Dr. Yoon’s collaborative work with COVID ACT NOW and Mass General Hospital is featured on the cover of Patterns from Cell Press

The paper “Looking back on forward-looking COVID models”, in which Dr. Byung-Jun Yoon is a co-author, has been featured on the cover of the July 2022 issue of Patterns, a premium open access journal from Cell Press. This paper is an outcome of Dr. Yoon’s ongoing collaboration with COVID ACT NOW (CAN) – the COVID-focused U.S initiative of Act Now Coalition – and the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

The cover art of Patterns July 2022 issue features Dr. Yoon’s collaborative project with Covid Act Now and Mass General Hospital.

In this work, we presented the epidemiological model by Covid Act Now (CAN) and evaluated its performance by back-testing against historical data. For comparison, similar analyses were performed for several other COVID models and the obtained results were compared. It was found that all models generally captured the potential magnitude and directionality of the pandemic in the short term. While there are limitations to epidemiological models, understanding these limitations enables these models to be utilized as tools for “data-driven decision-making” in viral outbreaks.

“Face the Music” – the cover image on the July 2022 issue of Patterns – was created by Anna Maybach, resident artist at Act Now Coalition.

The cover image is entitled “Face the Music”. The American idiom “face the music” means to accept consequences. It is thought to originate from an exhortation to face one’s stage fright. The sound waves in this image were created by superimposing Covid Act Now trend graphs representing cases, hospitalizations, ICU hospitalizations, and deaths in the United States since March 2020. This visualization represents the path of accepting the consequences of our actions and facing our fears in order to navigate the COVID pandemic: to “face the music.”

The paper can be accessed at the link below:

Paul Chong, Byung-Jun Yoon, Debbie Lai, Michael Carlson, Jarone Lee, Shuhan He, “Looking Back on Forward-Looking COVID Models,” Patterns, volume 3, issue 7, 100492, July 08, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2022.100492.