Spurious self-feedback of mean-field predictions inflates infection curves

The susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) model and its variants form the foundation of our understanding of the spread of diseases. Here, each agent can be in one of three states (susceptible, infected, or recovered), and transitions between these states follow a stochastic process. The probability of an agent becoming infected depends on the number of its infected neighbors, hence all agents are correlated. The simplest mean-field theory of the same stochastic process, however, assumes that the agents are statistically independent. This leads to a self-feedback effect in the approximation: when an agent infects its neighbors, this infection may subsequently travel back to the original agent at a later time, leading to a self-infection of the agent which is not present in the underlying stochastic process. We here compute the first-order correction to the mean-field assumption from a systematic expansion, called dynamical TAP theory. This correction, which takes fluctuations up to second order in the interaction strength into account, cancels the self-feedback effect, leading to smaller infection rates. The correction significantly improves predictions compared to mean-field theory. In particular, it captures how sparsity dampens the spread of the disease: this indicates that reducing the number of contacts is more effective than predicted by mean-field models. We further apply the expansion to variants of the SIR model, such as the SIRS model, in which the immunity of an individual to the disease wanes over time. We find that up to the second order, the correction terms in the SIR and SIRS model are equivalent, meaning that fluctuations partially cancel the self-feedback effect even when self-feedback is in principle allowed.