Ending the COVID-19 epidemic in the United Kingdom

Allometry and growth of eight tree taxa in United Kingdom woodlands

Allometry and growth rates of 8 forest species in the UK. The data were collected from two United Kingdom woodlands - Wytham Woods and Alice Holt. Here we present data from 582 individual trees of eight taxa in the form of summary variables. In addition the raw data files containing the variables from which the summary data were obtained. Large sample sizes with longitudinal data spanning 22 years make these datasets useful for future studies concerned with the way trees change in size and shape over their life-span. The allometric relationships include (1) trunk diameter, (2) height, (3) crow…

Vaccine-escape and fast-growing mutations in the United Kingdom, the United States, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, and other COVID-19-devastated countries

Recently, the SARS-CoV-2 variants from the United Kingdom (UK), South Africa, and Brazil have received much attention for their increased infectivity, potentially high virulence, and possible threats to existing vaccines and antibody therapies. The question remains if there are other more infectious variants transmitted around the world. We carry out a large-scale study of 252,874 SARS-CoV-2 genome isolates from patients to identify many other rapidly growing mutations on the spike (S) protein receptor-binding domain (RDB). We reveal that 88 out of 95 significant mutations that were observed m…

A reductive analysis of a compartmental model for COVID-19: data assimilation and forecasting for the United Kingdom

We introduce a deterministic model that partitions the total population into the susceptible, infected, quarantined, and those traced after exposure, the recovered and the deceased. We hypothesize 'accessible population for transmission of the disease' to be a small fraction of the total population, for instance when interventions are in force. This hypothesis, together with the structure of the set of coupled nonlinear ordinary differential equations for the populations, allows us to decouple the equations into just two equations. This further reduces to a logistic type of equation for the to…

英国人工智能自动报告正常胸部X光片：我们能否将人类移出决策回路？

Autonomous Reporting of Normal Chest X-rays by Artificial Intelligence in the United Kingdom. Can We Take the Human Out of the Loop?

本文探讨在英国由AI自动报告正常胸部X光片的可行性与挑战，涵盖“正常”定义、泛化性、灵敏度-特异度权衡、法律监管、问责、上市后监测及患者视角，主张审慎采用。

Choosing a growth curve to model the Covid-19 outbreak

The Richards family models comprise a well-known set of models with useful parameters to describe several aspects of disease outbreaks. Some of these models have been used to study the current Covid-19 pandemic. However, there seems to be confusion regarding the discrimination among competing models. In this paper a detailed application of Akaikes information approach is used to discern among models using data from The European Union, The United States and The United Kingdom. We argue that the epidemiological characteristics derived from competing models should be examined to complement the se…

A modeling approach for estimating dynamic measles case detection rates

The main idea in this paper is that the age associated with reported measles cases can be used to estimate the number of undetected measles infections. Somewhat surprisingly, even with age only to the nearest year, estimates of underreporting can be generated at the much faster, 2 week time-scale associated with measles transmission. I describe this idea by focusing on the well-studied, 60 city United Kingdom data set, which covers the transition to universal healthcare in 1948, and is, as a result, an interesting case study in infectious disease surveillance. Finally, at the end of the paper,…