Disease and information spreading at different speeds in multiplex networks

Fátima Velásquez-Rojas, Paulo Cesar Ventura, Colm Connaughton, Yamir Moreno, Francisco A. Rodrigues, and Federico Vazquez
Phys. Rev. E 102, 022312 – Published 24 August 2020

Abstract

Nowadays, one of the challenges we face when carrying out modeling of epidemic spreading is to develop methods to control disease transmission. In this article we study how the spreading of knowledge of a disease affects the propagation of that disease in a population of interacting individuals. For that, we analyze the interaction between two different processes on multiplex networks: the propagation of an epidemic using the susceptible-infected-susceptible dynamics and the dissemination of information about the disease—and its prevention methods—using the unaware-aware-unaware dynamics, so that informed individuals are less likely to be infected. Unlike previous related models where disease and information spread at the same time scale, we introduce here a parameter that controls the relative speed between the propagation of the two processes. We study the behavior of this model using a mean-field approach that gives results in good agreement with Monte Carlo simulations on homogeneous complex networks. We find that increasing the rate of information dissemination reduces the disease prevalence, as one may expect. However, increasing the speed of the information process as compared to that of the epidemic process has the counterintuitive effect of increasing the disease prevalence. This result opens an interesting discussion about the effects of information spreading on disease propagation.

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  • Received 2 June 2020
  • Accepted 4 August 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.102.022312

©2020 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Statistical Physics & ThermodynamicsInterdisciplinary PhysicsNetworks

Authors & Affiliations

Fátima Velásquez-Rojas

  • Instituto de Física de Líquidos y Sistemas Biológicos (UNLP-CONICET), 1900 La Plata, Argentina

Paulo Cesar Ventura

  • Instituto de Física de São Carlos, Universidade de São Paulo, São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil

Colm Connaughton

  • Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick, Gibbet Hill Road, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom and Centre for Complexity Science, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom

Yamir Moreno

  • Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems (BIFI), University of Zaragoza, E-50018 Zaragoza, Spain; Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Zaragoza, E-50018 Zaragoza, Spain; and ISI Foundation, I-10126 Turin, Italy

Francisco A. Rodrigues

  • Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação, Universidade de São Paulo, São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil

Federico Vazquez*

  • Instituto de Cálculo, FCEN, Universidad de Buenos Aires and CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina

  • *Corresponding author: fede.vazmin@gmail.com

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Vol. 102, Iss. 2 — August 2020

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