11–20 of 45 posts
Google Flu trends (near real time updates): http://www.google.org/flutrends/ How they do it: http://www.google.org/flutrends/about/how.html
Google's predictions of flu trends haven't been accurate recently: http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2013/01/google-flu-trends-cdc
it's the usual flu season people, no need to fear this thing
For an chillingly realistic depiction of how a worldwide pandemic could unfold, I'd highly recommend watching the film Contagion (2011)[1]. For all those who complain governments and scientists overreacting to new flu strains, I would prefer that than the alternative - doing too little and being swamped by an uncontrollable virus. [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1598778/
misleading title, it's first case in Hong Kong but not first case in whole world
Inclusion of an "its" would help: "Hong Kong reports its first human case of bird flu".
For an chillingly realistic depiction of how a worldwide pandemic could unfold, I'd highly recommend watching the film Contagion (2011)[1]. For all those who complain governments and scientists overreacting to new flu strains, I would prefer that than the alternative - doing too little and being swamped by an uncontrollable virus. [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1598778/
it's the usual flu season people, no need to fear this thing
1. Yes, this thing has a mortality rate of 30%. What that means is that out of all detected cases 30% of the people have died. The keyword here is detected. At this stage, and without a massive surveillance plan looking for specifically for serological evidence of the virus, authorities are only aware of a tiny fraction of the actual cases (the most severe) which tend to skew the mortality rate. The actual mortality rate for the 2009 H1N1 has just now been reevaluated with more accurate data and techniques [1, 2]
2. So far it doesn't seems to have crossed the threshold to be able to spread quickly from person to person. Doing that will imply a few more mutations that will likely make it less aggressive and deadly (it's hard to spread if you kill your host too quickly).
3. Better than watching Contagion to get an idea of what a spread looks like at a global scale is to watch [3] which is an accurate representation of the H1N1 spreade in 2009. Each edge you see represents the (likely) first infected person traveling from an infected to an uninflected city. You can play with the (client) software we used for these simulations over at [4]
4. Attempts to use real time proxy data like mentions in Twitter and searches in Google to monitor the spread of infectious diseases haven't really been very successful. Google flu trends had some early success but it seems to be breaking down recently. As usual Twitter seems to be much better at predicting the past than the future. In fact the CDC has recently launched a competition to try and do just this [5]
5. In summary, don't panic. Much smarter people than myself are keeping an eye on this and it's likely not as bad as the link baity headlines would have you believe.
[0] I worked directly with the official surveillance data and used it to model And forecast the worldwide spread of the virus. We were actually able to predict (and publish) the epidemic peak for dozens of countries I'm advance You can access all the relevant publications here: http://www.bgoncalves.com/publications.html
[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/11/26/247379604/2009-fl....
[2] http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj...
[3] http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YAf1aXCvvdU
[4] http://www.gleamviz.org/simulator/
[5] https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/11/25/2013-281...
Edit: spelling
it's the usual flu season people, no need to fear this thing
This flu is a bit worse than the standard one; you have a 3/10 chance of dying. As always, stay away from live birds...no pet chickens...think twice about buying that parrot.
What? No!
This virus doesn't just magically show up in a bird, the bird has to catch it from another bird.
Stay away from large flocks, sure. But home pets? No problem at all.
A few comments based on my experience working with these things back in 2009 [0] 1. Yes, this thing has a mortality rate of 30%. What that means is that out of all detected cases 30% of the people have died. The keyword here is detected. At this stage, and without a massive surveillance plan looking for specifically for serological evidence of the virus, authorities are only aware of a tiny fraction of the actual cas…
In the case of SARS, even though it killed more people in Hong Kong than anywhere else -many of them doctors and nurses-, the secondary effects of the disease affected everyone here: travel to Hong Kong stopped, the economy tanked, companies and shops closed and people lost their livelihood, no-one wanted to invest, everyone was afraid.
We should always be careful with the headlines.