Talk:2009 swine flu pandemic in the United States

See also: Template talk:2009 US swine flu outbreak table, File talk:H1N1 USA Map.svg, Template talk:2009 US swine flu outbreak image, File talk:H1N1 USA Map by confirmed cases.svg, and File talk:H1N1 USA deaths - CSS map.svg

• Disused maps
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• File:H1N1 Norte América Veracruz.svg
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California

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  2009 swine flu outbreak in California.png
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  H1N1 California Map.svg

The old PNG and the new SVG don't seem to match... in particular, a red area on the old PNG is now yellow on the SVG... 70.29.208.129 (talk) 05:12, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I will fix it in the next updat on Thursday.--Vrysxy! (talk) 21:26, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Puerto Rico

The map contains Puerto Rico but there's no section for it... 70.29.208.129 (talk) 12:40, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Updated map

Number of H1N1 cases reported to the CDC for June 1st, 2009.

I created an updated cases map. I see an older one in the article of a different color, so I'll let someone else decide if they want to use this one, or stick with the dramatic red and black. ;-) I'll leave it on the article for now. --Falcorian ^(talk) 04:18, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

The old map with a different color key is used in many languages... It would be best if it was updated. 70.29.208.129 (talk) 04:37, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually... your map is confirmed+probable, but the red map is confirmed only... 70.29.208.129 (talk) 04:46, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I can update the templated one tonight. --Falcorian ^(talk) 19:29, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

On second look, it seems one has to check each state separately, a little more work than I'd like to take on. ;-) --Falcorian ^(talk) 03:41, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

If you did update it, it would still need to be confirmed only, or you'd have to update the descriptions across many languages, and then the filename would not match the contents... 70.29.208.129 (talk) 09:13, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Any reason why it's called "June 1"? If you sequentially update the cases, it'll no longer be June 1. 70.29.208.129 (talk) 01:00, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Why Are You Not Editing to California?

Sorry for the alarm, but the California part of this article has not been edited for a month. Edit it now, because I don't know what has happened so far, please. For example, when did the first Californians die? Please add that. Typingwestern015 (talk) 16:52, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you could look at Google News, the state health department, or the CDC and add the information yourself. Lots of flu cases, the first 2 deaths in the state reported June 1. Also, in the early days of coverage of something, people rush to add the latest news item about some child at some school being thought to have the disease, but when there are 800 confirmed or probable cases widely distributed in the state, more reports of individual cases just do not seem that important to add. The early breathless additions should eventually be cleaned up in favor of a more encyclopedic summary style. There is a table and county by county graph with the latest official numbers. Edison (talk) 17:37, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Wyoming

The Wyoming section is using File:Map of Wyoming highlighting Laramie County.svg . This seems like an inappropriate map to use, since it's a county locator map, and not a disease outbreak map. Perhaps someone should copy the map and create a new file for the disease? 70.29.208.129 (talk) 07:27, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

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June 4 update of File:H1N1 USA Map.svg

File:H1N1 USA Map.svg

File:H1N1 USA Map.svg update for 4 June needs fixing. It has Massachusetts in black, but the description says that Connecticut is the one with the death. The data table here says Mass. has 0 deaths, while Conn. has 1.

70.29.208.129 (talk) 09:15, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry my bad. haha--Vrysxy! (talk) 16:07, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

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New map needed for Michigan

With the death of a lady in Warren (Macomb County), Michigan, it is high time an updated map be put up. I am not good with such things, so if someone else could do it it would be greatly appreciated.Johnpacklambert (talk) 17:48, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I am the author of the Michigan map. I have plans to update it, but my computer with Adobe Illustrator and the map is currently unusable, as I am waiting for a new power cord. The power cord should arrive tomorrow, at which time I should be able to update the map. Phizzy 18:46, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

• en:File:Michigan H1N1 Flu Map By County.svg
• commons:File:Michigan H1N1 Flu Map By County.svg

There are two versions of this map... the one on Commons isn't being updated as the one on English Wikipedia is updated... this means that this article in other languages is getting out of date if they use the commons image.

70.29.208.129 (talk) 00:35, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I Have updated the one in commons, because thats the only one that works on ther wikipedia like the Spanish one, thats why i updated that one and not the one on the en Wiki, because it doesnt work in the spanish article. --Vrysxy! (talk) 20:24, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Total cases maps

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  File:H1N1 May 7 2009 USA.svg
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  File:H1N1 May 8 2009.svg
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  File:H1N1 May 9 2009.svg
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  File:H1N1 May 10 2009.svg
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  File:H1N1 May 11 2009.svg
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  File:H1N1 May 13 2009.svg
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  File:H1N1 June 1 2009 USA.svg
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  File:H1N1 June 3 2009 USA.svg

There seems to be a rather lot of these maps lying around...

70.29.208.129 (talk) 12:11, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Too many maps, he should stop adding more maps, it gets more confusing. --Vrysxy! (talk) 23:48, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Actual US cases multiple hundreds of thousands at end of May, 2009

Models’ Projections for Flu Miss Mark by Wide Margin By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. Published: June 1, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/health/02model.html?ref=science

In the waning days of April, as federal officials were declaring a public health emergency and the world seemed gripped by swine flu panic, two rival supercomputer teams made projections about the epidemic that were surprisingly similar — and surprisingly reassuring. By the end of May, they said, there would be only 2,000 to 2,500 cases in the United States.

May’s over. They were a bit off.

On May 15, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there were “upwards of 100,000” cases in the country, even though only 7,415 had been confirmed at that point.

The agency declines to update that estimate just yet. But Tim Germann, a computational scientist who worked on a 2006 flu forecast model at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said he imagined there were now “a few hundred thousand” cases. (At their peaks, epidemics are thought to double in as little as three days, which could drive the number into the millions, but Dr. Germann said he would not use such a rapid doubling rate unless it was a cold November and no countermeasures, like closing schools, were being taken.)

What went wrong?

The leaders of both the Northwestern University and Indiana University teams seemed a bit abashed when they were asked that last week.

Northwestern’s predictions got the most publicity because of the eye-catching metric for predicting spread: data from Where’s George?, a Web site that tracks millions of dollar bills as they move around the country.

Dirk Brockmann, the engineering professor who led the team, said the realization that his initial estimates had been far too low struck him on May 11, when British, Mexican and World Health Organization researchers published a study in the journal Science tracing the first days of the outbreak. They estimated that it had begun in rural La Gloria, Mexico, in mid-February and that by April 30 there were 6,000 to 32,000 infections throughout Mexico.

“The numbers of reported cases in Mexico that we plugged in at the beginning of our model were orders of magnitude lower,” Dr. Brockmann said.

He is still proud, he said, of how well his model predicted geographical spread in the United States. He had to adjust it for the unexpected infusion of cases stemming from students at St. Francis Preparatory School in New York City who brought the virus back from spring break in Cancún, but otherwise it was accurate in predicting that California, Texas, Illinois and Florida would be hot spots.

Alessandro Vespignani, the informatics professor who led Indiana’s team, was a little more defensive, suggesting that he was either misquoted or had misunderstood the question on May 2 when he was reported as estimating that there would be about 2,500 cases by month’s end. His first model predicted 9,500 cases by May 24, he said.

Dr. Vespignani said he felt the C.D.C. estimate of 100,000 or more was “a bit of an overshooting.”

However, he pointed out, his adjustment of his figures on May 17 had an upper estimate of 100,000 for the end of May, and if one assumed that the disease centers counted asymptomatic cases and he did not, then that could stretch to 150,000.

Decisions by the C.D.C. and state health departments to stop confirming most cases in laboratories “is making our life miserable,” he said, adding, “If you don’t have good data, you don’t make good predictions.”

Both professors said they would use the experience to refine their models for the future. Dr. Brockman has not updated his since May 9.

“For this disease, we won’t put out another projection,” he said. “Once it’s in the dispersal phase, exponential growth kicks in. You don’t need a sophisticated model anymore.”

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INEXACT SCIENCE Where’s George?, a Web site that tracks dollar bills, provided data for a flu projection. Related Times Topics: Swine Flu (AH1N1 Virus)

Update maps?

Is there a freeware program similar to GIMP which can be used to edit vector graphics (.svg) that works on *nix and windows platforms? I would attempt to update the national map and local but I am unable to save as an .svg .

In that vein, can someone add the new states with deaths in them to the map? If I have time on my next few days off I'll try to map the counties in those states so any 'route' can be pieced together or predicted. Der.Gray (talk) 20:32, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

You can actually edit it in Notepad / Wordpad / Write / vi / vim / ed / jed / pico / xwrite ... SVG files are just text files. 70.29.210.130 (talk) 08:42, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

2009 Swine Flu outbreak in Utah.png

File:2009 Swine Flu outbreak in Utah.png has a problem, it's been nominated for deletion because it's copyright status wasn't specified. 70.29.210.130 (talk) 08:56, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Florida

There seem to be two versions of the Florida map... one used on English Wikipedia, and one used outside of English Wikipedia...

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  Swine Flu Florida.PNG
  English Wikipedia
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  Swine Flu Florida2.PNG
  non-English Wikipedia

Both of them reside on Commons... I don't know why the second one was created, instead of just updating the first one...

70.29.210.130 (talk) 09:07, 9 June 2009 (UTC)