We present a generic epidemic model with stochastic parameters, in which the dynamics selforganize to a critical state with suppressed exponential growth. More precisely, the dynamics evolve into a quasi-steady-state, where the effective reproduction rate fluctuates close to the critical value one, as observed for different epidemics. The main assumptions underlying the model are that the rate at which each individual becomes infected changes stochastically in time with a heavy-tailed steady state. The critical regime is characterized by an extremely long duration of the epidemic. Its stability is analyzed both numerically and analytically.Compartmental epidemics models, and their many variations or derivatives have been proven useful in understanding, analyzing and predicting real epidemic outbreaks [1,2]. However, fitting such models to the observed patient or dead counts has proven challenging [3]. One of the main reasons for that is that compartmental models are essentially exponential, at least locally in time [1,2,[4][5][6], while observed data are often not. Exponential dynamics emerge since at any given time in the evolution of the epidemics, the equation for the dynamics can be linearized around its current state, suggesting an exponential growth or decay of variables (except at particular time points such as the local maximum of infected individuals). The predicted exponential growth/decay motivates the commonly used notion of the effective reproduction rate, R t , or equivalently, doubling time [1,2]. The effective reproduction rate describes approximately the instantaneous exponential rate of change in the number of infected, hospitalized, deceased or other types of individuals. Fitting R t to real data is not straight-forward, and several methods have been proposed and applied [7][8][9].Often, the epidemic dynamics seem to be at, or close to the critical state R t = 1 [6, 10-16]. Consequently, the number of new cases per day (after some smoothing to eliminate weekly periodicities) is constant or linear. Indeed, several authors studied the dynamics of epidemics, both in compartmental and network models, assuming that the epidemic is poised at the critical threshold between exponential growth and decay [4,5,14,17]. This dynamical pattern can be explained by assuming that governments modify social distancing rules or, alternatively, people adapt their behavior according to the perceived spread of the epidemics to fine-tune R t [11,16]. However, such negative feedback typically takes effect on long time scales, possibly up to years [16]. Alternatively, Stollenwerk and Jansen [12,13] suggested a sand-pile-type model that exhibits self-organized criticality. The model assumes that the epidemic spreads on a square 2D lattice. Criticality is due to a vanishingly small rate of mutation to a deadly strain. Recent versions assume that the epidemic spreads to neighbors only once the viral load is above a threshold (thus the analogy to a sand-pile) [10] or that lattice sites are partially isolated communities (cl...