Imperfect targeted immunization in scale-free networks

Scale-free networks are prone to epidemic spreading. To provide cost-effective protection for such networks, targeted immunization was proposed to selectively immunize the hub nodes. In many real-life applications, however, the targeted immunization may not be perfect, either because some hub nodes are hidden and consequently not immunized, or because the vaccination simply cannot provide perfect protection. We investigate the effects of imperfect targeted immunization in scale-free networks. Analysis and simulation results show that there exists a linear relationship between the inverse of the epidemic threshold and the effectiveness of targeted immunization. Therefore, the probability of epidemic outbreak cannot be significantly lowered unless the protection is reasonably strong. On the other hand, even a relatively weak protection over the hub nodes significantly decreases the number of network nodes ever getting infected and therefore enhances network robustness against virus. We show that the above conclusions remain valid where there exists a negative correlation between nodal degree and infectiousness.