The Challenge of Using Epidemiological Case Count Data: The Example of Confirmed COVID-19 Cases and the Weather
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Abstract
The publicly available data on COVID-19 cases provides an opportunity to better understand this new disease. However, strong attention needs to be paid to the limitations of the data to avoid making inaccurate conclusions. This article, which focuses on the relationship between the weather and COVID-19, raises the concern that the same factors influencing the spread of the disease might also affect the number of tests performed and who gets tested. For example, weather conditions impact the prevalence of respiratory diseases with symptoms similar to COVID-19, and this will likely influence the number of tests performed. This general limitation could severely undermine any similar analysis using existing COVID-19 data or similar epidemiological data, which could, therefore, mislead decision-makers on questions of great policy relevance.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.21.20108803: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransp…SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.21.20108803: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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