Supercourse Newsletter, January 19, 2002
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Dear Friends,
Fear always springs from ignorance, Emerson, 1837
A terrorist has a mission to kill. The deaths caused by terrorism are
a means to instil fear and disruption. We experts in health can serve
to reduce the fear, horror and disruption by being a "steady hand" in
the face of the chaos caused by terrorism by helping people with in-
formation and knowledge. A major role is for us is to use our
strength to present wisdom about terrorism to our communities. Media
presentations are important, but local presentations by us in front
of groups in schools, churches, temples, mosques, and businesses are
more important to reduce anxiety in the community. However, in the
midst of an attack, it appears impossible for us to create presenta-
tions, as we know little about terrorism. Perhaps it is not impossi-
ble, if we begin a global effort to generate lectures based upon the
model of the Supercourse (www.pitt.edu/~super1/).
It is time to move into a new level, the Just-in-Time lecture. With a
Just-in-Time lecture, as soon as a natural or man-made disaster takes
place, we can begin to bring in global expertise to establish lec-
tures for us all to use. Topics can vary, depending upon the need.
They could range from a discussion of the public health impact of a
hurricane in Cuba, a bioterrorist attack in Russia, or a shark attack
in Argentina. Lectures would be available for free for any teacher to
use within a day. Recently we demonstrated the feasibility of this
concept. On Jan 6, in Tampa, Florida, a 15 year old crashed a small
plane into a bank. Tom Songer, immediately set out to create a lec-
ture on the safety of air flying and terrorism:
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec4811/index.htm
Any one of us in health could present this lecture, which shows, that
although airline crashes are very scary, the perceived risk thought
to exist for crashes greatly out weighs the actual risks. Knowing and
understanding the facts that the risk for a bioterrorist attack is
less than being hit by lightning, allows one to develop, understand
and comprehend, more fully, an appropriate response. Sharing our
knowledge of terrorism, allows us to have fear drained from us, our
children, and our community. Please write to <tjs@Pitt.edu> to join.
"The only thing to fear, is fear itself", Roosevelt, 1937
Lecture Club:
Recently some excellent new ideas have been suggested for the Super-
course. One of these was by Rania Saad from Egypt. She has been de-
veloping something akin to a journal club, but using the lectures as
the core. This "Lecture Club" has 16 epidemiologists meeting in Egypt
to discuss one of the lectures in the supercourse. What is exciting
about this, is that this is a "flat" model of peer-to-peer-to-peer
communications as in a journal club, which rarely is used with lec-
tures, and to our knowledge has never been used with web based Power-
Point lectures.
We can steal Rania's concept and move it from Egypt, to the world. We
might consider taking Boris Alexandrovich's beautiful lecture on Ra-
diation and Leukemia and setting up a lecture club. Each person would
go through the lecture. There may be 30 people world wide in the Su-
percourse interested in learning about Radiation. They could begin to
talk with each other, and Boris himself could be there to answer
questions. It would be a great way to get people together who are in-
terested in the same topic to learn together. It would be like a
global seminar. We could set up chat rooms about each lecture.
This seems to have considerable power. We would value your thoughts.
Internet Civil Defense:
There is considerable interest in Washington on the establishment of
an Internet Civil Defense/neighborhood watch/block parent. The real-
ity is in the US or most other countries, there are way too few epi-
demiologists. In the US, for example, there are only about 1 epidemi-
ologists interested in Anthrax for 150,000 people, or for 3,000 sq.
km. It is quite obvious as to why catch bioterrorism, or identify
disease early. Civil defense has had a long and successful history in
the UK, Russia, US, Cuba, Peru, and many other countries. We have
been arguing that if we established a global Internet civil defense,
this would be very powerful for both natural and man-made disasters.
In many ways, the faculty for the supercourse of 5,000 scientists
could be considered as a trusted neighborhood. We are a group where a
neighborhood watch could be set up. The information collected would
need to be completely open, as we have established it now. Wouldn't
it be wonderful if instead of having 5,000 eyes worldwide on the out-
look for anthrax, we would have 2,000,000 people working together.
CDs:
We are very pleased with all the responses we have received from peo-
ple who obtained the CD. Faina, and Mita did wonderful work in send-
ing these out with the help of Fan, and Beatriz. Eun Ryoung made this
CD much more user friendly. We are pleased that there is considerable
interest in copying the CDs. In some cases people have make 10 cop-
ies, in others 100s, and in a few cases, 1,000s of CDs. In some coun-
tries every public health person has access to the Supercourse. How-
ever, we must be careful. A good friend in Peru said that the CD was
sent to her mother. Her mother assumed that Ron LaPorte was a terror-
ist from the US, and that the envelope must contain Anthrax. Luckily,
the CD was not destroyed. Friends, Ron LaPorte, is many things, some
good, some bad, but he is not a bioterrorist! All of his white powder
is sugar for his coffee.
We would love for you to give us input. Please write directly to
<ronlaporte@aol.com>. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Ron, Akira, Eun Ryoung, Faina, Mita, Fan, Grace, Eugene, Abed, Julia,
Raina, Tom, Deb, Benjamin, Beatriz
mailto:super1+@pitt.edu
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