Clonal variance (V C ) and broad-sense heritability (H) for susceptibility to infection also increased dramatically between the pre- and post-epidemic time periods, as would be expected with disruptive selection.
Therefore, the year considered in the present study was a non-epidemic year, and the number of children born with deafness due to rubella would be expected to increase in epidemic years.
Specific details on the timing of slaughter are not available, although because most slaughtering occurred in response to, and soon after, the diagnosis of new cases, the slaughter curve would be expected to follow the epidemic curve.
As would be expected, our results show that onset-to-admission periods shortened throughout the epidemic as public awareness improved and public health interventions were implemented [ 14, 34, 35].
For daily syndromic surveillance to be effective, an efficient and sensible algorithm would be expected to detect aberrations in influenza illness, and alert public health workers prior to any impending epidemic.
Studies have shown that major epidemics in the 1980s and early 1990s in Ethiopia were significantly more often preceded by a month of abnormally high minimum temperature than would be expected by random chance (3 ).
Additionally, Nierkens et al. suggested that the Dutch Surinamese population, especially men, have already reversed the socioeconomic gradient in smoking behavior that would normally be expected according to the stages of the tobacco epidemic [ 40].
According to the World Health Organization, an epidemic is defined as a disease outbreak and, therefore, the occurrence of cases of disease in excess of what would normally be expected in a defined community, geographic area, or season (15 ).
