When Strong Mitigation against a Pandemic Backfires

I introduce social feasibility constraints in the standard SIR epidemiological model: at any point in time, the feasibility of implementing mitigation measures by a social planner is limited, but it increases when the infection rate is higher. When considering threshold policies with constant levels of mitigation for a time period, the overall fatality rate in the population is non-monotonic in the levels of mitigation: higher levels of mitigation can increase the overall fatality rate. Intuitively, even though strong mitigation at a point in time is unequivocally beneficial in the short-term by lowering the infection rate, this can undermine the social feasibility of future mitigation