The role of U.S. airports in disease epidemics

Public health crises of the past decade — such as the 2003 SARS outbreak, which spread to 37 countries and caused about 1,000 deaths, and the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic that killed about 300,000 people worldwide — have heightened awareness that new viruses or bacteria could spread quickly across the globe, aided by air travel.

While epidemiologists and scientists who study complex network systems — such as contagion patterns and information spread in social networks — are working to create mathematical models that describe the worldwide spread of disease, to date these models have focused on the final stages of epidemics, examining the locations that ultimately develop the highest infection rates.

But a new study by researchers in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) shifts the focus to the first few days of an epidemic, determining how likely the 40 largest U.S. airports are to influence the spread of a contagious disease originating in their home cities. This new approach could help determine appropriate measures for containing infection in specific geographic areas and aid public health officials in making decisions about the distribution of vaccinations or treatments in the earliest days of contagion.

Unlike existing models, the new MIT model incorporates variations in travel patterns among individuals, the geographic locations of airports, the disparity in interactions among airports, and waiting times at individual airports to create a tool that could be used to predict where and how fast a disease might spread.

Read more at MIT News: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/sp...

Animation courtesy Juanes Research Group - http://juanesgroup.mit.edu/

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  Science & Technology

[jdrodrigues7]

Wow... I was adding to the video in a helpful way... Perhaps if you've actually realize that there is a flash game that teaches you about these flight patterns as well as global boat traffic patterns, you'd see how you are mistaken. This video makes what they found seem as those they are the first to put this together and they direct you to learn more in scholarly way via MIT research but we all know that learning is done more effectively through games which is why I recommended a game.

[jdrodrigues7]

Just play "Pandemic 3" the Free Flash Game...

[deliah562]

Matrix, or just plain careless, love ur neighbor, as you would yourself, we all need each other healthy.

[QueenDeclan]

Get to Madagascar now before they shut the Seaport because someone in the world coughed!

[Mr42watson]

and this is why we need to colonize space

we are just to vulnerable

[entalto77]

Now I'm remembering the movie 12 monkeys...

[BraggAboutBetty]

Too many sleepers will never see this. And, if they do, won't fully understand the gravity or "the false flag".

[ToolFan68]

This is a pre-false flag implant for you that are still in the matrix. Wake up.