Simulated epidemic curves for 2014-2015 influenza season in Washington, DC.

(A) The best-fit parameters achieved an excellent fit to the observed cases, with a mean absolute error of 2818 cases. (B) Few news articles were published about influenza in HHS Region 3, during the 2014-2015 influenza season. (C) Using the best-fit parameters, we simulated outbreaks with varying levels of media coverage. The median number of cases in simulations conducted with the observed level of media coverage was not substantially different than the median number in simulations conducted assuming no media coverage. Increasing the number of news articles per week by ten times, resulted in a 33.5% decrease in the median number of cases, compared with the simulations conducted with the observed number of news articles per week.