Networks in Body of Proof

Earlier in the year we touched on how diseases spread through networks. The spread of something like a disease is obviously easier to spread from person to person than, say, a complicated idea. Since it's a simple contagion, we did not spend too much time talking about it compared to the time we spent talking about complex contagion, but there was a combination of disease spread and complex contagion in a recent episode of "Body of Proof."

The most recent episodes are "Going Viral Pt. 1" and, you guessed it, "Going Viral Pt. 2." They focus on a mysterious disease that is being spread as an act of bioterrorism by a man who believes that there needs to be some population control and has taken the issue into his own hands. The characters in the show work together to try to find out A. what the disease is and how to cure it, and B. who "patient zero" is and how the disease spread. Obviously part A is simply medical, however, when they were trying to figure out how the disease spread, they took advantage of network science. They asked everyone to retrace their steps for the past week to assess what the commonalities were between all of the infected people. They needed to see who they came into contact with, who they touched, and where they went. They used this information to separate the victims into nine "clusters." The clusters included things like, who stayed at a specific motel, who went to a certain gas station, who rode a certain bus, and so on and so forth. Using this information they were able to trace the steps of the terrorist, and determine that it was he who was "patient zero."

In the end, they used an experimental vaccine to cure the victims who were still alive, and they were able to catch and kill the terrorist. Killing the terrorist stopped the disease from spreading to an unbelievable number of new clusters and networks. They essentially cut out the piece of the network that was linking everyone together. Although the victims were only linked through the simple contagion of a disease, they used the ideas of complex network contagion to catch a killer.