Real-time epidemic forecasting for pandemic influenza

[Laidback Al]

Re: Real-time epidemic forecasting for pandemic influenza

In another thread Racter suggests that the attack rate will be the critical factor. The more people sick at the same time, with secondary employee loss of people staying home to take care of sick relatives, we could easily have serious infrastructure problems even of the CFR were relatively low.

The attack rate is simply the percentage of people infected, without regard for the speed at which the disease spreads.


I think it gets too complicated to figure, partly due to interdependency of factors. How people respond may make a big difference, and predicting that is never a perfect science. But if you took a typical strain of seasonal flu and cranked the attack rate up a bunch, it seems reasonable to assume that at some point you'd start to see critical systems strained to the breaking point, even if the CFR remained about what would normally be expected from seasonal flu. If those systems started to break down across wide areas simultaneously the consequences are something we can only guess at; it's never happened before.

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?p=34153

 

[under the radar]

Re: Real-time epidemic forecasting for pandemic influenza

Yes. If there is a high enough case attack rate, the social disruption may become infrastructure failure or collapse. The duration of the infrastructure collapse would depend on the case fatality rate. The higher the case fatality rate, the longer the duration of the infrastructure collapse.

In another thread Racter suggests that the attack rate will be the critical factor. The more people sick at the same time, with secondary employee loss of people staying home to take care of sick relatives, we could easily have serious infrastructure problems even of the CFR were relatively low.




http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?p=34153

 

[JJackson]

Re: Real-time epidemic forecasting for pandemic influenza

The graph that I used in my earlier post came from the UK pandemic plan. I originally used it in a long prep manual, which I wrote about a year ago. I used it to illustrate the point that if you become infected during a pandemic wave you are unlikely to be able to get quality medical attention as the health services will be totally overwhelmed. The more people that manage to prep and remain in isolation during a wave the better the health services will cope. Those that have sheltered in place, but still get infected between waves, should be able to avail themselves of a high level of medical care. The more we can do to widen the base and lower the peak of this curve the better society will cope as a whole.