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Hacking the public-health response to the Zika virus at MGH
By adamg on Fri, 03/18/2016 - 9:50am
Mass. General's Center for Global Health is hosting a hackathon next month to try to develop products and techniques to slow the spread of the mosquito-borne Zika virus:
Attention designers, engineers, clinicians and all innovators! We need your knowledge and expertise for a 48-hour hack-a-thon to create new product concepts, design novel personal protective equipment and develop new methods for local vector control that will help bend the curve of the Zika epidemic and similar outbreaks.
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Comments
Pointless
Even if they succeed, the FDA will take 2 years to approve it!
Not so
Zika has everyone's attention right now, so a meaningful outcome to this hackathon could really make a difference. Also, being MGH-affiliated will give their results extra weight. Plus, if there is money to be made from this, MGH will be all over it.
Not a drug or a genetic modification
This is a public health campaign design challenge.
This is not about Zika per se ... this is about our upcoming Round 2 of novel mosquito borne virus big battle. This will be only the second of many such rounds we will have to fight, courtesy of climate change.
The particular mosquitos involved in "Round 2: Zika" like to breed in little stagnant puddles, like tarps on pools and sandboxes, children's toys in the rain, and such. There are also municipal sources of such puddles, including things like potholes and flat roofs.
How we fight round two depends far less on drugs, which would take time to develop and test for safety, and far more on approaches to getting rid of the dam puddles where these skeeters breed.
Sources?
Sources?
.
.
Easy enough
JFGI
However, I do have a PhD in public health and I do this kind of thing for a living. Plenty of publications under my real name out there, including a research synthesis report on mosquito control during the West Nile outbreak.
And this ladies and gentlemen
And this ladies and gentlemen is how the Zombie Apocalypse starts.
Hacking a virus which alters brain tissues and functions.
Gibson Virus
They're not hacking a virus. They're hacking a solution to an epidemic, most likely through public health efforts like data collecting, awareness and instructional campaigns, and strategies for vector control.
I know you're joking, but it's like come on
Herd immunity?
If you're fertile and not currently pregnant, don't you want to get Zika right now so that you'll have some immunity when you do become pregnant?
Besides, mosquito season is a while away, so if you had Zika in Boston today it's not likely to spread through mosquito bites to anyone else.
Immunity
This isn't necessarily how immunity works. There hasn't been any evidence to the contrary that primary infections provides lifelong immunity but the data doesn't exist yet to make the claim definitive.
In some cases, secondary viral infections can be more severe than primary infections. This can be true in Dengue virus infection (google "dengue antigenic original sin" for more information) and both Dengue and Zika virus are in the same genus flavivirus so it's important not to make any assumptions about immunity etc.
Also there is now strong evidence that Zika can be transmitted sexually which makes it a worldwide concern rather than an emerging tropical disease. We can't rely on our terrible, horrible, no good, very bad weather to protect us forever.
Perfect is the enemy of the
Perfect is the enemy of the good.
Changed the headline ...
Because while it would be kind of cool to have a bunch of biologists actually trying to hack the virus, as my original headline seemed to say, it's actually a day-long session (as in 24 hours) to come up with ways to contain the virus through public-health efforts and new products. My apologies for any confusion.
It must be the skeptic in me,
It must be the skeptic in me, but when I read this the first thing that came to mind was who would own the rights and claim the credit to whatever innovative thing results from this effort. My guess is that Partners intentions are not purely altruistic.