2006.07199
Dynamic Epidemic Control via Sequential Resource Allocation
Mathilde Fekom, Nicolas Vayatis, Argyris Kalogeratos
wrongmedium confidence
- Category
- math.DS
- Journal tier
- Specialist/Solid
- Processed
- Sep 28, 2025, 12:55 AM
- arXiv Links
- Abstract ↗PDF ↗
Audit review
Part (a) follows immediately from Assumption 1 with c1 ≥ 0, exactly as stated in the paper’s Sec. V (eqs. (10)–(13)) . For part (b), the paper claims E[φk] ≥ 2 E[Smin,k] E[ek] and proceeds to eq. (14) . However, the displayed step replaces 1·(Rkoff − Rk) where 1 is the all-ones vector; since both selections have Hamming weight b, that inner product is identically zero, so the inequality/equality as written is false. The candidate solution treats the (flawed) lower link as a given hypothesis and, under that hypothesis and E[Smin,k] > 0, the rest of the derivation is correct.
Referee report (LaTeX)
\textbf{Recommendation:} major revisions
\textbf{Journal Tier:} specialist/solid
\textbf{Justification:}
The manuscript develops a practical and timely modeling framework and a useful empirical link between online selection error and epidemic AUC. However, the central theoretical step in Sec. V(b) incorrectly manipulates the all-ones vector inner product, yielding a false lower bound that drives the main inequality. This must be corrected (e.g., via a margin-based argument) and assumptions like positivity of S\_min and tie-free gaps should be made explicit. With these fixes, the contribution could be solid and informative for the community.