Influence of Opinion Dynamics to Inhibit Epidemic Spreading Over Multiplex Network

This letter investigates how opinion evolution in society regarding public health concerns during an epidemic hinders its progression. A multiplex bilayer network is considered in the study where the disease is transmitted through a directed physical interaction network layer while the opinions are formed over a directed social network layer. Towards that end, an opinion dynamical model is considered over the social network which incorporates people's current opinion-dependent susceptibilities to considering the cautious measures. The disease transmission, on the other hand, is captured by network generalized Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Vigilant (SEIV) epidemic model which incorporates vigilant attitude in the society. Stability analysis of the disease-free equilibrium (DFE) of the network transmission model is carried out, and sufficient condition for exponential stability of the DFE is derived. The simulation results corroborate the effectiveness of the theoretical findings.