Effect of Immunity and Susceptibility on Sickness or Mortality Risk
Effect of Immunity and Susceptibility on Sickness or Mortality Risk
The probability that a person becomes ill or dies of ingested biological or chemical agents is usually estimated from the agent's dose-response curve. Such estimation does not take into account the individual's immunity or susceptibility state. This state can be represented by an index, , for example, , where the lowest value represents extreme immunity and the highest extreme susceptibility. A correction function, , can be used to convert the nominal risk, , expressed as the probability of becoming sick or dying according to the agent's dose-response curve, into a more realistic individual risk. The concept is demonstrated with three hypothetical correction modes based on linear, sigmoid, and double-sigmoid models.
x
-1≤x≤1
p(x)
p
0