Medical News Blog

Medical News Blog Information

Showing posts with label Editor's Note. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Editor's Note. Show all posts

Editor's Note #23: Tweepidemiology#2..

,
Thought it was time to update the "Tweepidemiology" graph I first posted back in September of 2014.

The Ebola virus disease epidemic of 2014 certainly drive the biggest of my Tweepidemics.


Followers of my @MackayIM Twitter account (and this blog which gets
promoted through it) since I started tweeting.
This shows the cumulative rise, and pause, of followers and the relationship between the rate of that rise and some active periods of infectious disease outbreaks..
Click on the graph to enlarge

This will be something I check back in on from time to time. Interesting stuff. 

As above but zoomed in to show the dip in followers of the @MackayIM Twitter account.
Click on the graph to enlarge.
Something else this little analysis showed me was still interesting, but very disappointing. That thing was one of the biggest losses of followers and slowest periods of follower gains that my Twitter account has had in its 2 years. 

This dip happened immediately after I changed the background on my avatar to reflect my support for the US Supreme Court's legalisation of same sex marriage. I kept that background for a week. I haven't been able to find anything else to attribute to the dip - I haven't been any more annoying or rude than I usually am! I don't blog to gain followers per se but followers are very helpful because they help spread sometimes useful information further than it might otherwise reach. Also, because you're mostly a likable bunch of course! In the scheme of things it was a blip - and there is always a turnover of newcomers and "newleavers" and the latter generally increases in proportion to a decrease in my level of engagement. It just strikes me as sad that people feel so much dislike or annoyance that they need to respond by leaving the table in disgust or annoyance like a child who doesn't get what they want.

Data. So many things to learn from them.
Read More

Editor's Note #22: Two years old today..

, , , , ,
On March 27 2013, around the time of Easter and the school holidays, I gave in to the urgings of my wife, to try this blogging thing. 

And today it's two years later and now very clear to me that writing for fun, but based around what I know in science, will be something I do for many years to come. 

At times it's been tough - or maybe other pressures made it feel tougher than it was - and I've considered stopping and have at times paused. As hard as it was though, I found myself wanting to chime in on stuff and could not stay away. I still find that weird, but it must have been a part of me all along - I just hadn't noticed it until after I turned 40'ish. I'm a bit slow sometimes. 

Turns out that I enjoy writing and I needed a hobby that I enjoy and that helped inform and generated such unexpected positive feedback. Everyone needs that I think. Bit of a shame that the typos don't get fewer but such is life. 

It also turns out that blogging made me resign from my job of 23 years - which just so happens to co-occur with this very date. No, of course my resignation was not for such a simplistic reason, but blogging was one of a few major factors that set the process in motion. In particular, blogging about outbreaks of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), avian influenza A(H7N9) virus and the Ebola virus disease epidemic in West Africa. It was that last one that really had the greatest impact on me though. 

From blogging has come more interactions with the media (something I am now a firm believer in more scientists needing to do-communicate what we do to our stakeholders), new collaborations, papers, strange discussions with affiliate Institutes about why they'd rather me not link them in print or press to this press or these papers since I had no research funding for these viruses, friendly discussions with very high ranking Health officials, advice to documentary makers and then an invited role helping out my State's public health team. That one was the kicker. The feeling that the virology information and patterns I'd spent years accruing and piecing together in my head, and now blogging about and drawing graphs and graphics to describe, could be used for the greater good completely ruined me. But in a good way. It triggered many realisations about my current role, some were familiar to me as I had been living with them daily for years, others I had felt in the corners of my mind but they were too intangible and just wouldn't coalesce into anything that would describe itself to me and yet others that were patterns I simply didn't see. Told you I was a bit slow sometimes.

You could of course dismiss all of this as the rantings of a failed scientist who - despite an h-index of 32, 80 papers (15 with >100 citations), >400 citations per year for the past 9 years, 14 book chapters, roles as an Associate Editor at the Journal of Clinical Virology, a Section Editor at Biomolecular Detection and Quantification and an Editorial board for Viruses as well as having continuous competitive research grant funding since he was awarded his PhD in 2003 until 2014 - had missed out on achieving most of his recent grant applications. Go right ahead.

I wanted to use what I'd learned for the greater good. Yeah - as a comic nerd that makes even me cringe a little. But that's where I've been heading, knowingly or not, for some years now. Well, soon I'll be a part of a team that cam help me to do that. 

So I wish you a Happy 2nd birthday little VDU. You've helped me to grow and to learn at the rate of a human two year old. And in doing so, I've met and made friends with a lot of great people around the world. For such tiny things, viruses can have such an impact on us. Quite the hobby.
Read More

Editor's Note #21 Far better resting place I go to than I have ever known...


I've spent all day analysing why the death of a person I never knew makes me sad. And as the day draws to a close, I've settled on the fact that it is what he represented to me, so many years ago, and for so many years since, that makes me sad that he has left the world. So I've devoted my day to remembering Star Trek and Spock - Leonard Nimoy's most iconic of characters, and to being grateful Mr Nimoy put so much of himself into that role so many years ago.

In the passing of Spock I'm revisiting so many things he inadvertently taught me as a younger version of myself; things that have some part in making me who I am today.

Top of the list is science. Spock got to look for stuff, understand stuff, deal calmly and logically (I fail greatly here) with things, and was a valued and integral member of his crew. Of course I'd have loved to be on an Enterprise, seeking, learning and finding stuff in space, too! I can't quantify how much Spock and Star Trek have shaped my drive to search and find some more earthly things - seek new viruses, learn new knowledge and find out how infectious diseases are caused.

From here.
Spock was Mr Nimoy. But more than that-all Vulcans must now have elements of Mr Nimoy's portrayal of this one character or for many, they are not Vulcan at all. That's quite an acting legacy. You can't just write "be logical" down on a script-you have to have seen a Vulcan. A part of Nimoy was given to Spock. Other actors achieve this too of course - to my mind all Klingons are represented by Michael Dorn, Rangers by Viggo Mortensen, Wolverine is Hugh Jackman, Tony Stark is Robert Downey Jr, Batman is Christian Bale...and so on.

As Bones said in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (from which the image above is borrowed): "He's really not dead, as long as we remember him". 

Of course we will remember him. How could we forget the person, the character, the message of hope, tolerance and that use of logic? And the accidental humour. Spock was a perfect foil used so well to look both at, and into, ourselves.

Today I still very much respect and admire the ideals that represent the many iterations of earlier Star Trek voyages - care, knowledge, teamwork and a sense of shared goals chosen for the betterment of us all. 

In a world  that can so often be filled with hate, pettiness, self-interest, fractured communities, an absence of care, a disrespect of knowledge and lack of desire to work together, Trek still contains hope that others who share the mission and vision will eventually rise high enough in their roles, often enough, to make the world a better place. Many already do. Star Trek's creators and those who brought its many stories to us, are owed much.

We should always strive to continue the ongoing mission to explore, seek and boldly go where no-one has gone before, in whatever it is that we choose to do. 

Spock understood the need to work for everyone's benefit. He voiced it so well when he reminded Kirk that he has no ego to bruise and that "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few". We should try and stow our own egos more often, and work towards the bigger needs. We should do that as part of the same cree more often too - that of the spaceship Earth.

The ship is not yet out of danger Spock, but you gave us a lot to help make it work better. 

LLAP
Read More

Editor's Note #20: Tweepidemiology...

, , ,
Updated 05JUL2015
Followers of my @MackayIM Twitter account (and this blog which gets promoted through it) since I started tweeting. It shows the cumulative rise and rise of followers and the relationship of the rate of those rises to very active periods of infectious disease outbreaks and epidemics over the past 18-months or so.
Click on the graph to enlarge

While it's hard to separate whether I pick up followers because of the delivery of specific content or because as you pick up followers, they help spread the word and you pick up more followers, to simple old me this cumulative graph looks like MERS-CoV and the West African Ebola virus disease outbreaks drove people to seek information. Sometimes those people have done me the honour of following me on Twitter, accompanying me on my own journey to understand what's going on. I'm constantly amazed at that, let me assure you.

I thought it worth having a look at the Tweepidemiology of my Twitter account. That is, the epidemiology of my Twitter followers - a bit of a long bow - but you follow me because I talk about infectious disease outbreaks and stuff and because I like my new word...I'm keeping with it!

I paid Twitter Counter to get my Twitter data, plotted it in Excel, tidied it using Illustrator and here it is. 

I started Tweeting a little after I started blogging - this Twitter thing is for the young people and their constant need to take selfies and update the world on their lives...live and learn. 

Despite VDU blog posts on the emergence of influenza A(H7N9) virus in China dating back further in time, I came to Twitter well after H7N9's Wave 1 was engaged. So the slow burn could have been due to that or just because no-one knew me or that I could generally be trusted and generally don't spout drivel. 

Generally.

So there ya go - Tweepidemiology - a way of looking at when and perhaps why one gains followers through social media when it's used to engage the public and try and help people understand what's happening with new or emerging viruses and diseases . Perhaps I should check what happens when I post photos of my cat too.

Updates...

  1. Corrected some typos and grammatical errors


Read More

Editor's Note #19 VDU takes a pause...[UPDATE]



With so many other great, and sometimes overlapping, graphical sources of MERS-CoV information around right now, this seems like a good time to take a break from blogging for a while. 

In the short-term, I'm going to devote my hobby-time to some other virus-related reading & quite a few career-related tasks as well. Sadly, while I immensely enjoy this new-found science communication and writing gig, it does not contribute anything to my "day job". Not a jot...well 2 papers and a review in the pipeline and a million media interviews (those are not viewed with much value by the job, but I feel they are of use for the much wider community). I'm not talking about financial benefits here, I'm referring to blogging not ticking any boxes that contribute to my role description. Social media is still very much though of as a place for selfies and not sciences in many (?most) circles. We're still quite some way off the day when researchers will be expected to be able to engage their stakeholders or share around their knowledge. Sure, there are words on paper here and there, but reality and recognition? Not on my horizon anyway. Sad but true. Also, the level of additional research that goes into this hobby is pretty hard to sustain.

So, while I'm off having a change and a think about things, please do enjoy the back-catalogue if you need a VDU fix.

Note #1: Its not my intention to stop blogging for those concerned about that!
Note #2:  Thanks to Prof Racaniello's inspirational comment (stop whinging, do more - see here), I'll try and make some more time to keep up with the blogging.
Read More

Editor's Note #19: Just a pause...

Hi all,

Nothing fills me with more self-loathing than seeing VDU's charts being used when they are out of date...and I only have myself to blame! 

Generally speaking of course, I love seeing the charts used - that's what I make 'em for. But for some events, like the MERS-CoV localised epidemic, VDU's posts are out-of-date as quickly as the front page of yesterdays newspaper. So there is a need for a lot of night work.

I've been a little occupied with (drowning in) other paperwork of late - I do have a day-job after all - including a review of the fairly diverse MERS-CoV literature for a manuscript I'm writing.

As a result, I've fallen behind in updating my MERS-CoV (detections consistently roll in overnight but in smaller numbers than during April) and H7N9 (not many to add) charts.

I'll remedy this as soon as I can.

Cheers,
Ian


Read More

Editor's Note #19: An indication of the level of interest in MERS?

I know this is just a little blog and one tat is pretty nichey, but if it's visitor numbers are any guide, interest in the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is at a fever pitch. This past week (13th-19th of April-2014) was the biggest week, in terms of site visits and views, for Virology Down Under, since the VDU blog came into being.
Countries from which visits to VDU have originated
between 30-Mar and 19-Apr 2014. USA 1st. 2nd most
visiting country; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Thanks to @AB_Algaissi for asking.

13 of the 18 posts in the past week were MERS-CoV themed and each drew between 80 and 652 views. Yesterday most of those users were new visitors. So why don't you come back??? Oh well, I'll keep a light on ;)

The light is slowly dawning among researchers, that the many messages of science can be so much better conveyed through social media platforms than through scientific papers. And the public seem to be enjoying this slow moving change.

Apart from being stodgily written or sometimes incoherent, even to other scientists, such papers can be placed behind a paywall which cannot be accessed unless you have links to a University. Scientific papers are also frequently slow to emerge (reviewing and copy-editing and layout and such can take weeks, depending on the journal) and are aimed towards only a very select few; at least unless you have results that make it into a luxury journal like Science or Nature. The sloth like turnaround time is in start contrast to the emergence of an infectious disease outbreak and so the public, and many professional too,  must look elsewhere if they want to know the facts behind the latest "Killer virus mutates" media banner. Many big organisations have resources and professionals devoted to providing those answers; sometimes they are hard to wade through too, sometimes not.

If our research findings are good enough to be if interest to the scientific media, we may get a much wider pickup for our message. The trick then is being able to convey that message in understandable chunks. Ever been to a accountant/lawyer/banker/statistician? Then you know that half of what they say slips into their own tech-terminology. Yeah, we  scientists do that a lot too. Its a hard habit to break out of. We just get used to using that language in our day-to-day dealings even though it may confound (see?) others. But don't put up with convoluted tech-speak; ask for clarification. 

Realistically though, most submissions to luxury journals get rejected. Unfortunately, media attention can often be drawn to work appearing in those luxury journals rather than some journal with a lower impact factor. Yes, impact factors still get used in the real world at many levels from grant review panels to fellowship panels to contract renewals to attracting media attention. Why? Because your work has been deemed by some to be interesting and important enough to get there in the first place. 

And so the circle of scientific life goes on.

Thanks to all who read and visit. I hope its been worth your average 1min 29sec visit. ;)


Read More

Editor's Note #18: VDU on MERS in the media..

, ,
Many thanks to Andre Berro, MPH, CPH, SCPM, Public Health Advisor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for pointing out, on LinkedIn, that VDU got some media mentions of late. 

These follow on from a Twitter interview on the weekend with the Wall Street Journal's Ellen Knickmeyer. She and Ahmed Al Omran published an article: Deadly Virus's Spread Raises Alarms in Mideast Saudis Defend Approach to MERS Outbreak, Even as Cases Increase.[1] Part of the article was also quoted in a WebProNews article, MERS Virus Surge Seen in the Middle East [2] and in a story augmented with a VDU chart (Woo-Hoo!) in a Doha News article, Amid regional surge of MERS, official says no new incidences in Qatar.[3]

While missing from 2 of the articles, I will note here that I'm actually a virologist - despite all these charts I keep posting, and that those 3 articles should all be considered to list my affiliation with the Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre (AIDRC) at The University of Queensland. The AIDRC have been very kind in allowing me to affiliate my professional academic and educational comments to the media, conducted on my personal time, to their Centre of which I am a grateful member. But to be very clear though, this blog, also managed on my personal time, is separate from those comments. This is a thing of my own construction, curation and opinion (using real data available to all) and is not affiliated with The University of Queensland or any other Inquisition or Organisation. 

Thanks to all involved.

Sources...
  1. Deadly Virus's Spread Raises Alarms in Mideast: Saudis Defend Approach to MERS Outbreak, Even as Cases Increase
    http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303887804579499831393801054
    Full article ...
    http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20140413-701881.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
  2. MERS Virus Surge Seen in the Middle East
    http://www.webpronews.com/mers-virus-surge-seen-in-the-middle-east-2014-04
  3. Amid regional surge of MERS, official says no new incidences in Qatar
    http://dohanews.co/amid-regional-surge-mers-official-says-new-incidences-qatar/

Read More

Editor's Note #17: 500th post

,
Just noticed that there are 500 posts listed on this blog (501 now). I still have a few to port across from the old site but its kinda weird to think I've posted on stuff that many times. I only have ~60 actual scientific papers...although a lot more citations for VDU's blog than for those papers. Hmm. What does that say about my impact or chosen profession?

Anyhoo - Cool bananas!

I wasn't planning on blogging again for a while but Ebola has drawn me back for a little bit. 
Read More

Editor's Note #14: VDU in the scientific literature

,
Virology Down Under gets a 2nd citation (1)!

Dr Anne S De Groot and colleagues used a VDU graphic for a recent paper and cited VDU for it. Many thanks!

To read the paper entitled Cross-conservation of T-cell epitopes: Now even more relevant to (H7N9) influenza vaccine design hop over to..
  1. 1st citation for VDU at http://newsmedicalnet.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/concise-overview-of-mers-from-mid-2013.html
Read More

Vale Dr. Albert Z Kapikian

Others will no doubt write more cogently and personally than I can about Dr Kapikian's >56-years of medical and virology expertise, skills, discoveries and personality but I wanted to make a just a few quick comments on his passing in relation to a group of viruses for which he is not as often associated; the rhinoviruses (RV).

Dr Kapikian was an expert with electron microscopy (EM), learning the use of it from June Almeida at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, University of London in 1970. His use of immune EM led him to discover the viruses we now call noroviruses in 1972; a major cause of gastroenteritis. He also found instances of rotavirus (RoV) in the United States and went on to lead the development of an oral vaccine to prevent the serious diarrhoeal disease associated with infection by RoVs. 

He has over 200 publications listed on PubMED.

I exchanged a couple of eMails with him in 2009 (which Al graciously replied too in excellent detail) but never got to meet him, much to my disappointment. My first knowledge of him was from my work with rhinoviruses. While these were not his research focus, he Chaired the group that published the 1st (and 2nd in 1972 and co-authored the 3rd in 1987) formal description in 1967. This report gave the largest group of distinct respiratory viruses their 100 names. He helped to bring together RV researchers and their often identical isolates from around the globe and helped to create the 1 key to link them all in a single unifying scheme; HRV-1 to HRV-100. Having had a tiny role in doing that for the latest species, RV-C, I can more than imagine how much of a challenge that must have been at the time. Dr Kapikian also used his immune EM expertise to visualize the rhinoviruses in 1972.

That Dr Kapikian is so highly regarded, described as warm-hearted and the smartest and nicest guy in the room, speak volumes of him as a human. His track speaks to his role as a leader and medical virologist of huge impact.

Another trailblazer has moved on.

Dr Albert Z. Kapikian, Chief, Epidemiology Section, Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health in the United States, died 24-Feb at 86-years of age.

References...

  1. National Institutes of Health statement on the death of Dr Albert Z Kapikian
    http://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/2014/Pages/AlbertKapikian.aspx
  2. Seeing the new calicivirus: norovirus
    http://jvi.asm.org/content/10/5/1075.long
  3. Context for the discovery of norovirus
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=kapikian+a+s295+norwalk
  4. Sabin Gold Medal
    http://www.sabin.org/sites/sabin.org/files/GoldMedalSpeech2005.pdf
  5. Dr Kapikian's publication list on PubMED
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=search&db=pubmed&term=%28kapikian%20az%5bauth%5d%29
  6. NIH on the Sabin medal
    http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/may2005/niaida-12.htm
  7. Children's Vaccine Initiative Pasteur award summary at NIH
    http://nih.gov/news/pr/nov98/niaid-10.htm
  8. Alumni Award of Distinction from Weill Cornell Medical College where Dr Kapikian got his MD
    http://weill.cornell.edu/news/news/2001/06/kapikian-and-szeto-receive-alumni-awards.html
  9. Awarded Fellowship of The American Academy of Microbiology
    http://nihrecord.od.nih.gov/newsletters/2012/06_25_2012/story6.htm
  10. Visualising rhinoviruses by immune electron microscopy
    http://jvi.asm.org/content/10/1/142.long
  11. First rhinovirus numbering system report
    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v213/n5078/pdf/213761a0.pdf
  12. A collaborative report: rhinoviruses--extension of the numbering system from 89 to 100.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3037780
  13. A collaborative report: Rhinoviruses-extension of the numbering system
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0042682271903291
Read More

One Health Initiative is alive and well among Australian influenza specialists...

, , , ,
It struck me as really quite impressive how much influenza researchers (and a non-fluey ring-in like me) are already well aware of, and in some cases working on, the importance of animals in virus spread to humans. 

Admittedly, I'm a rhinovirus guy (or a metapneumovirus guy, or coronavirus guy, or an enterovirus guy, Saffold virus guy, parainfluenza virus 4 guy, a PCR guy...) not a flu guy, but 2/5 talks on Day 1 of the Influenza Specialist Group (ISG) Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) this afternoon included plenty of focus on poultry, wild and song birds, camels and even penguins! I did not know that penguins had H11N2 and the the nearest genetic matches were 50-years old!

And judging from the questions on my MERS-CoV and H7N9 talk (of which there were many - thanks to all!), its plain to the many experts in that room tonight that we still have a lot of data holes to plug in the story of H7N9 and MERS-CoV. Both virological and clinical gaps.

Also plain to me, was that I need to do some more reading about viral loads and clicnial outcomes in MERS and think a little more about whether our own hospital systems enhance the spread of viruses, as they may have done during SARS. Did the West see more of it because of its highly structured intensive care units concentrating cases ad funnelling infection at healthcare workers, or was it just that less developed nations didn't detect it's entry? Many interesting discussions tonight. Like the one about what to do you do with a problem like the rhinoviruses? Lots of detections in influenza-like illness (on a par or surpassing those due to influenza and respiratory syncytial virus), but also a chunk in controls. I know that you can't write off the 200 or so RVs as passengers just because they occur across the entire disease spectrum; all viruses do, its just that there are far fewer distinct members of any other given respiratory virus species you'd like to name. 

Really great to speak in front of a room full of people who already have their "spare time" filled with real research, still show an interest in how this sort of platform (the one you're reading now) can bring the message of influenza, or viruses in general, to others. 


  1. Influenza Specialists Group
    http://www.isg.org.au/
Read More

Editor's Note #13: 2014 thoughts...

Virology Down Under.
What does Virology Down Under's (VDU) blog stand for? 

First off, a little background.

The idea of VDU the website, was to provide some useful info on viruses; the type of info that could be used to help less expert people get an idea of what they are and what they do to us. It had its beginnings in 1996 as the website for the Sir Albert Sakzewski Virus Research Centre (SASVRC), my workplace. It then accrued enough mutations that it evolved into VDU.


That endeavor truly started online in 1997; 16-years, 11-months and 9-days ago. Last year VDU spawned a blog. This. 

The VDU website, while in need of sprucing up (still), exists more as a fixed point in time while the blog aims to keep readers abreast of some of the goings on in virology. The blog's focus is on respiratory virology because that's what I know most about, but other things get dropped in on occasion. The focus is also on my take on things, hopefully with some humour thrown in. I initially commented in April 2013 that I'd stay away from blather and keep the opinion related to hard data. That's still my intent, but opinion being what it is I may rant on occasion, I may drift away from citable evidence and I may collect thoughts in a way that cannot be verified by any one single study. Hopefully I'll make that clear but it will all be part of VDU's DNA...probably RNA given its focus on respiratory viruses...and nerdy little comments like that will continue to pop up too!

I've noticed during my short time in "flublogia" (I think that's a hard 'g') that each blog/site/newsboard has a distinct personality. Apart from spending a large slice of their own time collecting, collating and writing about infectious diseases for a largely intangible audience; page hits and comments being key proof-of-life beyond the keyboard. Some key authors I have learned from in 2013 produce a "vibe" through their blogs. I often read the same new piece of information but on multiple sites to see a wide range of interpretations - each one telling me something different, each a specialized cell contributing to the tissue. 

Crawford Kilian emphasizes the human cost to infections, Mike Coston emphasizes ways to personally protect yourself from infection and manages to place new news in superb context thanks to his blog's back-catalogue of posts while FluTrackers emphasize the spotting of information before it even occurs (yes, they are that fast!) and lays the groundwork for trends that are often only visible after their subject matter has emerged. If I want to actually be interested in what's happening in the world of not-viruses, I'll go to Maryn McKenna's Superbug because it's the only bacterial text I enjoy reading (and she posts funny Tweets). There are others but correcting all these typos means that I write slowly and this has already taken a while.

So what about VDU's blog? It aims to identify, define and add opinion to patterns seen during virus infections, epidemics and outbreaks. It's a part-time thing so I post when I can. My opinion may not be bleeding-edge expert or informed by decades of specific literature and research (sometimes it is)- virology has many, many aspects to it and I don't claim to be across them all - but I am most happy to be educated so please do leave comments here or on Twitter, LinkedIn, ResearchGate or anywhere else I've left an avenue for contact.

Another of the VDU blog's intentions is present its data pictorially and certainly to create a reference of somewhat "softened" science for you and also for me; it now serves me as a literature review repository and I hope some of its graphics can also be useful to you in your talks, blogs or whatever. VDU's images remain free to use - I just ask that you link back to the blog.

I won't dwell on the misery caused by virus infections (and there is much), in fact I deliberately keep VDU faceless and focus on the virus rather than the host. Others do a much better job of conveying the human cost than I can anyway. It's not because I don't care (I have written on this topic previously) so I apologize if it all seems a little devoid of humanity.

The VDU blog is not yet 1-year old; still an infant in human terms. It's been crawling along okay so far but it's still got a lot to learn and hopefully some more readers to pick up as it grows. In its 1st year VDU's blog has driven 2 publications, been cited in the scientific literature, under-pinned a lot of interviews with the media and been the reason for few local and interstate seminars (another coming up next month). More than I could have possibly imagined. It has also  created a lot of new links to good people both in science research and in science writing. I have learned much thanks to the help and mentoring these people have provided.

I hope that gives you an idea of what to expect from the blog in 2014. All the best for the New Year.

IanM


Read More

Keeping patient privacy to the fore...

Crawford Kilian (CK; with one "l") and Andrew Rambaut (AR) passed a couple of tweets a couple of evenings ago (my time), and I chipped in my 5c worth (inflation and all) at the time.

I wasn't really meaning to be argumentative, my comment was asking, cynically, whether a suggestion to improve patient privacy suggested by AR would help unstopper the cork of oft-times incomplete and sometimes slow or non-English information on cases of MERS-CoV infection in Saudi Arabia.

Yesterday afternoon CK penned some more detailed thoughts on the issue of patient privacy, stigma and microbial infections. The overall message from all related communication's (including Saudi Ministry of Health's [MOH] Dr Ziad Memish's comments to CK on patient privacy back in September) is that patient personal space was being encroached upon by media who had deduced their identity from the amount of detail in the Saudi press releases
about cases. This may have led to these patients, who had apparently complained to the Saudi MOH, being identified to their community and perhaps being stigmatised just because of their viral passengers. As Dr Memish wrote....


Over the last year we had patients and families complain to us about intrusion of their privacy by media reporters who recognized their identity through the transparency of reporting their case details.

He had said a similar thing a few days earlier in an interview I wrote about here.

I offer some thoughts and arguments below; and yes, this time I am being argumentative. There are a few issues here...
  1. Patient privacy must always be protected
  2. Is patient privacy being breached?
  3. Should we expect to have MERS-CoV data available for hobbyist bloggers and interested scientific parties?
As someone who has worked in a research capacity with patient samples for 2 decades, I've seen the ethical sands shift constantly towards improved patient privacy. I'm painfully aware that the need to ensure the patient's privacy is paramount. I can't pipette from a sample unless I have the appropriate external ethical approval to do so - every funded project in our lab is conducted this way today. I have not one problem with that whatsoever. At the end of the day, whether in a research or public health capacity, I want to try and help sick people - not make their lives more difficult.

When you submit yourself as a patient to a Doctor's care you do not expect to have your results show up in the local newspaper or on a tinpot blogger's column (I'm talking of mine not yours CK or AR!), or to be hounded by the media as you exit your hospital. Of course there may be exceptions to those people - we saw quite a few H7N9 cases wheeled or walked to the waiting press pack earlier this year. Being a patient puts us at a level of vulnerability that none enjoy and for it to be taken advantage of is absolutely unacceptable. I would have thought that keeping a patient's result details private is part of the Duty of Care. 

Still, I do wonder at the extent to which MERS-CoV patients are stigmatised because they are MERS-CoV-positive which was deduced by the media from the "transparency of reporting their case details". Let's take the best case scenario for MERS-CoV case details...age, sex, region, hospital name, underlying conditions, perhaps a couple of other items on a good media release. How does the media find out about that person to the extent that they track them down and hound them for an interview? They don't have access to medical records. Is the media release (see below) enough or should a bony accusatory finger be pointing towards a leak from one of the patients' sources during their travel through "the system"; someone not all that fussed about maintaining patient confidentiality, for whatever reason(s)? 

There is quite a chain of links between the patient and many others when that patient is sampled for disease diagnosis; a chain made longer when the disease is an unknown like MERS, driven by a newly discovered virus like the MERS-CoV. The lab techs will receive and process the sample, matching a patient slip to a specimen which is tested and linked to a result which may then be repeated externally for reliability. The clinical team(s) providing care and the hospital administrative staff, perhaps ambulance services, public health officials, international scientific and clinical experts such as World Health Organization and perhaps a panel of experts in a working group may or may not all have more patient detail than was released to the media. The family and those friends that are told will also be among the knowing. All this is just the same as in other countries around the world. How is it that reporters can identifying the patients? Is it happening differently in other parts of the world to the way it is in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; as CK noted, is it a cultural thing?
 If you take a look at a recent English language MERS-CoV case media release, from the Saudi MOH, we still see that some key patient details are continuing to be reported...

Within the framework of the constant monitoring and epidemic surveillance of the novel Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), the Ministry of Health (MOH) has announced that five new cases have been recorded.

The first case is for a 57-year-old male citizen, who has been suffering from some chronic diseases. Now, he is at the IC unit, receiving the proper treatment, may Allah grant him speedy recovery. 

The second case is for a 73-year-old male citizen, who has been suffering from some chronic diseases. He passed away, may Allah have mercy upon him.

As for the third (43-year-old resident), fourth (35-year-old resident) and fifth (27-year-old citizen) cases, they work at the health sector. They were in contact with confirmed cases of this virus, and didn�t suffer from any symptoms. May Allah, Almighty, heal the injured cases and bestow upon them the cure they so earnestly desire.

If this little amount of detail is not considered a problem now, then I don't see why a slightly expanded media release should be any more of a patient identifier; expanded along the lines of what I've listed previously here. Extra information is, I firmly believe, useful for "crowd-sourced epidemiology" - that which provides many fresh sets of eyes to perhaps help analyze aetiologies, peruse pathological puzzles and delve diagnostic dilemmas. It also allows for the re-presentation of all manner of complex infection and disease issues, after filtering through the minds of others, some of whom are very good at extracting points of interest for a much wider audience, thus contributing to keeping the world informed. 

But I'm drifting.

What about that "mysterious outbreak" in Montgomery County, Texas, USA back Dec-19? We didn't get each and every case's details and sure, that didn't raise too much ire did it? In fact, I don't think we've officially heard whether all 8 people (50% of whom sadly died) were influenza A(H1N1) virus positive or not. Yet it was assumed by the press and some others to be the case within hours. What then is the "So What" question from such an absence of patient information for you and I and the rest of the world who are not part of the patient chain? It's simply "so what??" We didn't need to know more than that. Yes, its horrible that people should die when they may not have had to. And yes, a US citizen's cultural affiliation with the media may be as different from that of a Saudi Arabian citizen as chalk is from cheese, but so long as the experts on the ground know the details, that's what really matters isn't it? So long as the treatment and management of the patients, the informing of their loved ones and the prevention of further viral spread is being attended to (including reinforcing the message that flu is a vaccine-preventable disease in the Montgomery instance) then people outside the loop of patient-doctor-scientist-admin-loved ones don't need to know anything further do they?

If such data could be released without identifying the patients at all - great, and I would have thought that quite possible in a country of 20+ million. The contents of current media releases seem to support that thinking too. But if it is not possible, then perhaps we should wake up to the fact that no one outside that list above needs to know. I've written about entitlement previously. 

Personally, I doubt that if the MOH stopped printing these tiny snippets of deidentified case detail, like those quoted above, it would halt the media from seeking interviews with people who had been afflicted with a "mystery" illness. But what do I know?

As we know from Dr Hatem Makhdoom, who accepts the description of an an experienced virologist on the Saudi Ministry of Health team said...
..in other words the experts in the scientific world are getting the knowledge they need, even if we bloggers are not.

At the end of the day, its about current and potential future patients; caring for the former, and preventing illness among the latter.

Read More

Merry Xmas and Happy Holidays 2013

,
Hi All,

Just a quick wish from me to you for a Happy Xmas time.

If you are lucky enough to have been born into a wealthy country, enjoy your good fortunes and have a very festive and well-fed time with friends and family over the next few days. 

But please also spare a thought for the many more people on the planet who have a much harder road to travel each and every day. Perhaps add substance to that thought with a last minute present in the name of some of your loved ones, gifted to a charity that can help. This year I am supporting  UNICEF via their excellent range of charity gifts. Polio vaccination kits will be in a couple of Xmas stockings this year!

All the very best for a safe, happy, prosperous (well-funded) 2014.

Ian 
Editor-in-chief,
Virology Down Under
Read More

FluTrackers needs your help....HELP THEM!!

,
I've written before about how much we smaller bloggers and interested other parties rely on FluTrackers to be the rock on which we can rely. Have a quick read of that post here.

FluTrackers are a bunch of volunteers who self-fund the computer infrastructure that houses and serves us with the carefully agglomerated rantings of a seemingly endless stream of information sources on all manner of infectious disease happenings, from all over the world; almost instantly in many cases. There's a very good chance that if it made it onto any website anywhere, then that information has been read and filtered and posted by one of the very few super-diligent FluTrackers newshounds.

I cannot imagine, even if blogging was not only a part-time hobby for me, how I would ever manage to do what FluTrackers manages.

Over 50,000,000 page views this year provide ample data to indicate that they perform a service that is of considerable value to many. 

FluTrackers punches very far above its weight in the complex, fast-paced world of infectious disease communication. I frankly don't know how they do it for the price - which, of course, is borne entirely by them.

So it comes to this time of year when we see a request from the crew at FluTrackers for some financial aid from us - some of those millions of page viewers. If only a tiny fraction of us were to donate $10 (that's a tub of Sara Lee ice cream in my neck of the woods), FluTrackers would be able to fund themselves for many a day.

So come on guys - help keep the FluTrackers tracking flu...and rhinovirus...and bocavirus...and respiratory syncytial virus...and parechovirus...and enterovirus (including poliovirus)...and parainfluenzavirus...and adenovirus...and staphylococcus...and unusual spikes in hospital admissions...and pneumonia cases... and emerging diseases...and emerging viruses...and disease outbreaks...and tuberculosis and...far too many more other things to list.

I might now be $10/poorer for each user that reads/uses the data in my own household, but I'll be exponentially more enriched in 2014 for the data I know they will (hopefully continue to) provide to the world's amateur and professional disease trackers and the public-at-large. 

Read more about where this paltry amount of money will go from FluTrackers themselves.

And more from Mike Coston's blog here on the Cost of fluing business.
Read More

Like Us

Blog Archive