Richard Preston’s “The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story” has sat on my shelf for the past 20 years. And though I haven’t cracked it since reading it last in 1994, I knew exactly what I would find when I opened the book again Friday.

Source: www.suntimes.com

Just an observation . . . .    

 

When Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome [MERS] made its way into the U.S.in early May 2014 (http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0517-mers.html ), it only traveled about 7000 miles as the bird flies.  That doesn’t include any side routes the planes and passengers took.    

 

As the bird flies, the longest route from a foreign country (that is occupied) to Chicago is approximately 10,500 miles, heading from Western Australia to Chicago.  

 

Many of Australia’s little know diseases are those that are animal born.  That animal might be livestock in nature, marketed as a pet, or present as a refugee on board.  The common Australian diseases to strike the US tend to be like Australian Equine Fever.     

 

When we consider the Ebola distribution, the distance it has to travel is very close to that of MERS.  Ebola however is more latitude-defined, its ecology more limiting than the same for MERS.      

 

To better understand disease flow patterns in the Chicago area, I developed some videomaps on common diffusion patterns for a disease.  See:     

 

Chicago Disease diffusion patterns —  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAmftXNEahE  (four ways that diseases theoretically diffuse in and around Chicago)

 

African Disease patterns around the Great Lakes  — http://www.scoop.it/t/an-episurveillance-researchers-guide/p/4027597103/2014/09/07/african-in-migrating-disease-patterns-around-the-great-lakes-region 

 

African Disease Patterns, entire U.S. — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb4P_QM-Rjc  (other global migration diseases, from other parts of the world, are covered on this page as well)

 

Australian Disease Patterns, entire U.S. — http://www.scoop.it/t/national-population-health-grid/p/4021930885/2014/05/25/australian-disease-in-migration-patterns-youtube 

 

The EMR records of all diseases from other countries, merged onto one dataset- – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh7iU04GNXg

 

 

 

 

 

See on Scoop.it – Medical GIS Guide