Happy 4th birthday...

This blog!

I'm sure somene one said that a year in social media equates to 7 cat years. Maybe it 9.

Anyhoo, I'll be hunting down a cake for us all today - or maybe a muffin at the canteen.

My heartfelt thanks to those who have made writing for this blog so much fun. 

I hope we all keep learning about viruses together. Anything is worthwhile if you learn something from it. ...and have a reference to prove it was based on data...and cite that reference...and it gets cited by others...and peer reviewed....

Happy 4th!!

Just to be clear...

Words of wisdom from a Master....

Prof Vincent Racaniello (he of the TWiV netcasts and Virology blog) took another step towards being the Yoda of contemporary virology communication using social media.
Earlier this morning (my time), while live Tweeting from the Australian Society for Microbiology's (#2014ASM) annual meeting in Melbourne, Prof Racaniello imparted these words of wisdom. This came out during a Tweet exchange with @NewProf1 about how to find some balance as a scientist engaging in social media communication in addition to having a life, succeeding at work...and personal hygiene.

@scienceCC @AmerSocVirol Have to figure out how to balance lab/data/reading/family/spouse/writing/grants/eating/sleeping/showering...
— NewProf1 (@newprof1) July 7, 2014

[above Tweet since deleted-IanM, 29JUN2018]

@newprof1 @scienceCC @AmerSocVirol My two cents: If you have to figure out how to balance you’re already in trouble
— Vincent Racaniello (@profvrr) July 7, 2014

@newprof1 @scienceCC @AmerSocVirol My point is not to overthink about balance, tenure, grants, family. Just be passionate and it will work
— Vincent Racaniello (@profvrr) July 7, 2014

Interesting how close those words are to Yoda's...

 No.

Try not.

Do. Or do not.

There is no try.

Oh, and if you are at the ASM this year - Tweet something for crying out loud!! 

Get into it. 

Create a Twitter account right now - just use it for work related stuff and follow a few people. Social media is, among other things, a great way to get another view of science. And if you engage with the public a little, just around your field of interest to start off with, you might be amazed at how positive and personally rewarding it can be. Not to mention how widespread your reach can become compared to a standard journal publication paradigm. Think of it as another way to look at impact. You may even pick up some collaborations.

At the very least remember, teaching is a great way to learn.

MERS-CoV charting on hold after 113 new cases reported without details...[UPDATED]

UPDATE No.1: 10SEPT2017

With the announcement overnight that a bunch (133 detections including 92 fatal cases) of old laboratory confirmed Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) detections had been found, without any specific data to link them with earlier announcements, I will not be posting any further MERS-related charts. 

I believe there is a big World Health Organization (WHO) Disease Outbreak News update coming soon and it will provide all the detail - we bloggers will need to take a week off from our day jobs to add this detail to our line lists - but I'll resume charts some time after those data appear.

This is all obviously being dumped at the feet of the stood-down Deputy Minster of Public Health of he Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) whose reputation for total control was well reported. Let's not forget that the Minister, Abdullah al-Rabeeah, was stood down 21-April by King Abdullah. 

If Prof. Memish, who had been moved off the advisory committee when the new Acting Minster of Health took the reins, had the total responsibility (that many attribute to him) of ensuring every lab result was identified and reported and he was in charge of overseeing and releasing those data - then blame away! ;

But that would also mean that the Ministry of Health (MOH) is not a Ministry, but a one-manistry. I'd like to believe that was not the case. Was the Ministry really under the complete control of just one Deputy Minister? It's never that simplistic.

This latest event occurred 6-weeks after the change in Minister and included MERS cases from 2013/2014, pointing to reporting systems and data collection and collation pipelines that failed miserably.

Given the inconsistencies of case reporting by the MOH, I don't have much trouble believing this is not a cover up but an administrative stuff-up.

Sounds like I'm defending Prof. Memish too - which is not my intention. I do not know the facts. But I'm not sure anyone outside the KSA MOH does either.

Wouldn't it be great to live in a world where someone came out and just told it like it was? 

While Prof Memish obviously loved a good paper, and that was his chosen method of science communication (I've talked about that as a less-than-ideal route for public health matters), I personally have no evidence for or against the scope of his control over this latest debacle. 

Highlights of 113 retrospectively added (orange)
laboratory-confirmed detections of MERS
(including 92 deaths)
added to the cases already knwon (blue)
Chart from KSA MOH CCC [3]

A final note. These data [3] are presented on the new-look Ministry of Health's Control & Command Center (CCC).[1] It's a new website address so update your links. 

Let's wait and see whether the CCC lives up to it's name.

References..

1. Saudi MERS data review shows big jump in number of deaths
   http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/06/03/us-health-mers-saudi-idINKBN0EE1N820140603?feedType=RSS&feedName=health&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=309303
2. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of Health Command and Control Center (CCC)http://www.moh.gov.sa/en/CCC/PressReleases/Pages/default.aspx
3. Update in Statistics: Ministry of Health Institutes New Standards for Reporting of MERS-CoVhttp://www.moh.gov.sa/en/CCC/PressReleases/Pages/mediastatement-2014-06-03-001.aspx

Update...

1. Grammatical and font changes.

Dump the garbage...

Sharon from @FluTrackers and I had an exchange on Skype this morning - always a useful way to message, even with my high rate of typos - and we agreed (or perhaps I bullied) that there was little point to keeping  "TheUAE12" (as I've taken to calling the 12 cases announced in the Kuwaiti News Agency [1]) on the list. 

In the past I've also argued that if samples get dropped, such as when Spanish or other cases could not be confirmed as MERS-CoV-positive, for whatever reasons, that FluTrackers retain their case numbers and "count around them". So the numbers become discontinuous. Those arguments are based on the numbers having already become embedded among flublogians/coronablogians and this way they could continue to be trackable by those who have used them. For example, FluTrackers makes a note saying this case is now a probable case, not included in the tally as it could not be suitably confirmed or somesuch. This is akin to not making wholesale changes to the name of a virus because you no longer like the "look" of the name when it already has decades of published literature behind it and is in the head of every researcher in the field. 

I proposed to Sharon that the MERS-CoV detections over the past few days were not yet embedded enough to be missed. So we've cleaned our lists. The FluTracker's tally [2] now sites at 360 cases using Ministry and WHO data. And I follow that excellent list.

So my Tweets this morning (AEST) were about those numbers having now been deleted and the case list comprising ~6-days and 70 cases has been "moved up" to fill the gap, but the numbers remain continuous. The new list [2] is thus 12 cases down from a few hours ago, but that has little impact on April's surge of new cases. 

We think that some of TheUAE12 are included in recent WHO Disease Outbreak News posts but they are not linked to the announced 12, no-one could/would link them to the announced 12 and so retaining them as empty case numbers was pointless.

On with the show.

Resource...

1. UAE Media Report: 12 New (Asymptomatic?) MERS Cases Detected
   http://afludiary.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/uae-media-report-new-asymptomatic-mers.html
2. FluTrackers MERS-CoV line list | MASTER LIST
   http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=205075

Editor's comment: Biomolecular Detection and Quantification...

I've been invited to be a section Editor for Biomolecular Detection and Quantification (BDQ).

BDQ is an Elsevier-based, open access, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to championing excellence in molecular study design, measurement, data analysis and reporting. 

BDQ's Editor's-in-Chief are Stephen Bustin, Jim Huggett, Justin O'Grady, Michael Pfaffl, Carl Witwer and Ron Cook. Quite the line up huh?

My role will be one of attracting, reviewing and shepherding manuscripts relating to BDQ in infectious disease, but particularly related to viruses.

Our two main aims are:

1. to provide a forum for discussion and recommendation of guidelines designed to improve the accuracy of molecular measurement, its data analysis and the transparency of its subsequent reporting;
2. to publish molecular biology based studies that adhere to best practice guidelines, both current and future.

So, if you have any ideas for future articles or would like to publish in our little baby right now (once they become toddlers things get more rowdy), please contact me or one of the other Editors as soon as you can.

Links...

• The journal
  http://www.journals.elsevier.com/biomolecular-detection-and-quantification/
• Aims
  http://www.journals.elsevier.com/biomolecular-detection-and-quantification/
• Editorial Board
  http://www.journals.elsevier.com/biomolecular-detection-and-quantification/editorial-board/

Why one watches the webs for the worst of the woes...

In an article on BAYTODAY.CA,written by @HelenBranswell, there is a fantastic quote that really defines why infectious disease bloggers, and public health professionals working through more official channels, get all fired up when they cannot have or find, information that could be used to help monitor or understand disease outbreaks. 

"We breathe the same air. We drink the same water. We fly on the same planes. And an infectious disease outbreak anywhere is a potential risk and threat to all of us," said Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the center for global immigration and quarantine at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

"And we just have to constantly pay attention and stay vigilant."

The influenza H5N1 death in Canada has and continues to generate a huge amount of interest. It's also generating no small amount of confusion over how the infection was acquired by this late 20-something East Asian female who worked in healthcare at Red Deer Regional Hospital. Apart from that, this infection also highlighted that when many eyes focus on a case, it is very difficult to keep a patient's details, work, travel routes and trip details, secret for long. 

Does intentionally withholding any or all of age, sex, date of onset, date of hospitalization, and perhaps a few other deidentified details truly hinder a globally connected world's efforts to uncover these details? Seems not. Whether those details hinder a patient's ability to remain anonymous I cannot say; I said other things about that recently though.

In the meantime, interested and involved professionals and amateurs alike use what information they have to hand to bend their minds towards seeking answers and making comments that might help solve mysteries like this. Because they try to help. For the benefit of all of us. I suspect, regardless of the communicative devices available to them and the extent of the interconnectedness in which they abided at the time, they always have and they always will.