Dynamics of epidemic spreading with vaccination: impact of social pressure and engagement

TL;DR

This paper models epidemic spreading coupled with opinion dynamics, showing how social pressure and engagement influence vaccination uptake and disease control, with analytical and simulation results highlighting the importance of pro-vaccine individuals in halting epidemics.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled epidemic-opinion model with majority-rule opinion dynamics and vaccination states, analyzing the impact of social pressure on epidemic control.

Findings

Opinion dynamics significantly influence disease spread.

Engagement of pro-vaccine individuals is crucial for epidemic suppression.

The model demonstrates the importance of social factors in vaccination campaigns.

Abstract

In this work we consider a model of epidemic spreading coupled with an opinion dynamics in a fully-connected population. Regarding the opinion dynamics, the individuals may be in two distinct states, namely in favor or against a vaccination campaign. Individuals against the vaccination follow a standard SIS model, whereas the pro-vaccine individuals can also be in a third compartment, namely Vaccinated. In addition, the opinions change according to the majority-rule dynamics in groups with three individuals. We also consider that the vaccine can give permanent or temporary immunization to the individuals. By means of analytical calculations and computer simulations, we show that the opinion dynamics can drastically affect the disease propagation, and that the engagement of the pro-vaccine individuals can be crucial for stopping the epidemic spreading. The full numerical code for simulate the model is available from the authors' webpage.