--- title: "New Research: Contagious Diseases Spread a Lot Like Memes" description: "A group of scientists say their new research shows that contagious diseases like the coronavirus spread like viral videos and other internet memes." date: "2020-02-27" modified: "2020-02-27" authors: - name: "Jon Christian" job_title: "Executive Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jonc" url: "https://futurism.com/neoscope/research-diseases-spread-like-memes" categories: - "Health & Medicine" - "Medical" - "Pathogens" - "Viruses" tags: - "contagion" - "coronavirus" - "covid-19" - "epidemiology" --- # New Research: Contagious Diseases Spread a Lot Like Memes ![A group of scientists say their new research shows that contagious diseases like the coronavirus spread like viral videos and other internet memes.]() *\Image: Image via Pixnio/Victor Tangermann\* A group of scientists say their new research shows that contagious diseases spread very similarly to internet memes — meaning that rather than spreading in isolation, they jostle one another for success, and fall off after reaching saturation. "When diseases reinforce each other, they rapidly accelerate through the population, then fizzle out as they run out of new hosts," reads a [press release]() about the provocative research. "According to the researchers' model, the same super-exponential pattern characterizes the spread of social trends, like viral videos, which are widely shared and then cease to be relevant after a critical mass of people have viewed them." The research, [published]() in the journal *Nature Communications* this week, pushes back against the common idea that an outbreak simply spreads from one host to several more, each of whom spread it again. Instead, the researchers found, separate diseases often reinforce each other, like a cold that makes you sneeze, spreading a second illness to other people. Or your body can fight off one disease, but doing so weakens your immune system, leading you to succumb to another one. In other words, it's like when you see so many friends share the same tweet that you eventually break down and share it yourself. Or as researcher Laurent Hébert-Dufresne put it, "the phenomenon through which ten friends telling you to go see the new 'Star Wars' movie is different from one friend telling you the same thing ten times." That sounds whimsical, but the finding has special resonance, Hébert-Dufresne warned, as the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is rapidly spreading worldwide. "When making predictions, such as for the current coronavirus outbreak occurring in a flu season, it becomes important to know which cases have multiple infections and which patients are in the hospital with flu — but scared because of coronavirus," he said. "The interactions can be biological or social in nature, but they all matter." ## Author I'm responsible for editing, assigning, and scouting at Futurism, as well as occasionally writing for the site. That work involves keeping an eye on a wide range of narratives and issues, but over the past few years I've become increasingly interested in how AI is shaping the future of media, the web, and information itself. My day-to-day often involves collaborating on reporting and commentary projects bylined by my colleagues, but I try to find time to do my own reporting as well; stories I've broken for Futurism have been cited by publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Wired, Ars Technica, New York Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, Bloomberg, and more. I grew up in Southern Vermont and attended Vanderbilt University. Prior to Futurism, I contributed to outlets including the Boston Globe, Vice, Wired, Slate, the Atlantic, the Outline, Ars Technica and more, and did stints in farming and food service. I currently live in Brooklyn, New York, and in my free time I enjoy pinball, word games, cycling, running, and music production. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()