Conserved patterns of incomplete reporting in pre-vaccine era childhood diseases.

ABSTRACT: Incomplete observation is an important yet often neglected feature of observational ecological timeseries. In particular, observational case report timeseries of childhood diseases have played an important role in the formulation of mechanistic dynamical models of populations and metapopulations. Yet to our knowledge, no comprehensive study of childhood disease reporting probabilities (commonly referred to as reporting rates) has been conducted to date. Here, we provide a detailed analysis of measles and whooping cough reporting probabilities in pre-vaccine United States cities and states, as well as measles in cities of England and Wales. Overall, we find the variability between locations and diseases greatly exceeds that between methods or time periods. We demonstrate a strong relationsh

SUBMITTER: Gunning CE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4211441 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature