The Effects of Vaccine Hesitancy Assortativity on Virus Spread and Evolution

Abstract

This paper looks at how assortativity with respect to vaccine hesitancy—that is, people's tendency to interact with people who share their attitudes—influences the epidemiology and pathogen evolution dynamics of the outbreak of infectious diseases within social networks. Using simulations, it demonstrates how an outbreak of a disease would be more likely given higher assortativity levels, and it shows that immune escape variants are more likely to spread in more assortative networks. In particular, this paper also looks at how the likelihood of the outbreak of immune escape variants of the pathogen is influenced by assumptions about the variant and the level of virus immunity within the population. These results help to make predictions about the spread of infectious diseases and provide insights about the importance of vaccination efforts across an entire population.