Escherichia coli O157 infection on cattle farms: the formulation of the force of infection and its effect on control effectiveness

The kernel of modelling transmission dynamics of infectious diseases lies in constructing the force of infection (FOI). Traditionally, it was based on mass-action law. In this paper, we show, based on survey data of Escherichia coli O157 infection on Scottish cattle farms, that the actual form of FOI deviates greatly from mass-action law. Further, control effectiveness deviates qualitatively: the epidemic of mass-action FOI can be controlled with a control effort larger than the so-called herd immunity, while the epidemic inferred from the survey data of E. coli O157 infection was shown to be difficult to control. This indicates that, at least for E. coli O157 infection on cattle farms, it is risky to rely on models of transmission dynamics that were based on mass-action law to design the optimal intervention programme for infectious diseases. This suggests the importance of collecting epidemic data and model selection from data-driven models to infer the most likely model of transmission dynamics.