Domination-time dynamics in susceptible-infected-susceptible virus competition on networks.
When two viruses compete for healthy nodes in a simple network and both spreading rates are above the epidemic threshold, only one virus will survive. However, if we prevent the viruses from dying out, rich dynamics emerge. When both viruses are identical, one virus always dominates the other, but the dominating and dominated virus alternate. We show in the complete graph that the domination time depends on the total number of infected nodes at the beginning of the domination period and, moreover, that the distribution of the domination time decays exponentially yet slowly. When the viruses differ moderately in strength and/or speed the weaker and/or slower virus can still dominate the other but for a short time. Interestingly, depending on the number of infected nodes at the start of a domination period, being quicker can be a disadvantage.
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.
Ruud
R
van de Bovenkamp
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.
Fernando
F
Kuipers
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.
Piet
P
Van Mieghem
D003198:Computer Simulation; D004196:Disease Outbreaks / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D056265:Microbial Interactions; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D014777:Virus Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000821:virology*; D014780:Viruses / Q000472:pathogenicity*