ISSN: 2639-2038
Authors: Lewis TG*
A contagion network forms as a subnetwork within a larger “social network” when actors become infected and transmit infections to others. Nodes represent infected actors, and links represent contact that resulted in transmitting the infection from one person to another. The result of random contact is a non-random contagion network. Simulation of an SIR contagion shows emergence of a scale-free micro-scale structure with degree and betweenness distributions that obey a power law. Thus, contagion networks are the result of mild self-organization of scale-free structure-both degree distribution and betweenness centrality distribution obey a power law. This surprising result reinforces public health policies that advocate contact tracing and testing as early and fast as possible. An effective counter measure, barring availability of a vaccine, is testing and contact tracing back in time as far as possible, to disrupt the emergence of a contagion network.
Keywords: Scale Free Epidemics; Epidemic Modeling; SIR Model; Contagion Networks; Covid-19; Emergence of Structure; Network Science; Infection Rate; Infection Latency; Scale-Free Network; Betweenness
