# 2371
A week scarcely goes by when we don't get a report of an outbreak of an unidentified `mystery' disease somewhere in the world.
With the advent of the Internet, and the increased flow of information due to cell phones and laptop computers - even from remote areas of the world - we tend to hear about these events more often than we did in the past.
That makes it difficult to judge whether or not the actual number of outbreaks is increasing, or its just our ability to hear about them.
Early news reports, however, are often fragmented, incomplete, speculative and sometimes misleading.
The quality of reporting varies from news source to news source, as does the official flow of information in different regions of the world. Frankly, I tend to take most of these reports with a very large grain of salt.
This past weekend many news services have been carrying reports of three such outbreaks. One in Alaska, one in Pakistan, and one in South Africa.
The Alaskan outbreak on Prince of Wales Island, first mentioned in the press on Oct 1st, now appears to be another outbreak of adenovirus-14, something we've seen several times in recent years.
The remaining two `mystery outbreaks', in South Africa and in Pakistan, remain under investigation. There are no indications at all that these are `avian flu related'.
ProMed Mail, the global electronic reporting system for outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases & toxins managed by ISID (The International Society For Infectious Diseases), sends out multiple notices each and every day about outbreaks around the world to its 40,000 subscribers.
And often they put out RFI's, or Requests for Information, regarding media reports of outbreaks. With 40,000 members, ProMed quite often gets a rapid response from someone knowledgeable near the outbreak.
Fair warning: While I am appreciative of ProMED's alerts, and recommend them highly, they are definitely not for hypochondriacs.
Sometimes it takes a few days, or even longer . . . but eventually most of these outbreaks are diagnosed. Initially, however, we often hear of `mystery fevers' or `atypical pneumonia's'.
We watch these outbreaks with great interest because, on rare occasions, these early reports can tip us off to a possible epidemic . . . or worse, a pandemic.
Most of the time, however, these incidents are quickly contained.
While I don't always blog on them, I do keep up with these reports. Given a few days investigation, health authorities can generally unravel these mysteries.
Unfortunately we are hampered by the lack of transparency (nice euphemism, isn't it?) by some nations when it comes to internal health threats.
China obfuscated the SARS outbreak of 2003 and more recently covered up the tainted milk scandal, while Indonesia has openly declared they will no longer report avian flu cases in `real-time'.
The quality of our information, this season, I suspect will be lower than in years past. This is a regrettable and dangerous trend, but one I fear other nations are adopting as well.
As the Internet abhors an informational vacuum, speculation can always be counted on to rush in to fill any void.
And on the Internet, the lines between news and speculation are often badly blurred. Sometimes, even the mainstream media can be guilty of speculative hyperbole.
After all, the intent is to sell papers or drive people to a website. As always, Caveat Lector.
As for this blog, I will probably be a little slow to jump on every `mysterious outbreak' report that crosses the wires this winter. If it strikes me as being unusual or significant, I'll blog on it, of course.
But most of the time, I'd rather wait until we have solid information.
Since there is no prize for being the first blogger to spot the start of a pandemic, I'd rather get it right than get it first.
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