Antivax movement and epidemic spreading in the era of social networks: Nonmonotonic effects, bistability and network segregation

TL;DR

This paper explores how social network structures influence epidemic spreading and vaccination opinions, revealing complex phenomena like bistability and an optimal segregation level that impacts disease control strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled network model showing how segregation levels affect vaccine opinions and epidemic dynamics, highlighting nonmonotonic effects and optimal community structures.

Findings

Intermediate segregation levels can maximize negative vaccine opinions.

Excessive segregation creates echo chambers that hinder disease control.

Bistability and nonequilibrium transitions occur in the coupled dynamics.

Abstract

In this work, we address a multicoupled dynamics on complex networks with tunable structural segregation. Specifically, we work on a networked epidemic spreading under a vaccination campaign with agents in favor and against the vaccine. Our results show that such coupled dynamics exhibits a myriad of phenomena such as nonequilibrium transitions accompanied by bistability. Besides we observe the emergence of an intermediate optimal segregation level where the community structure enhances negative opinions over vaccination but counterintuitively hinders - rather than favoring - the global disease spreading. Thus, our results hint vaccination campaigns should avoid policies that end up segregating excessively anti-vaccine groups so that they effectively work as echo chambers in which individuals look to confirmation without jeopardising the safety of the whole population.