Locally self-organized quasi-critical percolation in a multiple disease model

TL;DR

This paper investigates a multi-disease model showing that disease spread self-organizes near critical percolation levels, maintaining a steady state without global control, across various disease introduction rates.

Contribution

It reveals that multiple diseases can self-organize into a quasi-critical percolation state through local interactions, without the need for global regulation.

Findings

System reaches a steady state close to critical percolation

Transmission likelihood remains stable over different disease introduction rates

Self-organization occurs without global control mechanisms

Abstract

Diseases emerge, persist and vanish in an ongoing battle for available hosts. Hosts, on the other hand, defend themselves by developing immunity that limits the ability of pathogens to reinfect them. We here explore a multi-disease system with emphasis on mutual exclusion. We demonstrate that such a system develops towards a steady state, where the spread of individual diseases self-organizes to a state close to that of critical percolation, without any global control mechanism or separation of time scale. For a broad range of introduction rates of new diseases, the likelihood of transmitting diseases remains approximately constant.