How can you account for the fact that different infected people might transmit the disease to the same susceptible individual within the same time-step? Early on in an outbreak this would not be that much of a factor, but if the sizes of the susceptible and infected groups are similar later on, would there not be some overlap between transmissions? I don't think that Beta*I*S accounts for this, and I don't want to overestimate the number of infected individuals in my model.
How can you account for the fact that different infected people might transmit the disease to the same susceptible individual within the same time-step? Early on in an outbreak this would not be that much of a factor, but if the sizes of the susceptible and infected groups are similar later on, would there not be some overlap between transmissions? I don't think that Beta*I*S accounts for this, and I don't want to overestimate the number of infected individuals in my model.