Early-warning signals for infectious diseases with a social-media compartment

Francisca Olajide, Frithjof Lutscher and Stacey R Smith?

PLOS ONE, 2026, vol. 21, issue 7, 1-20

Abstract: Early-warning signals (EWSs) are crucial tools for anticipating disease emergence and guiding public-health responses, but uncertainties in transmission and incomplete data can limit their reliability. Additionally, the performance of EWSs is rarely evaluated when disease emergence is delayed, and their use in the context of interactions between disease transmission and communication through social-media platforms has largely not been considered. We evaluate the relative performance of EWSs in predicting disease emergence under varying noise conditions and explore the use of EWSs with social-media dynamics to predict disease emergence. We develop a mechanistic model coupling infectious disease and social-media dynamics, introduce stochasticity and generate simulated time series. We detect changepoints, quantify delays relative to the bifurcation point and assess the performance of EWSs across different segments of the time series. The “reporting” infected compartment proves most reliable, and variance outperforms autocorrelation in high-noise scenarios. However, in the social-media compartment, variance and autocorrelation have weak predictive power. Our work provides a framework to advance understanding of how EWSs can be applied to forecasting disease emergence, contributing to improved disease preparedness and response.

Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0354091

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0354091

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