31 January 2019, Seattle: Guest lecture in Environmental Health Seminar at Washington University

[Daniel-Mietchen]

Thursdays, 12:30-1:20 pm (Pacific) https://deohs.washington.edu/calendar/environmental-health-seminar

The Environmental Health Seminar (Env H 580) is a department-sponsored seminar series for students, staff, and faculty; practicing professionals in the environmental and occupational health fields; and the public. This seminar highlights the rich diversity of our department and is an opportunity to hear from local, national, and internationally known scientists, practitioners, and policymakers on issues of current scientific importance.

Title of my talk: Data Sharing as a Key Component of Addressing and Preparing for Disease Outbreaks

[Daniel-Mietchen]

This is a follow-up to my talk at International Data Week 2018 (abstract, slides).

[Daniel-Mietchen]

In preparation, I will post some additional notes here before setting up the slides proper.

For instance, there was a press release by the Liberian Ministry of Health, announcing that fragments of Ebola Zaire virus RNA had been found in a Miniopterus inflatus bat in Liberia:

• http://nationalphil.org/index.php/press-release/
  • see also multiple news pieces on the matter
  • e.g. doi:10.1126/science.aaw7864, Das Virus in der Fledermaus

“felt that this was an important finding to bring to the public irrespective of a scientific publication”

[Daniel-Mietchen]

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory/Liberia

[Daniel-Mietchen]

• http://www.nbc29.com/story/39873768/uva-confirms-cases-of-norovirus-within-student-population
• https://tools.wmflabs.org/scholia/topic/Q1142751

[Daniel-Mietchen]

• 1970s and ‘Patient 0’ HIV-1 genomes illuminate early HIV/AIDS history in North America
  • reused blood samples to sequence patient genomes to analyze the spread of HIV
• Human Sera Collected between 1979 and 2010 Possess Blocking-Antibody Titers to Pandemic GII.4 Noroviruses Isolated over Three Decades

[Daniel-Mietchen]

• organizations with affiliated authors who have published about norovirus
• filter for a specific organization

[Daniel-Mietchen]

try to dig out that old paywalled paper that predicted that Liberia might be in risk of an Ebola outbreak

[Daniel-Mietchen]

Here's a post about a post about such papers: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150409/17514230608/dont-think-open-access-is-important-it-might-have-prevented-much-ebola-outbreak.shtml

[Daniel-Mietchen]

some more on those Liberian papers:

• http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2015/04/1982-study-suggested-ebola-was-liberia-then
• https://health-policy-systems.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12961-017-0235-3
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27865376
• https://web.archive.org/web/20171214145557/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/opinion/yes-we-were-warned-about-ebola.html
• https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06536

[Daniel-Mietchen]

My slides for today are up at https://github.com/Daniel-Mietchen/events/blob/master/Environmental-Health-Seminar-Env-H-580-on-2019-01-31.md . Will keep tuning them a bit more.

[Daniel-Mietchen]

Both the Liberian press release and the UVA email contained recommendations, and recommendations are just another kind of data to be collected, refined and shared in emergency contexts.

[Daniel-Mietchen]

Talk is over. I think it went well. It was recorded, and I hope it will be posted somewhere public soon.