Luke A. Barratt’s contribution to the Discussion of ‘Some statistical aspects of the Covid-19 response’ by Wood et al.
本文指出在新冠疫情分析中需考虑地理异质性，以伦敦为例说明忽略局部效应可能导致全国性结论不适用于各地区，并提出三个相关问题。
It is well noted in the paper that it is crucial to understand and include heterogeneities in the underlying dynamics to fully appreciate the progression of an epidemic.In particular noted is the fact that individuals do not have uniform social interaction and therefore are not uniformly exposed nor uniformly spread the disease.However, little is made in the statistical analysis of geographical heterogeneity.In particular, in the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was noted at the time that London was extraordinary in its experience of the first wave in 2020.Indeed, this fact has been demonstrated statistically by many authors, including recently by Barratt and Aston in two pre-prints (Barratt & Aston, 2024 and 2025) which make minimal modelling assumptions.It is not clear that the analysis provided on the aggregate level for the UK is valid for the various constituent nations and regions without explicit consideration of local effects.This raises three main questions: