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Chapter 16 - Bias in Pandemic Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Michael B. Bracken
Affiliation:
Emeritus of Yale University
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Summary

All of the data needed to examine and model an epidemic are difficult to obtain with any accuracy, during a pandemic. This includes: case fatality, calculating the number of infections, estimating the effective reproduction number (R, how many additional cases will be infected by a single case), the incubation period (time from infection to symptoms), and the serial interval (time from start of symptoms in the infector to symptoms starting in the infectee). The COVID-19 pandemic is used to demonstrate these difficulties. Secondary health effects are an important consequence of pandemics and bias in these studies is discussed, as is pandemic modeling.

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