Global variation in event-based surveillance for disease outbreak detection: A time series analysis (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Robust and flexible infectious disease surveillance is crucial for public health. Event-based surveillance (EBS) was developed to allow timely detection of infectious disease outbreaks using mostly web-based data. Despite its widespread use, EBS has not been evaluated systematically on a global scale in terms of outbreak detection performance. OBJECTIVE To assess the variation in timing and frequency of EBS reports compared to true outbreaks and to identify the determinants of variability, using the example of seasonal influenza epidemics in 24 countries. METHODS We obtained influenza-related reports from two EBS systems, HealthMap and the WHO Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS), and weekly virologic influenza counts from FluNet as a gold standard. Epidemic influenza periods were detected based on report frequency using Bayesian change point analysis. Timely sensitivity, i.e., outbreak detection within the first two weeks before or after an outbreak onset, was calculated along with sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and timeliness of detection. Linear regressions were performed to assess the influence of country-specific factors on EBS performance. RESULTS Overall, monitoring the frequency of EBS reports detected 73.5% of outbreaks, but only 9.2% within two weeks of onset; in the best case, monitoring the frequency of health-related reports identified 29% of outbreaks within two weeks of onset. We observed a large degree of variability in all evaluation metrics across countries. The number of EBS reports available within a country, the human development index, and the country’s geographical location partially explained this variability. CONCLUSIONS Monitoring the frequency of EBS reports allowed just under 10% of seasonal influenza outbreaks to be detected in a timely manner in a worldwide analysis, with a large variability in detection capabilities. This article documents the global variation of EBS performance and demonstrates that monitoring report frequency alone in EBS may be insufficient for timely detection of outbreaks. Moreover, factors such as human development index and geographical location of a country may influence the performance of EBS and should be considered in future evaluations.

Patience and Vaccination

Vaccination against COVID-19 and other diseases is a pressing public health issue. We hypothesize that a short-term orientation (impatience) – as it heavily discounts the future benefits of actions taken today – leads to lower rates of vaccination. Using a recently constructed, experimentally validated measure of patience, we document four results consistent with our hypothesis. First, patience alone explains a large share (21%) of the global variation in COVID-19 vaccinations across countries as of November 2021 (Study 1a; N = 76). An increase in patience of one S.D. is associated with 12 p.p. larger vaccination rates. Second, using duration models (Study 1b; 4,180 ≤ N ≤ 9,973), we demonstrate that more patient countries are quicker to reach high COVID-19 vaccination thresholds. Third, our results are not specific to the COVID-19 pandemic: in Study 2a, we show that beliefs regarding the safety and effectiveness of vaccination against swine influenza (H1N1) in 2009 are also well-explained by patience in a sample of sub-national regions of Europe (N regions = 138; N countries = 17). Fourth, in Study 2b, we show that our results are not specific to pandemics: patience also explains the global variation in infant vaccinations against 12 common diseases (N = 75).

How to measure a psychological construct in cross-national comparison: Regarding Rhoads et al. (2021)

This is a critique of the altruism variables used by Rhoads et al. (2021). Accepted for publication as "Letter to Editor" in Psychological Science. Rhoads, S. A., Gunter, D., Ryan, R. M., & Marsh, A. A. Global Variation in Subjective Well-Being Predicts Seven Forms of Altruism. Psychological Science, 0(0), 0956797621994767. doi:10.1177/0956797621994767