Recent U.S. public policy debates regarding smallpox vaccination were
largely focused on comparing mass versus trace vaccination strategies;
namely, whether to vaccinate the entire population or only those
who have been in contact with infected individuals. In this talk, we
present a Bayesian susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (SEIR) model
and apply it to analyze a set of eight smallpox epidemics in Southwest
Native American communities during 1780--1781. The outcome of the model
is the posterior distribution of epidemic parameters, after taking into
account the population and geographical heterogeneity. We then present a
comparison of the two main vaccination strategies based on the posterior
predictive distribution of the fatalities under each.
Meet the speaker in Room 212 Cockins Hall at 4:30
p.m. Refreshments will be served.