The data science of covid-19 spread: Some troubling current and future trends

Abstract

One of the main ways we try to understand the COVID-19 pandemic is through time series cross section counts of cases and deaths. Observational studies based on these kinds of data have concrete and well known methodological issues that suggest significant caution for both consumers and produces of COVID-19 knowledge. We briefly enumerate some of these issues in the areas of measurement, inference, and interpretation.