COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Joanna pivoted to work on risk analysis for test and trace programs, with a particular interest in digital tracing/notification strategies, and their potential for sophisticated risk analysis. The Masel lab is open to new students who want to work in this area, whether in preparation for the next pandemic, developing strategies for current endemic diseases (e.g. quantifying the circumstances under which non-pharmaceutical interventions could have advantages for specific subpopulations even when relatively ineffective at a whole-population level), or just intellectual interest.

As well as academic research, Joanna wrote some pieces and did interviews for the general public: 

• 2022: Interview about COVID-19 risk assessment on Wharton Moneyball

• 2021: Blog post on "Health Equity and Exposure Notification Technology"

• 2021: Blog post on "How Effective is Exposure Notification in the United States?"

• 2021: Blog post on "What does the success of the NHS app tell us about other EN apps?"

• 2021: Blog post on "How many people need to use exposure notification for it to work?"

• 2021: Blog post on "Why do we believe that our exposure notification app will help?"

• 2021: Blog post on "How should exposure notifications account for new, more infectious strains?"

• 2021: Blog post on "Will exposure notification apps be useful for anything post-pandemic?"

• 2021: Blog post on "Now that vaccines are coming, is it still worth bothering with exposure notifications"

• 2020: Article with Peter Singer on "To Fight Covid-19 We Need Flexible Technology, Not Rigid Rules" Project Syndicate

And strange as it may be, I think the most-read thing I wrote at this time was a viral twitter thread about manuscript clearance processes and data use agreements at the CDC.

More video recordings:

• • Risk scoring in Exposure Notification apps, Oct 2020

  • Who should you be talking to? Three lessons in interdisciplinary problem solving, Jan 2021

And there is a whole series of talks by others that are part of Science of Pandemic Tech webinar series I co-ran.

Publications :

• Petrie J, Hay JA, Srimokla O, Panovska-Griffiths J, Whittaker C, Masel J, (2024) Enhanced testing can substantially improve defence against several types of respiratory virus pandemic, medRxiv.

• Masel J, Petrie J, Bay J, Ebbers W, Sharan A, Leibrand S, Gebhard A, Zimmerman S  (2023) Combatting SARS-CoV-2 With Digital Contact Tracing and Notification: Navigating Six Points of Failure, JMIR Public Health & Surveillance 9:e49560.

• Petrie J, Masel J (2023) Optimal targeting of interventions uses estimated risk of infectiousness to control a pandemic with minimal collateral damage, medRxiv.

• Ferretti L, Wymant D, Nurtay A, Zhao L, Hinch R, Bonsall D, Kendall M, Masel J, Bell J, Hopkins S, Kilpatrick AM, Peto T, Abeler-Dörner L, Fraser C. (2021). Modelling the effectiveness and social costs of daily lateral flow antigen tests versus quarantine in preventing onward transmission of COVID-19 from traced contacts, medRxiv.

• Masel J, Shilen A, Helming B, Rutschman J, Windham G, Pogreba-Brown K, Ernst KC (2021). Quantifying meaningful adoption of a SARS-CoV-2 exposure notification app on the campus of the University of Arizona, medRxiv.

• Petrie J, Masel J. (2021). The economic value of quarantine is higher at lower case prevalence, with quarantine justified at lower risk of infection, Journal of the Royal Society Interface,18(182)

• Wilson AM, Aviles NR, Petrie JI, Beamer PI, Szabo Z, Xie M, McIllece J, Chen Y, Son Y-J, Halai S, White T, Ernst KC, Masel J. (2022). Quantifying SARS-CoV-2 infection risk within the Apple/Google exposure notification framework to inform quarantine recommendations, Risk Analysis 42: 162-176.

• Ferretti L, Ledda A, Wymant C, Zhao L, Ledda V, Abeler-Dorner L, Kendall M, Nurtay A, Cheng H-Y, Ng T-C, Lin H-H, Hinch R, Masel J, Kilpatrick AM, Fraser C. (2020). The timing of COVID-19 Transmission, medRxiv, preprint.