Uncertainty on the Reproduction Ratio in the SIR Model

The aim of this paper is to understand the extreme variability on the estimated reproduction ratio $R_0$ observed in practice. For expository purpose we consider a discrete time stochastic version of the Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model, and introduce different approximate maximum likelihood (AML) estimators of $R_0$. We carefully discuss the properties of these estimators and illustrate by a Monte-Carlo study the width of confidence intervals on $R_0$.