bird flu simulator

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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I agree in principle, but am curious as to why *this* year rather than years past. This particular flu was identified in 2001...and I just don't get why this year there's been such a spread as opposed to last year, or the year before.

More attention, more money for testing in countries in which it otherwise would not be done?

[ExAFO 0]

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!






















(eventually.)

Illinois needs a CCW Law. NOW.

[Amazon 7]

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WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!

Fucking A man

[nathaniel 0]

I gather they used multiple values in a simulation of individuals, based on estimated parameters of the course of the disease and number of people interacted with, average distance traveled, etc...

It appears that the research paper itself is online here, if you're curious enough wade through it PubMedCentral

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[nerdgirl 0]

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the simulation paper will be published for pay next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and the NIH will put it online for free after 6 months at PubMedCentral

Thanks for the additional info!
(The article is available to members of the Academy. those with individual subscriptions, or access to institutional subscriptions.)

The authors used R0 1.6-2.4, which appears reasonable.

There was a large-scale national exercise of a smallpox outbreak a few years back, Dark Winter, in which the planners used an R0 of 10, which is way too high. A reasonable R0 is ~3. Since its effect is exponential, it led to a scenario in which a whole lot more people were infected (& notionally "died").

Most (but not all!) modellers have learned from the Dark Winter episode.

If it was just a bunch of academic scientists arguing about the merits of a model, that would be one situation. The potential impact, however, for resource allocation, hype, etc. extends far beyond academic settings.

Marg

PNAS abstract (www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0601266103v1):

"Recent human deaths due to infection by highly pathogenic (H5N1) avian influenza A virus have raised the specter of a devastating pandemic like that of 1917-1918, should this avian virus evolve to become readily transmissible among humans. We introduce and use a large-scale stochastic simulation model to investigate the spread of a pandemic strain of influenza virus through the U.S. population of 281 million individuals for R0 (the basic reproductive number) from 1.6 to 2.4. We model the impact that a variety of levels and combinations of influenza antiviral agents, vaccines, and modified social mobility (including school closure and travel restrictions) have on the timing and magnitude of this spread. Our simulations demonstrate that, in a highly mobile population, restricting travel after an outbreak is detected is likely to delay slightly the time course of the outbreak without impacting the eventual number ill. For R0 < 1.9, our model suggests that the rapid production and distribution of vaccines, even if poorly matched to circulating strains, could significantly slow disease spread and limit the number ill to <10% of the population, particularly if children are preferentially vaccinated. Alternatively, the aggressive deployment of several million courses of influenza antiviral agents in a targeted prophylaxis strategy may contain a nascent outbreak with low R0, provided adequate contact tracing and distribution capacities exist. For higher R0, we predict that multiple strategies in combination (involving both social and medical interventions) will be required to achieve similar limits on illness rates."

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying