Wednesday, January 30, 2013

CDC: Fungal meningitis outbreak could have been much worse | Redux

CDC: Fungal meningitis outbreak could have been much worse

Get Set for Winter Illness
Get Set for Winter Illness by The U.S. Food and Drug Administration
License (according to Flickr): United States Government Work
Excerpt:

As bad as the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak has been, so far infecting 620 people in 19 states and killing 39 of them, it could have been a lot worse, U.S. health officials said. Prior and much smaller fungal outbreaks involving tainted spinal injections were far more deadly, killing as many as 40 to 50 percent of those who had become infected," said Dr. Rachel Smith, an epidemic intelligence service officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "This is still an ongoing outbreak. We these attack rates to go up."- Dr. Rachel Smith, an epidemic intelligence service officer at the CDC "We were certainly concerned we could see that kind of mortality rate in this outbreak," said Smith, who wrote about the ongoing U.S. outbreak of fungal meningitis and related infections in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Keywords:

outbreak Smith fungal meningitis epidemic intelligence service Dr. Rachel Smith intelligence service officer drug ongoing outbreak cases percent spinal injections fungal meningitis outbreak NECC health officials New England attack rates health agencies death rate brain stem ongoing U.S. outbreak Drug Administration U.S. Food people patients smaller fungal outbreaks infections U.S. health officials spine state public health New England Journal potentially exposed patients overall death rate steroid medication methylprednisolone ambulatory surgical center New England Compounding local health agencies big manufacturing operations strict safety standards state health departments case especially challenging task so-called attack rate case count information average incubation period steroid injections related infections spinal infections Disease Control states drug companies

People:

Dr. Rachel Smith

Overall Sentiment: -0.209973

Relevance: 0.93552

SentimentQuote
0"We think it likely saved lives," Smith said ...
0"That was a huge effort," Smith said. ...
Sentiment Stats:
  • Number of Quotes: 2
  • Aggregate Sentiment: 0
  • Mean: 0
  • Standard Deviation: 0

Smith

Overall Sentiment: -0.37305

Relevance: 0.430452

SentimentQuote
-0.271052"This is still an ongoing outbreak," said Smith, ...
-0.196095"This is still an ongoing outbreak," said Smith, adding that there are now 620 cases. "We do expect these attack rates to go up."
Sentiment Stats:
  • Number of Quotes: 2
  • Aggregate Sentiment: -0.467147
  • Mean: -0.2335735
  • Standard Deviation: 0

Needles

Overall Sentiment: -0.0534813

Relevance: 0.334125

Key:

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  • The Mean is meant to be an indicator of an individual's average comment sentiment.
  • The Standard Deviation, when there are enough quotes, will indicate an individual's consistency of sentiment (i.e. a Standard Deviation of 0 would mean they were very consistent in their sentiment and 1 would mean they were very inconsistent).

Note that quote stats are likely to be meaningless beyond the aggregate score due to the tiny sample size. However, they are always provided just in case you find something useful there.

Additional Info:

Organization: U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Overall Sentiment: 0.0293004

Relevance: 0.67843

Organization: CDC

Overall Sentiment: -0.122599

Relevance: 0.394827

Organization: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Overall Sentiment: -0.245911

Relevance: 0.370437

Company: Drugs

Overall Sentiment: -0.0120166

Relevance: 0.543882

NaturalDisaster: tsunami

Overall Sentiment: -0.153441

Relevance: 0.304224

PrintMedia: New England Journal of Medicine

Overall Sentiment: -0.350376

Relevance: 0.337874

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