Mathematics Indicates That an HIV-Style Strategy Could Be Applied to Manage the Coronavirus
We have learned to live with many potentially deadly viruses for which there is no vaccine, no immunity, and no cure. We do not live in constant fear of these viruses, instead, we have learned how to outsmart them and reduce the harm they cause. A new mat
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1 Can We Adapt Strategies Used to Fight HIV to Create Strategies to Fight the Coronavirus? We live with many viruses that have no vaccine and no cure. One notable example is HIV. Although many effective treatments have been developed, there is still neither a cure nor a vaccine for HIV. Nonetheless, most people do not live in constant fear of HIV, in spite of the fact that it is a deadly and incurable virus. How do we manage this? How do you protect yourself from HIV? You might answer that you abstain from sex with partners that have not been tested for HIV, or that you use condoms with new sexual partners. These are examples of effective methods that when used correctly prevent or reduce transmission between people. With the coronavirus and HIV, we highlight in Figure 1 mitigation strategies for these two viruses that are somewhat—albeit not perfectly—analogous. On the one hand, both HIV and the coronavirus can be transmitted by people who do not have any symptoms [3, 7, 8, 14], so that both viruses can be invisible threats. On the other hand, the transmission routes for HIV are much more specific and intimate compared with the transmission routes for the coronavirus. Nonetheless, we may be able to use what we have learned in the past forty years fighting HIV and apply it to fight the novel coronavirus. The good news is: we have very recently obtained a mathematical proof that an HIV-style strategy could work [9]. As with all theoretical mathematics, there are certain caveats that should be mentioned. First, the mathematical model in [9] is rooted in evolutionary game dynamics, that assumes individuals are rational and act in their best self-interest. The model makes no predictions for individuals who do not J. Rowlett (*) Mathematics Department, Chalmers University, Göteborg, Sweden University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Wonders (ed.) Math in the Time of Corona, Mathematics Online First Collections, https://doi.org/10.1007/16618_2020_22
J. Rowlett
Fig. 1 There are many similarities between HIV and the coronavirus, like the fact that both viruses can be transmitted by people who show no symptoms. To fight these invisible enemies, effective mitigation measures are also somewhat analogous. Of course, the analogy is far from perfect because these viruses are also quite different. For example, the level of intimacy required to contract HIV compared to the coronavirus is much greater. Nonetheless, we may be able to apply lessons from fighting HIV to battle our new enemy. These mitigation measure analogies are only a few; there may be further analogous measures that have escaped our attention
fit that description. Second, it is currently unknown whether or not infection from the coronavirus and subsequent recovery grants long-term immunity [12, 13, 17]. Our model errs on the side of caution by making no assumption regarding long-term immunity; that is, we assume that immunity is either not conferred o
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