title: Disease extinction in the presence of random vaccination.
abstract: We investigate disease extinction in an epidemic model described by a birth-death process. We show that, in the absence of vaccination, the effective entropic barrier for extinction displays scaling with the distance to the bifurcation point, with an unusual critical exponent. Even a comparatively weak Poisson-distributed random vaccination leads to an exponential increase in the extinction rate, with the exponent that strongly depends on the vaccination parameters.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA.
authors.forename: Mark I
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: Dykman
authors.forename: Ira B
authors.initials: IB
authors.lastname: Schwartz
authors.forename: Alexandra S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Landsman