U-Type-Shaped Curves Across Economics, Biology, and Infection

Major threats to the economic future of several nations include climate change, infectious pandemics, and drug-resistant bacteria. The rise and fall of each of these behaviors seems to conform to a U-shaped or inverted U-shaped curve. In academic medicine, stakeholders in the field (infection control personnel, epidemiologists, and vaccinologists) will argue that infectious outbreaks can be prevented by surveillance programs and the development of new drugs (antibiotics, vaccines, etc.). The promise of vaccines, antibiotics, genetic manipulations, air filtration, agriculture control measures, etc., is that with next-generation technology, effective countermeasures can be rapidly deployed to combat any emerging threat to our ecosystem and hence our economy. In this piece, we advance the idea that Laffer curves and their U-type-shaped ancestors share interconnectedness across multiple domains of science including biology, economics, infectious disease, and ecology. U-type-shaped curves and their sibling, the inverted U-curve, conform to the general principle of hormesis, a biphasic response where there is a measured benefit at lower exposures to a phenomenon yet harm when exposure is excessive (i.e., low-dose stimulation and high-dose inhibition).