COVID-19 : nothing is normal in this pandemic
Abstract
This manuscript brings attention to inaccurate epidemiological concepts that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. In social media and scientific journals, some wrong references were given to a "normal epidemic curve" and also to a "log-normal curve/distribution". For many years, textbooks and courses of reputable institutions and scientific journals have disseminated misleading concepts. For example, calling histogram to plots of epidemic curves or using epidemic data to introduce the concept of a Gaussian distribution, ignoring its temporal indexing. Although an epidemic curve may look like a Gaussian curve and be eventually modelled by a Gauss function, it is not a normal distribution or a log-normal, as some authors claim. A pandemic produces highly-complex data and to tackle it effectively statistical and mathematical modelling need to go beyond the "one-size-fits-all solution". Classical textbooks need to be updated since pandemics happen and epidemiology needs to provide reliable information to policy recommendations and actions.
Citation
Gonçalves , L , Turkman , M A A , Geraldes , C , Marques , T A & Sousa , L 2021 , ' COVID-19 : nothing is normal in this pandemic ' , Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health , vol. 11 , no. 2 , pp. 146 - 149 . https://doi.org/10.2991/jegh.k.210108.001
Publication
Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2210-6006Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press International B.V. This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Description
Funding: This work was partially support by CEAUL (funded by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal, through the project UIDB/00006/2020).Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.