User:Naomiroll/sandbox

Scientific Communication and Concerns during the 2015-16 Zika virus epidemic
The 2015-2016 Zika virus outbreak became an important topic on many social media sites, especially on Twitter. An analysis of twitter posts on February 2nd, 2016 showed that 50 tweets per minute were posted about Zika, many of which contained the hashtags #salud, which means health in Spanish as well as #who, which served as a reference to the World Health Organization.

The epidemic also caused a rise in tweets from college students upset that their spring break trips and study abroad plans had been changed or cancelled due to the virus’ spread.

Many studies have been conducted on the connections and impact of social media mentions of Zika. One analysis found that the primary topics discussed on Twitter before the peak of the outbreak regarding Zika included Zika’s impact, reactions to Zika, pregnancy and microcephaly, transmission routes of Zika, and case reports. During the summer of 2016 when Zika was spreading at a much faster rate, this social media analysis determined that the major topics on Twitter regarding Zika had become concerns about the spread of Zika, criticism of Congress, news about Zika, and scientific information about Zika. The same study also found that tweets from reputable institutions and people holding scientific credentials demonstrated the ability of Twitter as a source to spread information quickly on the internet. Another study found that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the general public showed similar concerns about Zika. The CDC’s posts on Twitter during the outbreak focused on focused on symptoms and education for Zika. However, the public had more of a tendency to focus concern on the consequences of Zika on women and infants, such as microcephaly.

While there was concern for children on social media, this concern was lacking in in countries largely impacted by Zika virus, such as Brazil. In Brazil, struggling mothers of infants with microcephaly caused by Zika have used support systems on social media on the cellphone chat app called Whatsapp or on Facebook pages that can help connect mothers in need of supplies and money to donors.

The heavy traditional news and social media coverage of the virus spreading did cause concern over lack of reliability. Research has found that between May and June of 2016, four out of five social media posts about Zika provided accurate information, but inaccurate posts were much more popular. This led many researchers to worry about the quality of information being spread and shared on social media. Google Trends showed that Zika did not become a trending topic for the media until January of 2016. A study done found that 81 percent of the most popular posts on Facebook about Zika did contain truthful information, but posts spreading false information were far more popular. Initial media reports on Zika in the United States focused on reassuring viewers and readers that Zika was not a threat in the United States. Studies have found that real-time social media updates are desirable methods for communication during the emergence of infectious diseases. However, misinformation is common and data control in the cyber world has become a growing necessity.

Many people criticized the lack of governmental response from the U.S. Government in the wake of the crisis. The United States was criticized for a lack of preparedness in terms of an ability to contain a virus outbreak in the United States. The Obama Administration requested an emergency supplemental appropriation of $1.86 billion for both domestic and international response to the crisis. In response to this request, Congress redirected $589 million from funds previously dedicated to Ebola instead of allocating new funds. Another criticism regarding Zika funding had to do with the fact that Congress members still took vacation in July of 2016 before allocating any of the funds requested in February of 2016.

In August of 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that they had spent $194 million of the initial $222 million allocation to fight Zika virus. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said that the NIAID was running out of funds, which would substantially slow down the development of vaccines. Although the government faced criticism for not responding strongly enough to the Zika outbreak, the government eventually provided funding of $1.1 billion for Zika in October of 2016. It took congress nearly seven months to agree to this allocation, which left many prevention and education projects without funding for a substantial amount of time. Senate Democrats urged Republicans to approve the full amount of funding more quickly rather than waiting for major transmission of Zika virus to begin in the United States.

In 2017, public health experts are still concerned about the failure of the Zika response in the United States. Many officials failed to provide information about Zika’s sexual transmission. New York City subway systems had posters about mosquitos while all local cases reported had been picked up elsewhere or transmitted sexually. Many experts believe that the United States lacked severely in providing the public with information to prevent sexual transmission of the virus.

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Evaluating Wikipedia Module
I chose to read an article on cancer treatment on Wikipedia for this assignment. One of the first things that stuck out to me was a statement saying that "Under current estimates, two in five people will have cancer at some point in their lifetime." While this is important information, I don't think it is necessarily related to the actual treatment of cancer, and would be better suited on an article about cancer in general. This quote came from an Economist article, and when I clicked on it I was unable to read the article without paying for a subscription to the website. Aside from that, I think the article does a really good job of covering the treatments that I have heard of as well as some newer ones and the rest of the sources appear to be well respected medical journals. I found quite a bit of information similar to what I found when researching thyroid cancer for our class assignment.

The article is part of Wikiproject Medicine which means it must include high quality medical information and is likely to have edits be under a bit more scrutiny as to not provide people with false medical information.