Part 3 -- Simulation and the Coronavirus: The Importance of Complexity Science for Public Health

BLOG POST 3 of N

This post is the 3rd of several devoted to addressing the complex challenges of modelling the coronavirus as a public health issue. It is also about clarifying for a wider audience how and why such modelling is important, as well as the value and power of complex systems thinking and computational modelling for public health policy.

QUICK SUMMARY
The focus of the first post was to explain how models influence public health policy and why some models are better at modelling COVID-19 than others, given the challenge of complexity. The post ended asking the question: So, what does an effective model look like? (CLICK HERE for the first post)  In response I said I would review two of the models getting the most attention. Before turning to these models, however, the second post reviewed, from a complex systems perspective, what a public health model of infectious disease looks like in the first place. (CLICK HERE for the second post) The current post moves on to review the first of our two models: the simulation model by Ferguson and colleagues at Imperial College London. The fourth post will review the complex network model by Vespignani and colleagues at Northeastern University in the States

There is no one way to model infectious disease
As Matt Keeling and Pejman Rohani explain in Modeling Infectious Diseases in Humans and Animals, in the world of public health there are a variety of approaches to mathematically modelling infectious disease. In terms of methods, for example, there are agent-based models, microsimulations, differential equations, statistical methods, Bayesian approaches, stochastic models, network analyses and geospatial modelling, to name of a few.

And, in terms of how these models are used, there are also a variety of theoretical frameworks; that is, there are a variety of ways to conceptualise how infectious disease spreads through a population. These conceptualisations range from the very simple to the highly complex. For example, one of the simplest models, which is highly useful and still used at the base of most conceptualisations, is the SIR model. The model consists of three compartments: S for the number of susceptible, I for the number of infectious, and R for the number recovered (or immune) individuals. For anyone on social media, watching television or reading the newspapers, variants of the SIR model have been shown in discussions about 'flattening the curve', as well as explanations about the value of herd immunity.

And, as the global conflict around which model or approach is correct has demonstrated (circa March 2020), there is a tradoff involved in choosing the right method and theoretical framework. For example, different models will yield different results. A network model is very good at showing how diseases spread through a population's network structure; in turn, agent-based models are very good at showing how people interact with and react to the spread of an infection. Meanwhile, differential equation models and stochastic models are good at predicting the prevalence or duration of a disease. Simpler models can be adapted to a variety of different situations, but lack enough specificity to often make useful predictions or forecasts. In turn, highly complex models are not easily adapted to new and different situations. Also, the more complex a model gets, the more difficult it is to discern what is causing what. 

It is within this modelling milieu that the model from Imperial is situated.

So, which modelling approach is Imperial College London using? 

Ferguson and colleagues describe their model as a microsimulation. More specifically, their model is an individual-based, stochastic, spatially situated microsimulation for modelling the health outcomes of COVID-19. (We will unpack all of these terms in a minute!) The purpose of their model is to simulate and explore the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand, given that we are maybe a year away from a vaccine. (Examples include home isolation of suspect cases, home quarantine of those living in the same household as suspect cases, and social distancing of the elderly and others at most risk of severe disease. Their test cases are the UK and USA.

To make sense of their model, let's walk through their terms and ideas one at a time.

Microsimulations (MSMs): As Carolyn Rutter and colleagues explain: "MSMs describe events and outcomes at the person-level with an ultimate goal of providing information that can guide policy decisions" (2012, p. 2). To do this, MSMs “simulate individual event histories associated with key components of a disease process; [which are aggregated] to estimate population-level effects of treatment on disease outcomes [e.g., social isolation versus developing herd immunity]" (2012, p. 1).

• Breaking this definition down, an event history is simply a longitudinal record of when events occurred for an individual or a sample of individuals. For example, collecting information on a sample of people to determine if and when they had COVID-19. 
• Components of an infectious disease process include: agent, portals of entry and exit, mode of transmission, immunity.  
• In terms of aggregated estimates of the population-level effects of treatment, MSMs predict aggregate trends in disease incidence and mortality under alternative health policy scenarios, or compare the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of public health strategies, be it health costs or economic wellbeing.

Steps in developing and running an MSM: As Rutter and colleagues explain, “there are three essential steps in developing any MSM: (1) Identifying a fixed number of distinct states and characteristics associated with these states; (2) Specifying stochastic rules for transition through states; and (3) Setting values for model parameters" (2012, p. 2). So, to summarise: 

• microsimulation is a modelling technique that operates at the level of individual units such as persons, households, vehicles or firms.
• within the model each unit is represented by a record containing a unique identifier and a set of associated attributes – e.g. a list of persons with known age, sex, marital and employment status; or a list of vehicles with known origins, destinations and operational characteristics. 
• a set of rules (transition probabilities) are then applied to these units leading to simulated changes in state and behaviour. 
• these rules may be deterministic (probability = 1), such as changes in susceptibility to catching COVID-19 resulting from changes in social distancing, or stochastic (probability <=1), such as chance of recovering from COVID-19 within a given time period. 
• in either case the result is an estimate of the outcomes of applying these rules, possibly over many time steps, including both total overall aggregate change and (importantly) the way this change is distributed in the population or location that is being modelled.

Short video demonstration of pandemic evolving across time/space

Stochastic: As our summary above just suggested, there are two basic types of microsimulation models. The first is deterministic. In such a model, everything, including the behaviours of the people in them, is defined and fixed. There is no room for chance. Clocks, for example, are deterministic models of time. As such, given some set of initial conditions, the outcome is basically always the same. It is 7AM every day at basically the same time. Or is it? While clocks are rather good there is still a degree of error and randomness in the model. And that is just a clock. Once we move to the level of such highly complex and dynamic phenomena as the spread of infectious disease and pandemics, often there is no choice but to embrace the randomness or what is also referred to as its stochasticity.

In infectious disease modelling, stochasticity is the 'chance' element in disease transmission. As Keeling and Rohani explain, "Stochastic models are concerned with approximating or mimicking [the random or probabilistic element of disease transmission]. In general, the role played by chance will be most important whenever the number of infectious individuals is relatively small, which can be when the population size is small, when an infectious disease has just invaded, when control measures are successfully applied, or during the trough phase of an epidemic cycle. In such circumstances, it is especially important that stochasticity is taken into account and incorporated into models" (2011, p. 190). And stochasticity not only emerges in terms of randomness, but also the hard reality that we will never have perfect data.

Thinking of the Imperial College model then, a stochastic individual-based model of COVID-19 seeks to model explicitly random events at the level of the individuals in a population -- in this case the UK and the United States -- based on the best available data (which currently is not great!) and the population's differences in key characteristics, such as where they live, the social distancing practices in which they engage, the types of policies implemented and, over the course of the next year, the availability of vaccinations.

Because of schochasticity, however, a microsimulation is not run just once. Instead, given some set of initial conditions and some set or paramters within which differences are allowed to fall -- say, for example, rates of infection -- "multiple simulations are required to determine the expected range of behavior" (Keeling and Rohani 2011, p. 190).

Relative to this idea of running multiple microsimulations, Keeling and Rohani (2011) make another important point, which needs to be considered when understanding the catious nature of how the Imperial model reports its results. Keeling and Rohani state, "The most obvious element of any stochastic model is that different simulations give rise to different outcomes. This implies that although the general statistical properties (such as the mean and the variance) may be accurately predicted, it is generally impossible to predetermine the precise disease prevalence at any given point in the future" (2011 p. 191).

In terms of COVID-19, this is where people mistake the public health community's differences of opinion for some sort of modelling failure. But, it is not! The vagaries of these models are not demonstrations of confusion or perplexity. Instead, they are the hard realities of the uncertainties of forecasting, given the complexity of this pandemic, the availability of good data, the challenges of getting people to practice what the model preaches, and the unknowns (knock-on effects) presently unknown.  That is why, if the reader recalls from my 2nd blog post, modelling is best done collectively (we need more than one model) and democratically and self-critically through co-production and participatory research, including not only policy makers but also healthcare providers and the general public.

Individual-based: As already hinted at, part of why microsimulations are called micro is because they focus on individuals at the microscopic level. That is not to say they do not provide macroscopic insights into how a virus, for example, spreads across a population -- because, in fact, that is exactly what they do. They just do it by examining how the disease spreads from person to person based on some set of key characteristics and, in turn, some key set of interventions. 

As Keeling and Rohani explain, "Models with demographic stochasticity force the population to be made up of individuals, but all individuals of the same type are compartmentalized and measured by a single parameter—there is no distinction between individuals in the same class. In contrast, individual-based models monitor the state of each individual in the population. For example, in models with demographic stochasticity we know how many individuals are in the infectious class but not who they are, whereas in individual-based models we know the state of each individual and hence which individuals are infectious. Individual based models are therefore often more computationally intensive (especially in terms of computer memory) because each individual in the population must have its status recorded" (2011, p. 217).

In thinking about COVID-19, this 'need to know' is why testing is so important: our data for running our models is only as good as our knowledge of who gets infected and how, who they have interacted with, the incubation period of their illness, whether they were asymptomatic or not (and to what extent) and their health outcome, as well as where they live and so forth.  Still, even with such an approach, we seldom model the entire population. Which takes us to the next point.

Spatial: As you might have already guessed, stochasticity is heavily dependent upon not only time but also space. As such, if one wants to model the unique and nuanced differences in how disease transmission takes place in a particular country or region of the world, it will need to be spatially grounded. As Keeling and Rohani explain, "Spatial structure, the subdivision of the population due to geographical location, is another situation where stochasticity plays a vital and dominant role. Without underlying heterogeneities in the parameters at different locations, most deterministic models are asymptote to a uniform solution at all locations, thereby negating the necessity of a spatial model. However, in a stochastic setting, different spatial locations experience different random effects, and spatial heterogeneity may therefore be maintained" (2011, p. 221). 

Different spatial locations also experience differences in density, proximity, etc, as well as how a policy, strategy or intervention is implemented, as well as different population densities. For example, in the case of COVID-19, living in an urban versus rural community, for example, strongly impacts how well someone can engage in social distancing, access grocery stores, self-isolate, get testing, access critical care, and so forth.

 4-minute video summary of spatial microsimulation

How does their microsimulation work?

So, now that we have a basic sense of how microsimulations work, we can turn specifically to the model Ferguson and colleagues developed. The easiest way to overview their model is to copy-and-paste the excellent summary they provide at the beginning of Report 9 (released 16 March 2020) and add comments for clarification (my comments are in green font):

THEY STATE: We modified an individual-based simulation model developed to support pandemic influenza planning to explore scenarios for COVID-19 in GB. The basic structure of the model remains as previously published.

Castellani comment: In 2005, Elizabeth Halloran and colleagues (including Ferguson) published 'Modeling targeted layered containment of an influenze pandemic in the United States'. In 2005, Ferguson and colleagues also published, 'Strategies for containing anemerging influenza pandemic in Southeast Asia'. And, finally, in 2006, Ferguson and colleagues published 'Strategies for mitigating an influenza pandemic' The COVID-19 model Ferguson and colleagues used was adopted from these studies. The last two articles, in particular, provide a supplementary paper that outlines in detail the original model, as well as videos on the spread of a pandemic in Thailand, UK and USA. You can download the videos and watch them. 

THEY STATE: [In our model] individuals reside in areas defined by high-resolution population density data. Contacts with other individuals in the population are made within the household, at school, in the workplace and in the wider community. Census data were used to define the age and household distribution size. Data on average class sizes and staff-student ratios were used to generate a synthetic population of schools distributed proportional to local population density. Data on the distribution of workplace size was used to generate workplaces with commuting distance data used to locate workplaces appropriately across the population. Individuals are assigned to each of these locations at the start of the simulation.

Castellani comment: the last sentence above is particularly important for a microsimulation -- the idea that, once the setting and all of the basic parameters are estabalished, based on all sort of real-world data, individuals in the simulated version of the UK and USA are assigned a location on the map and the simulation is started. 

THEY STATE: Transmission events occur through contacts made between susceptible and infectious individuals in either the household, workplace, school or randomly in the community, with the latter depending on spatial distance between contacts. Per-capita contacts within schools were assumed to be double those elsewhere in order to reproduce the attack rates in children observed in past influenza pandemics. With the parameterisation above, approximately one third of transmission occurs in the household, one third in schools and workplaces and the remaining third in the community. These contact patterns reproduce those reported in social mixing surveys.

We assumed an incubation period of 5.1 days. Infectiousness is assumed to occur from 12 hours prior to the onset of symptoms for those that are symptomatic and from 4.6 days after infection in those that are asymptomatic with an infectiousness profile over time that results in a 6.5-day mean generation time. Based on fits to the early growth-rate of the epidemic in Wuhan10,11, we make a baseline assumption that R0=2.4 [number of people a sick person will infect],but examine values between 2.0 and 2.6.

Castellani comment: If readers recall from the 1st blog post, R_o is the reproduction number, which is defined as how many people each infected person can infect if the transmission of the virus is not hampered by quarantines, face masks, or other factors. 

THEY STATE: We assume that symptomatic individuals are 50% more infectious than asymptomatic individuals. Individual infectiousness is assumed to be variable, described by a gamma distribution with mean 1 and shape parameter alpha=0.25.

Example of Gamma Distributions

Castellani comment: remember our review above about microsimulations being individual-based? Well, here it comes into play insomuch as the model assumes that individual infectiousness varies amongst people based on key social and demographic differences, which is important as the population is not a uniform group of people. This relationship can be graphed using a gamma distribution, which is useful for showing the time until k events (k infections) given the rate of infection and because these distributions are always skewed. Also, the guess at people with coronavirus being 50% more infectious is an assumption based on what we know and don't know about infectious diseasese similar to COVID-19, but it is not by any means exact. In other words, there is a bit of handwaving going on here. But, those are the realities of modelling and why modellers tell each other what they did, so others can try different scenarios.

THEY STATE: On recovery from infection, individuals are assumed to be immune to re-infection in the short term. Evidence from the Flu Watch cohort study suggests that re-infection with the same strain of seasonal circulating coronavirus is highly unlikely in the same or following season (Prof Andrew Hayward, personal communication).

Infection was assumed to be seeded in each country at an exponentially growing rate (with a doubling time of 5 days) from early January 2020, with the rate of seeding being calibrated to give local epidemics which reproduced the observed cumulative number of deaths in GB or the US seen by 14th March 2020.

Castellani comment: I am not sure why, but in my 23 years of being a professor, one of the concepts students regularly struggle to understand is exponential growth. In mathematics and statistics there are lots of different types of exponential functions. The one I find easiest to explain is something that triples at each time step. Consider a disease in a population of N=1,000 where on Day1, two people have it. If nothing is done to stop the disease, here is how it progresses: 

Day 1 = 2 people infected
Day2 = 2*3 = 6
Day3 = 6*3 = 18 
Day4 = 18*3 = 54 
Day5 = 54*3 = 162
Day6 = 162*3 = 486
Day7 = 486*3 = 1458 
By Day 7 everyone has the virus

What does the Imperial College London simulation tell us?

As we stated earlier, the purpose of the model developed by Ferguson and colleagues is to simulate and explore the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand, given that we are maybe a year or more away from a vaccine.

So, what did they learn?

Here is the summary they present in their report as of 16 March 2020. As the pandemic progresses, there will obviously be updated modelling and reports. (CLICK HERE For a complete copy of Report 9 and the other reports available at their website).

The global impact of COVID-19 has been profound, and the public health threat it represents is the most serious seen in a respiratory virus since the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic. Here we present the results of epidemiological modelling which has informed policymaking in the UK and other countries in recent weeks. In the absence of a COVID-19 vaccine, we assess the potential role of a number of public health measures – so-called non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) – aimed at reducing contact rates in the population and thereby reducing transmission of the virus. In the results presented here, we apply a previously published microsimulation model to two countries: the UK (Great Britain specifically) and the US. We conclude that the effectiveness of any one intervention in isolation is likely to be limited, requiring multiple interventions to be combined to have a substantial impact on transmission.

Two fundamental strategies are possible: (a) mitigation, which focuses on slowing but not necessarily stopping epidemic spread – reducing peak healthcare demand while protecting those most at risk of severe disease from infection, and (b) suppression, which aims to reverse epidemic growth, reducing case numbers to low levels and maintaining that situation indefinitely. Each policy has major challenges.

Figure 2 shows various UK mitigation strategies; Figure 3 shows UK suppression strategies.

We find that that optimal mitigation policies (combining home isolation of suspect cases, home quarantine of those living in the same household as suspect cases, and social distancing of the elderly and others at most risk of severe disease) might reduce peak healthcare demand by 2/3 and deaths by half. However, the resulting mitigated epidemic would still likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and health systems (most notably intensive care units) being overwhelmed many times over. For countries able to achieve it, this leaves suppression as the preferred policy option.

We show that in the UK and US context, suppression will minimally require a combination of social distancing of the entire population, home isolation of cases and household quarantine of their family members. This may need to be supplemented by school and university closures, though it should be recognised that such closures may have negative impacts on health systems due to increased absenteeism. The major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package – or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission – will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more) – given that we predict that transmission will quickly rebound if interventions are relaxed. We show that intermittent social distancing – triggered by trends in disease surveillance – may allow interventions to be relaxed temporarily in relative short time windows, but measures will need to be reintroduced if or when case numbers rebound. Last, while experience in China and now South Korea show that suppression is possible in the short term, it remains to be seen whether it is possible long-term, and whether the social and economic costs of the interventions adopted thus far can be reduced.

What is missing from the Imperial model?

While the COVID-19 microsimulation model designed by Ferugson and colleagues is to be highly commended for all that it does, no single model, no matter how great, is perfect nor sufficient. As we discussed in the previous two blog posts, the best approach therefore is to think of these models as learning tools and also to situate any one model within a wider suite or ensemble of models. And the group at Imperial College London would be the first to make this point (as well as the points below)!

So, what needs to be improved? And what else is needed?

• First, we need to remember that this model is best seen as a learning tool.
• Second, we need to take into account the list of issues I provided at the end of my 2nd post (click here to review)
• We also need to remember that all such data forecasting is within a certain set of parameters, and so things are most likely to play out in a different way, as such the model could be wrong. 
• Which is why such models need to be run again.
• It is also why we need to constantly make use of the error in our models, in order to take into account what we do not know, and what we do not know that we do not know!
• Also, the shorter the time-frame being examined, the better the chance of being more accurate. For example, it is easier to suggest what might happen in five weeks than what will happen five months from now. 
• Also, relative to these forecasting challenge, we need better data -- which is why testing is so important! 
• The underlying mechanisms (both social and biological) need to be understood about COVID-19. In other words, we need better theoretical and conceptual models, which we presently lack.
• We also need to augment this microsimulation with other models. 
• We need to explore how complex network models help to illuminate the results of microsimulation, as they do more than just focus on individuals; they also focus on the social networks of everyone and how they link-up to one another.
• In this way, complex network models can show us not only how a virus spreads spatially and temporally, but through which particular networks, which gives us very specific insights into which sections of a network are best for us to place an intervention. (We will discuss this in greater detail in the next post.)
• We also need to compare these microsimulations with agent-based models (ABMs). ABMs are very good at showing how an infection spreads through people's interactions with one another as well as how they react to the policies implemented.

• For example, a microsimulation would not be as good at modelling how students on Spring Break in Florida or people at the beaches in Europe spread COVID-19 by not practicing social distancings despite being asked to do so. ABMs would, however, be very good at this.
• In short, microsimulations do not model well social interactions. Which is why ABMs are highly useful, as they allow us to explore how social behaviours and social life impact the spread of a virus. And, they allow us to explore how individuals, groups, communities, complex networks, etc interact with the policies and strategies put into place to mitigate or suppress the disease. As illustration, see this excellent blog post by Wander Jager on ABMS and COVID-19. 

Summary
Given all of the above limits and the need for more and other modelling, at the end of the day, all model-based policy recommendations need to be taken into account cautiously. But, we need to also make use of science. We never have lived in world where serious science should be ignored, particularly when it comes to highly complex issues such as pandemics. And in a very harsh and upsetting way, COVID-19 is demonstrating that, contrary to the post-fact-anti-expert political and cultural climates that so many people, the world over, have willingly embraced, science and medicine are not simply social constructions; instead, they are often the difference between life and death.

Part 2 -- Modelling COVID-19: So, what does an effective approach to simulation look like?

BLOG POST 2 of N

This post is the 2nd of several devoted to addressing the complex challenges of modelling the coronavirus as a public health issue. It is also about clarifying for a wider audience how and why such modelling is important, as well as the value and power of complex systems thinking and computational modelling for public health policy. The first post -- Modelling the coronavirus: why all public health models are not the same -- can be read by CLICKING HERE.

So, what does an effective approach to simulating COVID-19 look like?

The focus of the first post was to explain how models influence public health policy and why some models are better at modelling COVID-19 than others, given the challenge of complexity. The post ended asking the question: So, what does an effective model look like? In response I said I would review two of the models getting the most attention, which are very good in their particular ways. The first is the simulation model by Ferguson and colleagues at Imperial College London; the second is complex network model by Alessandro Vespignani and colleagues at Northeastern University in the States. 

Before we turn to these models, however, we first need to understand what a public health infectious disease model looks like in the first place. NOTE: I am not going to reinvent the wheel here, as there are a ton of video tutorials, books, articles, workshops, white papers, and on the basics of simulations and complex network models. In short, I will keep to the basics and provide links for more in-depth review elsewhere.

Public Heath Infectious Disease Models: The Basics

1. Modelling is more about learning and less about predicting

Of the various things to get clear first is that there is a fuzzy divide between those who think public health models are created to make accurate predictions about the future; while others (myself included) who see them more as learning tools that can help us think better about a topic -- albeit with data forecasting still being incredibly important! And the latter -- that is modelling to learn -- which works even better when 'learning' is done through a participatory and co-production approach. (For more on participatory approaches, see the INVOLVE project.)
 

Bottom line: when it comes to highly complex systems, the fact is that agent-based models, complex networks, survival models, microsimulations are not particularly great at telling us what exactly will happen -- in fact, nothing is! 

However, they do seem rather good at telling us what sorts of public health outcomes might happen and how we might respond to these outcomes and so forth. In other words, they seem better when used as learning tools (albeit as well as forms of cautious prediction). And that is, it seems to me, exactly what a lot of the public health models these past several weeks (circa March 2020) have done: they have challenged a certain way of thinking in the government of focusing on mitigation alone, and probably really helped to put us in the right direction, even if their predictions on mortality and rate of spread are not (or will not be) exact.

   

2. Modelling multiple trajectories, not a single outcome!

The reasons all of these models fall short of accurate predictions is because complex social systems are, by definition, comprised of multiple and different trends that evolve simultaneously.

Also, as I mentioned in my first blog post, the agents in social systems are learning animals and therefore interact with and respond to changes in the system, including policy interventions. At the aggregate level, these responses and their intersecting interactions self-organise into a larger emergent pattern that forms a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. 

Predicting these emergent aspects and the multiple and different trends upon which these patterns are based is further complicated by the fact that the outcomes will also differ for different groups and trends (a point I made in the first post relative to case-based configurational thinking). For example, if a certain set of guidelines for behavioural change are suggested to mitigate COVID-19, they may work much better to the advantage of affluent communities (which have the resources and healthcare to carry out the recommendations) as opposed to a poor community lacking in resources with an already-strained healthcare system. 

Example of multiple trends and emergent patterns in depression/physical health study

3. Thinking about complex causality in modelling

When running any model of a complex system, such as pandemic like COVID-19, please take the following caveats into consideration when thinking about causality: 

(CITATION: The following points were developed from my reading of Moore, G. F., Evans, R. E., Hawkins, J., Littlecott, H., Melendez-Torres, G. J., Bonell, C., & Murphy, S. (2019). From complex social interventions to interventions in complex social systems: future directions and unresolved questions for intervention development and evaluation. Evaluation, 25(1), 23-45.)

First, we need to be clear that no evaluation method, including a complex systems approach, “will ever be able to address the almost infinite number of uncertainties posed by the introduction of change into a complex system” (Moore et al, 2019: 36).

However, adopting the type of case-based systems lens suggested by complex systems approach (which I outlined in my first post) may help to “drive the focus of evaluation (i.e. which of the multitude of uncertainties posed by interventions in complex systems do we need answers to in order to make decisions, or move the field forward)” (Moore et al., 2019: 36). It can also help to “shape the interpretation of process and outcomes data” (Moore et al., 2019: 36). 

Second, “complex interventions in complex social systems,” including exploring such strategies via a complex systems approach “pose almost infinite uncertainties and there will always be much going on outside of the field of vision of an individual study” (Moore et al., 2019: 37).

“However, a focus on discrete impacts of system change” as if often done with complex systems approach, “does not necessarily betray a naïve view of how systems work, but may simply reflect a pragmatic focusing of research on core uncertainties” (Moore et al., 2019: 37). And this is, for me, one of the most powerful provisions of a computational modelling perspective (particularly simulation, network analysis and machine learning) given its focus on interventions in complex clusters and the configuration of factors of which they are comprised, be such a study cross-sectional, pre-post, or longitudinal.

Third, we need to strongly emphasize that the complex systems approach is a learning environment that bridges the computational/quantitative/qualitative divide, as it requires users to be in direct and constant (i.e., iterative) interaction with the complex systems approach environment and their respective theories of change, be they sitting implicitly in the background of their minds or formally outlined and defined. For example, as Moore et al (2019) state, “Of course, it is never possible to identify all potential system level mechanisms and moderators of the effects of an evaluation,” (Moore et al, 2019: 39), even in the case of complex systems approach. Additionally, “no evaluation would be powered to formally model all of these. However, combining quantitative causal modelling [as in the case of complex systems approach] with qualitative process data [in the form of user-engagement with the simulation platform] can play a vital role in building and testing theories about the processes of disrupting the functioning of complex social systems to optimize their impacts on health” (Moore et al., 2019: 39).

In short, putting all of the above points together, the goal here is not necessarily about identifying some underlying causal model, as much as it is about exploring and learning how various interventions or strategies might play out for a given policy and the larger complex system in which it is situated. And such a goal is, while humbler, nonetheless very important.  

4. What, then, can models tell us and help us do?

Given the above realities, the value of modelling is that models (no matter the form) are useful heuristic tools for exploring the implications of what might happen in relation to different sets of governance interventions. One can think of such interventions as control parameters which can operate to determine (in the sense of set boundaries not exact specification) the future state of the system. This seems to be what governments around the world are doing in response to the implications of the Imperial College model and other such models.

In other words, the best that can be achieved is a tentative forecast of several possible futures. However, that would require policy makers and citizens to actually implement the strategies described in such a model. But, even then, if implemented at a threshold of 100%, most of these possible futures will not occur anyway. As such, the value of modelling, when done well, is that they allow policy makers, scientists, healthcare providers, public health officials, businesses, and the general public to talk about scenarios for which precautions could be taken.

And so, to reiterate, as one of my colleagues recently pointed out in an email -- it is crucial for modelers to ensure that model users (policymakers, healthcare providers, government officials, the general public, etc) treat these models as decision support tools, not prediction machines. Unfortunately, this is not often made clear or understood by users. It is also not made explicit by model developers in their well-intentioned enthusiasm to help. 

(For more on this point, see (1) Computational Modelling of Public Policy: Reflections on Practice; (2) Ideal, Best, and Emerging Practices in Creating Artificial Societies; (3) Using Agent-Based Modelling to Inform Policy – What Could Possibly Go Wrong? See also, the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation and also, relative to policy, the Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus.) 

So, to summarise: what does an effective approach to modelleing COVID-19 look like?

• It is one that embraces complexity.
• Takes a case-based configurational approach, similar to current compuational modelling.
• Focuses on the complex sets of conditions and wider context in which the model is situated.
• Related, while being country or population or region specific, it is taking into account the wider global picture.
• Is aware that complex social systems are comprised of humans, who react and learn in response to change, including public health interventions, and so culture, politics, economics, and collective psychology must be taken into account, along with likelihood of people adhering to the things being asked of them.
• understands the role of human and social interaction, including interaction with wider socio-ecological systems in which people and the rest of life on planet earth live.
• Searches for diferences -- differences in groups, populations, trends, trajectories, reactions, and outcomes.
• Recognises that the intersecting complex systems in which COVID-19 is playing itself out are nexus issues and wicked problems that bring with them a host of knock-on effects.
• Makes it clear that the purpose of modelling is less about prediction and more about helping people learn and explore. In other words, modelling is a powerful learning tool.
• Still predictions are helpful and very important within certain parameters and as long as they are done soberly.
• Demonstrates multiple and different possible scenarious and outcomes, many of which will not actually happen, but which allows users to understand the COVID-19 pandemic in more nuanced and sophisticated ways.
• Related, they allow for the exploration of counterfactuals -- which could prove the model to be wrong or partially wrong, or wrong for different groups, or require further development.
  
• Evaluates public health policies, strategies and interventions in a spirit of democratic co-production and participatory research, including the citizens it is meant to serve.
• Makes clear that its purpose is not necessarily just about identifying some underlying causal model, as much as it is about helping users explore and learn how various interventions or strategies might play out for a given COVID-19 policy and the larger complex system in which it is situated.
• Is able to adjust to new information, new data, new criticisms, and alternative viewpoints.
• Is designed, run and understood as one of an ansemble of other forms of scientific evaluation and modelling. In other words, all models are underdetermined by their evidence; all models are in some way wrong, but that does not mean they are not useful.

I am sure there are other points that my fellow modellers would add. And perhaps they can in the comments section below. But I think, overall, you get the basic points! 


So, how do our two key models work and what do they tell us?
Now that we have a good sense of the challenges of modelling (POST 1) and also a good sense of what an effective model of COVID-19 looks like, it is time, finally, to review two of the incredible models getting the most attention. The first is the simulation model by Ferguson and colleagues at Imperial College London; the second is complex network model by Alessandro Vespignani and colleagues at Northeastern University in the States. 

This is the focus of my third blog post!

Part 1 -- Modelling the coronavirus: why all public health models are not the same

Scientific Models Making the News Headlines

As most readers have probably seen, in the last couple weeks the issue of how to model the coronavirus has made headline news. In particular, two scientific public health models have been highlighted amongst an increadible outpouring of modelling research. The first is the simulation model by Ferguson and colleagues at Imperial College London; and the second is the complex network model by Alessandro Vespignani and colleagues at Northeastern University in the States. 

The impact these public health models have made on how governments are thinking about such things as containment, mitigation, suppression and eradication has been pronounced. And, what is likewise significant is that these models come from the computational and complexity sciences, which signals within the scientific community (in particular epidemiology and public health) a major advance in how we are dealing with the global complexity we are confronted with today -- which is an incredible accomplishment for the modelling community. Making sense of these advances and how they inform policy is therefore a key task.

BLOG POST 1 of N

In response to these advances, the current post is meant to be the first of several addressing the complex challenges of modelling the coronavirus as a public health issue. It is also about clarifying for a wider audience how and why such modelling is important, as well as the value and power of complex systems thinking and computational modelling for public health policy. Still, this does not mean modelling will answer all of our questions; nor does it mean that all models are equally useful! 

The Models We Use Impact the Decisions We Make

Image from Brockmann Lab http://rocs.hu-berlin.de/

In addition to the challenges of converting science into policy recommendations, the coronavirus has made very clear the recommendations made by policy evaluators and politicians are very much determined by the models upon which they rely -- be they economic, scientific, political. And, as we have seen with the controversial public health recommendations in the UK, USA and elsewhere in the world (circa March 2020), while some models are very good at simulating COVID-19 and making reasonably useful predictions, others are significantly problematic and lacking. In other words, even scientific models can be lacking. (See for example, Tracking an epidemic requires computer models. But what if those models are wrong?)

1. Some COVID-19 models are better than others

Case in point are the significant errors made by many public health models. For example, many of the current models are far too simplistic, Many also fail to model human interactions and the complex networks in which we live, or how societies, social networks or populations react to the policies being implemented to help them.

Also, even if interactive and dynamic, many are country specific; that is, they fail to see their society and population as part of a wider and highly complex global system and ignore that we live in a global network society, including its major transportation routes. As a result, as the World Health Organisation has been pleading for the past three months, their interventions are not coordinated with other countries; nor do they consider much beyond their own borders. Given this view, they assume that outbreaks in other parts of the world are not their problem; or that such 'problems' only happen in other countries. 

In turn, they also misunderstand collective psychology and how quickly ‘panic’ or ‘rebellion’ can set in -- the hording of toilet paper is a good example; or people failing to follow health behaviours guidelines; or how culture impacts health practices, as in Italy versus Singapore for example.

And, realtive to the issue of time and societal reaction, they fail to forecast the knock-on effects of their policies. Knock-on effects include:

• Unexpected drawbacks -- for example, how social isolation impacts different segements of the population differently; such as those who provide critical services, the elderly, children, the working poor; and those with pre-exisiting health problems.
• Perverse effects -- for example, school closings lead to kids being cared for by elderly grandparents, who are now made more vulnerable to catching the virus. Or, poor people who cannot pay the rent because the pub or restaurant at which they work is closed.
• Rebound effects -- for example, many of the current measures being employed may result in a rebound of COVID-19 this autumn 2020. For example, the simulation model developed by Ferguson and colleagues at Imperial College (which has helped to shift how the UK is addressing COVID-19) shows that some approaches to containment will lead to a resurgence sometime around late October/early November.

2. Cases, configurations and COVID-19 transmission

The other major challenge is that many of these models do not think about disease transmissions from a case-based configurational perspective. Regardless of the method used, a case-based configurational perspective is anchored in four core arguments that deeply resonate with the majority of computational methods used today. First, the case (which in this case is someone with COVID-19) and its trajectory across time/space are the focus of study, not the individual variables or attributes of which it is comprised. Second, cases and their trajectories are treated as composites (profiles), comprised of an interdependent, interconnected sets of variables, factors or attributes. Third, the relationships and social interactions amongst cases are also important, as are the hierarchical social contexts/systems in which these relationships take place. And, finally, cases and their relationships and trajectories are the methodological equivalent of complex systems – that is, they are emergent, self-organizing, nonlinear, dynamic, network-like, etc – and therefore should be studied as such. 

Given that many public health models do not embrace this approach, they often struggle to demonstrate the differential impact that the spread of COVID-19 will have on different populations and subgroups. 

For epidemiologists, different populations and sub-groups -- be they communities, towns, cities, regions, different socioeconomic groups, particular health vulnerable groups, etc -- differ from one another, based on differences in their respective public health profiles, which includes such key social factors as age, gender, ethnicity, residence, income, education, health behaviours, quality of healthcare and public health system (e.g., access to respirators, hospital beds, quarantine centres). 

Again, by profiles we also mean how these different sets of social factors intersect one another to account for different health outcomes and wellbeing of these different groups. For example, poor parents living in urban environments where they need to work cannot afford to self-quarantine as easily as a privileged professor like myself living on a university campus. As such, the policies needed for my health differ from the needs of others. For example, for working parents, it might be how and when we partially close schools so the kids of these working parents can still attend school and be safe? Or, how can these parents be given a way to afford school closings and self-quarantine?

And to make the point one more time, for those unfamiliar with a configurational approach, it is the methodological backbone of just about all smart technology and machine learning, which tries to develop profiles on how different groups or communities of people shop, surf the web, travel, use social media, etc, in order to better target interventions specific to these groups, be it new things to buy, news to read, music to listen to, health behaviours to change, etc. Various names for this approach are data mining, data science, digital social science, and big data -- see Mark Carrigan's blog.

3. Data, data and more data

The other major problem with many of these models is that they lack good data. Now, to be fair, that is presently a problem for all modelling, as the coronavirus presents a bit of a different epidemiological scenario, particularly the absence of current human immunity and also no current vaccines.

Another data issue that it is not clear is what the "reproduction number" (R_o) should be -- which is defined as how many people each infected person can infect if the transmission of the virus is not hampered by quarantines, face masks, or other factors.

Another major data challenge is COVID-19's incubation time, which is how long it takes for the virus to cause symptoms. (For more on this point, see this Science Magazine article).

Still, all models are only as good as the data on which they are fine-tuned and validated. Which gets even more tricky if one is thinking about data trajectories and trends across time; as well as about sampling and representation in terms of the sub-groups and communities in a country or region of the world and, in turn, their different respective configurations of factors. In short, things get complex very fast.

(NOTE: For those interested in the details, here is a supplementary overview of the 2006 model that Ferguson and colleagues used to develop their current COVID-19 simulation of the UK. It goes into considerable detail about the importance of data for modelling. Also, for an overview of the importance of data for initializing, calibrating and validating a model, see http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/19/1/9.html. Also, see https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8732881)

4. Managing pandemics such as COVID-19 versus eradicating them

The final major issue is one of perspective. Is the goal to eradicate or manage COVID-19? For example, the total quarantine of a population is mostly focused on trying to stop the coronavirus in the short-term. What happens, though, when a country tries to go back to normal? Will the virus return? This is a major concern for China and Italy right now (circa March 2020).

For complexity scientists, such a decision has everything to do with, ... well, ... complexity.

 

The more complex the problem, the more likely it is best treated as what we call a nexus issue or wicked problem. Such problems are wicked because the configuration of factors is far too challenging and intersects with too many different domains of our lives, to effectively solve once and for all. For example, quarantining the population can collapse the economy; keeping the economy going leads to people becoming sick; developing herd immunity for a country creates very high and unacceptable mortality rates; however, not doing so could lead to even higher mortality rates, and so forth. As such, complexity scientists opt for a systems mapping approach for wicked and nexus problem, with the goal of managing the issue, and with an eye to all of the issues we discussed above, including knock-on effects.

NOTE: Managing a pandemic still allows for periodic suppression of a virus such as COVID-19. But that does not mean the public health problem has gone away or will not return or evolve sufficiently to harm again. Even Ferguson and colleagues at Imperial College London, who developed the simulation being most widely explored and used by the UK government end their report with the following caveated conclusion:

We therefore conclude that epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time. The social and economic effects of the measures which are needed to achieve this policy goal will be profound. Many countries have adopted such measures already, but even those countries at an earlier stage of their epidemic (such as the UK) will need to do so imminently.

Our analysis informs the evaluation of both the nature of the measures required to suppress COVID-19 and the likely duration that these measures will need to be in place. Results in this paper have informed policymaking in the UK and other countries in the last weeks. However, we emphasise that is not at all certain that suppression will succeed long term; no public health intervention with such disruptive effects on society has been previously attempted for such a long duration of time. How populations and societies will respond remains unclear.

All of which takes us to the last major point.


5. While some models are better than others, all models are wrong!
At the end of the day, no matter how incredible the model, it is somehow or in some way wrong. That is the truth of it. All models are underdetermined by their evidence. As such, we always need to be sober in our usage of scientific and public health modelling. While scientific models can help us make decisions, as the complexity they seek to model increases, they are ultimately predictions of what might happen, not necessarily what will happen. Change the data or some of the parameters and the outcome it predicts can be different. It is a harsh reality of modelling complexity.

As one of my professors once said in response to the question, why can we put a person on the moon but we cannot solve poverty? The professor answers, because poverty is more complex!

MODELLING COVID-19: So, what does an effective approach to simulation look like?

So, given the above concerns, what does an effective model of COVID-19 look like? That will be the focus of my next two blogs. To demonstrate, I will review the simulation model by Ferguson and colleagues at Imperial College London; and then the complex network model by Alessandro Vespignani and colleagues at Northeastern University in the States. 

The Social Complexity Atlas. Public Lecture 31 March 2020 Institute for Advanced Study, University of Amsterdam

We Need a Social Complexity Atlas

The study of social complexity has developed over the last twenty-five years into a rather advanced field of study, reaching into just about every area of social inquiry – from sociology and economics to the public policy and urban planning – to become one of the largest areas of research in the complexity sciences.

It has also become, more recently, entangled with the dramatic rise in big data and digital social science; and it sits at the nexus of some of the biggest global problems we face, from climate change to the instabilities of the global economy.

Despite these advances, the field is by no means a mature area of study, suffering from a key list of challenges, all of which need addressing if it is to truly become an established field of research. Some examples include a methodological privileging of the micro over the macro; a rather noncritical embrace of the latest developments in computational modelling and big data and machine learning; the canonization of the field’s core concepts such as self-organisation and emergence; and the absence of a developed theory of power relations or inequality.

What is needed, then, is a proper mapping of where the field has been, what is presently taking place, and perhaps most important, what yet needs to be done, and with it a more rigorous and critical cartography of where we are in 2020.

The Social Complexity Atlas with Edward Elgar

In response, my colleague Lasse Gerrits and I are writing a book, titled appropriately enought, The Social Complexity Atlas. We are publishing it in 2022 with Edward Elgar.

Fellowship Institute of Advanced Study, University of Amsterdam

Toward the effort of writing the book, we are thankful to the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Amsterdam, for a 2020 research fellowship, which will allow us to work on the book and work with colleagues in the complexity sciences at the IAS and University.


Public Lecture 31 March 2020 (16:00PM - 18:00PM)
As a way of launching the project, the IAS has kindly asked us to provide a public lecture. Which we will do on the 31st of March from 16:00 - 18:00. In this lecture, we will provide an overview of the incredible innovations and significant challenges the study of social complexity presently faces and how we suggest they are best addressed to help advance this research as a mature field of study. We also ask the audience for suggestions in what directions we should look for future research into social complexity.

TO REGISTER FOR THE LECTURE, CLICK HERE

BOOK: Defiance of Global Commitment -- Updated Maps and Figures

I have had several requests over the past few months for high resolution versions of the maps and figures in my recent book, The Defiance of Global Commitment: A Complex Social Psychology. As such, I am providing them here, for download. If you use the figures or maps, please cite them as follows: Castellani, B. (2018). The Defiance of Global Commitment: A Complex Social Psychology. Routledge.

A QUICK SUMMARY OF THE BOOK

A copy of the final chapter can be downloaded here

The Brexit vote; the election of Trump; the upsurge of European nationalism; the devolution of the Arab Spring; global violence; Chinese expansionism; disruptive climate change; the riotous instabilities of the world capitalist system…While diverse in nature, these events share a common denominator: they are less a failure of policy, and more a complex mass psychological reaction to globalization, the result of which presently threatens our survival on Earth.

Based on a critical reading of Freud’s Civilization and its discontents, The defiance of global commitment constructs a complex social psychology of how people all over the world are addressing globalization. Drawing on the latest advances in the cognitive, social, and complexity sciences, this timely volume presents a global model of defiance and the triangular tensions between nostalgic retreat, global aggression, and civil society, as manifested in forms ranging from nostalgic resentment and LGBTQI issues to racism and ecological aggression.

Revealing how globalization and its discontents manifest the darker reaches of the human psyche and its conflicted relations with others, as well as our more pro-social behaviours, this insightful monograph will appeal to a general audience, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as globalization studies, climate change psychology, the political psychology, complexity sciences and social psychology.

HERE ARE THE MAPS AND FIGURES

In defiance of our defiance; hacking our primal selves: Research to aid humanity get out of its funk

Recently, my doctoral student, Anton Botha wrote an excellent blog post on the linkages between our current societal reactions to globalisation and the myriad of global social problems we presently face, all grounded in a complexity theory of psychological motivation, which he is developing.


The post is very good and worth reading, as it draws upon a wide list of theoretical frameworks, including evolutionary psychology, motivation theory, attachment theory, sociology, political science and globalisation studies.