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Author(s): Fredrik Liljeros (corresponding author) [1, 2]; Christofer R. Edling [2]; H. Eugene Stanley [3]; Y. Ãberg [2]; Luis A. N. Amaral [4] Liljeros et al . reply Jones and [...]

During epidemic control, containment of the disease is usually achieved through increasing a devoted resource to reduce the infectiousness. However, the impact of this resource expenditure has not been studied quantitatively. For disease spread, the recovery rate can be positively correlated with the average amount of resource devoted to infected individuals. By incorporating this relation we build a novel model and find that insufficient resource leads to an abrupt increase in the infected population size, which is in marked contrast with the continuous phase transitions believed previously. Counterintuitively, this abrupt phase transition is more pronounced in less contagious diseases. Furthermore, we find that even for a single infection source, the public resource needs to be available in a significant amount, which is proportional to the total population size, to ensure epidemic containment. Our findings provide a theoretical foundation for efficient epidemic containment strategies in the early stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulations that govern oversight of seclusion and/or restraint episodes (SREs) in the United States are relatively uniform and may assume that such events are normally distributed within the population generating them. This study illustrates that the distribution of patients who required one or more SREs within one state psychiatric hospital setting is heavy-tailed-that is, a small group of patients generated a disproportionate majority of the events: 20 percent of patients with the most SREs accounted for approximately 75 percent of the total number of SREs; 10 percent of patients accounted for 61 percent, and 1 percent of patients accounted for 21 percent. Characteristic features of heavy-tailed distributions are described and discussed in relation to the feasibility of eliminating SREs in mental health settings and the governance of SREs by uniform regulations. Attempts are made to model and subtype the distribution, and commentary is made as to potential clinical and policy relevance of the findings.