The cost of myopic pandemic response

Prior to the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) served as a primary strategy to mitigate the spread of the disease. However, the efficiency of these interventions relies on understanding and incorporating human behavior into infectious disease models. This study addresses the need for models that better account for the influence of temporal discounting on behavioral dynamics to enhance forecasting accuracy and develop robust mitigation strategies. Our previous research introduced Known Time Horizon (KTH) policies, optimizing social distancing measures based on a central planner’s rational assessment of the pandemic’s time frame and associated costs. In this paper, we contrast the KTH policy with a model reflecting myopic decision-making, an extreme form of temporal discounting that emphasizes short-term outcomes over long-term consequences. By comparing the expected social distancing behavior under myopic decision-making with the optimal policy derived from KTH approaches, we elucidate the impact of temporal bias on social distancing practices and assess its implications for infection dynamics and associated costs. We find that myopic policy always results in greater total costs throughout an epidemic compared to a KTH policy. However, each cost component – the costs of infection and social distancing – derived from a myopic strategy may be either larger or smaller than the component costs for a strategy developed using a full optimization model, depending on the specific parameters involved as myopic decision-makers seek to delay both costs of social distancing and infection. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement We wish to thank the National Cancer Institute (R21CA157571), and the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (R01AI118705 & R01AI160240) for providing support in projects that led to preliminary work and ideas that motivated this project. Dr. Nowak acknowledges support from the Blodwen S. Huber Early Career Green and Gold Professor in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at The Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine as well as support from The National Institute of General Medical Sciences 3P20GM125498-04S1 and 2P20GM125498P-06. ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable. Yes All code used is available at: