Articles: pandemics.
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Front Public Health · Jan 2016
Twitter Influence on UK Vaccination and Antiviral Uptake during the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic.
Information exchange via Twitter and other forms of social media make public health communication more complex as citizens play an increasingly influential role in shaping acceptable or desired health behaviors. Taking the case of the 2009-2010 H1N1 pandemic, we explore in detail the dissemination of H1N1-related advice in the UK through Twitter to see how it was used to discourage or encourage vaccine and antiviral uptake. ⋯ Most tweets linked to reliable sources, however Twitter was used to discuss both individual and health authority motivations to vaccinate. The PMT framework describes the ways individuals assessed the threat of the H1N1 pandemic, weighing this against the perceived cost of taking medication. These findings offer some valuable insights for social media communication practices in future pandemics.
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Laborers and soldiers from China and Southeast Asia recruited during the First World War by Britain and France have been suggested as the origin of the 1918 influenza pandemic in Western Europe. This study aimed to review the available data to better understand the sources and origins of the 1918 influenza pandemic, and clarify whether, in fact, there was an Asian connection to its onset. ⋯ The results indicated that influenza mortality (estimated 1/1000) in Chinese and Southeast Asian laborers and soldiers lagged other co-located military units by several weeks. This finding does not support a Southeast Asian importation of lethal influenza to Europe in 1918.
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Review Meta Analysis
Key stakeholder perceptions about consent to participate in acute illness research: a rapid, systematic review to inform epi/pandemic research preparedness.
A rigorous research response is required to inform clinical and public health decision-making during an epi/pandemic. However, the ethical conduct of such research, which often involves critically ill patients, may be complicated by the diminished capacity to consent and an imperative to initiate trial therapies within short time frames. Alternative approaches to taking prospective informed consent may therefore be used. We aimed to rapidly review evidence on key stakeholder (patients, their proxy decision-makers, clinicians and regulators) views concerning the acceptability of various approaches for obtaining consent relevant to pandemic-related acute illness research. ⋯ CRD42014014000.
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Large outbreaks of zoonotic influenza A virus (IAV) infections may presage an influenza pandemic. However, the likelihood that an airborne-transmissible variant evolves upon zoonotic infection or co-infection with zoonotic and seasonal IAVs remains poorly understood, as does the relative importance of accumulating mutations versus re-assortment in this process. Using discrete-time probabilistic models, we determined quantitative probability ranges that transmissible variants with 1-5 mutations and transmissible re-assortants evolve after a given number of zoonotic IAV infections. ⋯ This may result in the evolution of a full transmissible genotype along short chains of contact transmission. Although co-infection with zoonotic and seasonal IAVs was shown to be a rare event, it consistently resulted in high viral loads of re-assortants, which may facilitate their onward transmission among humans. The prevention or limitation of zoonotic IAV infection in immunocompromised and contact individuals, including health care workers, as well as vaccination against seasonal IAVs-limiting the risk of co-infection-should be considered fundamental tools to thwart the evolution of a novel pandemic IAV by accumulation of mutations and re-assortment.