Many disease models focus on characterizing the underlying transmission mechanism but make simple, possibly naive assumptions about how infections are reported. In this note, we use a simple deterministic Susceptible-Infected-Removed (SIR) model to compare two common assumptions about disease incidence reports: Individuals can report their infection as soon as they become infected or as soon as they recover. We show that incorrect assumptions about the underlying observation processes can bias estimates of the basic reproduction number and lead to overly narrow confidence intervals.

中文翻译：

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流行病模型中的观察过程注意事项

许多疾病模型侧重于表征潜在的传播机制，但对感染的报告方式做出简单的、可能是幼稚的假设。在本说明中，我们使用一个简单的确定性易感感染移除 (SIR) 模型来比较关于疾病发生率报告的两个常见假设：个人可以在感染后或康复后立即报告其感染情况。我们表明，对基础观察过程的不正确假设会使基本再生数的估计产生偏差，并导致置信区间过窄。