The basic idea of right-censoring is simple: if someone leaves a study before their event happens, it's not counted and therefore the study's results are skewedpic.twitter.com/Fx2UNaZTas
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There are probably a bunch of people who HAVE the disease on day x who are counted in our sample and will die but haven't yet!
So, what we SHOULD do in cases like these is either: a) use a statistical model to account for this issue b) wait a few weeks and use different death estimates to correct for potential right-censoring
Instead, most people just take the proportion immune on day x and divide by deaths on the same day This will almost certainly underestimate the 'true' infection-fatality rate, and is a big worry
But antibodies take about the same time.
Would it make sense to do both an antibody test and a swab and have the denominator be antibody positive - swab positive to get the total recovered population?
That is totally true but you are also not counting the cases that are going to keep increasing,and the fatalities are going down so to be fair we should do it at the end of the pandemic or at least a year from now, but anyway that would imply that it is in fact lower the fatality
People don’t seroconvert immediately either so if you are using serology you are finding out how many were infected in the past. So given, on average, it takes longer to seroconvert than to die this is actually introducing a “left censoring” effect.
For COVID-19, the published estimates I've seen are median 7-11 days for seroconversion and 15-21 days for death. Would be interested if you've seen substantially different!
But wait. Antibodies can also take from 14-21 days to develop... Studies I’ve seen *do* take this into account. You seem to be underestimating serious epidemiologists.
Any thoughts on the right censoring impact of the early termination of the remdesivir study?
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