Modeling Epidemics: A Primer and Numerus Software Implementation

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

With the above parameter and model settings, the best-fitting remaining parameter values, denoted by asterisk and obtained using a Nelder-Mead minimization algorithm, were LSE: In Figure 8A we see that the LSE and MLE provide similar fits, though both provided relatively poor fits to the first third of data: these data reflect a more linear than the exponential initial phase which is uncharacteristic of homogeneous SEIR models, particular those that have no spatial structure. In general, we should not expect and SEIR model to fit the data particularly well because many of the assumptions inherent in the SEIR model, as discussed in the previous section, are violated to some oftenunknown and likely-large degree.