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The Path Toward Improved Biosurveillance
Lasrick writes "Interesting opinion piece that explains successes and holes in the U.S. system of detecting and responding to pandemics: 'In April 2009, following an experimental protocol, staff members at a Navy lab in San Diego tested specimens from two patients using a new diagnostic device. Both tested positive for influenza, but, oddly, neither specimen matched the influenza A subtypes that are known to infect humans. This finding raised suspicions, and so the samples were sent to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Further tests would reveal that these two patients were the first reported cases of a novel H1N1 influenza virus that would cause a global pandemic in 2009. In many respects, the Navy lab's discovery of H1N1 is a success story for US efforts to boost its biosurveillance capabilities.'"
Rarin!
-- the town drunk from Blazing Saddles
Experimental protocol...just happens to find H1N1????
I say bollocks, there is more to this story.
At first I read it as "Brosurveillance" and wasn't sure what the fuck that means.
But now I want to know.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
And that is how the bioweapons conspiranoia(?) begins.
I Like all these "US government surveillance is GOOD for you!" articles lately.
Means they really are running scared about all the illegal shit they do. I hope the paycheck for Lasrick ist worth it.
And "Biosurveillance" is a cool newspeak where all the first links on google go to such paragons of virtue as the dhs.gov, defense.gov and so on
I basically don't get it. The Navy has developed a new test for Influenza that (apparently) doesn't need the typical surface markers that other tests do. Cool. But TFA just drops that and wanders around the US government's attempt at creating a more unified / functional bio-surveillance program but then complains we don't have the money or expertise to do it.
OK. Fine. Another first world Problem.
I'd like to know more about the test. I'm well aware of the Government's inability to organize anything more complex than an egg coloring contest.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Here's the technical article mentioned. Open source, peer reviewed, incidentally. The Navy gets a mouth swab from every new recruit (all services), and shipped to a lab for analysis. This is done so they catch contagious diseases early. It also gives the military something it's hard to get today - samples from a sizable healthy population. So they have good baseline data for people who aren't sick, to compare against.
One valuable result of that study is that detection and sequencing of a broad-range of influenza-like viruses may lead to a vaccine that blocks all of them. There's now more understanding of what's common to all flu-like viruses.
you know what actually happened, the author went to watch world war Z...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
and a basic income: http://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-perspective.html
"Right now, a profit driven health care system has sized emergency rooms for average needs, and those emergency rooms are often full. With a basic income and more money going on a systematic basis to the health care system, the health care system emergency rooms will no longer be overrun with people there for reasons they could see a doctor for. So, emergency care would be better for millionaires. Millionaires with heart attacks won't be as likely to end up being diverted to far away hospitals because the local hospital emergency room is full. Likewise, emergency rooms might, with more money going to medicine, become sized for national emergencies, not personal emergencies, so they might become vast empty places, with physicians and other health care staff keeping their skills sharp always running simulations, learning more medical information, and/or doing basic medical research, with these people always ready for a pandemic or natural disaster or industrial accident which they had the resources in reserve to deal with. So, millionaires who got sick or injured in a disaster could be sure there was the facilities and expertise nearby to help them, even if most of the rest of the population needed help too at the same time too. In that way, some of this basic income could be funded by money that might otherwise go to the Defense department, because what is better civil defense then investing in a health care system able to to handle national disasters? So, any millionaires who are doctors (many are) would benefit by this plan, because their lives as doctors will become happier and less stressful, both with less paperwork and with more resources."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.