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Contagion ?


observer

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It's a hundred years since "Spanish Flu " came across the pond with the US Army, and killed more people than WW1 and WW2 combined. BBC4 put together a prog to model for the effects of a future pandemic (in the UK).  It was all done with mathematics and GPS tracking of mobile phones.  The result:  an estimated 43million people (two-thirds of the population) would be infected within the 4 months it takes to produce a vaccine. However, surprisingly (to me),  the number of deaths were less than a million (unfortunate of course if your one in that million).         :ph34r:

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Crikey I'd heard of the Spanish Flu pandemic but that's as far as my knowledge about it went.  I had no idea it killed more people that WW1 & 2 combined :shock:

When was the prog on Obs and what was it called as I'd like to watch that if it's on catch-up.

How did the use of GPS tracking of mobiles help in their findings though?  Was that to see how modern people's movements are and how far the may travel so 'if' they were infected how far afield they could spread their germs?   Surely if you had flu though you wouldn't go very far cos you'd feel sh*te and unable to get out of your bed... oh but then there's probably and incubation period.

Interesting and maybe we should all wear face masks and stock up the ration cupboards just to be on the safe side as you never know when these germy buggers might arise eek !   

 

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Think it was on Wed night Diz:    what they did is use a phone app as the pathogen, and then tracked people movement and contact and spread was shown on their screens as they monitored mobiles.  There's also a complex mathematical formula applied to mimic the rate and extent of spread.  Spread covered most of the UK within a month, and they discovered a few lessons. 1. So called super-spreaders increase the rate of spread, these are generally folk working in places where people gather - GPs surgeries, A&E, schools, shops, cafes etc; and the idea now is to target such people for early vaccination (Tamiflu). 2. The simple act of everyone pursuing a hand-washing regime, reduced spread considerably.  The most obvious method of fighting a pandemic is isolation, like everyone stays in their homes, thus reducing contact with others. However, you would need to "cabin up" for at least 4 months, as that is the time needed to produce a relevant vaccine; so the economy would come to a grinding halt and most would run out of food.  I think folk can be infectious for about 24hrs prior to falling ill. Unlike 1918, where many deaths were caused by secondary bacterial infections, anti-biotics (at least at the moment) can help in reducing cases.  Still, I was surprised that their estimate of deaths was below a million, let's hope they're right.     :ph34r:    btw. the app is still live at a BBC site, but I can't remember where !-_-

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6 hours ago, observer said:

Why would it deter migrants ?   It's people movement that would be spreading it globally.    :ph34r:

Well the gist of your previous post seemed to be talking about how the pandemic would affect Britain. People might not want to migrate to a place that is disease ridden.

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Err no Dave,  pandemics are global events, spread by migrants (people movements); this prog dealt with the scenario from when the first infected person (patient zero) arrives in the UK;  but we can presume similar spread throughout the world. The WHO who monitor this, take responsibility for tackling such outbreaks at source, as they did with an outbreak in Mexico or the ebola outbreak in W/Africa.   These of course are natural events, which occure when a virus mutates, and the question is not if it will happen, but when. The other really scary scenario, would be if terrorists ever get hold of a lethal pathogen.    :ph34r:

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