An epidemic model highlighting humane social awareness and vector-host lifespan ratio variation

Abstract: Many vector-borne disease epidemic models neglect the fact that in modern human civilization, social awareness as well as self-defence system are overwhelming against advanced propagation of the disease. News are becoming more effortlessly accessible through social media and mobile apps, while apparatuses for disease prevention are inclined to be more abundant and affordable. Here we study a simple host-vector model in which media-triggered social awareness and seasonality in vector breeding are taken into account. There appears a certain threshold indicating the alarming outbreak; the number of infective human individuals above which shall actuate the self-defence system for the susceptible subpopulation. A model where the infection rate revolves in the likelihood of poverty, reluctancy, tiresomeness, perceiving the disease as being easily curable, absence of medical access, and overwhelming hungrier vectors is proposed. Further discoveries are made from undertaking disparate time scales between human and vector population dynamics. The resulting slow-fast system discloses notable dynamics in which solution trajectories confine to the slow manifold and critical manifold, before finally ending up at equilibria. How coinciding the slow manifold with the critical manifold enhances periodic forcing is also studied. The finding on hysteresis loops gives insights of how defining alarming outbreak critically perturbs the basic reproductive number, which later helps keep the incidence cycle on small magnitudes.