23. The Exponential distribution and the Plymouth Typhoid outbreak

Paraphrasing the CDC, Typhoid fever is a potentially life-threatening infection caused by Salmonella Typhi. A related illness, paratyphoid fever, is caused by Salmonella Paratyphi. These infections remain an important global health problem, especially in areas with limited access to clean water and sanitation. In the United States, most cases are associated with international travel.

Typhoid is spread through the fecal–oral route, usually when food or water becomes contaminated by an infected person or carrier. Common symptoms include prolonged fever, weakness, stomach pain, headache, and loss of appetite. Prevention relies on safe food and water practices, good sanitation and hand hygiene, and vaccination for people traveling to areas where typhoid is common.

A 32 page account of a massive outbreak of typhoid fever in Plymouth PA is available at the National Library of Medicine here https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-9801178-bk.

Time to recovery and incubation times

You can always use practice on computing probabilities from an estimated density, and learning what you can say about this estimated density in a public health context. This is good for you: like brocolli.

Question 01 Please read, in total, the 32 page account of the Plymouth Outbreak linked above. In this account there was data from 11 patients about when they were exposed to the pathogen and when symptoms onset. Please create a dataset below with 11 rows—one for each patient—and columns that are “time of exposure” and “time of symptom onset”. In those two columns i want you not to enter times but instead the sentence that was used to describe the date like “ill nearly as week by April 22”.