A geometric analysis of the SIRS compartmental model with fast information and misinformation spreading

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel slow-fast SIRS model incorporating information and misinformation dynamics, analyzing its behavior using Geometric Singular Perturbation Theory to understand how misinformation impacts epidemic evolution.

Contribution

It develops a new coupled SIRS model with information spread, providing a detailed geometric and bifurcation analysis of its multi-scale dynamics.

Findings

Fast dynamics have three stable equilibria under certain conditions.

Misinformation spread can either hinder or help epidemic control.

Numerical simulations confirm analytical predictions.

Abstract

We propose a novel slow-fast SIRS compartmental model with demography, by coupling a slow disease spreading model and a fast information and misinformation spreading model. Beside the classes of susceptible, infected and recovered individuals of a common SIRS model, here we define three new classes related to the information spreading model, e.g. unaware individuals, misinformed individuals and individuals who are skeptical to disease-related misinformation. Under our assumptions, the system evolves on two time scales. We completely characterize its asymptotic behaviour with techniques of Geometric Singular Perturbation Theory (GSPT). We exploit the time scale separation to analyse two lower dimensional subsystem separately. First, we focus on the analysis of the fast dynamics and we find three equilibrium point which are feasible and stable under specific conditions. We perform a theoretical bifurcation analysis of the fast system to understand the relations between these three equilibria when varying specific parameters of the fast system. Secondly, we focus on the evolution of the slow variables and we identify three branches of the critical manifold, which are described by the three equilibria of the fast system. We fully characterize the slow dynamics on each branch. Moreover, we show how the inclusion of (mis)information spread may negatively or positively affect the evolution of the epidemic, depending on whether the slow dynamics evolves on the second branch of the critical manifold, related to the skeptical-free equilibrium or on the third one, related to misinformed-free equilibrium, respectively. We conclude with numerical simulations which showcase our analytical results.