Descriptions of model parameters and their fixed values, or prior distributions used in Bayesian statistical inference.

Estimated parameters are indicated by an asterisk on the description. We assigned a generic, weakly informative prior, except for erythropoiesis upregulation, ρ, burst size, β, and standard deviations of log10 RBC and iRBC density, σRBC and σiRBC, for which there exist specific prior information from previous studies. Further details of the priors and comparisons with estimated posterior probability densities, and prior sensitivity analyses are provided in S1b Appendix.