The White Peril 白禍クシャミッ！

File under: Tell Us Something We Don't Know:

Crowded commuter trains would likely be a major contributor to the rapid spread of influenza in the event of an outbreak of a new strain in Japan, researchers have found.

A simulation performed by researchers from the University of Tokyo's Institute of Industrial Science and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases found that crowded commuter trains increased the number of infections, and suggested that halting them could decrease the number of infected people by as much as 30 percent.

Numerous simulations on the spread of new strains of influenza have been conducted, but the latest one is reportedly the first to take commuter trains into account.

...

The study found that without taking commuter trains into consideration, it would take about 50 days for the number of infected patients to peak, and more than 400,000 people would be infected.

However, when commuter trains were added into the equation, at a rate of 5 infections per 100,000 people per day, researchers found that it would take a dozen or so days for the number of infections to peak, with the number of patients increasing to 500,000.

I'm not an epidemiologist, but WTF? How is it possible to model the spread of a potential epidemic in contemporary Japan and just kind of NEGLECT to take the trains into account? Did they forget? Did they not feel they could map train travel effectively? That doesn't make sense--presumably civil engineers and railway schedulers have to do that kind of thing all the time. Very strange.

Added on 17 January: WTF? Where the hell are all these Australians coming from? Not that there's anything wrong with being Australian. Some of my best friends are Australian. My favorite band is Australian.

Kylie's Australian.

But normally, I have about five Australian visitors a week, and I know them all by name. Is there a sudden fashion there for American poofs living in Japan?

Oh, that's it. Thanks to Tim Blair for the link. Not to take anything away from Gaijin Biker, who has a very good blog, but I do feel compelled to point out that if it's Greenpeace's tomfoolery we're talking about, Ross at Romeo Mike's posted about this several days earlier.

(link)

Portia (mail):

Considering there have been strange people who've tried chemical and biological (? not sure I remember that right?) attacks in public transportation in Japan, yeah, you'd think it was part of their modeling.

I've been saying this for a while -- if the flu pandemic materializes the US (outside a few eastern cities) will be lightly hit in relation to the rest of the world. Our love affair with the car will protect us. It's not how the ecological mythos would like it to happen, but there it is.

Of course, I hope a flu pandemic doesn't happen. Even Japan and Western Europe, for all their packed commuter trains and buses would be lightly hit in comparison to the third world which has that plus sucky hygienic/health care conditions.

I think modelers are seriously underestimating the impact of a pandemic in terms of deaths.

P.

1.11.2006 12:19pm

Dean Esmay (www):

It may be that they didn't take trains into account because it has, seriously, been generations since we've had a real plague outbreak in the classic sense, so the models have probably been based on old standards that they just never bothered to update until someone noticed the hole.

1.11.2006 6:36pm

Sean Kinsell (mail) (www):

Dean, I did think of that--outdated equipment and poor information sharing is actually a surprisingly pervasive problem in Japanese universities and think tanks--but even if their models dated to after the war, the train system would still have been part of them in some form. The article doesn't say that they had to update their figures; it says this was the first simulation of the spread of a potential new form of influenza to take the commuter trains into account at all. You'd think that even if they were relying on old data, it wouldn't go back to, like, before the War.

Portia, yeah, that's always seemed likely to me, too. It's truly amazing how many people's germs you can come in contact with, even on a not-really-packed train and even if you think you're being very careful.

1.12.2006 12:24am

Gaijin Biker (mail) (www):

Ah, but did the study take into account that all the sick people would be wearing those cute little surgical masks? The masks will save us!

1.12.2006 5:13am

Toby (mail) (www):

OT - but this colloquialism is beyond my Japanese. S, can you help?

1.13.2006 1:34am

Okay, you were talking about "Take that, hippie!" right? Probably the closest equivalent is 「これでも食らえ！」(kore de mo kurae: which is literally more like "take this" or "eat this" or even "have a nice, hot cup of this"). That's from a Japanese colleague who looked it up. What I came up with initially based on context was 「いい気味だな」(ii kimi da na: "serves you right, huh!"), which is an expression you hear more often but isn't as close an equivalent. Hippies are just called ヒッピー (hippii).

1.14.2006 12:48am

Hennayatsu:

There is always 'Mi kara deta sabi' which means 'Rust that comes out from your own body'

It has a closer meaning to 'Serves you right' in English

Not exactly the same fuinki as 'Take that, hippy' though

1.16.2006 11:36pm

Jonathan Merz:

ザマー見ろ！」is what sprang into my head first...

1.17.2006 1:13am

Well, I was also trying to maintain the register. Also, "Take that!" doesn't always indicate that someone is only getting what he asked for, right? That was why I was a little unhappy with the "serves you right" equivalents. In that case...well, the register would be off, but I guess 自業自得 would probably be the best as far as meaning goes.

1.17.2006 1:31am

Carey (mail):

Serves you right? Take that, hippy? How about sod off, Swampy? Is Japanese too polite a language for that expression?

1.17.2006 7:14am

The White Peril 白禍

Categories

Contact

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Archives

Representative Posts

Subscribe

Links

Account:
Password:

Name:
Email:
Url: