# 4330
Once again I’m back with a recap of some of the stories from in and around Flublogia (and or science blogs) from the past couple of weeks.
This is a subjective list of things that I found of interest, and by no means mentions every worthy blog post out there. It is more of a sampling, and not always restricted to flu.
My apologies for the good stories I may miss. So, with that said, in no particularly order . . .
This weekend marks the fourth anniversary of the opening of the FluTrackers forum, and so congratulations are in order to Sharon Sanders, Sally, Jeremy - and to the dozens of moderators and advisors who help keep the wheels on the track - and of course to all of the members.
FluTrackers, despite its name, follows more than just influenza. It has become an enormous online repository of information on all manner of emerging infectious diseases, and is one I avail myself of often.
Although Revere at Effect Measure has been occupied with writing a major grant proposal, he has managed to find time to take Wolfgang Wodarg to the woodshed over his allegations against the World Health Organization and has offered up an assessment of the CDC’s epidemiology efforts over the past year.
Fire in the hole: Wolfgang Wodarg and WHO
Random thoughts on CDC's swine flu effort: epidemiology and surveillance
Maryn McKenna’s Superbug Blog was named a top 50 Health Blog (and deservedly so) by he website The Science of Health, sharing honors with other deserving recipients including Effect Measure and The Pump Handle.
Her latest entry concerns budget cuts that will reduce or eliminate critical MRSA surveillance projects:
Bad news in the President's budget request
Three other entries of note include:
Recommending: Consumer Reports on hospital infections
Back again to MRSA in animals, and spreading to humans
Once again, flu and bacterial co-infection
Vincent Racaniello’s Virology Blog continues to provide us with videos of his Columbia University Virology Lectures (up to #5 now), along with access to TWiV his (This week In Virology) and TWiP (This week in Parasitism) podcasts.
Professor Ian York’s Mystery Rays from Outer Space blog is an eclectic collection of short science essays, and often takes me in unexpected directions. Three diverse examples from the past ten days include:
Tumors as ecosystems
Virus discovery by jigsaw puzzle
Viral resistance and new functions
Crof over at Crofsblog has been doing some housekeeping and rearranging of his site, along with first class news gathering. He also offered his evaluation of a recent contrarian editorial in Annals of viral paranoia VI: Fumento on WHO's real motives.
Newshounds on the flu forums (I frequent the Flu Wiki and FluTrackers) have been dealing with fresh reports of bird flu cropping up in Indonesia, Cambodia, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Egypt, along with the latest development with pandemic H1N1, and other emerging infectious diseases.
As I’ve stated many times, this blog is highly dependent upon their hard work, and I try to highlight them whenever possible.
Three that have been kept particularly busy over the past couple of weeks have been Ida at BFIC, Commonground at Pandemic Information News, and Paul at Chen Qi. My thanks go to them, and the rest of the newshounds that are doing the heavy lifting of finding and translating news stories.
Some of my efforts over the past couple of weeks include:
At The Sound Of The Tone
Neurologic Manifestations of Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 Virus Infection
IgG2 and Flu
Indonesia: Changes In The H5N1 Virus
I Only Have Eyes For Flu
Contrarians At The Gate
Hopefully you’ll find something in this roundup you missed the first time round.
