Nick Irons

Optimal pandemic control strategies and cost-effectiveness of COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions in the United States - BMC Global and Public Health Background Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a trade-off between the health impacts of viral spread and the social and economic costs of restric...

Our paper, “Optimal pandemic control strategies …” bmcglobalpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... w @nickirons.bsky.social, just published.Takeaway: U.S. COVID-19 school closures were not cost-effective, but other measures were. medicalxpress.com/news/2025-09...

The Air

The Air https://www.wikiart.org/en/joan-miro/the-air-1937

Science’s 2024 Breakthrough of the Year: Opening the door to a new era of HIV prevention A drug with a novel mechanism protects people against the AIDS virus for 6 months. It could speed the end of the epidemic—if those who need it most get access

Science @science.org magazine's Breakthrough of the Year is fantastic: an HIV-prevention drug protects people for six months at a time and in two clinical trials showed 99.9% and 100% (!) efficacy in preventing infection www.science.org/content/arti... by @cohenjon.bsky.social 🧪

People are enraged by health insurance denials because they arise when they are at their most vulnerable and least able to respond. Both physical and mental health matter to our ability to respond to the types of administrative demands that insurers rely on.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Keefe's Say Nothing is great

likely at least partially responsible for why the US has become such an antisocial place

Huge congratulations to my Florida State Univ Population Center colleagues Mike McFarland and Matt Hauer (@drdemography.bsky.social) on this important and very newsworthy (!!) paper on the impact of leaded gasoline on US public health. #demography

acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Perhaps just a heavy-tailed Lee-Carter would do the trick as well? instead of using two stages

These posterior projections give an approximation to the full posterior (with uncertainty propagated correctly). This is the idea behind multiple imputation

my initial take would be:
(1) fit a bayesian model to the pre-trend (can use a heavy-tailed likelihood to account for outliers). (2) take a random sample of (say 100) posterior trajectories, fitting Lee-Carter to each one and project forward. Each one of these is a posterior projection.

Woman in park

Woman in park https://www.wikiart.org/en/august-macke/woman-in-park

have you considered going Bayesian

US COVID-19 school closure was not cost-effective, but other measures were Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a trade-off between the health impacts of viral spread and the social and economic costs of restrictions. We c...

Lockdown decision-making was challenging. Perhaps we can leave room for nuance in our reflections on the pandemic.
arxiv.org/abs/2411.12016

US COVID-19 school closure was not cost-effective, but other measures were Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a trade-off between the health impacts of viral spread and the social and economic costs of restrictions. We c...

masking was extremely cost-effective arxiv.org/abs/2411.12016