|
|
SSA Canberra Branch Meetings
SSA Canberra Branch will be holding its next meeting on Tuesday 30th April in person and via Zoom. There will be the opportunity to meet for dinner afterwards in Canberra City. Please forward to any non-members who may be interested. Venue: The Gallery, Level 2, Cultural Centre, University Ave, Kambri ANU (The Gallery - Kambri). There is a single level, underground car park at Kambri, with elevator access directly into The Gallery, and two pedestrian access points (Car Parking Kambri | Australian National University | Care Park). Date: Tuesday 30 April 2024 Time: 5:45pm Zoom link: The zoom link will be open from 5.30pm. RSVP is not required. Full zoom details given at the end of the email. Speaker: Robin Muegge, University of Glasgow, UK Topic: COVID-19 vaccine fatigue in Scotland: How do the trends in attrition rates for the second and third doses differ by age, sex, and council area? Abstract: Vaccine fatigue is the propensity for individuals to start but not finish a vaccination program with several doses, which thus means they are less protected. This is an especially important topic for COVID-19, where the vaccination program commonly consists of two doses followed by a booster vaccine dose to get full protection. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy (the delay in acceptance or refusal of the first dose of the vaccine) has been studied extensively, and a few studies investigated the willingness to receive the booster vaccine dose. In contrast, attrition rates across subsequent doses caused by evolving vaccine fatigue have yet to be examined, which is the novel contribution of this paper. Our study focuses on Scotland, where the vaccine rollout began on 8th December 2020. We model vaccine attrition rates in the first transition (from doses one to two) and the second transition (from doses two to three) for the 32 council areas in Scotland. We estimate the effects of sex and transition, examine trends and patterns in the attrition rates by age group and council area and evaluate if these differ by sex or transition. We model the attrition rates with a hierarchical binomial logistic regression model that allows for flexible autocorrelation estimation for the corresponding neighbourhood and age group structures via correlated random effects models. Inference is based on a Bayesian paradigm, using integrated nested Laplace approximation (INLA). Our main findings are that attrition rates smoothly decrease with increasing age, that they are much higher in the second transition than in the first, that they are generally higher for males than females, and that the variation in attrition rates between age groups is greater for males than females. At the end of the seminar, Robin will briefly introduce his current work on outlier detection in areal data, titled “Disease mapping: What if Tobler's First Law of Geography doesn't hold?”. Biography: Robin Muegge is a PhD student in statistics from the University of Glasgow, UK. His research is in spatial and spatio-temporal areal data modelling under the supervision of Duncan Lee, Nema Dean, and Eilidh Jack. Robin completed his B.Sc. Mathematics at the Leibniz University of Hanover in Germany, and his M.Sc. Statistics at Portland State University, USA. He is currently visiting Wollongong on a research placement, collaborating with Andrew Zammit Mangion. Dinner: After the talk we will be holding a dinner at 7.15pm at Kathmandu Momo House, 24 West Row, Canberra, ACT (The Kathmandu Momo House | Canberra ACT | Facebook). If you are interested in attending the dinner, please let us know by 5pm Monday 29 April by entering your details at SSA Canberra Branch dinner attendance sheet or contacting Warren Muller (warren.muller@csiro.au ; 0407 916 868). Please regard this as a firm commitment, not just an intention. For withdrawals after the deadline, please remove your name from the sheet and phone or text Warren (0407 916 868). NOTE: We are offering discounts to SSA early career and student members who attend dinner! For this meeting, dinners will be a fixed charge of $10 for student members and $20 for early career members. Warren Müller (Secretary, SSA Canberra Branch) Zoom link: Topic: SSA Canberra branch meeting |
|   @StatSocAus
|
