The interaction of simultaneous diseases and awareness in multiplex networks

Abstract

It is common that the spreading of epidemics is influenced by other simultaneous spreading diseases and preventive reactions due to the awareness of people. In this paper, we study the co-evolution dynamics of two competing epidemics and the awareness process for prevention related to the epidemics, where the former represents the biological suppression impact and the latter represents social suppression impact. Our analysis reveals that when the two factors act simultaneously their impact is not guaranteed to be suppression, but may even prompt the spreading of an epidemic. Detailed analyses are provided to account for these phenomena which are supported by numerical simulations.