Virtual
Seminar
  US Mountain Time
Speaker: 
Amos Golan (American University; SFI)

Our campus is closed to the public for this event.

Abstract:  The possibility of reoccurring waves of the novel coronavirus that triggered the 2020 pandemic makes it critical to identify underlying policy-relevant factors that could be leveraged to decrease future COVID-19 death rates. We examined variation in a number of underlying, policy-relevant, country-level factors and COVID-19 death rates across countries. We found three such factors that significantly impact the survival probability of patients infected with COVID-19.  In order of impact, these are universal TB (BCG) vaccination, air pollution deaths and a health-related expenditure. We quantify each probability change by age and sex. To deal with small sample size and high correlations, we use an information-theoretic inferential method that also allows us to introduce priors constructed from independent SARS data.

Key Words:  BCG vaccine, coronavirus, COVID-19, health expenditure, inference, information theory, policy pollution level

Purpose: 
Research Collaboration
SFI Host: 
Mirta Galesic

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