Generative-Modeling-rt-live.ipynb

generative-rtlive.ipynb

Section4_2-Generative_Modeling.ipynb

The implicit assumption in the generative process above is that people get sick and infectuous instantly, as they infect another person on the very next day.

In reality, it takes a while for a person to (i) become infectuous and (ii) pass the disease on. This delay is officially known as the "serial interval" and we will model it with a probability distribution which we get from this study30119-3/pdf).

the "serial interval" is the time between symptoms in the primary infection and symptoms in the secondary infection. the distribution that we care about is the "generation time" which is the interval between primary infection and secondary infection. we are using the serial interval as a proxy for the generation time, with the assumption that it is just shifted back in time