Related papers: Some reflections on the test-negative design

Most governments employ a set of quasi-standard measures to fight COVID-19 including wearing masks, social distancing, virus testing, contact tracing, and vaccination. However, combining these measures into an efficient holistic pandemic…

Advances in machine learning have enabled the prediction of immune system responses to prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines. However, the engineering task of designing vaccines remains a challenge. In particular, the genetic variability of…

We conducted a literature review of COVID-19 vaccine allocation modelling papers, specifically looking for publications that considered equity. We found that most models did not take equity into account, with the vast majority of…

Despite the astonishing success of COVID-19 vaccines against the virus, a substantial proportion of the population is still hesitant to be vaccinated, undermining governmental efforts to control the virus. To address this problem, we need…

Anti-vaccine sentiments have been well-known and reported throughout the history of viral outbreaks and vaccination programmes. The COVID-19 pandemic had fear and uncertainty about vaccines which has been well expressed on social media…

Retracted scientific articles about COVID-19 vaccines have proliferated false claims about vaccination harms and discouraged vaccine acceptance. Our study analyzed the topical content of 4,876 English-language tweets about retracted…

Effective public health messaging benefits from understanding antecedents to unstable attitudes that are more likely to be influenced. This work investigates the relationship between moral and emotional bases for attitudes towards COVID-19…

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines have been an important topic in public discourse. The discussions around vaccines are polarized as some see them as an important measure to end the pandemic, and others are hesitant or find…

We discuss the (twisted) weak positivity theorem. We also treat some applications.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had and continues to have major impacts on planned and ongoing clinical trials. Its effects on trial data create multiple potential statistical issues. The scale of impact is unprecedented, but when viewed…

There are multiple testing methods to ascertain an infection in an individual and they vary in their performances, cost and delay. Unfortunately, better performing tests are sometimes costlier and time consuming and can only be done for a…

Digital tools play an important role in fighting the current global COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted a representative online study in Germany on a sample of 599 participants to evaluate the user perception of vaccination certificates. We…

Bayesian adaptive designs have gained popularity in all phases of clinical trials with numerous new developments in the past few decades. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to establish evidence for the effectiveness of vaccines,…

There are racial disparities in the COVID-19 test positivity rate, suggesting that minorities may be under-tested. Here, drawing on the literature on statistically assessing racial disparities in policing, we 1) illuminate a statistical…

As humanity struggles to contain the global COVID-19 pandemic, privacy concerns are emerging regarding confinement, tracing and testing. The scientific debate concerning privacy of the COVID-19 tracing efforts has been intense, especially…

Knowing the true effect size of clinical interventions in randomised clinical trials is key to informing the public health policies. Vaccine efficacy is defined in terms of the relative risk or the ratio of two disease risks. However, only…

A recent publication by the NSA assessing the usability of quantum cryptography has generated significant attention, concluding that this technology is not recommended for use. Here, we reply to this criticism and argue that some of the…

A negative result is when the outcome of an experiment or a model is not what is expected or when a hypothesis does not hold. Despite being often overlooked in the scientific community, negative results are results and they carry value.…

An analysis drawing on Signal Detection Theory suggests that people may fall for misinformation because they are unable to discern true from false information (truth insensitivity) or because they tend to accept information with a…

Determining whether vaccine efficacy wanes is important for individual and public decision making. Yet, quantification of waning is a subtle task. The classical approaches cannot be interpreted as measures of declining efficacy unless we…