Harmful information spreading and its impact on vaccination campaigns modeled through fractal-fractional operators

Abstract

Despite the huge efforts to develop and administer vaccines worldwide to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation spreading through fake news in media and social networks about vaccination safety, make that people refuse to be vaccinated, which harms not only these people but also the whole population. In this work, we model the effects of harmful information spreading in immunization acquisition through vaccination. Our model is posed for several fractional derivative operators. We have conducted a comprehensive foundation analysis of this model for the different fractional derivatives. Additionally, we have incorporated a strength parameter that shows the combined impact of nonlinear and linear components within an epidemiological model. We have used the second derivative of the Lyapunov function to ascertain the detection of wave patterns within the vaccination dynamics.