This paper is concerned with the cost Cis
= aWis
+ bTis
(a, b > 0) of a general stochastic epidemic starting with i infectives and s susceptibles; Tis
denotes the duration of the epidemic, and Wis
the area under the infective curve. The joint Laplace-Stieltjes transform of (Wis, Tis
) is studied, and a recursive equation derived for it. The duration Tis
and its mean Nis
are considered in some detail, as are also Wis
and its mean Mis
. Using the results obtained, bounds are found for the mean cost of the epidemic.
On the existence and uniqueness of solutions of the Cauchy problem for wave equations with general stochastic measures