3.3. The Epidemic Consequences of Varying Virulence and Survival
In the next analysis, we examine the epidemic consequences of varying traits associated with survival and virulence. One can consider this as a scenario where we compare the endpoints of evolution of different virus populations (corresponding to combinations of values of survival and virulence) and calculating how these evolved populations manifest in epidemic terms.
In Figure 4, we observe how dynamics of the outbreak are influenced across a space of combinations of traits altering virulence (see Table 3 for a list of virulence-associated parameters) and survival (see Table 4 for a list of survival-associated parameters), changed by ±5% (10% overall). In Figure 4D, we demonstrate how changes in virulence and free-living survival traits influence R0, with variation in virulence-related traits having the largest effect on R0. Of note is how the range in R0 values varies widely across virulence–survival values, from nearly 2.0 to 3.7 (Figure 4D).