{"paper":{"title":"Stochasticity and the limits to confidence when estimating R_0 of Ebola and other emerging infectious diseases","license":"http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"q-bio.PE","authors_text":"Bradford P Taylor, Jonathan Dushoff, Joshua S Weitz","submitted_at":"2016-01-21T21:04:44Z","abstract_excerpt":"Dynamic models - often deterministic in nature - were used to estimate the basic reproductive number, R_0, of the 2014-5 Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic outbreak in West Africa. Estimates of R_0 were then used to project the likelihood for large outbreak sizes, e.g., exceeding hundreds of thousands of cases. Yet fitting deterministic models can lead to over-confidence in the confidence intervals of the fitted R_0, and, in turn, the type and scope of necessary interventions. In this manuscript we propose a hybrid stochastic-deterministic method to estimate R_0 and associated confidence inter"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"1601.06829","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}