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Why Big Data Missed the Early Warning Signs of Ebola

▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/26/why_big_data_missed_the_early_warning_signs_of_ebola

Merci à @freakonometrics d’avoir signalé cet article sur Twitter

ith the Centers for Disease Control now forecasting up to 1.4 million new infections from the current Ebola outbreak, what could “big data” do to help us identify the earliest warnings of future outbreaks and track the movements of the current outbreak in realtime? It turns out that monitoring the spread of Ebola can teach us a lot about what we missed — and how data mining, translation, and the non-Western world can help to provide better early warning tools.

Earlier this month, Harvard’s HealthMap service made world headlines for monitoring early mentions of the current Ebola outbreak on March 14, 2014, “nine days before the World Health Organization formally announced the epidemic,” and issuing its first alert on March 19. Much of the coverage of HealthMap’s success has emphasized that its early warning came from using massive computing power to sift out early indicators from millions of social media posts and other informal media.

#ebola #statistics #big_data

In the Eye of a Man-Made Storm
▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/26/unwra_in_the_eye_of_a_man_made_storm_gaza_recovery_israel

Having worked in conflict zones for 25 years, I have often been confronted with the deep polarization that characterizes such environments. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a prime example: Everything related to the occupation of the Palestinian territory and the blockade of Gaza generates particularly high levels of passion and hostility. #UNRWA has not been spared in the past, and it was not spared in the latest conflict. I will therefore address how we responded to this acute crisis and some of the questions and criticisms we have received.

At the heart of the situation in #Gaza are people. At present, 1.8 million live in the Gaza Strip. In its urban areas, the population density is above 20,000 people per square kilometer — one of the highest in the world. Over 70 percent of Gaza’s residents are Palestinian refugees who fled or were forced to leave their homes during the war of 1948. UNRWA’s activities in Gaza focus on providing education, health care, and social services to this community, which numbers approximately 1.2 million people, or emergency aid in times of war.

When I first visited Gaza as the newly appointed commissioner-general in April, I was immediately struck by the sheer unsustainability of the situation. The refugees and wider population of Gaza have no prospects, no jobs, nowhere to go, and no future. The territory suffers from over 40 percent unemployment, over 65 percent youth unemployment, and 80 percent female unemployment. I was also struck by the depleted and heavily contaminated aquifer in Gaza, which will — along with Gaza’s run-down health, water, electricity, and sewage systems — make the Strip unlivable in a matter of just a few years. The staggering increase of people on UNRWA’s food distribution lists is another serious concern: These lists have soared from 80,000 people in 2000 to nearly 830,000 people just before the war.

UNRWA is at times challenged by people who criticize us for allegedly keeping the refugee question alive and holding refugees in a state of dependency. While I believe it is important that any humanitarian or development agency regularly and critically reviews how it operates, these questions fail to address the core underlying issues that affect the population in Gaza.

It is not UNRWA that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee crisis, but the lack of a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have yet to meet anyone, anywhere in the world, who wishes to remain a refugee — and this includes Palestinian refugees. The increase in the number of people dependent on UNRWA assistance is the direct consequence of the illegal land blockade imposed on Gaza since 2007.

#Israël #Israel #Palestine #crimes #impunité

If regular Sunnis like this guy support the Islamic State, then western hope of crushing it are illusory
▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/12/the_blood_brothers_of_anbar_sunni_arabs_iraq_islamic_state
#ISIS #Iraq #Irak #Syria

Ebola : We Could Have Stopped This - by Laurie Garrett
▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/05/we_could_have_stopped_this_ebola_virus_world_health_organization

Public health officials knew Ebola was coming. They know how to defeat it. But they’re blowing it anyway.

La réponse est très loin du compte :

To understand the scale of response the world must mount in order to stop Ebola’s march across Africa (and perhaps other continents), the world community needs to immediately consider the humanitarian efforts following the 2004 tsunami and its devastation of Aceh, Indonesia.

L’OMS est en vrac :

the sole major international responder, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), pleaded for help and warned repeatedly that the virus was spreading out of control. The WHO was all but AWOL, its miniscule epidemic-response department slashed to smithereens by three years of budget cuts, monitoring the epidemic’s relentless growth but taking little real action.

et ça fait des années qu’elle est maltraitée et instrumentalisée :

The neglectful status of the WHO was, horribly, by design. Its governing body, the World Health Assembly (WHA), in which nearly every nation on Earth is a voting member, has declined to increase country WHO dues for more than a quarter-century. Worse, following the 2008 financial crisis, most of the extrabudgetary special support that the WHO relied upon — funds from rich countries that more than doubled the agency’s financing — disappeared as once-wealthy governments turned away from philanthropy

le facteur épidémique (R0) s’accroît :

Today in Liberia, the virus is spreading so rapidly that no RO has been computed. Back in the spring, however, when matters were conceivably controllable, Liberia’s then-small rural outbreak was 1.59.

Les stats sous-évaluent la réalité :

WHO’s official case reports, which solely reflect lab-confirmed patients that have sought care in medical facilities, under-represents the true toll by at least half

Le reste de l’article est un appel à l’armée américaine qui est la seule (selon l’auteure) à pouvoir intervenir à cette échelle de besoins et de manière décisive :

Washington officials say off the record that options for U.S. military assistance are under consideration, and may be announced in a few days.

Mais ça va pas être facile :

Ebola responses in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and possibly Nigeria each need a “national force/brigade that tells people, ’this is what you do and what you do not,’ and that does surveillance — this brigade has to have the trust of the people.”

#santé #intervention #OMS #ebola #MSF #armée