I am presently sitting in the "Preventing a Pandemic Flu" working group at the National Academy of Sciences/Keck Futures Intiative. These discussions are embargoed for the time being, so I can't relate them here, but we are coming up with an interesting strategy that fills significant holes in the present US Gov't plan. My greatest fear is that President Bush's announcement has sucked all the air out of the room for other options. But perhaps we will attract sufficient attention to get some money spent.
We'll see.
Does the scale-free networks perspective have anything to say for the targeted use of vaccines - not just the vaccination of really really important people?
We are talking about this at bio-era, though I am not sure that I buy it will be useful in the near term. The recent modeling efforts suggest that only if we are very lucky in compound ways -- that we detect an outbreak early, that we are able to enforce containment, that we get anti-virals and vaccines distributed immediately and sufficiently broadly to the local population -- will targeted anything be of much use. The main problem, as far as I can tell, is still that the vaccine is being produced from a bug isolated a year ago and that it simply may not be effected against the eventual pandemic strain. Nevermind that a pandemic could come from a different direction entirely...
We just don't have the right technology available to respond to threats like this. Annual flu, yes. Rapidly emerging, deadly disease, no.
RC: "We just don't have the right technology available."
I take it technology is in the very broad sense of the meaning. That the organizational framework seems to be missing. This is not just the containment issues but more to do with the right organizational framework to create a suitable vaccine. I think the open source framework has many lessons to give on responsiveness in creating complex artifacts. However, lessons have to be learnt... that takes time