03/16/2010 (4:35 am)
AFD - Miscellaneous Notes & Other Fun Stuff
# 2048
http://afludiary.blogspot.com/2008/06/brief-hiatus-for-afd.html
http://www.newfluwiki2.com/upload/ReadyMoms-Toolkit-Lite-poster1-tn.gif (http://www.newfluwiki2.com/upload/ReadyMoms%20Toolkit%20Lite%20poster1%2048inx36in.p pt)
In an hour or so I'll be leaving for Orlando to help set up the Readymom's Alliance (http://afludiary.blogspot.com/2008/06/readymom-alliance-in-orlando.html) display at the American College Health Association (http://www.acha.org/AnnualMeeting08/index.html) meeting. I'm looking forward to meeting Dr. Susan Chu, and helping her in this project.
I expect to be largely out of touch until sometime Friday afternoon or evening, so I doubt I'll be able to update this website until then.
For the best breaking news coverage of all things bird flu, Crof at Crofsblog (http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/) is hard to beat. I can assure you that if I get the chance, that's where I'll be checking for the latest information.
If any of you are going to be attending this event, stop by the Readymom's booth or Thursday or Friday and say `hi'.
We'd love to meet you.
posted by FLA_MEDIC @ 11:34 AM (http://afludiary.blogspot.com/2008/06/brief-hiatus-for-afd.html)
# 2161
For bloggers, occasionally life gets in the way, and blog entries can temporarily cease - or at least slow to a dribble. When that happens, regular readers may stop checking their sites, and miss noticing that they have returned.
I'm happy to report that two of our best bloggers - Maryn McKenna (http://drugresistantstaph.blogspot.com/) and SophiaZoe (http://birdflujourney.typepad.com/) - have returned with gusto after brief absences.
Maryn's blog Superbug (http://drugresistantstaph.blogspot.com/) functions as a `virtual whiteboard' as she works on her next book which will deal with MRSA. While this blog deals mostly with the problems of drug resistant bacteria, Maryn is no stranger to pandemic flu issues.
Maryn McKenna and CIDRAP News (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/index.html) received an Award for Excellence in Health Care Journalism on Mar 29 for her seven-part series, "The Pandemic Vaccine Puzzle (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/biz-plan/news/nov1507panvax.html)." If you haven't read it, this award was well deserved.
Here are links to all 7 parts.
The pandemic vaccine puzzle
Part 1: Flu research: a legacy of neglect (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/news/oct2507panvax1.html)Part 2: Vaccine production capacity falls far short (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/news/oct2607panvax2.html)
Part 3: H5N1 poses major immunologic challenges (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/news/oct2907panvax3.html)
Part 4: The promise and problems of adjuvants (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/news/oct3007panvax4.html)Part 5: What role for prepandemic vaccination? (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/news/oct3107panvax5.html)Part 6: Looking to novel vaccine technologies (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/news/nov0107panvax6.html)
Part 7: Time for a vaccine 'Manhattan Project'? (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/news/nov0207panvax7.html)Bibliography (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/news/oct2507panvaxbiblio.html)
SophiaZoe, my cyber-twin and good buddy, has returned after several months of being buried at work. She has been blogging up a storm at A Journey Through The World of Pandemic Influenza (http://birdflujourney.typepad.com/a_journey_through_the_wor/) the past couple of weeks.
A few of her (very) recent entries include:
House of Lords report (http://birdflujourney.typepad.com/a_journey_through_the_wor/2008/07/house-of-lords.html)
Anecdotal vs Empirical evidence (http://birdflujourney.typepad.com/a_journey_through_the_wor/2008/07/anecdotal-vs-em.html)
A humanitarian crisis: Ethiopia (http://birdflujourney.typepad.com/a_journey_through_the_wor/2008/07/a-humanitarian.html)
Britain’s House of Lords Report: Take II (http://birdflujourney.typepad.com/a_journey_through_the_wor/2008/07/britains-house.html)
Hinterland disease and national security (http://birdflujourney.typepad.com/a_journey_through_the_wor/2008/07/hinterland-dise.html)
Fear: Real and ego driven (http://birdflujourney.typepad.com/a_journey_through_the_wor/2008/07/fear-real-and-e.html)
If you've fallen out of the habit of visiting their blogs, now is a good time to resume.
posted by FLA_MEDIC @ 8:17 AM (http://afludiary.blogspot.com/2008/07/two-came-back.html)
We talked about several "bird flu" issues and decided that the operational needs of the servers for the flu forums would exceed the capacity that we each have. We also discussed that this need would have to be anticipated and acted upon before the pandemic. Ghostrider described how "mirror" sites work.
At this point Mike volunteered to fund FT and Readymoms if he wins the Fla lotto this weekend!!
I talked to SusanC about what steps FT took to become a 501 (c) (3) non-profit charity and we are going to exchange more information via emails.
We had a very good time and I look forward to seeing everyone again!
Mike - You said you are buying! Right??
# 2166
Yesterday I did a quickie blog on the HealthMap project (http://www.healthmap.org/en).
This morning I discovered that one of my favorite writers, Maryn McKenna, wrote an excellent backgrounder on HealthMap (http://www.healthmap.org/en) - and other projects that are using the Internet as an early disease warning system - for CIDRAP (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/index.html) News.
I'll just post a snippet. Follow the link to read the entire article.
More efforts look outside the box for outbreak signals (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/news/jul2108healthmap.html)
Maryn McKenna http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/images/purple-speck.gif Contributing Writer
Jul 21, 2008 (CIDRAP News) – In the history of infectious diseases, coincidence plays an extraordinary role. In 1706, Cotton Mather purchased a slave named Onesimus who happened to come from a tribe that practiced variolation, and so smallpox prevention was introduced to North America. In 1928, Alexander Fleming happened to leave a window open in his laboratory, and the contaminants that drifted into a dish of Staphylococcus aureus provided the raw material for the discovery of penicillin.
And in February 2003, a never-identified man in southern China emailed a query to an American teacher he knew from an Internet chat room, who happened to have been the neighbor of a US Navy epidemiologist. The epidemiologist, Dr. Stephen Cunnion, placed the relayed note on the electronic mailing list ProMED—and so the first notice of the international SARS epidemic was brought to the world, weeks before the Chinese government admitted the disease's existence.
Five years on, the example of that relayed note has inspired a broad-based effort to take the coincidence out of outbreak notification. It seeks to do by design what the never-named writer accomplished by happenstance: tap nontraditional sources of information, find and verify the earliest possible news of disease outbreaks, publicize the outbreaks, and possibly help contain them.
Dr. Larry Brilliant, one of the chiefs of the World Health Organization's (WHO's) smallpox-eradication effort and now executive director of the philanthropy Google.org, has dubbed the effort "two steps to the left"—meaning two steps backward on an epidemic curve, when an outbreak is much harder to detect but easier to control or contain.
(Continue reading . . . ) (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/news/jul2108healthmap.html)
If you are unfamiliar with Dr. Larry Brilliant, I would urge you to watch the following video from 2006.
It runs 26 minutes, and it is both fascinating and inspiring.
- http://images.ted.com/images/ted/222_113x85.jpg (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_brilliant_wants_to_stop_pandemics.html)
-
Larry Brilliant wants to stop pandemics (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_brilliant_wants_to_stop_pandemics.html)
26:02 Posted: Jul 2006
Dr. Brilliant, among his many accomplishments, is the winner 2006 TED award. (http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/larry_brilliant.html)
posted by FLA_MEDIC @ 10:18 AM (http://afludiary.blogspot.com/2008/07/healthmap-redux.html)
# 2072
For those who have fallen out of the habit of checking on SophiaZoe's blog, A Journey Through The World of Pandemic Influenza (http://birdflujourney.typepad.com/a_journey_through_the_wor/) due to the lack of activity there these past few months, I'm pleased to announce that SZ is back blogging, and is as good as ever.
The past few months have seen an overload of responsibilities in her `day job', leaving her with little time to blog. That, thankfully, has changed.
Her latest blog is We All Make Choices (http://birdflujourney.typepad.com/a_journey_through_the_wor/2008/06/we-all-make-cho.html), and it is the fourth in the past week.
Welcome back, SZ.
You've been missed.
posted by FLA_MEDIC @ 5:51 PM (http://afludiary.blogspot.com/2008/06/happy-return.html)
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