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Social Confinement and Mesoscopic Localization of Epidemics on Networks
Guillaume St-Onge1,2, Vincent Thibeault1,2, Antoine Allard1,2
1Département de physique, de génie physique et d'optique, Université Laval, Québec (Québec), Canada G1V 0A6.
Physical Review Letters
|March 22, 2021
Summary
Collective behavior interventions, like canceling large events during epidemics, can suddenly collapse disease spread. This higher-order network approach reveals how group-level actions impact epidemic dynamics more than individual-focused strategies.
Area of Science:
- Epidemiology
- Network Science
- Mathematical Modeling
Background:
- Epidemic control strategies often prioritize individual behaviors.
- Existing models struggle to incorporate the impact of large gatherings and collective actions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To model the effect of large-scale event cancellations on epidemic spread.
- To explore higher-order network structures for describing contagions in groups.
Main Methods:
- Developed a higher-order description of contagions on networks.
- Simulated the impact of canceling events exceeding a critical size.
Main Results:
- Epidemics can collapse abruptly when interventions target group behaviors.
- Observed a phenomenon related to mesoscopic localization, where contagions cluster in dominant groups.
Conclusions:
- Interventions targeting collective behaviors, such as event cancellations, can be highly effective.
- Higher-order network models are crucial for understanding epidemic dynamics in complex social structures.
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