Free Republic

As Obama touts the benefits of big government amidst pandemic fear, the government missed a clear and present opportunity to contain the virus. The Obama administration says it is too late to close the borders. But you cannot say members of his administration were not warned. A biosurveillance firm warned government officials at the federal level about a serious influenza outbreak in Mexico a full two weeks before the World Health Organization offered its first official warning about a public health emergency of global concern on April 24th. On April 6th, analysts sent numerous alerts to authorities at the federal...

A Washington state biosurveillance firm raised the first warning about a possible outbreak of swine flu in Mexico more than two weeks before the World Health Organization offered its initial alert about a public health emergency of international concern. Both federal and international health officials had access to the warning from Veratect Corp. Later e-mails calling attention to the company's subsequent report that the disease was possibly spreading in Mexico were sent to 10 officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Robert Hart, the company's chief executive. Hart said he wasn't sure why health officials didn't act...

Introduction At Veratect, we operate two operations centers based in the United States (one in the Washington, DC area and one in Seattle, WA) that provide animal and human infectious disease event detection and tracking globally. Both operations centers are organizationally modeled after our National Weather Service using a distinct methodology inspired by the natural disaster and meteorology communities. Our analysts handle information in the native vernacular language and have been thoroughly trained in their discipline, which include cultural-specific interpretation of the information. We are currently partnered with 14 organizations that provide us with direct ground observations in 238 countries....