Department of Mathematics, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States of America.
Department of Statistics, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2021 Dec 2;16(12):e0260973. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260973. eCollection 2021.
Contact between people with similar opinions and characteristics occurs at a higher rate than among other people, a phenomenon known as homophily. The presence of clusters of unvaccinated people has been associated with increased incidence of infectious disease outbreaks despite high population-wide vaccination rates. The epidemiological consequences of homophily regarding other beliefs as well as correlations among beliefs or circumstances are poorly understood, however. Here, we use a simple compartmental disease model as well as a more complex COVID-19 model to study how homophily and correlation of beliefs and circumstances in a social interaction network affect the probability of disease outbreak and COVID-19-related mortality. We find that the current social context, characterized by the presence of homophily and correlations between who vaccinates, who engages in risk reduction, and individual risk status, corresponds to a situation with substantially worse disease burden than in the absence of heterogeneities. In the presence of an effective vaccine, the effects of homophily and correlation of beliefs and circumstances become stronger. Further, the optimal vaccination strategy depends on the degree of homophily regarding vaccination status as well as the relative level of risk mitigation high- and low-risk individuals practice. The developed methods are broadly applicable to any investigation in which node attributes in a graph might reasonably be expected to cluster or exhibit correlations.
人们之间具有相似观点和特征的接触比其他接触更为频繁，这种现象被称为同质性。尽管人群的疫苗接种率很高，但未接种人群聚集的现象与传染病爆发的发生率增加有关。然而，关于其他信仰的同质性的流行病学后果以及信仰或情况之间的相关性，人们知之甚少。在这里，我们使用简单的房室疾病模型和更复杂的 COVID-19 模型来研究社会互动网络中同质性和信仰与情况之间的相关性如何影响疾病爆发的概率和与 COVID-19 相关的死亡率。我们发现，当前的社会背景，其特征是存在同质性以及谁接种疫苗、谁采取风险降低措施以及个人风险状况之间的相关性，与没有异质性的情况下相比，疾病负担明显更重。在存在有效疫苗的情况下，信仰和情况的同质性和相关性的影响会更强。此外，最佳的疫苗接种策略取决于疫苗接种状况的同质性程度以及高风险和低风险个体实施的风险缓解的相对水平。所开发的方法广泛适用于任何调查，在这些调查中，图中的节点属性可能合理地预期会聚类或表现出相关性。
