Modeling Epidemics: A Primer and Numerus Software Implementation

Wayne M. Getz; Richard Salter; Oliver Muellerklein; Hyun S. Yoon; Krti Tallam

Models are also the best tools for guiding our response to an outbreak once it has begun. Although, after 10 weeks, a fit to the Sierra Leone data set would have substantially underestimated the problem at hand, the fit at 20 weeks provided a much better ball park assessment of the final size of the Sierra Leone outbreak than could have been obtained with non dynamic modeling efforts. This remained somewhat true at 30 weeks and certainly so at 40 weeks, despite all the known serious violations of an SEIR model applied to an inhomogeneous, spatially-structured population. Thus SEIR models remain an important tool for managing epidemics, provided we treat predictions from such models with circumspection. [8] Allen LJ. A primer on stochastic epidemic models: Formulation, numerical simulation, and analysis. Infectious Disease Modelling. 2017;.