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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.
Children are good carriers. Kill the children, it's the only way for humanity to survive.
If you trace back to the original EETimes article (http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=217201126) you'll see this in the opening paragraph:
Swine flu may have been caught early enough to prevent a serious U.S. epidemic, according to computer models developed by Virginia Tech's Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory (NDSSL).
So why is this Slashdot story claiming:
"Supercomputer software models predict that swine flu will likely go pandemic sometime next week"
So is the author just panicking unnecessarily or is this another case of using fear tactics to push an agenda, in this case boosting sales of a flu detection chip?
First link seems like astroturfing. A better link would of been [NDSSL @ Virgina Tech], where the research is being done.
"Spanish flu" came about because all countries infected before Spain were at war and had press censorship in place. Therefore, the first real public record of the pandemic was in Spain...
The point is to delay the spread so that infections don't happen all at once and overwhelm the health system. See this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/health/30contain.html
TFS leads off with 'OMG! Pandemic next week!', as does the tiny, uninformative blog TFS links to, despite lack of citation to a source that might be more authoritative than a 2-paragraph pseudo-article. Fortunately, that blog links to a story that is actually informative and somewhat related to technical matters. It leads off with the less exciting, but probably more accurate 'Swine flu may have been caught early enough to prevent a serious U.S. epidemic.' Nowhere in the eetimes.com article does it say a pandemic is predicted within a week, and nowhere in the blog TFS links to is there a citation for the author's pandemic prediction.
I'm not saying the disease isn't serious, but will someone please beat some sense into the fearmonger who cut/pasted this shitty summary together? It makes my eyes hurt just to read it, and stinks of someone trying to drive up their blog's hit count.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Cluster Computer Predicts Cluster Fuck For Clustered People.
Film at 11.
Try to stay at least seven people away from Kevin Bacon
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.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti