Flu Spreads Through Social Network
This is fresh off the press at The New York Times
Close Look at a Flu Outbreak Upends Some Common Wisdom
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: February 3, 2011
If you or your child came down with influenza during the H1N1, or swine flu, outbreak in 2009, it may not have happened the way you thought it did.
A new study of a 2009 epidemic at a school in Pennsylvania has found that children most likely did not catch it by sitting near an infected classmate, and that adults who got sick were probably not infected by their own children.
Closing the school after the epidemic was under way did little to slow the rate of transmission, the study found, and the most common way the disease spread was a through child’s network of friends.
Researchers learned all this when they studied an outbreak of H1N1 at an elementary school in a semirural community in spring 2009. They collected data in real time, while the epidemic was going on.
With this information on exactly who got sick and when, plus data on seating charts, activities and social networks, they were able to use statistical techniques to trace the spread of the disease from one victim to the next. Their report appears online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The scientists collected data on 370 students from 295 households. Almost 35 percent of the students and more than 15 percent of their household contacts came down with flu. The most detailed information was gathered from fourth-graders, the group most affected by the outbreak.
The class and grade structure had a significant effect on transmission rates. Transmission was 25 times as intensive among classmates as between children in different grades. And yet sitting next to a student who was infected did not increase the chances of catching flu.
Social networks were apparently a more significant means of transmission than seating arrangements. Students were four times as likely to play with children of the same sex as with those of the opposite sex, and following this pattern, boys were more likely to catch the flu from other boys, and girls from other girls.
The progress of the disease from day to day followed these social interactions: from May 7 to 9, the illness spread mostly among boys; from May 10 to 13 mostly among girls.
“Our social networks shape disease spread,” said Simon Cauchemez, the lead author. “And we can quantify the role of social networks.”
Thirty-eight percent of children 6 to 12 were infected, compared with 23 percent of 11- to 18-year-olds and 13 percent of those older than 18. Adults were only about half as susceptible as children, but when they got sick they were just as likely to transmit the virus to others.
The school closed from May 14 to 18, but there was no indication that this slowed transmission. It may already have been too late — May 14 was the 18th day of the outbreak, and 27 percent of the students already had symptoms.
The scientists found no difference in transmission rates during the closure and during the rest of the outbreak. This, they write, confirms earlier studies showing that a school has to be closed quite early in an epidemic to have any effect on disease transmission.
Only 1 in 5 adults caught the illness from their own children, and this goes against one of the most common arguments for closing schools: that it will prevent the disease from moving from the school to households.
“Here we find that most of the infected adults were not infected by one of the children in their household,” said Dr. Cauchemez, a research fellow at Imperial College London. “This information could be used to understand whether it might be better to close a school, or to close individual classes or grades.”
Other experts were impressed with the work. “I think it’s a nice step,” said Ira M. Longini Jr., a professor of biostatistics at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “It’s a beautiful analysis of an important dataset. This virus spreads very fast among school-age children, so the topic is important.”
What’s Really Hood: A Collection of Tales from the Streets by Wahida Clark, et al
Sometimes do you pick up a book and you don’t really know why you did? I saw this book in Target, and picked it up on an impulse. I read the cover and thought “you know, this is way out of my culture and out of my comfort zone” but then I thought hey – it’s a sub-culture in my own country, and like isn’t it hypocritical to be so interested in other cultures and then to ignore this sub-culture in my own country? Plus, I had a friend called Wahida, . . . well, it doesn’t have to make sense. It’s just the way it was.
I read the whole book. Some of what I read was frankly repellant. Some of the sex was so implausible that I can’t tell if my ideas are just way out of step with the changing times (and there are clues that this may be the problem) or that this sub-culture just has constant, earth-shaking sex.
The book contains five very different stories, but there are threads of similarity that appear in all five. Drugs are rampant, and destructive to individuals, couples, families, children, friendships, marriages, and the social context. Parenting skills are often fragile or non-existent. The male-female relationships are mostly exploitive.
And they all dream of a better life.
I think that’s what kept me reading. The stories are raw. You might not even like them at all, you might wish you had never heard of this book, but there is an honesty in the rawness, and a yearning to escape. The goal of all the easy money in the drug trade is mostly to GET OUT, to run away to some place safe, to live in a place where gunshots aren’t heard, and where kids can safely go to school.
I learned a lot from reading this book, but it was not an easy read. It is gritty, and characters you find yourself liking get killed off. It’s also stuck with me; I find myself thinking about things it brought to my attention. I’d love for you to read it too, and tell me what you think.
I Don’t Know Which was Worse
I had to take the Qatteri Cat to a boarding facility today, and I had a really hard time with it. First, when I got home, he was all stretched out in his heated bed. I had unplugged it earlier, and I had not filled his bowl at noon, and I figured the combination of hunger and not-warm bed would encourage him to come downstairs, where I waited for him with his cage. I had brought the carrying cage out several days ago, because he always freaks out when he sees it, so I leave it out until he gets so he can walk past it without running.
But this time, I kept going upstairs to check on him, and even though his bed was no longer heated, he just kept stretching and turning over.
Finally, I took his bird/stick toy, and teased him a little, at which point he was wide awake, and chased me merrily down the stairs and around the house until we got to the cage, where I scooped him up and popped him in.
As we drove to the inn, he complained a little, but he was lying down in the cage and looked pretty relaxed. I had a big pit in my stomach. I felt bad about tricking him out of his bed and turning his toy into a manipulation to get him into the cage. I know, I know, I am over-thinking this and feeling bad over not much.
So we get to the inn, and QC goes right into his upper berth, a two room suite with a special covered area for his litter. He steps right out of the carry-cage and into his room, and doesn’t even look back. We fill his dish with lunch, and shut the door. The tech brings out the kitty-treats and QC’s eyes light up.
I don’t know which was worse, feeling bad about bringing him to the boarding place, or feeling bad because QC didn’t appear to mind it that much, LOL.
“So I Shot HIm . . . “
In Pensacola, people talk all the time about “carrying.” People have lots of weapons; even my tiniest little friend has a small revolver in her handbag when she goes out.
This old guy makes life a lot easier for the rest of us. Sometimes young guys get bad ideas, and these guys evidently thought they would hit and rob the old people. Guess they got quite a surprise. Guess they will think twice before doing another home invasion – once they get out of prison, which will probably be quite a while from now.
Resident shoots 2 teens in home invasion
Resident, 72, fends off 3 attackers; 1 suspect in hospital, 2 in jail
Two teenagers were shot Saturday night by a 72-year-old man they allegedly beat with a baseball bat during a home-invasion robbery in Ferry Pass.
About 8:45 p.m., three teenage males knocked on the door of a home in the 3300 block of Raines Street, Pensacola Police Department officials said.
When resident Jack Crawford, 72, answered the door, one of the teens hit him in the head with an aluminum bat and tried to force his way into the home.
“I opened it up, and he hit me right off. … Wham! Split my head open,” Crawford said.
“So I shot him and another guy,” Crawford said, chuckling as he told the story to a News Journal reporter Sunday evening. “I could have shot the third one, but I would have had to shoot him in the back as he ran away.”
The attackers fled the scene on foot, and Crawford’s 70-year-old sister, who also lives at the home, called the police, he said.
Earl Benard, 15, Nathaniel Nichols, 17, and Curtis Crenshaw, 18, all of Pensacola, have been charged with home-invasion robbery and aggravated battery in connection with the case, police said.
Crenshaw and Nichols were arrested at a local hospital after being dropped off for treatment with gunshot wounds to their torsos. Benard later was arrested at a nearby rental home.
Nichols remained hospitalized Sunday afternoon, police said. Crenshaw was treated and released and was being held Sunday evening at Escambia County Jail on $300,000 bond.
State Attorney Bill Eddins said he plans to try all three suspects as adults.
Crawford said he grabbed his handgun as a precaution and was holding it at his side when he opened the door Saturday night.
“At 9 o’clock at night, I never take any chances,” Crawford said.
The three teens had “hoods on and scarves around their faces,” Crawford said, and they hit him with the bat before anyone had a chance to speak.
Crawford stumbled back a step from the blow but didn’t fall, and he started shooting as the first attacker was coming through the door, he said.
“I didn’t go down, and I think it shocked him,” Crawford said.
Following the attack, Crawford was transported by ambulance to West Florida Hospital for treatment of injuries to his head. He said doctors stapled his scalp back together, and he was back at home and feeling fine Sunday evening.
“Yeah I’m fine. I’ve got a hard head,” Crawford said.
Police did not release any information Sunday about possible connections between Crawford and the teens. Crawford said he’s lived in the neighborhood about 12 years, and he suspects the attackers were acquaintances with a neighborhood boy who used to do odd jobs around his home.
Crawford said he wasn’t too rattled by the attack, and he still felt comfortable staying in the home.
He said he’s had a rough-and-tumble past that’s left him with a cool head in similar situations.
“I’m not that big of a boy, but I had a reputation,” Crawford said.
I live next door to a cop. His car isn’t marked, but it is a big dark Crown Vic with that cage thing that separates the front from the back seats. Not that criminals are very smart, but you would have to be REALLY stupid to invade my house.
This story is from today’s Pensacola News Journal.
Today in Kuwait
Oh! I am green with envy! I would love to be at these events!
Imagine what the release of falcons is going to look like!
Al Jazeera (English) Covers Egypt
If you are in the USA, the best coverage I have been able to find has been on Al Jazeera live. They have English language coverage. Unlike Egypt, which has closed down all access to the internet, you can stream Al Jazeera live by clicking on the blue type below.
Their coverage is – from what I can tell – fair and balanced.
It’s in the mid 70’s Fahrenheit, in Cairo in the daytime, getting down to the 50’s – 60’s at night – perfect weather for a protest. Looks like Paris in the late 60’s.
Full Speed
Thanks be to God, it was only a bad 24 hours. I thought it was something I ate that had maybe gone bad, but I was also so tired, and so cold. I huddled under layers of covers, including a feather bed, and slept and slept and slept.
I worried that sleeping on and off all day, I wouldn’t sleep at night, but again, I slept and slept and slept. Woke up this morning to the Qatari Cat coughing up a hairball, and felt like my normal self. 🙂
LOL, at one point last evening, a plumber came by to take a look at some little things we need done, and he referred to “the dog sleeping on the bed.” I laughed and said “that’s not a dog, it’s our cat!” He was astonished. The Qateri Cat is a very long cat, with great big fur, so he does look a lot bigger than he really is. (He doesn’t look like a small dog, either, but more like a very medium sized dog.)
Lost Day
I am so rarely sick that I hardly know what to do when I get sick. I think I must’ve eaten something spoiled; I’ve got all the digestive clues, and I’ve huddled under my down comforter most of the day, trying to get warm. Small headache. No energy. No appetite. I just want to sleep until it goes away.
The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke
“Here’s the book,” Sparkle said, sliding into the restaurant seat as we all poured over the menu, wafts of garlic, white wine and butter drifting our way. “I’m getting kind of tired of Dave and Clete.”
“What, you mean not just bending the envelope but tearing right through it?” I asked “Or all the gratuitous violence?”
“Mostly the scorn for official procedures,” she started, two little lines between her eyes as she took in all the delicious possibilities, “How about some of that Montepulciano?”
She passed the book along to me. I was in the middle of another book, but oh, the temptation to drop it and get on with a new James Lee Burke.
The book opens with Dave Robicheaux, our recovering alcoholic detective, meeting up with a convict on a work crew whose sister has disappeared and who was found murdered. Bernadette Latiolais’s remains are thought to be the work of a serial killer working the area who targets prostitutes, but Bernadette was an honor student, graduating with a full scholarship promised to a Louisiana university. She was also an heiress, in a small way, to some property at the edge of a swamp. She doesn’t fit the profile, and her brother wants justice – not for himself, he’s doing his time, but for his sister, who never did anything to anyone, and who wanted to create a conservation area to preserve bears.
Right off the top, Robicheaux is outside of his parish, investigating a case nobody cares about in an area out of his jurisdiction.
OK, OK, my sister is right, this is pretty much another formulaic James Lee Burke. There are the corrupt rich families, the amoral women, the voiceless victims. Instead of the old Italian organized crime families, this time there are hired mercenaries, equally creative in killing, but way more efficient in cleaning up afterwards.
I’m just a sucker for James Lee Burke’s writing. Here’s one sample, from his interview with a very rich old man who goes a long way back with Robicheaux’s family:
“Don’t get old, Mr. Robicheaux. Age is an insatiable thief. It steals the pleasures of your youth, then locks you inside your own body with your desires still glowing. Worse, it makes you dependent upon people who are half a century younger than you. Dont’ let anyone tell you that it brings you peace, either, because that’s the biggest lie of all.”
Burke’s Dave Robicheaux and his private-investigator friend Clete are flawed men, prone to violence, but I cut them a lot of slack because in each novel they are bright shining avengers of all the wrongs done to the weak and helpless. They are Quixotic. They fight the rich and powerful for the rights of the common man. They know the risks they take, and they are too old to think they are going to survive every bad guy they go after. It’s a good thing the law of averages doesn’t hold true in novels; they should have been dead a long time ago.
What keeps me coming back are the lyrical descriptions of life along the Atchafalaya Bayou, community life in New Iberia, Louisiana, and Robicheaux’s family life, wife Molly, daughter Alifair (now grown to young womanhood) and Snuggs their cat and Tripod their raccoon, as well as the knowledge that at the end of the book, in spite of every evidence to the contrary, Dave and Clete will emerge alive, if damaged, and their indirect and violent path will have achieved some semblance of justice.
(I ordered the spaghetti with a white-wine mussel sauce, and Sparkle ordered the chicken marsala. Mom had seafood diablo.)
Breakfast Delight
One of the best things about breakfast is that we have all kinds of visitors at our backyard feeders. I love all the tiny little birds, but oh! the flashy splendor of the male cardinal!
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