Modelling the biology and transmission of influenza virus - learning from 1918-19 and other outbreaks

在为未来的流感大流行做准备时，重要的是尽可能多地从过去发生的事情中吸取教训，特别是从1918-19年毁灭性的大流行中吸取教训。该项目将整理过去爆发的流感传播的详细信息，并创建一个可供公众访问的数据库。将使用数学方法分析历史和当代数据，以便更好地了解流感的传播，以及为控制其采取的社会和医疗措施可能产生的影响。该项目的一个重要主题是巩固我们关于过去接触非大流行性流感如何针对任何新的大流行提供短期保护的知识，并探索这对今天预防工作的影响。另一个主题是探讨大流行期间流感的严重程度，并确定可能减少病毒传播剂量或以其他方式降低感染严重程度的社会和医学因素。从建模中获得的见解还将有助于确定关于流感基本生物学的知识和理解方面的差距，刺激新的研究来填补这些空白，从而为未来的流感控制提供更有效的疫苗和治疗方法的前景。

In preparing for a future pandemic of influenza, it is important to learn as much as possible from what happened in the past, particularly from the devastating pandemic of 1918-19. This project will collate detailed information about the spread of influenza in past outbreaks and create a publicly accessible data-base. Mathematical methods will be used to analyse historic and contemporary data, so as to provide better understanding of the spread of influenza, and of the likely effects of social and medical measures for its control. An important theme of the project is to consolidate our knowledge about how past exposure to non-pandemic influenza could provide short-lived protection against any new pandemic, and to explore the implications of this for prevention today. Another theme is to explore the severity of influenza during pandemics, and to identify social and medical factors that might reduce the dose of virus transmitted, or otherwise reduce the severity of infection. The insights from the modeling will also help to identify gaps in knowledge and understanding about the basic biology of influenza, stimulate new research to fill those gaps, and thus offer the prospect of more effective vaccines and treatments for the future control of influenza.