Models in the Media: BBC's Inside Science
- Rebecca Murray-Watson
- Oct 22, 2019
- 1 min read
Updated: Dec 12, 2019
On October 17th, one of my favourite podcasts, BBC's 'Inside Science' with Dr Adam Rutherford, featured a segment on how models can help predict future Ebola outbreaks. The segment featured the work of Professor Katie Jones, chair of ecology and biodiversity at University College London.
Adapted from Redding et al (2019). 'Present' represents current prevalence of Ebola. 'Future' shows projected prevalence in 2070 when climatic, land use, and population changes are considered. Scale indicates severity.
The podcast gave a good overview of the types of information needed to design these models, including factors such as population grows, land use change or how climate change may affect the virus's host's range . When questioned about what we could do to restrict future outbreaks of Ebola, Prof. Jones mentioned reducing greenhouse gas emissions as a practical step that could be taken.
I would highly recommend listening to the podcast, available here. You'll also find the final segment of the podcast is about malaria, so provides some biological background to past posts about the disease.
Clontarfmurrays-Thanks for your message. I'm really surprised these kinds of issues don't get more media coverage, so it was a nice surprise to hear it mentioned on a BBC podcast. Hopefully other media will start paying attention soon.
This is getting even more interesting. The importance of the issues involved simply do not get appropriate coverage so hopefully this blog will help address this.....hope your readers pass the message on widely. Well Done