We aren't very good at predicting either one much further out than a week or two.
A BBC story (and film) talks about the problems virologists and public health defenders face as they tackle a virus like H1N1 flu and try to figure out how the disease will impact people around the globe. It's an honest examination of both the strengths of science, and the barriers that exist around human knowledge.
Such are the limitations of science, whether meteorology or virology. The recent H1N1 or swine flu predictions have led to forecasts of 65,000 deaths in the UK - but the truth is, we simply don't know. Yet in reporting the outbreak, the media broadly falls between two extremes - from alarming scare stories to experts who purport mass vaccination to be "madness, foolhardy and a gamble". Whatever happens when the pandemic pans out, there will be a substantial third group - the "I told you so" faction. Pandemic disease remains a critical test of the extent of what we do and don't know.
Pandemics--What History Tells Us on the BBC, via Holly Tucker.
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And yet we can effectively map out a nuclear blast according the same vectors. Your tax dollars at work.
See also:
"Lewis Fry Richardson, FRS (11 October 1881 - 30 September 1953) was an English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist and pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting, and the application of similar techniques to studying the causes of wars and how to prevent them."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Richardson
I first read about Richardson in "Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner, who notes: "War, like the weather, just happens."
Nice cloud picture. It's not exactly Mammatus, but I'ld expect hail and a slight chance of tornadoes.
I imagine that pandemics are like weather and are closely tied to chaos theory. Trying to understand that has always made my head hurt. http://www.answers.com/topic/chaos-theory-3
Tying this with an article last week about how fractals were found to be incredibly helpful in predicting weather patterns- could fractals hold the key for predicting pandemics?
I like to think the H1N1 pandemic is one of those things that should be kept on the back burner to let simmer. It doesn't need to be projected into peoples faces 24/7. And it certainly does not need to be blown into the mass hysteria that today's US media can certainly cause.
When the grey goo syndrome starts then we can let Fox/CNN and everyone else know.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/e-coli/4091669455/
If we can comprende the Navier-Stokes equations auf englais we can put all of this "risk analysis" mumbo jumbo to bed. Get to work ppl.
http://www.claymath.org/millennium/Navier-Stokes_Equations/