August 3rd, 2008
April 2nd, 2008
February 25th, 2008
February 19th, 2008
January 2nd, 2007
October 25th, 2005
With recent reports of avian flu in Western Europe, the disease is clearly no longer East Asia's problem. It's a dilemma for the world. Last week I emailed Revere, the pseudonymous leader of Effect Measure, a public health group blog. Since its inception in late 2004, Effect Measure has been covering the global response to avian flu. My goal was to discuss the pandemic fears and what the world -- and ordinary people -- can do to prepare for it.
Revere, an environmental epidemiologist in a senior faculty position at a major research university, has 40 years of experience in medicine and public health. He is also one of the individuals behind the Flu Wiki, an Internet-based experiment in community mobilization and knowledge-pooling to face the feared epidemic. He paints an alarming picture. "If a pandemic is going to happen (and we don't know how to predict if it will or not with certainty), it will happen whatever we do," he writes. "There will be no "outside" for help to come from, so each community needs to prepare to cope on its own." In previous flu pandemics, hundreds of thousands of people went sick or died, leading to massive disruptions as workers failed to show up to work and instead surged into ill-equipped and ill-prepared hospitals ill-prepared.
Revere sees two big tasks ahead: managing the consequences of a potential pandemic, and building (or rebuilding) the world's rotting public health infrastructure. 4 comments · »»
August 2nd, 2008
July 30th, 2008
July 14th, 2008
At A Fistful of Euros, a discussion of the situation with the Roma people in Italy, inspired by this piece from the Guardian's Comment is Free (229 comments).
July 10th, 2008
June 18th, 2008
June 17th, 2008
June 12th, 2008
Kosmopolit writes about Romanian politicians' blogs.
May 29th, 2008
Belatedly, a link to a Eurovision report by BBC's Mark Mardell - and over 150 comments to his post.
| Korea content supported by |
![]() |
Japan content supported by |
![]() |