Better public decisions on COVID-19: A thought experiment in metrics
Objectives: Poor decision-making is a hallmark of the COVID-19 pandemic. Better metrics would help improve decision-makers' understanding of the scope of the pandemic and allow for better public understanding/review of these decisions. Study design: Two novel metrics of disease impact were comp...
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| Autores principales: | , , |
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| Formato: | article |
| Lenguaje: | EN |
| Publicado: |
Elsevier
2021
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | https://doaj.org/article/c459d8efd94c4b1a9977c3230aaf887c |
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| Sumario: | Objectives: Poor decision-making is a hallmark of the COVID-19 pandemic. Better metrics would help improve decision-makers' understanding of the scope of the pandemic and allow for better public understanding/review of these decisions. Study design: Two novel metrics of disease impact were compared with more commonly used standard metrics. Methods: A multi-criteria decision analysis technique, used previously to support metric selection in solid waste planning, was adapted to compare number of deaths, hospitalisations, positive test results and positivity rates (standard COVID-19 impact metrics) with a simple model that estimates the total number of potentially infectious people in an area and an associated odds ratio for infectious people. Results: The odds ratio and total infectious population estimate metrics scored better in a comparison analysis than number of deaths, hospitalisations, positive test results and positivity rates (in that order). Conclusions: The novel metrics provide a more effective means of communication than other more common measures of the outbreak. These superior metrics should support decision-making processes and result in a more informed population. |
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