{"id":190,"date":"2007-12-26T00:26:42","date_gmt":"2007-12-26T05:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/?p=190"},"modified":"2007-12-26T00:30:21","modified_gmt":"2007-12-26T05:30:21","slug":"the-top-posts-of-2007-number-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/?p=190","title":{"rendered":"The top posts of 2007: number 7"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the holiday period, the physics arxiv blog is re-running the most popular blogs (by page views) of 2007.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/?p=135\">The frightening prospect of flu<\/a><br \/>\n23 November<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/flu-transmission.jpg\" title=\"Flu transmission\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/flu-transmission.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"Flu transmission\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Bird flu may get all the headlines but the number of deaths it causes each year is currently measured in hundreds. The real killer, the one that should set yer spine a-shiver, is ordinary fly which kills hundreds of thousands each year.<\/p>\n<p>With winter nearly upon us up here in the northern hemisphere, the spectre that we\u2019ll be a-shakin and a-sweatin our way through a flu pandemic in the coming months is raising its ugly head again.<\/p>\n<p>So what can science tell us about the way pandemics spread? Not enough, according to Gerardo Chowell from Arizona State University in the US and his friend Hiroshi. They\u2019ve posted a comprehensive review of epidemic science dating back to the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic that killed as many as 100 million people by some estimates. We\u2019ve learnt an awful lot since then about the way flu spreads but the frightening thing about Gerardo\u2019s review is how much more we need to understand.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not just small things that are up in the air but sizable pieces of the jigsaw. We still don\u2019t know some basic probabilities associated with infection. For instance, given that an individual is infected with flu, what are the chances that the disease will manifest itself clinically? And given that the disease has manifested itself clinically in an individual, what are the chances of that person dying. And if a virus can be caught from a number of diffferent host species (as it might eventually be with bird flu) what is the probability of transmission?<\/p>\n<p>Without a good understanding of these kindsa factors, it\u2019s gonna be difficult for authorities to plan an effective response to a flu pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>Mah advice? Stock up on food and water.<\/p>\n<p>Ref: <a href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/0711.3088\">arxiv.org\/abs\/0711.3088<\/a>: Quantifying the Transmission Potential of Pandemic Influenza<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the holiday period, the physics arxiv blog is re-running the most popular blogs (by page views) of 2007. The frightening prospect of flu 23 November Bird flu may get all the headlines but the number of deaths it causes each year is currently measured in hundreds. The real killer, the one that should set [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-highlights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}