General remarks
How this program should NOT be used
This Program is not a prophetic tool. It should not be used to predict the exact
course of the next influenza pandemi. The influenza virus which will create the
next pandemic is yet unknown and it could deviate in important aspects from the
known viruses, which may influence the degree of contagiousness, the duration
and severity of the disease and the effect of antiviral treatment. Another
important aspect is given by the behaviour of the human population which will
certainly change during the course of a devastating plague and which could only
be modelled in a rather sketchy way in this program anyway.
How this program should be used
This program should be used to produce a variety of possible pandemic curves in
order to
-
learn how the pandemic curve depends on the parameter values used
-
examin how the (yet widely unsupported) assumptions concerning contagiousness
and pathogenicity of the new virus influence the pandemic
-
recognize bottle necks in the public health system
-
evaluate the influence of various interventions on the course of the pandemic
curve in order to avoid or mitigate such bottle necks
-
make cost-effectiveness analyses, based on best-case and worst-case parameter
settings
-
make sensitivity analyses
