Very scientific “modeling”, LOL:
Supporting data.
We collected county-level gender- and age-specific stimates of population from North Carolina’s Office of State Budget and Management. We extracted county-specific weekly average temperature data from the Southeast Regional Climate Center (http://www.sercc.com). For counties without a weather tation, average temperature was based on average weekly temperatures recorded in all counties that are adjacent to the county with the missing data. Data on weekly rates of ED visits for influenza like illness (ILI) were accessed from the NC DETECT system and defined using NC DETECT’s syndrome based reporting definition.
Statistical Analysis
We used an interrupted time series design to evaluate whether the implementation of smoke-free legislation on Jan. 1, 2010, was associated with a change in the rate of ED visits for AMI. We calculated crude and adjusted rate ratios
by modeling the weekly number of ED visits for...
I smell BS. Somebody please let the herd out.
TC