Changing of spreading dynamics for infectious diseases in an aging society: A simulation case study on flu pandemic

In this paper, we report some initial results obtained from the agent-based simulation system SimTW about the changing of spreading dynamics, e.g. speed, magnitude and affected people of different ages, when the target society is aging. A disease model of influenza is built and then is invoked with two different social structures, e.g., population and household distribution, and working and schooling patterns based on Census 2000 and Census 2010 of Taiwan. In the 10 years time, the average population age in the country increases from 33.0 to 37.6 while the average household size decreases from 3.19 to 2.94. From the simulation results, we find that in the more aging year-2010 society, the pandemic, if occurred, is smaller, in terms of the total number of infected persons and slower in terms of the date of the peak number of daily new cases, but is more serious both in terms of the numbers of needed hospital beds and death cases. Using this finding, we hope to motivate further discussions on adapting public health policies to this inevitable global trend of aging.