Forecasting virus outbreaks with social media data via neural ordinary differential equations

During the Covid-19 pandemic, real-time social media data could in principle be used as an early predictor of a new epidemic wave. This possibility is examined here by employing a neural ordinary differential equation (neural ODE) trained to forecast viral outbreaks in a specific geographic region. It learns from multivariate time series of signals derived from a novel set of large online polls regarding COVID-19 symptoms. Once trained, the neural ODE can capture the dynamics of interconnected local signals and effectively estimate the number of new infections up to two months in advance. In addition, it may predict the future consequences of changes in the number of infected at a certain period, which might be related with the flow of individuals entering or exiting a region. This study provides persuasive evidence for the predictive ability of widely disseminated social media surveys for public health applications.