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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Epidemic paradox induced by awareness driven network dynamics

Csegő Balázs Kolok1,2, Gergely Ódor3,2, Dániel Keliger2,4, and Márton Karsai3,2

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Phys. Rev. Research 7, L012061 – Published 10 March, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.7.L012061

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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Phys. Rev. Research 7, L012061– Published 10 March, 2025
  • Received 31 July 2024
  • Accepted 5 February 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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