| The structure of social contact networks strongly influences the dynamics of epidemic diseases. In particular the scale-free structure of real-world social networks allegedly allows unlikely diseases with low infection rates to spread and become endemic. However, in particular for potentially fatal diseases also the impact of the disease on the social structure should not be neglected. In this study, we consider the growth of a network by preferential attachment from which nodes are simultaneously removed due to an SIR epidemic. By comparison to network simulations we show that the interplay between topological evolution and epidemic dynamics can be captured by an analytical approximation. This reveals that increased infectivity increases the prevalence of the disease but also leads to the reemergence of an epidemic threshold by causing a transition from scale-free to exponential topology. |
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