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A comparison of observation models for statistical inference of emerging disease transmission dynamics: Application to SARS-CoV-2

2026-01-29 epidemiology Title + abstract only
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1Parameter estimation is often necessary to inform transmission models of infectious diseases. This estimation requires choosing an observation model that links the model outputs to the observed data. Although potentially consequential, this choice has received little attention in the literature. Here, we aimed to compare eight observation models, including common distributions such as the Poisson, binomial, negative binomial, and normal (equivalent to least-squares estimation). Using Bayesian i...

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