Strategies used to support validity have included the incorporation of uncertainty using sensitivity analyses, modelling a range of possible scenarios [ 9], and simulating a range of outbreaks so that those most similar to observed outbreaks for the disease under investigation can be used [ 4].
Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques are the best established such methods and have been successfully employed in the analysis of a range of spatiotemporal outbreak data in the past [12] [14], as well as to purely temporal incidence data [15], [16].
Agent-based models should be applied in the future to evaluate the efficacy of control measures for a range of disease outbreaks in a range of settings given sufficient information about the given case and knowledge about the transmission processes at a fine scale.
Our estimate of a person-to-person basic reproduction number R0 pp ≈ 1 in 1976 suggests that Ebola would have been capable of generating a wide range of outbreak sizes in the absence of any extrinsic variation in epidemiological conditions.
Rather than try to model the full outbreak process from infection to ED visit, as has been done for some limited outbreak types[ 17], we tried to model a wide range of outbreak signals, representing various ways that outbreaks in the community could alter ED syndrome counts.
Anthropogenic land use changes drive a range of infectious disease outbreaks and emergence events and modify the transmission of endemic infections.
Human-induced land use changes are the primary drivers of a range of infectious disease outbreaks and emergence events and also modifiers of the transmission of endemic infections (Patz et al. 2000).
The stochastic nature of the model ensures that simulations provide a representation of the possible range of outbreak scenarios based on existing knowledge about disease transmission.
That kind of warming level has a really strong influence on ecosystems and influence on risks for a range of pest and disease outbreaks".
More specifically, a range of factors, including local disease outbreak, construction work that made one of the ED sites more difficult to reach, or capacity changes in one or both sites, could have happened coincidently with the publication of ED wait time information and could have altered patients' selection of ED sites.
