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arXiv · 2409.01384

Epidemic paradox induced by awareness driven network dynamics

Csegő Balázs Kolok·Gergely Ódor·Dániel Keliger·Márton Karsai
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Abstract

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.

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Csegő Balázs Kolok, Gergely Ódor, Dániel Keliger, Márton Karsai. 2024-09-02. Epidemic paradox induced by awareness driven network dynamics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.01384

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