Predictability of COVID-19 worldwide lethality using permutation-information theory quantifiers

Abstract

This paper examines the predictability of COVID-19 worldwide lethality considering 43 countries. Based on the values inherent to Permutation entropy (Hs) and Fisher information measure (Fs), we apply the Shannon-Fisher causality plane (SFCP), which allows us to quantify the disorder an evaluate randomness present in the time series of daily death cases related to COVID-19 in each country. We also use Hs and Fs to rank the COVID-19 lethality in these countries based on the complexity hierarchy. Our results suggest that the most proactive countries implemented measures such as facemasks, social distancing, quarantine, massive population testing, and hygienic (sanitary) orientations to limit the impacts of COVID-19, which implied lower entropy (higher predictability) to the COVID-19 lethality. In contrast, the most reactive countries implementing these measures depicted higher entropy (lower predictability) to the COVID-19 lethality. Given this, our findings shed light that these preventive measures are efficient to combat the COVID-19 lethality.

Keywords

• COVID-19
• Lethality
• Permutation entropy
• Fisher information measure
• Complexity hierarchy
• Sliding window technique