Near real-time tracking of Ebola

If you want to see just how Ebola is spreading (and soon regressing?) , this article provides the view and insight of how it’s done. Ten years ago, these data would percolate slowly, compiled by public health authorities and eventually appear in an academic or lay publication Now through the foundations of computational epidemiology established by Dr. Brownstein, we are able to directly monitor this in-progress disaster. Now that we have a good afferent circuit, let’s see hope the efferent circuit is even more robust.

Influenza in Massachusetts

aegis.4.27.2009 Originally uploaded by kohane

Time will tell whether this picture is due to a lot of worried individuals with influenza-like symptoms showing up in emergency rooms or an actual uptick in cases. Nonetheless, there is something compelling about observing, live, the distribution of cases of influenza across this state.

An equally compelling global perspective is provided by my colleague John Brownstein.