So just to give you a little bit of background, why do we care about the flu? Well because it's a very common disease. Millions and millions of people get it every year in the US and elsewhere. So there are some numbers there and just as you can see that about 10 percent of adults and about 20 to 30 percent of children get it every year, which is a lot and most of you probably have had it. Most of the times it's not such a big deal. It's a little worse than a regular cold. So yeah, you'll have some of the usual symptoms like fever, maybe body aches, maybe some running nose. But it's some of those cases will actually turn out to be severe and it's not all of them. It's a small proportion but turns out because a lot of people get sick with it. Then if a small fraction of those cases become severe, then it can be a quite a big problem. It's kind of a numbers game, if everyone gets it and a small proportion of people have severe complications, then that means that's a lot of people. So flu every year causes a lot of costs and health consequences as well as economic costs and people who end up having complications which tend to be maybe really, really young people, infants, maybe a little older people, seniors, as well as people with other conditions or diseases might present with some complications that could eventually lead to even death. So just some numbers there as well that means in the US every year there's a lot of people who are actually dying as a consequence of the flu and it can vary from year to year depending on how common the flu was and also how specifically bad it is every year and we really want to prevent that. We really want to find the best ways to every year kind of deal with this issue and make sure that it doesn't cause more trouble or at least minimize the trouble they will cost. So how do we deal with this? Well, every year we need to plan and make sure that we can prevent as many flu infections as possible. Every year there's a new slightly different version of the flu virus circulating, usually we call that the seasonal flu. So every year there's a new vaccine that is kind of put together of course before the new flu season comes. So it's a little bit of a guessing game of which specific virus strain or specific type is going to be circulating and that's what they put in the vaccines. So we want to make sure that most people, or a lot of people get vaccinated. But at the same time we know that every once in a while there's going to be a completely new version of the virus showing up and that's what we call a pandemic, like the one that happened in 2009 that started in Mexico. In that case, we don't have a vaccine to begin with, then we really need to decide what to do as the thing is emerging and propagating to minimize its cost. So there are different interventions that we can do. Of course vaccine may be one, but if we don't have a vaccine then what can we do? How can we prevent people from getting sick? What are the best strategies? Should we maybe close schools if it's really serious. Should we tell people to avoid having close contacts, and eventually when we get a vaccine and if the vaccine amount is limited, who should we get the vaccine to? To those most for instance are likely to get sick or to those most likely to have complications. That's a decision that if we have limited amounts we would need to decide. So we need to decide what to do every year and in particular if we have a new strain and a pandemic, we're going to need to decide what to do with the tools that we have and it will not only be the vaccine, it may also be that we might have other type of intervention such as antivirals that we can give to people to prevent them from getting sick or at least from them to have severe infections. But there are other as we mentioned such as for instance social distancing, getting people to wash their hands periodically, and even like having a more serious attempts to actually decontaminate surfaces in different places such as bakers and maybe even in like public spaces like a subway. So we'll need to decide among all these things that we can do which are the ones that we should and where should we put their priorities and the effort? So then you might be thinking, okay, so how can computational thinking help us with this? How can computing mathematical modeling which is a little bit of the topic that I'm going to be talking about, and mathematical models translators into algorithms that a computer can run. How can we actually use that to help us solve some of these issues and if not solve at least how can they help us to make the best decisions of how to use the limited resources that we have in an efficient and effective way? So for instance computational thinking could help us if we develop a model that predicts how the flu is going to propagate and how are people going to get infected. Then we could use that model, that computational algorithm to predict maybe how many people will get infected every year, and then among those who get infected how many people are going to get complications. We can then use that information to help us plan, how many vaccines we're going to need, how many antivirals we're going to need, how many beds in hospitals we're going to need to respond to this crisis? For instance it can also help us determine of all these different options which might be the best one that works in different settings. Maybe what's the best interventions for a country like the US are not necessarily the best interventions for other type of countries that might have less resources, maybe that are smaller so they could be able to deploy drugs or vaccines maybe more quickly. Whatever it is, different places might have just because of their own context, might have different things that work better for them or not, then maybe if we develop models that are specific for those specific settings then maybe we can help make them reuse those models to identify the potential best solutions for each country or setting. One thing that we mentioned earlier is that well, let's say we have a vaccine, we didn't have enough, who should we give it to? So we have a model, a computational algorithm that can't help us predict who is going to get sick and then maybe who's going to have complications and who may actually end up dying from it, we can then use that model to see well, what if we vaccinate these people instead of these other group of people since we have limited number and then look at the outcomes, look at did we prevent it? Where did we prevent more infections? How can we actually prevent more deaths? So in the end, these type of models are computational algorithms can help us do something that we cannot do or wait because unfortunately this is not something that we can just go and do experiments. So instead of that, maybe we can create a virtual work with some of these models and then make experiments in that we are to work just like you do all the time with video games and harder things that you're using every day. So you might think, okay, this sounds interesting how people actually being doing this? The answer is yes, and that's part of my work. Some of the things that you just saw is what I do for a living. I am faculty here at the University of Michigan that works on research to develop models to try to predict what will be the impact of interventions in different aspects or questions in public health.
