Flu Models Predict Pandemic, But Flu Chips Ready

An anonymous reader writes "Supercomputer software models predict that swine flu will likely go pandemic sometime next week, but flu chips capable of detecting the virus within four hours are already rolling off the assembly line. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which has designated swine flu as the '2009 H1N1 flu virus,' is modeling the spread of the virus using modeling software designed by the Department of Defense back when avian flu was a perceived threat. Now those programs are being run on cluster supercomputers and predict that officials are not implementing enough social distancing--such as closing all schools--to prevent a pandemic. Companies that designed flu-detecting chips for avian flu, are quickly retrofitting them to detect swine flu, with the first flu chips being delivered to labs today." Relatedly, at least one bio-surveillance firm is claiming they detected and warned the CDC and the WHO about the swine flu problem in Mexico over two weeks before the alert was issued.

Comments

Re:why just schools?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The state doesn't exactly have jurisdiction over businesses the way they do (public) schools. Things would have to be far nastier than they are for some sort of state-of-emergency declaration and the shutdown of private businesses to be politically palatable.

What's the point?

[try_anything]

What's the point of closing schools if the virus isn't virulent enough to burn itself out? If it's about as severe and durable as the garden-variety flu strains that circulate everywhere anyway, then it will continue to circulate in Mexico indefinitely, and wherever else it establishes itself. We can't exterminate it any more than we can exterminate other moderate strains of flu.

So when we reopen the schools, borders, or whatever else people are screaming for, the swine flu will be there waiting... waiting to make us cough and hack and stay home from work... waiting to kill children, the weak, the elderly... waiting... just like the regular garden-variety flu that we get every year.

(I'm not a biologist, I'm just baiting a real biologist to correct or clarify anything I got wrong. Please and TIA.)

Re:What's the point?

[slashkitty]

The main point is to delay and ultimately prevent the spread if it has a high fatality rate. 100 cases and 1 death don't give us a 1% fatality rate... we have to make sure those 100 people recover.

While we delay the spread, we can learn more about the disease and maybe produce a vaccine.

Re:What's the point?

[try_anything]

100 cases and 1 death don't give us a 1% fatality rate... we have to make sure those 100 people recover.

100 cases and 1 death don't give us a 1% fatality rate, because we have to take into account the people who got sick and didn't seek medical attention.

Anyway, where do you get those numbers? I thought the latest word was that it might not be any more fatal or infectious than normal. And since nobody has told me what the original fear of high mortality was based on (unless it was the 12 dead out of 312 confirmed cases in Mexico, a terrible statistic to base a mortality estimate on) I'm not inclined to buy into it.

Re:Fear Mongering for Sales?

[rorin]

Even better, the blog author's "source" is the article on EETimes written by ...the blog author.

Resistance is futile

[wsanders]

It isn't the dangerousness, it that no one has any resistance and everyone gets it at the same time. I work at a university and we are following our generic "epidemic" plan - no cases yet, but we would follow the same plan whether it was regular flu or the food service served bad fish for dinner, when 500+ people got sick at the same time in the same place it's a problem..

Rolan P. is the Undead!!

[rts008]

This is just the boogey man du jour. Got to sell those newspapers and that ad space!

TFA is a prime example of this.
The summary first links to a blog[ad space] that links to the real article[more ad space]. The real article is also written by the author of said blog.

I will give credit for the real article being an interesting read, but why not go straight to the real article in the first place?

To top that off, the second link(also a blog) in the 'fine' article is an astroturf piece for some data mining company that's whining that WHO, CDC, and one other organization are not buying his company's services and software, and pushing an international tracking system that his company 'deserves' to be part of.[his word]

The whole point of this story was to increase adviews on two websites by the same guy, and push an astroturf on another blog.

We used to blast Roland P. for this until he finally stopped. Then shortly died...Hmmm....

There are a small handful of web sites I whitelist in Adblock+, but this crap is one of the main reasons I don't feel bad about using it in the first place.