Thomas Fleming, professor of biostatistics, co-authored a recently published JAMA paper that addresses issues important to protecting the integrity of clinical trials conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

UW Biostatistics faculty members Thomas Fleming and Betz Halloran are among five leading biostatisticians and epidemiologists who debate the probable scope and duration of the pandemic, the kinds of medical responses that we need, and some of the impacts they foresee on the U.S. and on the world. They also discuss the pandemic's likely effect on higher education.

Betz Halloran, professor of biostatistics and director of the Center for Inference and Dynamics of Infectious Diseases at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, is featured in this recent PBS News story. “You can't believe every number that comes out. But if we don't try to formulate our thinking about a complex process, then we will be running blind,” says Halloran.

Xihong Lin (PhD, ’94), professor and former chair of the Department of Biostatistics and professor of statistics at Harvard University, gave a talk about data surrounding public health interventions that were put into place in Wuhan, China, which she compared to interventions implemented in the United States and in various countries in Europe. Watch the recorded presentation and read the take-home messages.

Ruth Etzioni, a population health scientist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and affiliate professor of biostatistics, says, "It's so gratifying in a way to see modeling in the news everyday," adding that quickly changing data about COVID-19 can be confusing.

Elizabeth Halloran, a biostatistician at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and University of Washington, told Business Insider that New York City probably has a two-week delay in reporting deaths, but even then some deaths won't receive a proper diagnosis.

Nearly 20 years of cumulative follow-up of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) Dietary Modification trial turned up something new. For the first time there was a significant reduction in deaths due to breast cancer in the dietary intervention group

"But as modelers, we have a responsibility. We have to be humble. We must make sure that the key caveats and uncertainties that are the nature of our work find their way into the headlines and are not relegated to the fine print." – Ruth Etzioni, affiliate professor of biostatistics and Fred Hutch researcher