Are epidemiological indicators misleading under uncertainty? An evaluation and a remedy from an economic perspective

Christelle Baunez (), Mickaël Degoulet (), Stéphane Luchini (), Patrick Pintus and Miriam Teschl ()
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Christelle Baunez: INT - Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Mickaël Degoulet: INT - Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Stéphane Luchini: AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Miriam Teschl: AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: Even though much has been learned about the new pathogen SARS-CoV-2 since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of uncertainty remains. In this paper we argue that what is important to know under uncertainty is whether harm accelerates and whether health policies achieve deceleration of harm. For this, we need to see cases in relation to diagnostic effort and not to look at indicators based on cases only, such as a number of widely used epidemiological indicators, including the reproduction number, do. To do so overlooks a crucial dimension, namely the fact that the best we can know about cases will depend on some welldefined strategy of diagnostic effort, such as testing in the case of COVID-19. We will present a newly developed indicator to observe harm, the acceleration index, which is essentially an elasticity of cases in relation to tests. We will discuss what efficiency of testing means and propose that the corresponding health policy goal should be to find ever fewer cases with an ever-greater diagnostic effort. Easy and low-threshold testing will also be a means to give back people's sovereignty to lead their life in an "open" as opposed to "locked-down" society.

Keywords: uncertainty; acceleration index; anti-fragility; reproduction factor; test strategy; sovereignty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-02-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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Working Paper: Are epidemiological indicators misleading under uncertainty? An evaluation and a remedy from an economic perspective (2021)
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