Bird Flu News Picking Up
By: Lyle FearnleyAs public health blog Effect Measure puts it, “It’s January and once again the bird flu news is unsettling.” In the past few days, the New York Times has reported on six cases in Indonesia (with one death) and the first case in China in over six months. Perhaps most interesting is the role of internet blogging in raising awareness of outbreaks; Effect Measure calls this an “early warning system”. But whereas a year or so ago, all you heard was praise for these “citizen epidemiologists” who spoke truth to reluctant governments, today their is a certain amount of skepticism. See for example this avian flu message board. Effect Measure writes “There is no shortage of people willing to speculate and I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the many citizen epidemiologists out there who are fast becoming the eyes and ears of a worldwide early warning system. That system is sensitive and will likely pick up the signal when it comes. But it isn’t very specific. It also is tripped by many false signals. That is inevitable with any surveillance system and this one more than most. While in many surveillance systems the cost of running down the false alarms is high, in this one the cost is usually measured in having the patience to wait a few days or a week while the false signals fade and the true ones become clearer.”
January 17th, 2007 at 7:19 am
It is also interesting to keep an eye on places where “no cases” occur (or, rather, are detected). For instance, I am very curious to know whether there will be cases again in Europe in the next few weeks.
January 17th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
It would be interesting to have some kind of critical reflection on whether this speculation about a more efficient form of surveillance — with, as it were, distributed assessment of “signals” — is actually more efficient or accurate. Another question would be: who is looking at this data? Is anyone trying to act on it? Interesting resonance, of course, with the Poindexter program.
January 17th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
I think the importance of so-called “citizen epidemiologists” is way overstated. I would take this discussion more as a sign indicating a general tendency to overhype the issue and “involve” the public. Since we know that the virus is around for at least 10 years now and probably will remain for some time into the future, it is unclear why one should call this kind of surveillance an “early warning system”. What’s early about it?
To have people looking for dead birds and chicken, some experts might argue, is fine but won’t make too much a difference in terms of finding out what’s going on. What it allows is to intervene rapidly and kill all the chicken, but that’s basically it. The infected birds will move on.
In such a situation, it makes more sense to have long-term, situated, scientific surveillance projects that observe birds in general. Where do the different birds come from, where are they moving to, when are they arriving, when are they leaving, which birds are carrying the virus and which are not? Which role do different species play? Etc. etc. We need more thick knowledge, rather than thin “signals”.
It is also important to detect avian viruses (not only H5N1) in birds which show no sign of illness. I am looking right now at a project in Germany/Switzerland/Austria where they are precisely trying to do all this. The results of this research project are expected for 2008.