Vaccination and public trust: A model for the dissemination of vaccination behaviour with external intervention
Authored by Pablo Balenzuela, Claudio O Dorso, Andres Medus
Date Published: 2017
DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2017.04.112
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Abstract
Vaccination is widely recognized as the most effective way of
immunization against many infectious diseases. However, unfounded claims
about supposed side effects of some vaccines have contributed to spread
concern and fear among people, thus inducing vaccination refusal. MMR
(Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccine coverage has undergone an important
decrease in a large part of Europe and US as a consequence of
erroneously alleged side effects, leading to recent measles outbreaks.
There is evidence that clusterization of unvaccinated individuals may
lead to epidemics way larger that the ones that might appear in the case
that unvaccinated agents are distributed at random in the population. In
this work we explore the emergence of those clusters as a consequence of
the social interaction driven mainly by homophily, where vaccination
behaviour is part of a process of cultural dissemination in the spirit
of Axelrod's model. The ingredients of this calculation encompass: (i)
interacting agents which are to decide if they vaccinate or not their
children, (ii) their interaction with a small subset of stubborn agents
who believe that the MMR vaccine is not safe and (iii) government
sponsored propaganda trying to convince people of the benefits of
vaccination. We find that these clusters, which emerge as a dynamical
outcome of the model, are the responsible of the increasing probability
of the occurrence of measles outbreaks, even in scenarios where the WHO
(World Health Organization) recommendation of 95\% vaccine coverage is
fulfilled. However, we also illustrate that the mitigating effect of a
public health campaign, could effectively reduce the impact and size of
outbreaks. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Tags
epidemics
Dynamics
networks
sociophysics
disease
Social-influence
Agent-based
model
Adaptive dynamics
Measles
Complex emergent behaviour
Autism controversy
Mumps