In looking back over the FluPortal project, I felt we probably hadn’t featured our Delicious bookmarks prominently enough. But whether or not we promoted them well, Delicious is a powerful tool. You might be interested to learn what we did with it — so that you can start using it yourself, either publicly on your station’s website or internally as a reporting tool.

Every morning after scanning for H1N1 news and leads, we’d use Delicious to bookmark the best reporting, press releases, studies, etc. These bookmarked pieces showed up on our Delicious page — and also in the box at the top of our “Reporter & Program Resources” page.

The main point, here, was to provide a one-stop shop of the best reliable news about H1N1. We spent time searching for it online to save you time. This required an editorial eye, but it ensured quality — something automated aggregators don’t always supply.

Some of the nitty gritty: We learned, partway through the project, to make prominent the source of each bookmarked piece — so that you could judge quickly that it was reputable. We also used a consistent stable of tags to label each piece — so that you could search for information by topic. Finally, we inserted a sentence or two from each piece that summarized its most important information — so that you could decide whether or not to click through.

To learn more about how we used Delicious for FluPortal, check out our final report. To learn how you can use Delicious on your station’s website — or in your reporting — try this FluPortal guide.

If you blog for a pubmedia station — or would like to start — here are a few tips we can recommend. They’re based on what we practiced and learned blogging here at FluPortal.

• Think hard about your blog’s purpose — develop a clear niche and voice.
• Don’t limit your posts to tight finished reporting. You can use your blog to report — by asking questions to solicit story ideas, leads, etc.
• Keep posts concise and scannable. If you don’t hook readers rapidly, they’ll move on.
• Establish a regular blogging schedule. This will let people know what to expect — and increases the chance that they’ll return to your blog.
• Look for leads everywhere online — not just in mainstream media. See our social-media guide for ideas.
• Make post titles literal and Googleable. In other words: use keywords that people are likely to enter in Google searches. This will increase the chance of someone landing on your blog.
• Break up long quotations into small chunks and write into and out of them.
• Use links as footnotes. They’re a really handy way to back up statements you make.
• OK, just use links a lot. Linking out is the generous thing to do. It will also encourage other bloggers to link back to you (which can increase your traffic).
• Attribute photographs, videos, etc. — with links. Use a consistent style for the attributions.
• Use a search box, tags, and categories to help readers find older posts.
• Decide on a commenting policy (and make that clear on the blog).
• Interact with commenters in the comments section — this can help develop a regular community on your blog.

To find details about some of these tips — and some of the difficulties we had with FluPortal’s blog — check out this section of FluPortal’s final report.

We’ll be putting FluPortal to bed on March 31st. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting funded the project to help pubmedia stations report on H1N1, so with this wave of swine flu winding up, it’s time for FluPortal to wrap up, too. You’ll still be able to visit the site, but we won’t be updating it any longer; it will stand as an archive. (Rekha will provide more details shortly.)

In tying up the project, we’ve tried to extract lessons that could be useful for future crisis websites modelled on FluPortal. Find out what we learned in our final report: “Crisis Coverage by Public Media: A Review of FluPortal and Recommendations for the Future.”

Each of us on the FluPortal team wrote up what we worked on day-to-day — and what we could recommend for future “crisis portals”: Rekha gives a detailed overview of the project. Josh explains how he built the site and shares tech tips any station webmaster could use. Ken lays out how he spread the word about FluPortal and solicited feedback. And I describe how we collected H1N1 information and blogged about it.

Many of the “lessons learned” will be useful primarily to teams building other “crisis portals.” But some of what we figured out at FluPortal could be directly useful to you: pubmedia reporters, news directors, and webmasters. In the next few days, we’ll be posting some condensed tips from the report that might help you cover future crises.

The CDC’s Emerging Infections Diseases journal will publish in April a study (PDF file) examining household transmission of H1N1.

The investigators tracked patients in San Antonio, TX, (in April and May of 2009) who had lab-confirmed H1N1. They also recorded any “secondary case-patients” among housemates of the flu sufferers — i.e., people who were (presumably) sickened by their H1N1-infected housemates.

The study concludes that children (people under 18) were “disproportionately affected” by H1N1:

The highest proportion of laboratory-confirmed pandemic (H1N1) 2009 and secondary attack rates occurred in children, a finding consistent with the epidemiology of seasonal and pandemic influenza, where we know children experience higher rates of illness [...] and higher secondary attack rates [...]

It also determines that the “secondary attack rate” (contagiousness) appeared to be lower than for seasonal flu:

The secondary attack rate was 4% for laboratory-confirmed pandemic (H1N1) 2009, 9% for ILI [influenza-like illness], and 13% for ARI [acute respiratory infection]. In general, these rates are lower than for seasonal influenza and lower than anticipated for a pandemic strain [...].

You can read up on the full scope and “several limitations” of the study here (PDF file).

A study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that vaccinating kids against H1N1 helps protect their entire community.

The researchers set out to test the idea of herd immunity and the observation that “[c]hildren and adolescents appear to play an important role in the transmission of influenza.”

The randomized, blinded study examined 46 volunteer Canadian Hutterite colonies. Roughly 80% of children aged 3 to 15 in half the colonies were given an H1N1 vaccine. Roughly 80% of those in the other colonies were given a hepatitis A vaccine.

Comparing the two populations, the study determined that vaccinating children against H1N1 “conferred 61% indirect protection against influenza among persons who did not receive the study vaccine.” The overall conclusion:

Our data suggest that a significant herd immunity effect can be achieved when the uptake of vaccine is approximately 80% in clusters in which children and adolescents aged 3 to 15 years are immunized.

The authors also propose that elderly people may benefit more from child-based herd-immunity than from being vaccinated themselves:

Although there were relatively few elderly individuals in this population, the protective effect is likely comparable with or greater than what can be achieved by direct immunization.

Helen Branswell, medical reporter for The Canadian Press, notes that children may not necessarily be the key to herd immunity:

Dr. Allison McGeer, an influenza expert at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, questioned whether the effect was due to the fact that Loeb’s team vaccinated kids, or just to the fact that they vaccinated a sizable portion of the population of the colonies randomized to get flu shots.

The New York Times piece about the study is here. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases press release is here.

I’ve been wondering for some time why seasonal flu is apparently being suppressed by H1N1. Much of the reporting I’ve seen notes the fact but doesn’t seem to get to the bottom of why it’s happening. Is that because doctors and public-health officials themselves aren’t sure? Are there at least plausible working theories?

This Washington Post article hints at one possible factor:

When a person is infected with one respiratory virus (such as rhinovirus, which causes colds), the chance of catching a different virus (such as flu) declines greatly. Part of the reason is that the first infection provokes what’s called “innate immunity” — a flood of interferon and other cellular hormones that defend the body in a general way without specifically targeting the invader. That protection can last weeks, breaking chains of transmission and slowing a flu epidemic.

A similar form of interference occurs between strains of flu, which is one of the reasons there’s been almost no “seasonal flu” in recent months. The strains circulating last season and still occasionally found this season — H3N2, other forms of H1N1 and influenza B — have all been outcompeted by the upstart H1N1.

In fact, even if there isn’t a third wave, the new H1N1 may well spell the end of one or more of the families of flu virus that have been circulating for decades. That’s what’s happened in previous pandemics, at least.

The H1N1 family arrived in 1918 with the Spanish flu. In the 1957 pandemic, the new virus was in the HN2 family; it drove all H1N1 strains to extinction. In 1968, the new virus was an H3N2. It spelled the end of the H2N2 family, which disappeared. H1N1 returned in 1977, apparently the result of an accidental release from a laboratory in Russia or China.

Have you seen/heard/read any good pieces about intra-flu-strain competition? It seems central to H1N1’s story arc at the moment. The questions about H1N1’s dominance — and the possible answers — could be interesting to keep in mind as you continue reporting on swine flu and seasonal flu.

This CDC chart summarizes the data:

[CDC]

Click here to find the data broken down into helpful bar graphs. Also to learn how CDC compiles its estimates.

We blogged recently about a Pittsburgh-area study that suggests roughly 63 million Americans were infected with H1N1 in 2009. This estimate — although based on a methodology completely different from the CDC’s — falls in the mid-range of the CDC estimates. (Note: the CDC numbers include data for two extra weeks in January 2010.)

A study (PDF file) released in February by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research suggests that the lack of paid sick days in the private sector increased the spread of H1N1.

Some of the study’s interesting findings:

• “The vast majority of public sector employees receive paid sick days, but two of five private sector employees have no access to paid sick days.”
• “[E]mployees who attended work while infected with H1N1 are estimated to have caused the infection of as many as 7 million co-workers.”
• “The data suggest that more than 90 percent of public sector employees, but only 66 percent of private sector employees, took time away from work when infected with H1N1 [...] implying that many more private sector employees felt that it was necessary to attend work while ill.”
• “[T]he drop in absence rates between October and November was twice as steep in the public sector as it was in the private sector, suggesting that contagion was less common in the public sector.”

The study goes on to propose that “similar patterns of absence” might be “found among children and students” depending on whether their parents “have access to paid sick days to care for family members.”

(Our usual disclaimer: we can’t vouch for the study’s methodology or results; we offer it up as something you might be interested in reporting on.)

[Update 4 March 2010: This is an issue that public-health experts have worried about throughout the H1N1 pandemic. New York Times article from November 2009 here and WNYC report from September 2009 here.]

SAFER — Your Station in an Emergency
9:00AM – 2:00PM, Saturday, June 12th, 2010
35th Annual Community Radio Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota
Richard Dillman, SAFER Manual Writer and KWMR Transmitter Engineer

Hurricanes, fires, blizzards, chemical spills, floods, earthquakes — is your station ready to provide critical public service in a time of critical public need? SAFER — Station Action for Emergency Readiness — is a joint project of NFCB and NPR, funded mostly by CPB. The SAFER project has created a detailed guide for stations to develop their own emergency readiness plans, plus digital tools for station websites.

This Intensive is for stations that have started work on their plan. It will be very interactive. We will work with plans from a variety of stations — different sizes, different kinds of markets. We will workshop the plans, help you solve problems that have you stumped and help you move forward.  

You will have opportunities to pick the brains of and share ideas with people from other community and public radio stations. Regardless of where you are in your planning — as long as you have begun — we encourage you to attend this Intensive and take advantage of the best thinking of the SAFER team and stations working through some of the same problems.  

Who should attend this Intensive? The staff person who is most involved with and responsible for developing your station’s emergency preparedness plan.

This Intensive is supported by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Although the registration fee for the SAFER (Station Action for Emergency Readiness) Intensive is only $50, we know that for some of you the cost of getting to St. Paul, staying in the hotel, etc. will be prohibitive.  

We are able to offer 3 scholarships, each worth $1000, to 3 stations so that they may attend the Intensive (and the Community Radio Conference, if you wish). The scholarship application can be found here.

Ginny Z. Berson
Vice President and Director of Federation Services
National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB)
510 451-8200 ext. 305
1970 Broadway, Suite 1000
Oakland, CA 94612
www.nfcb.org

When the World Economic Forum convened its annual meeting of high-powered business leaders this winter, it offered a panel examining the pandemic vulnerability of companies dependent on the global economy.

Here’s one statistic it cited to make people sit up and take notice. (It’s not clear whether the numbers refer specifically to H1N1 or to any pandemic.)

[A]lthough 60% of CEOs believe the threat of a pandemic is real, only 22% have an emergency plan and only 27% are working on developing one.

Among the key points it raised:

The interconnected nature of the global economy is likely to result in unexpected effects from a pandemic. A company may find that a disease halfway around the world stops it from receiving critical parts or materials needed for its own manufacturing.

To stress the importance of desigining a pandemic plan ahead of time, the panel cited examples of two Mexican companies navigating H1N1’s first wave. The first company weathered it well because it had a pandemic plan in place. The second one had “to suspend operations for nearly a month and ran a significant loss” because it apparently had no pre-existing plan. The panel emphasized that it’s virtually impossible to design an effective plan once a flu pandemic is already underway:

[O]nce a pandemic starts, the flood of conflicting and often misleading information is likely to dramatically increase the difficulty of making executive decisions and communicating them to employees. As a result, it is crucial to have a contingency plan already in place.

The full summary of the “Prepared for a Pandemic?” panel is here. To read our post highlighting what companies can do to prepare for pandemics — what steps they can take to ensure “business continuity” — click here.