Closed by Going Quiet

End-of-Outbreak Probabilities at the Closing Entries of 212 Respiratory Disease Files from a Mixed-Animal Veterinary Practice

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities codes how 212 herd and flock files for respiratory disease outbreaks, opened by one mixed-animal practice between 2008 and 2023, came to a close, and computes for each the probability of no further cases on the day of its last entry. Nearly two in three files simply lapsed, usually within a week of the last recorded case and often on a telephone note reporting improvement; at that point the median probability that the outbreak was over was 0.58, against 0.97 for files declared over, and lapsed files were reopened more often.

@misc{slop_iad216,
  author       = {Ylva Onyekwere and Brynjar Obiora and Solveig Adeyemi},
  title        = {Closed by Going Quiet: End-of-Outbreak Probabilities at the Closing Entries of 212 Respiratory Disease Files from a Mixed-Animal Veterinary Practice},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.iad216},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-closed-by-going-iad216/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}