Opinion formers and conspiracy theorists

[Lark]

I just watched the movie Contagion again, I like that movie but I can understand why people werent thrilled by it, its more realistic and a lot less action story than anything like it or before it, for instance Outbreak, but I like features like this one.

I liked it because in part some of the characters are supposedly similar to the stories of people involved in fighting the Avian Flu outbreaks in asia, which werent covered a lot outside of the scientific/epidemiology (spelling) community or in the western media, I read, years after the fact, about someone who worked closely with victims, long after they were likely to have been infected themselves and then died researching the disease. There knowledge marches on though.

Anyway, I think the movie did a very good job of protraying issues to do with populism versus accuracy and accountability in reporting, there's a character who is a blogger and conspiracy theorist who eventually profits massively from the public's trust of him, or more like their distrust of everyone else, however, bigger than this still, as they rightly say his overnight fortune was liable to be wiped out by civil suits once people got wise to him after the emergency, was the fact as an opinion former he was likely to be able to influence people's uptake of the eventual vacine. Which could have jeopardised the actual recovery.

What are your opinions on phenomenon like this? Does the reach of social media rival conventional media and what are the consequences? At any time and at times of emergencies? Should people be able to do the equivalent of "cry fire in the theatre"? Its become more feasible than ever before with new technology, I'll give my own opinions in a moment.

 

[sprinkles]

People should be able to speak freely because some times there is a fire in the theater.

Some good rights can be abused. A few bad people can ruin an otherwise good thing. If we have to regulate every good freedom because of what a bad egg does with it, then that is letting bad people ruin good things.

What kind of life is that where the few ruin everything for the many?

 

[muir]

SARS Virus in Vials Missing from French Lab; Pasteur Institute Officials Say 2,000 Fragments of Deadly Agent Vanished

http://www.hngn.com/articles/29026/...-2-000-fragments-of-deadly-agent-vanished.htm

A lab in France announced that it lost at least 2,000 vials holding portions of the deadly SARS virus this week.

According to ABC News, the Pasteur Institute in Paris announced that officials noticed vials were missing earlier this month. They then got in touch with the National Security Agency of Medicines and Health Products in the European country. A press release on the event reported that the agency opened an investigation into the loss on April 8.

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Dr. William Schaffner, who works at Vanderbilt University Medical Center as chair of preventative medicine, confirmed that fragments of the virus wouldn't present any immediate danger, but the loss of such a crucial piece of material did not reflect well on the lab's safety procedures.

"It's actually not in itself so scary, but you wonder about the procedures in that laboratory," Schaffner said. "Could that lab, and perhaps others, actually misplace vials that have the complete virus so that it might escape?"

Severe acute respiratory syndrome, better known by its acronym SARS, caused the deaths of almost 800 people during a 2003 epidemic that spanned four continents, ABC reported. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there haven't been any reported instances of SARS in the past 10 years.

SARS has been labeled a "select agent" in the United States, which means the virus has the "potential to pose a severe threat to both human and animal health, to plant health, or to animal and plant products," the CDC reported.

The Mayo Clinic describes SARS' symptoms as beginning with flu-like problems - chills, fever and sore throat - but in the following seven days, the fever can heighten, a dry cough will develop, and the victim will experience shortness of breath.

Schaffner told ABC that the French lab probably put the SARS virus fragments in a lab refrigerator, then left the contents for an extended period of time. He said he hoped that the vials were accidentally destroyed.

"It reminds us that each and every lab must have rigorous safety procedures," Schaffner stressed. "People must be trained, and there has to be good supervision."


Le gasp!! Zut Alors!!

Where could ze missing vials be? Could they possibly be used by the shadow government's NATO stay behind armies (operation gladio) to create outbreaks as a biotech weapon as part of their 'strategy of tension'?

 

[say what]

What are your opinions on phenomenon like this? Does the reach of social media rival conventional media and what are the consequences? At any time and at times of emergencies? Should people be able to do the equivalent of "cry fire in the theatre"? Its become more feasible than ever before with new technology, I'll give my own opinions in a moment.

I didn't get the vaccine message from Contagion- perhaps I should have! haha...I just enjoyed the real demonstration of population disease control. There's a lot of work done on mapping the spread of diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, west nile and lyme disease ...etc.

Here is some literature that is typically given to population health students:

http://thebritishgeographer.weebly.com/the-spread-of-disease-and-its-management.html

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/13/4/07-0037_article.htm

http://www.who.int/environmental_health_emergencies/disease_outbreaks/communicable_diseases/en/

http://scimaps.org/maps/map/impact_of_air_travel_24/detail/


The case in Contagion was pretty extreme- but the mechanisms and pathways were correct!

 

[Lark]

I didn't get the vaccine message from Contagion- perhaps I should have! haha...I just enjoyed the real demonstration of population disease control. There's a lot of work done on mapping the spread of diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, west nile and lyme disease ...etc.

Here is some literature that is typically given to population health students:

http://thebritishgeographer.weebly.com/the-spread-of-disease-and-its-management.html

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/13/4/07-0037_article.htm

http://www.who.int/environmental_health_emergencies/disease_outbreaks/communicable_diseases/en/

http://scimaps.org/maps/map/impact_of_air_travel_24/detail/


The case in Contagion was pretty extreme- but the mechanisms and pathways were correct!

This may seem like a dumb example, by comparison to your links there, but there was also a really great example from, of all places, the world of warcraft, with something called the "blood curse" which was a kind of contagion, the behaviour of gamers in relation to this phenomenon was mapped by epidemiologists, now I dont know if it was originally or just eventually but it was really interesting, people didnt just refuse to comply with attempts at containment they did real douchey things like teleport into uninfected or just cleansed areas to reinfect them and a range of equally awful selfish or asshole things.

It wasnt just cases of non-compliance with the authorities or any kind of social or normative community effort at control but positive attempts at spreading infection, I am cursed, therefore everyone else ought to be too kind of thing.

Evolutionary psychologists who argue about the selfish gene loved it as an example of bad character being the norm.

 

[muir]

I didn't get the vaccine message from Contagion

Maybe in an indirect way he is actually answering to the recent vaccine thread...

 

[say what]

Maybe in an indirect way he is actually answering to the recent vaccine thread...

True!

 

[say what]

This may seem like a dumb example, by comparison to your links there, but there was also a really great example from, of all places, the world of warcraft, with something called the "blood curse" which was a kind of contagion, the behaviour of gamers in relation to this phenomenon was mapped by epidemiologists, now I dont know if it was originally or just eventually but it was really interesting, people didnt just refuse to comply with attempts at containment they did real douchey things like teleport into uninfected or just cleansed areas to reinfect them and a range of equally awful selfish or asshole things.

It wasnt just cases of non-compliance with the authorities or any kind of social or normative community effort at control but positive attempts at spreading infection, I am cursed, therefore everyone else ought to be too kind of thing.

Evolutionary psychologists who argue about the selfish gene loved it as an example of bad character being the norm.

That's interesting! I never heard of them doing that- but it sounds pretty cool! It would be hard to justify that actual behaviour in the real world though. Do you know how many times I have flown people around and then dropped them just to kill them? A LOT! But does this mean it's a natural trait for me? I don't think so. The realism factor in games is a huge issue. If you know there is no actual real world outcome to your actions, how does it impact your behaviour?

Cool study though! I would be interested in seeing how they figured in implications for real world behaviour

 

[Lark]

That's interesting! I never heard of them doing that- but it sounds pretty cool! It would be hard to justify that actual behaviour in the real world though. Do you know how many times I have flown people around and then dropped them just to kill them? A LOT! But does this mean it's a natural trait for me? I don't think so. The realism factor in games is a huge issue. If you know there is no actual real world outcome to your actions, how does it impact your behaviour?

Cool study though! I would be interested in seeing how they figured in implications for real world behaviour

That was my thoughts when I first heard about it, I know that I used to play the earliest versions of command and conquer and didnt care about civilian casualties on the levels were that was possible but obviously I wouldnt think that way in real life.

Although when I did hear about the whole "blood curse" thing it was pretty massive, they had such trouble wiping that thing out in the end, there are other examples which are interesting from massive online role players too, there was one which they producers created a monster or guardian which was undefeatable, unknown to gamers, they mounted an incredible globally co-ordinated and co-operative attempt to do so. Probably a heartening example of the opposite to the douchery of the "blood curse" viral plague.