ISSS608 2017-18 T1 Assign FOO CELONG RAYMOND/Preliminary
The epidemioloic triad is a traditional model for infectious disease. It consists of the external agent, the susceptible host and the environment that results in the interaction between the host and the agent. My hypothesis for the transmission will need to address the 3 factors.
On studying the Epi curve of the individual symptoms, I noticed not all the symptoms starts at the same time. One group of symptoms started manifesting from the 18-May. The epi curves of the 18-May symptoms suggest that I am looking at point source outbreak because most of the curves have the telltale shape of steadily reaching the peak and declining after reaching the peak which is the typical shape of a point source outbreak. A continuous common source outbreak would have sustained the peak for a longer time and even have multiple peaks.
The second group of symptoms started manifesting from the 19-May. This may be due to symptoms that develop in the later stage of the illness or even caused by a unrelated outbreak of a separate disease. However, because the data presented only contains micro blog up to 20-May, there is insufficient data to determine if these set of epi curves are from a point source or a continuous common source outbreak.
Notable events that may be related to the outbreak are truck accidents, conventions and an explosion in smogtown. I noted that the explosion at smogtown is potentially premeditated as there were chatters about an explosion happening just one day before the actual explosion.
