I will talk about how to build an epidemiological model for an ongoing pandemic when there are many unknowns and get buy-in for the results. Modelling considerations will include:

• basics of epidemiological modelling
• enhancing tools available in R for COVID-19 modelling
• incorporating COVID-19 modelling into existing pandemic modelling
• relying on data and scientific research in early weeks of a pandemic
• capturing uncertainty in assumptions
• generating stochastic scenarios
• communicating results
• understanding the politics and news cycle impact on management views
• defining boundaries of what is known and what is not known as tool for communication.