In Figure 1 , we explore the theoretical limits of what can be achieved by "removing" highly connected individuals from the contact network: the vertical axis shows the maximum eigenvalue of the next generation matrix of the casual contact network which predicts the initial spread of the epidemic. The horizontal axis shows the fraction of the population which is removed from the transmission network (e.g. by immunization), whereby the individuals are sorted by their number of contacts, such that the most highly connected individuals will be removed first (red curve). Even if only a small fraction of the population is removed, Figure 1 shows a steep decline in the eigenvalue, which clearly indicates that removing the most highly connected individuals has a huge effect on the index cases' capacity to spread the infection, as has been shown in other publications (1). The blue curve in Figure 1 shows a much less dramatic effect which is gained if individuals are removed at random -irrespective of their number of contacts.