# 7258
Of late, infectious disease blogging has me feeling a bit like an indecisive racetrack tout, unable to pick which horse to recommend. On paper, H7N9 and nCoV (aka MERS) both appear to have some degree of pandemic potential, yet neither has much of a track record.
Our knowledge of where they come from, and how they are spreading to, and among, humans is very limited.
Making handicapping them, exceedingly difficult.
If that’s a dilemma for us bloggers, consider how tough it is for public health agencies and officials who must not only plan for any contingency, but also inform the public of any threat.
To that end, the World Health Organization has been using their Twitter account (@WHO) quite effectively over the past six weeks to keep the public up to date on both emerging viruses.
This morning – while we await word on (now three) contacts of the French nCoV patient who are being tested – WHO’s social media arm has been both busy, and forthright about the limits of what they know.
Of course, WHO is not alone.
The CDC, ECDC, Hong Kong’s CHP, and other agencies have all been putting out fresh advisories, updates, and guidelines – just in case H7N9 or nCoV take off.
A common theme among them has been that these viruses are newly discovered, poorly understood, and that we don’t know how much of a threat they actually pose to global public health.
Admittedly, a difficult message for any public health agency to have to deliver.
But one that has the virtue of being absolutely true.
