Monthly Archives: April 2009
The Pandemic
With the cases in New York I think it is very likely that what we are seeing now is a pandemic. A couple of things. First, the event does not correspond to what has been predicted over the past five … Continue reading
“Public Health Event of International Concern” ?
Bloomberg Reports: The deadly swine flu outbreak that’s spread across Mexico and infected people in California and Texas may be declared an international health emergency. The World Health Organization will hold a teleconference with flu experts at 4 p.m. Geneva … Continue reading
Swine Flu (Redux)
… no good news today. Not avian flu, but swine flu … ! New, deadly swine flu hits Mexico By Noel Randewich and Armando Tovar Reuters Friday, April 24, 2009 11:30 AM MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A deadly strain of … Continue reading
Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science
The new issue has something for everyone, including articles on health system preparedness for catastrophic emergencies, on a national biosurveillance program and early warning, onand  stockpile optimization. A true VSS smorgasborg.
Dynamic Traffic Flow Optimization
Apropos of nothing, I happened to run into this cool video on Streetsblog about Los Angeles Traffic Control. It seems that beginning with the 1984 Olympics, the city has been developing an Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control system for monitoring … Continue reading
Animalia Biosecurity (II of II)
Note: There have been quite a few thoughtful comments posted in response to the first half of this discussion, and although many of my replies spring from the interview below I will continue the exchange on the previous page to … Continue reading
Animalia Biosecurity: A Kingdom of Bio-Agent Sentinels (I of II)
Just a quick note on what is below and what is to come: this post briefly introduces some (re)emergent techniques of zoonotic disease preparedness and surveillance accompanied by a few theoretical implications that, well, seem to overheat quite quickly. The … Continue reading
On culturalist analyses of risk perception
Have just been reading Sunstein’s *Worst Case Scenarios.* There is some Douglas/ Wildavsky and a lot of Kahneman/ Tversky in it. Since Sunstein is now our Regulation Czar, it is probably worth analyzing this approach with care. The question he … Continue reading
Introduction — Nick Shapiro
Everyone: In the next few days Nick Shapiro will be joining the discussion with a post relating to some preliminary work he is doing on zoonotic disease preparedness — particularly on the problem of creating surveillance systems that will be … Continue reading
Black Swans
Here is another attempt to get a discussion going about VSS and the current financial crisis. I want to focus on one of the angles into the current debates that seems most interesting for us: the question of how one … Continue reading
