thinking: relating- celebrating :-)

As beings it seems to me that  - we are all wired to look for patterns partly to decipher meaning but also because the sheer amount of information we get can be so overwhelming.

We are also constantly comparing the “news” to our own reference points and expectations to  weight the content and relevance to our own situations.

Now the media stories seems to overshoot much of these expectations with so much coverage splashing over the metaphorical sides of the tea cup that we actively discount “news” when it gets too saturated.

One example is swine flu coverage. It is definitely an important story but the way in which it is being covered paradoxically switches many of us off the full significance of the event. There are two key facts about previous pandemics we should be picking up on (key patterns?.)

1. In 1918 and other pandemics it was the second and repeat waves that were more lethal once the virus has been through larger numbers of humans and mutated a bit more.
2. The secondary story on swine flu is how disorganised we have been  with group planning on previous disasters with very fragmented responses.

In 2007 Laurie Garrett: What can we learn from the 1918 flu pandemic? presented this talk at TED based on real analysis of earlier pandemics and global health planning.  Most of use can point to more local health issues to see that not much has changed.

Moving right along – Does this thinking apply to other “news” stories and events like the global financial crisis for example?

In recent weeks I have been fascinated to see surveys of business confidence go lower and lower and last week they have suddenly topped out at the highest for some time.

“(NZ) Business sentiment has perked up this month – the National Bank’s survey has recorded its biggest monthly gain since December 2000.“

We want to see better news after months of coverage fatigue about the global financial crisis and so expectations appear to be over shooting again.

Two weeks earlier we had Aust economic index at 26-year low New Zealand is not more resilient than Australia although I’m beginning to think that we all have outrageous optimism partly because most local business markets are shallow and tough.

We could argue that Australia’s commodity boom has slowed them into the slide andc so NZ is ahead of the cycle and our primary commodities and huge fall in exchange rates has provided an early upswing of confidence that differentiates the NZ economy.

Translation NZ business sectors and local markets are small, highly developed and very demanding and so any glimmer of hope from export markets or the “weighless economy” has us revving our economic engines.

Central banks are aware of this tendency and so the Reserve Bank Governor Bollard was at pains to signal interest rates should stay low for at least a year to 18 month longer.

The lag between recovery of some market segments / indicators and actual local recovery can still be long enough to cause serious medium term issues for many of us.

The March exports number was way higher than the imports number and that has boosted confidence as have changes to housing and employment markets. (Trade deficit melts as imports shrink)

“In the same article economist Bagrie notes Structural imbalances, like negative household savings rates and a large current account deficit, needed to be corrected and that would not be quick or easy..” and we know rationally that is true but still the survey overshoots the hope index.

In today’s TED talk videos is a new 7 minute  presentation by Sean Gourley: The mathematics of war

“By pulling raw data from the news and plotting it onto a graph, Sean Gourley and his team have come up with a stunning conclusion about the nature of modern war — and perhaps a model for resolving conflicts.”

I won’t pretend to understand what Sean is saying in this 7 minute clip but I know the patterns he is discovering appear everywhere and deciphering the economic news is every bit as mathmatical as it is for any major human induced crisis.

The group dynamic does plot patterns and we can use some of that to make sense of the overall trendlines.

Sean does a good job of explaining the “so what” part of this analysis but at 7 minutes this is really a teaser and we need to go deeper.

For example I’d like to see the analysis of Iraq right as the end compared with  Irelands history and the transformation of the IRA into a more credible polticla rather than military force.

I think with maths the risk is that we can describe events much better but unless we go compare with other histories we can still miss the underlying out takes.

In the “Fog of War” did a much more personal analysis which we seem to have forgotten.

Now I’d like to see Robert (b 1916) make some personal sense of Sean’s math but for now I’m pleased that we have a chance to think about clustering information and media through some new filters.

I also caught part of a radio dicussion yesterday which described “belief” as a recessive gene. The idea being that as a society we have become much more evidence based but that is not something we see on the actual regular news.

For me Jon Stewarts satirical Daily show makes far more sense of the news than regular media as it acknowledges the bizarreness of the human condition.

So a recap formula might look like this

Sean Gourley + Robert McNamara – Jon Stewart  = many a true word is spoken in jest – we just need to know which ones and if our math/model makes sense.

For the past week or so it has been interesting to note the different media treatments of the developing swine flu story.

It now clear that globalisation and easy air travel means there are almost certainly more case of the flu than we know about and in more places.

Even in New Zealand we now have 12  14 confirmed cases as of today. There is the predictable argument about whether health authorities have done their best to manage the known risks and these will continue.

One irony is that many of us learned about this online from a twitter or other source before the news media picked up the story for later in the day. Hopefully social media and other online readers are doing their own research so we can avoid the moral panic / mass hysteria that does seem to result from this type of news item. 

Its about time we used our greater information resources to fight fear with knowledge..

“fear of the flu is at least as responsible for the economic disruption as the disease itself.”

There will be travel and tourism side effects for Mexico and many other countries as authorities try to balance public safety and health concerns with personal freedoms.

In reading about the background of this particular wave of the flu it seems that much of this should have been no surprise and all of the planning and scenario practice that went on a few years ago (SARS) should now be worked through.

In the US in 1976 (after the Fort Dix outbreak) around 40m people received swine flu immunizations. However the programme was called off for all sorts of reasons.

I just wonder whether vaccinating the pigs themselves might be a smarter way to break the disease mutation cycle. Seems that pigs provide the ideal conditions for viral mixing of the influenza disease strains. 

Much more recently an estimated 35 million have been treated with Tamiflu in Japan which is one of the recommended treatments.

Mass vaccinations are not popular but we can bet they are being considered in many countries. The NZ government had a stockpile equivalent to 21% of the population in 2006 during the avian flu pandemic planning.

According to some new reports

“Australia has stockpiled 8.7 million doses of Tamiflu and Relenza drugs”.

There will be public debate over how those stockpiles are used and when and there should be.  NZ information about Tamiflu is over here. Predictably that site is way out of date but there are updates over at the Ministry of Health

In the past few weeks I have been tuned in to watch a Mexican ife science entrepreneur and thinker – Juan Enriquez talk about science as the way foward from crisis. His talk called Beyond the crisis, mindboggling science and the arrival of Homo evolutis. 

“Even as mega-banks topple, Juan Enriquez says the big reboot is yet to come. But don’t look for it on your ballot — or in the stock exchange. It’ll come from science labs, and it promises keener bodies and minds. Our kids are going to be … different.”

About Juan Enriquez

Juan Enriquez thinks and writes about the profound changes that genomics and other life sciences will cause in business, technology, politics and society.

“Formerly CEO of Mexico City’s Urban Development Corporation and chief of staff for Mexico’s secretary of state, Enriquez played a role in reforming Mexico’s domestic policy and helped negotiate a cease-fire with Zapatista rebels. He is a Managing Director at Excel Medical Ventures, a life sciences venture capital firm, and the chair and CEO of Biotechonomy, a research and investment firm helping to fund new genomics firms. The Untied States of America, his latest book, looks at the forces threatening America’s future as a unified country.” From his TED bio  

Beyond the crisis, mindboggling science and the arrival of Homo evolutis. 

Juan has two other video presentations on TED that are also worth checking out.

Juan Enriquez: Decoding the future with genomics

and

Juan Enriquez: Why can’t we grow new energy?

I like the idea of good news from Mexico at a time like this. I see the NZ MOH has labelled the flu as being Mexican Swine Flu. I’d rather have some enlightenment from Mexico via Juan Enriquez.