Google To Help Predict Bird Flu Patterns

It is next to impossible to quarantine all the birds in a country...

The world famous internet company Google has been instrumental in helping researchers come up with a special interactive "Super map" that is designed to explain how the H5N1 bird flu virus is spreading around the world. Using the Google Earth technology the scientists from the University of Colorado and Ohio State University are now projecting likely pandemic patterns to show how the bird flu virus could eventually turn into a worldwide pandemic. The technology is also being used to predict likely bird flu mutations and likely pandemic scenarios.

The researchers have used previous bird flu spreading patterns in Asian countries like Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand to predict future likely outbreaks. The idea is that the novel technology will be used to aid the people who are responsible for the distribution and supply of medical equipment as well as the bird flu drug Tamiflu, so that they can get the right things to the places where the next outbreaks are likely to occur.

The most frightening aspect about the bird flu virus is that unlike most contagious diseases where you are able to quarantine people so that the disease cannot spread, the H5N1 virus is primarily transmitted through birds and it is next to impossible to quarantine all the birds in a country. Added to that, birds have no respect for international boundaries and migrate throughout the world meaning that a bird who picks up the flu virus in one country can easily bring it across the oceans to another country.

The Google technology is extremely complex and literally thousands and thousands of different scenarios are being entered into the program. For example the probability of illegal bird trading between various countries will be part of the program setup as well as all known bird migratory routes.