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arXiv · 2601.20123

Optimal illness policy for an unethical daycare center

Lauren D Smith
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Abstract

While businesses are typically more profitable if their workers and communities are minimally exposed to diseases, the same is not true for daycare centers. Here it is shown that a daycare center could maximize its profits by maintaining a population of sick children within the center, with the intention to infect more children who then do not attend. Through a modification of the Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model for disease spread we find the optimal number of sick children who should be kept within the center to maximize profits. We show that as disease infectiousness increases, the optimal attendance rate of sick children approaches zero, while the potential profit increases.

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Lauren D Smith. 2026-01-27. Optimal illness policy for an unethical daycare center. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.20123

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