Aggressive or moderate drug therapy for infectious diseases? Trade-offs between different treatment goals at the individual and population levels
Fig 1
Nested model of an acute infectious disease.
(A) Average timeline of the infection for a non-treated individual. The host’s transition from one phase to the other is determined by the pathogen load. (B) Diagram of the nested model. Prior to infection, individuals are susceptible. For infected individuals, the pathogen load defines if an individual is infectious or non-infectious. Once the pathogen load has dropped to zero, individuals are recovered and have aquired life-long immunity.