Get the News Out Loudly and Quickly: The Influence of the Media on Limiting Emerging Infectious Disease Outbreaks

During outbreaks of infectious diseases with high morbidity and mortality, individuals closely follow media reports of the outbreak. Many will attempt to minimize contacts with other individuals in order to protect themselves from infection and possibly death. This process is called social distancing. Social distancing strategies include restricting socializing and travel, and using barrier protections. We use modeling to show that for short-term outbreaks, social distancing can have a large influence on reducing outbreak morbidity and mortality. In particular, public health agencies working together with the media can significantly reduce the severity of an outbreak by providing timely accounts of new infections and deaths. Our models show that the most effective strategy to reduce infections is to provide this information as early as possible, though providing it well into the course of the outbreak can still have a significant effect. However, our models for long-term outbreaks indicate that reporting historic infection data can result in more infections than with no reporting at all. We examine three types of media influence and we illustrate the media influence with a simulated outbreak of a generic emerging infectious disease in a small city. Social distancing can never be complete; however, for a spectrum of outbreaks, we show that leaving isolation (stopping applying social distancing measures) for up to 4 hours each day has modest effect on the overall morbidity and mortality.

在发病率与死亡率均较高的传染病暴发期间，民众会密切关注媒体对疫情的报道。许多人会尽量减少与他人的接触，以保护自身免受感染甚至死亡威胁，这一过程即称为社交距离措施（social distancing）。社交距离措施的实施手段包括限制社交活动与出行、采用屏障式防护等。
本研究通过建模分析表明，针对短期暴发的疫情，社交距离措施可显著降低疫情的发病率与死亡率。具体而言，公共卫生机构与媒体协同合作，通过及时通报新增感染与死亡病例的相关信息，可大幅降低疫情的严重程度。模型结果显示，尽早发布此类信息是减少感染的最优策略，但即便在疫情暴发中期再发布相关信息，仍可产生显著的防控效果。
不过，针对长期持续的疫情，模型结果显示，披露历史感染数据反而可能比完全不发布任何信息导致更多的感染病例。本研究分析了三类媒体传播的影响，并以某小城市中一类通用型新兴传染病（emerging infectious disease）的模拟暴发场景为例，阐释了媒体的具体影响机制。
社交距离措施永远无法完全落实；不过，针对多类疫情场景的分析显示，每日最多4小时的隔离解除（即停止实施社交距离措施），对整体发病率与死亡率的影响相对有限。