title: Network Firewall Dynamics and the Subsaturation Stabilization of HIV.
abstract: In 2001, Friedman et al. conjectured the existence of a "firewall effect" in which individuals who are infected with HIV, but remain in a state of low infectiousness, serve to prevent the virus from spreading. To evaluate this historical conjecture, we develop a new graph-theoretic measure that quantifies the extent to which Friedman's firewall hypothesis(FH)holds in a risk network. We compute this new measure across simulated trajectories of a stochastic discrete dynamical system that models a social network of 25,000 individuals engaging in risk acts over a period of 15 years. The model's parameters are based on analyses of data collected in prior studies of the real-world risk networks of people who inject drugs (PWID) in New York City. Analysis of system trajectories reveals the structural mechanisms by which individuals with mature HIV infections tend to partition the network into homogeneous clusters (with respect to infection status) and how uninfected clusters remain relatively stable (with respect to infection status) over long stretches of time. We confirm the spontaneous emergence of network firewalls in the system and reveal their structural role in the nonspreading of HIV.
authors.affiliation: Department of Math and Computer Science, John Jay College (CUNY), New York, NY 10019, USA.
authors.forename: Bilal
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Khan
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, John Jay College (CUNY), New York, NY 10019, USA.
authors.forename: Kirk
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Dombrowski
authors.affiliation: Social Networks Research Group, John Jay College (CUNY), New York, NY 10019, USA.
authors.forename: Mohamed
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Saad
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY 10016, USA.
authors.forename: Katherine
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: McLean
authors.affiliation: Institute for AIDS Research at National Development and Research Institutes, Inc., New York, NY 10010, USA ; Center for Drug Use and HIV Research, New York, NY 10003, USA.
authors.forename: Samuel
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Friedman
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