BETS: the dangers of selection bias in early analyses of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic

DOI10.1214/20-AOAS1401zbMATH Open1475.62274arXiv2004.07743OpenAlexW3138734629MaRDI QIDQ137953FDOQ137953

Authors: Qingyuan Zhao, Nianqiao Ju, Sergio Bacallado, Rajen D. Shah, Qingyuan Zhao, Nianqiao Ju, Sergio Bacallado, Rajen D. Shah 

Publication date: 16 April 2020

Published in: The Annals of Applied Statistics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has quickly grown from a regional outbreak in Wuhan, China to a global pandemic. Early estimates of the epidemic growth and incubation period of COVID-19 may have been biased due to sample selection. Using detailed case reports from 14 locations in and outside mainland China, we obtained 378 Wuhan-exported cases who left Wuhan before an abrupt travel quarantine. We developed a generative model we call BETS for four key epidemiological events---Beginning of exposure, End of exposure, time of Transmission, and time of Symptom onset (BETS)---and derived explicit formulas to correct for the sample selection. We gave a detailed illustration of why some early and highly influential analyses of the COVID-19 pandemic were severely biased. All our analyses, regardless of which subsample and model were being used, point to an epidemic doubling time of 2 to 2.5 days during the early outbreak in Wuhan. A Bayesian nonparametric analysis further suggests that about 5% of the symptomatic cases may not develop symptoms within 14 days of infection and that men may be much more likely than women to develop symptoms within 2 days of infection.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.07743

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zbMATH Keywords

Bayesian nonparametricsselection biasinfectious diseaseepidemic growthepidemiologyincubation period

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Bayesian inference (62F15) Applications of statistics to biology and medical sciences; meta analysis (62P10) Medical epidemiology (92C60) Statistical ranking and selection procedures (62F07)

Cites Work

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• Inference from iterative simulation using multiple sequences
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• The mathematics of infectious diseases

Cited In (7)

• Addressing selection bias and measurement error in COVID-19 case count data using auxiliary information
• Semiparametric regression analysis of doubly-censored data with applications to incubation period estimation
• Estimation of incubation period and generation time based on observed length‐biased epidemic cohort with censoring for COVID‐19 outbreak in China
• Estimating the time interval between transmission generations when negative values occur in the serial interval data: using COVID-19 as an example
• Epidemics, the Ising-model and percolation theory: a comprehensive review focused on Covid-19
• An epidemic-economic model for COVID-19
• bets.covid19

Uses Software

• TensorFlow
• bootstrap
• GitHub

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