期刊
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
卷 289, 期 1968, 页码 -出版社
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.1809
关键词
COVID-19; critical slowing down; early warning signals; timescale separation
资金
- ZonMw [10430032010011, 10430022010001]
- NSF [2027786]
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Environmental Biology [2027786] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
This study aims to investigate whether early warning indicators based on critical slowing down could reliably predict the emergence of the second wave of COVID-19 in Europe. Contrary to theoretical predictions, the study found that these indicators generally decreased rather than increased prior to the second wave. Simulation results showed that the lack of timescale separation was expected during the second wave of the European COVID-19 epidemic.
Early warning indicators based on critical slowing down have been suggested as a model-independent and low-cost tool to anticipate the (re)emergence of infectious diseases. We studied whether such indicators could reliably have anticipated the second COVID-19 wave in European countries. Contrary to theoretical predictions, we found that characteristic early warning indicators generally decreased rather than increased prior to the second wave. A model explains this unexpected finding as a result of transient dynamics and the multiple timescales of relaxation during a non-stationary epidemic. Particularly, if an epidemic that seems initially contained after a first wave does not fully settle to its new quasi-equilibrium prior to changing circumstances or conditions that force a second wave, then indicators will show a decreasing rather than an increasing trend as a result of the persistent transient trajectory of the first wave. Our simulations show that this lack of timescale separation was to be expected during the second European epidemic wave of COVID-19. Overall, our results emphasize that the theory of critical slowing down applies only when the external forcing of the system across a critical point is slow relative to the internal system dynamics.
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