Epidemic paradox induced by awareness driven network dynamics

We study stationary epidemic processes in scale-free networks with local-awareness behavior adopted by only susceptible, only infected, or all nodes. We find that, while the epidemic size in the susceptible-aware and the all-aware models scales linearly with the network size, the scaling becomes sub...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Csegő Balázs Kolok, Gergely Ódor, Dániel Keliger, Márton Karsai
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society 2025-03-01
Series:Physical Review Research
Online Access:http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.7.L012061
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We study stationary epidemic processes in scale-free networks with local-awareness behavior adopted by only susceptible, only infected, or all nodes. We find that, while the epidemic size in the susceptible-aware and the all-aware models scales linearly with the network size, the scaling becomes sublinear in the infected-aware model. Hence, fewer aware nodes may reduce the epidemic size more effectively; a phenomenon reminiscent of Braess's paradox. We present numerical and theoretical analysis and highlight the role of influential nodes and their disassortativity to raise epidemic awareness.
ISSN:2643-1564