I read a fascinating paper a while back about estimating the true prevalence of Covid-19 using positivity rate and case rate. The suggestion is to use the geometric mean, since the two numbers often move in different directions. I wonder if it could be applicable to Lyme disease as well?
There’s an issue of what we care to measure. The number of people who go to the doctor with a rash due to Borrelia bacteria and then take antibiotics and everything is fine might be able to be estimated that way.
On the other hand that’s not really what we care about. We care about not getting long-term problems.
In a similar fashion, if you don’t get Lyme disease but another nasty tickborne disease that can be treated with antibiotics we don’t care that much about the difference to Lyme disease.
I read a fascinating paper a while back about estimating the true prevalence of Covid-19 using positivity rate and case rate. The suggestion is to use the geometric mean, since the two numbers often move in different directions. I wonder if it could be applicable to Lyme disease as well?
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.07.20208504v1.full
There’s an issue of what we care to measure. The number of people who go to the doctor with a rash due to Borrelia bacteria and then take antibiotics and everything is fine might be able to be estimated that way.
On the other hand that’s not really what we care about. We care about not getting long-term problems.
In a similar fashion, if you don’t get Lyme disease but another nasty tickborne disease that can be treated with antibiotics we don’t care that much about the difference to Lyme disease.