Check if input is in the proper empirical delay data format

If the delay input is not a dataframe, return FALSE. Otherwise, an error is thrown if delay does not follow the expected format.

.check_is_empirical_delay_data(
  delay,
  parameter_name = deparse(substitute(distribution))
)

Arguments

delay	object to be tested
parameter_name	A string containing the name the tested parameter had in the initial function in which it was passed.

Value

boolean. TRUE if the input is a dataframe in the proper format.

Details

An empirical_delays dataframe must contain (at least) two columns. An 'event_date' column of type Date and a 'report_delay' column of type numeric. Each row represents the recording of a single delay between event and observation. Typically, the 'event' here is the onset of symptoms of the disease of interest. And the observation can be, for instance, case confirmation, hospital admission, admission to an ICU, or death, depending on what the incidence data represents. For a particular row, 'event_date' would then represent, for a single individual, the date at which symptoms appeared. And 'report_delay' would represent the number of time steps (as specified by time_step) until the observation was made for this same individual.