[gis_info] FW: [nsgic_board_list] swine flue

[SMITH Cy * EISPD GEO]

I thought you all might be interested in this message from my
counterpart, Mike Byrne, the new State GIO in CA.  He came to the
position recently from the public health agency in CA.  This was part of
a discussion about a conference agenda.

 

cy

 

Cy Smith, GISP

Statewide GIS Coordinator

COGO Chair

NSGIC Past-President

DAS/Geospatial Enterprise Office

955 Center St. NE, Room 470

Salem, OR  97301

503-378-6066

http://gis.oregon.gov

 

________________________________

From: Byrne, Michael at CIO [mailto:Michael.Byrne at CIO.ca.gov] 
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 10:52 PM
To: NSGIC Board List
Subject: RE: [nsgic_board_list] Agenda Options

 

Chris/Dan,

  These are excellent questions, and a valuable discussion.  I must say
I have a slightly different take on this, having worked in the health
arena for sometime.  So, as we all know, the technology is never the
problem.  CDC (and indeed many other health entities) have the
technology in place to collect, analyze, and serve the data for
consumption by others.  Setting up a data service is not the issue.  For
the health folks, from my experience, it is all about the validity of
the data.  There are protocols and academic forces far greater than I
(or perhaps we) at work here. 

 

Events like these are not like other events (fire, flood, earthquakes,
tornadoes etc), where the public and CNN are standing there with their
IPones emailing proof of the event.  There is tons of data validity and
lab tests and confirmation of process and second round lab tests and the
like.  Epidemiology events have very different bounds than other natural
disaster events.  As an example, all of the labs in California (there
are over 6,000 of them) where a sample might be sent to test something,
in a case like this, must have CDC confirm the positive tests.  I am not
exactly sure how this works, but I believe samples are also sent to CDC
and we do not get positive confirmation until both tests are confirmed.

 

I am not saying that the transfer of information at this time is well
thought out and going smoothly, I am saying these events are different
and there are cultural issues which provide a different problem set than
natural disasters.  

 

We (NSGIC) should identify this issue, and be sensitive to the public
need and the lead agency need and where our services can help the two
out.  Clearly the public has a right to know the issue, and in this case
the lead agency has a need to be very accurate and correct in
determining the issue.  

 

I am going to conclude by also throwing out there that we need to have a
good head on our shoulders about the 'culture of fear' here.  For my
state, we have, as of 2 pm today, 16 confirmed cases, and 0 deaths (for
context we have 37,000,000 people).  We expect the number to grow in
California, but with the temperature rising, we also anticipate a 6 week
max (that is the virus has a max infection rate in the next 6 weeks), if
the strain does mutate significantly.  Mostly this is because of the
ambient air temperature in the northern hemisphere is getting warmed as
we move to summer (and this virus dies in heat), but also because the
WHO recognizes that this strain of H1N1 is not that strong (see
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-sci-swine-reality30-2009apr30,
0,3606923.story ).  

 

 

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