Community lockdowns and travel restrictions are commonly employed to decelerate epidemic spreading. We here use a stochastic susceptible-infectious-recovered model on different social networks to determine when and to what degree such lockdowns are likely to be effective. Our research shows that community lockdowns are effective only if the links outside of the communities are virtually completely sealed off. The benefits of targeting specifically these links, as opposed to links uniformly at random across the whole network, are inferable only beyond 90% lockdown effectiveness. And even then the peak of the infected curve decreases by only 20% and its onset is delayed by a factor of 1.5. This holds for static and temporal social networks, regardless of their size and structural particularities. Networks derived from cell phone location data and online location-based social platforms yield the same results as a large family of hyperbolic geometric network models where characteristic path lengths, clustering, and community structure can be arbitrarily adjusted. The complex connectedness of modern human societies, which enables the ease of global communication and the lightning speeds at which news and information spread, thus makes it very difficult to halt epidemic spreading with top-down measures. We therefore emphasize the outstanding importance of endogenous self-isolation and social distancing for successfully arresting epidemic spreading.

社区封锁和旅行限制通常用于减缓流行病的传播。我们在这里使用不同社交网络上的随机易感-感染-恢复模型来确定此类锁定何时以及在多大程度上可能有效。我们的研究表明，只有当社区外的联系几乎完全被封锁时，社区封锁才有效。专门针对这些链接的好处，而不是在整个网络中均匀随机的链接，只有超过 90% 的锁定有效性才能推断出来。即便如此，感染曲线的峰值也仅下降了 20%，其发病延迟了 1.5 倍。这适用于静态和时间社交网络，无论其规模和结构特殊性如何。源自手机位置数据和基于在线位置的社交平台的网络产生与大量双曲线几何网络模型相同的结果，其中特征路径长度、聚类和社区结构可以任意调整。现代人类社会复杂的联通性，使得全球交流变得容易，新闻和信息传播速度快如闪电，因此很难用自上而下的措施阻止流行病的传播。因此，我们强调内源性自我隔离和社交距离对于成功阻止流行病传播的突出重要性。并且社区结构可以任意调整。现代人类社会复杂的联通性，使得全球交流变得容易，新闻和信息传播速度快如闪电，因此很难用自上而下的措施阻止流行病的传播。因此，我们强调内源性自我隔离和社交距离对于成功阻止流行病传播的突出重要性。并且社区结构可以任意调整。现代人类社会复杂的联通性，使得全球交流变得容易，新闻和信息传播速度快如闪电，因此很难用自上而下的措施阻止流行病的传播。因此，我们强调内源性自我隔离和社交距离对于成功阻止流行病传播的突出重要性。