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A recent article from NY Times talks about how airlines are responsible for spreading SARS.

Speed of the Spread of Flu Is Linked to Airline Travel - New York Times

Most people I think came to this conclusions just based on what was reported in the main stream media.

Here’s the actual article:

PLoS Medicine: Empirical Evidence for the Effect of Airline Travel on Inter-Regional Influenza Spread in the United States

They also used the flight ban after Sept. 11, 2001 to see what affect that had on the spread of flu. Flu that winter was delayed and also prolonged and this is likely due to the changes in airline travel.

Here is the conclusion:

Although the mechanisms driving the seasonality of influenza epidemics are still not well understood, our findings do suggest that fluctuations in airline travel have an impact on large-scale spread of influenza. At the regional level, our results suggest an important influence of international air travel on influenza timing as well as an influence of domestic air travel on influenza spread in the US. However, for the global influenza pandemic widely believed to be inevitable, the efficacy of travel advisories, flight restrictions, or even complete flight bans as a control measure is still uncertain.

Other Resources

PLoS Medicine: SARS: Systematic Review of Treatment Effects:

Technorati Tags: air travel, flu, SARS

Email Ed Vawter

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