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Forecasting the Next Pandemic 57

Posted by samzenpus from the I-don't-feel-so-good dept.
sciencehabit writes: A new study led by Barbara A. Han, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, suggests a computer model that incorporates machine learning can pinpoint, with 90% accuracy, rodent species that are known to harbor pathogens that can spread to humans. Sciencemag reports on the study: "Han and her team first used their program to identify lifestyle patterns common to rodents harboring diseases like black plague, rabies, and hanta virus and found that their model had an accuracy rate of 90%. After the machine had 'learned' the telltale signs, the researchers searched for new rodents that fit the profile but were not previously thought to be carriers. So far, the model has identified more than 150 new animal species that could harbor zoonotic diseases, the researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The computer program also predicted 58 new infections in rodents that were already known to carry one zoonotic disease."
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Forecasting the Next Pandemic More

Forecasting the Next Pandemic

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  • 90% accuracy (Score:3)

    by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Monday May 18, 2015 @07:38PM (#49722893)
    that's what she said.

  • It's just an 'armless little bunny.

  • Wouldn't it be more useful if... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    We could predict which humans had undiagnosed diseases that are contagious and easily spread to other humans, and then use that knowledge to either cure them, or, in the event that they are incurable (like with HIV), keep them away from other people?

    I know people with HIV can be kept alive for a long time, but they are obviously infecting other people, because the disease is not going away. And perhaps if people with deadly diseases can't reasonably be expected to do the right thing on their own, maybe the

    • And perhaps if people with deadly diseases can't reasonably be expected to do the right thing on their own, maybe the government should step in and force them to stop infecting healthy humans.

      Good luck with that. We can't even stop ourselves from deliberately importing Ebola patients.

    • 2015 (Score:3)

      by DrYak ( 748999 )

      I know I'm feeding a Troll, but...

      I know people with HIV can be kept alive for a long time, but they are obviously infecting other people, because the disease is not going away.

      Welcome to 2015.
      - A period of time when HIV can be prevented from propagating during sex using an extremely sophisticated method called a "condom".
      - A period of time when, at least for the developed world, drugs have advanced to the point where a sick person can be treated and kept alive more or less indefinitely. (although it costs money, and the treatement is a heavy one with some displeasing secondary effect. I would not recommend anyone glossing over "meh, not a proble

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Desler ( 1608317 )

        Or you know, you could just put a condom on and forget about whole "dying" story.

        Ignoring numerous people like Arthur Ashe and Isaac Asimov who got AIDS via blood transfusion, right?

        • Doctor A died of AIDS? I'd not even realized, his family apparently kept it quiet for along time. Given Isaac Asimov's reported and repeated history of sexual harassment of female fans, especially in letters such as this one (https://www.facebook.com/IndianAtheists/posts/197188677080469), it does raise some interesting questions about other possible vectors by which he may have gotten AIDS. If you dig into old letters about him, he was what we would then call "an old rogue with a twinkle in his eye" and no

          • Also: condoms sometimes break, sometimes they slip off, and sometimes they are used incorrectly.

            Well if you want to factor in risks:
            - risks of condom failure are very low, specially when used properly (it possible to learn to use them properly).

            - there is also a thing called an emergency treatment. If started soon enough (= in the few hours after an incident, the sooner, the better the results, useless after 36 hours) risks of HIV transmission are dramatically reduced.
            Basically it's an intensive anti-retroviral therapy that one needs to take either for a certain time until safe, or until the results c

            • According tot he CDC at http://www.cdc.gov/reproductiv... [cdc.gov], the unintended pregnancy rate male condoms is 18%. Whether "failures can be fixed", they're not being "fixed".

              • According tot he CDC at http://www.cdc.gov/reproductiv... [cdc.gov], the unintended pregnancy rate male condoms is 18%.

                Funny that here around I've regularly seen and read different numbers [lefigaro.fr] (random source in fr. key point < 10% for latex based condoms, < 5% for polyurethan. that's just a random example. I don't have enough time to kill to do a complete litterature mining and meta analysis)
                Either North American are much dumber or worse at using condom than European, or your condoms tend to be made of a self-destructin material~
                Xenophobic jokes aside, actual result vary *wildly* depending on the considered population, sp

        • Ignoring numerous people like Arthur Ashe and Isaac Asimov who got AIDS via blood transfusion, right?

          Read again my previous title: 2015
          And you're citing people how died approximately ~25 years ago (and thus probably caught the virus at the end of the 80s).

          I'm speaking about the current state of AIDS in HIV as of today. Not past history.
          Do you really think that they still accept in the blood bank any blood of dubious source without running any test on it?
          Quite the opposite: In fact they have extremely stringent criteria about accepting blood donors.
          Donors are systematically checked against known infections,

      • Excluding signature and block quotes:

        777 Words.
        17 Parenthetical statements.
        399 Words excluding those inside parentheses

        Almost exactly half of what was written (49%) was inside parentheses (That may be a little excessive). :)

    • Modding before finished reading is a regretful thing. The first 2/3 of the 1st sentence starts out interesting, but devolves into a homophobic rant.

    • > I know people with HIV can be kept alive for a long time, but they are obviously infecting other people,

      HIV can be "clinically latent" for 10 years. That is a _long_ time to be infectious but without symptoms. For someone sexually active, that is also a long time to have a single sexual partner and rely on both themselves and that partner to be sexually monogamous. And given the sexual activity of some people and of their cultures, I'm afraid the continuing though much reduced spread is not surprising.

  • It's already here: "social justice". (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The next global pandemic is already here, and it's commonly called "social justice". The symptoms include a loss of the ability to think logically, chronic knee-jerk reactions, repeated false accusations of racism and sexism, hypersensitivity to anything that may be potentially considered offensive by somebody somewhere, and daily idiotic stories about some totally irrelevant social justice nonsense here at Slashdot.

  • can we get all of those rodents rounded up and sent to Washington D.C.?

  • Fortune Telling (Score:3)

    by pubwvj ( 1045960 ) on Monday May 18, 2015 @08:19PM (#49723153)

    "the model has identified more than 150 new animal species that could harbor zoonotic diseases"

    Using a very broad baseline helps - just like astrology and fortune telling.

  • I mean, how many of the latest big epidemics has been transmitted by rodents? and even then how many of those depend on other factors not taken in account with this approach (arbovirus, change in ecology, etc.) Even if they really have a good model, putting as risky more than 150 species and a territory under heavy risk including half of the world would not be exactly useful to redirect resources.

  • 10,000 dead!!! (Score:3)

    by EmperorOfCanada ( 1332175 ) on Monday May 18, 2015 @08:52PM (#49723337)
    I was told by a guy who build computer models of pandemics that when the media is blah blahing about ebola and whatnot that the key test is that if we first hear of a disease and 10,000 are dead then it is time to run for the hills but no sooner. Everything else is pure hype. But he also said that he didn't think that the governments of the world fully understood the math behind a truly nasty disease and that they wouldn't do the right thing when it came to quarantines especially with "favoured" countries. He said shutting down all transport to the Ivory Coast was enough of a political hand-grenade so what would be like to shut down all travellers to and from Japan, or England? The key being not most travellers but all including the VIPs who will potentially make calls to the whitehouse or whitehall as the case may be.

    So while he thought that we could easily deal with any pandemic along the lines of the worst in history that the mamby-pamby governments of today wouldn't so he had a cabin way in the woods to sit it out until the various governments realized that PR was now out the window and that measures for survival now needed and could be brutally implemented. A great example would be the aggressive measures taken against malaria in the Southern US would be very difficult to implement in today's political climate.

    But at the same time he was working on a model that showed that our ability to deal with diseases is soon approaching the point where pretty much no disease could really wipe out huge majorities of populations.

    By the way the second test of a really dangerous disease was that another 10,000 were dead in western countries in that many diseases are local by their very nature such as Malaria; so a disease that spread in a modern non tropical country would be a dire problem. Ebola basically not spreading in the West is a perfect example.
  • Actually got to play the board game "Pandemic" recently. It's a great game, but one relevant learning from it was that we had to lose three times before we worked out how to actually contain diseases. I am hoping that our society has had enough experience with disease outbreak control that we actually handle such an event successfully. The recent Ebola situation seems to suggest that we're not bad (though could be better). But, if we had something start in a big city in a Western, developed country, and
  • Oh ya, we're fucked.
  • It will come from Africa or Asia. See, I can do it too.

  • That's easy. Whenever the media need a new hype or pharma corporations need to get rid of stockpiled old antidote.

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