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UMass Amherst-UT Austin team awarded $27.5 million by CDC to help establish nation’s first disease outbreak response network

A team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and The University of Texas at Austin is among 13 institutional partners chosen by the CDC’s Center…

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A team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and The University of Texas at Austin is among 13 institutional partners chosen by the CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA) to establish the nation’s first outbreak response and disease modeling network.

Credit: UMass Amherst

A team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and The University of Texas at Austin is among 13 institutional partners chosen by the CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA) to establish the nation’s first outbreak response and disease modeling network.

The CDC on Tuesday, Sept. 19, announced the $250 million effort that grew out of the needs and lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic. The emerging national network will use data to support decision makers during public health emergencies. 

Led by renowned infectious-disease researchers, integrative biologist Lauren Ancel Meyers, director of the Center for Pandemic Decision Science, and biostatistician Nicholas Reich, director of the UMass COVID-19 Forecast Hub, the UMass-UT team was awarded $27.5 million from the CFA to help implement forecasting and disease-modeling efforts over the next five years. 

In addition to the “implementation” category under which the UMass-UT team applied for and was funded as one of three centers in the nation, the other categories for funding are innovation and integration.

“Implementation is where the rubber meets the road,” says Reich, who is also director of the CDC-designated Influenza Forecasting Center of Excellence and professor in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences. “We want to take what worked from the collaborations between public health officials and the modeling community during COVID and improve upon it.”

Meyers was an integral player in the local analysis of and response to COVID-19 in the Austin area, where she directed the UT Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium. She was given a key to the city earlier this year for her lab’s round-the-clock contribution to the community during the pandemic. 

“Our models have provided critical information and saved lives during COVID-19 and other public health emergencies,” says Meyers, a professor of integrative biology, statistics and data sciences, and population health at UT Austin. “However, with each new threat, we scrambled to build predictive analytics and to communicate the results to decision makers. This project represents a huge national investment in data and analytics for pandemic preparedness. It will allow us, and teams like ours, to ensure that our tools are poised to rapidly detect, forecast and combat new threats and that public health officials across the U.S. are equipped to use them.” 

Reich’s forecast hub, which created a weekly “ensemble” forecast of COVID deaths and hospitalizations from dozens of models developed by teams of highly respected infectious-disease forecasters, served as the source for the CDC’s short-term forecasts for counties, states and the nation during the pandemic. These predictions were used by the White House to inform public communications as well as by healthcare and university systems in planning for coming waves, and by vaccine manufacturers in designing and siting clinical trials.

Reich says the collaboration with Meyers at UT Austin will take advantage of the strengths of both of their groups’ experiences collaborating with public health officials. The goal will be to take pilot projects that have proven successful and design them for use across jurisdictions.

“We’re looking forward to using this new partnership to take the best of what modeling and outbreak analytics have to offer and building tools and systems that can provide valuable insights to a wide range of stakeholders, from decision-makers at the local, state and federal levels to the general public,” Reich says.

Reich and Meyers will partner with two dozen academic groups and public health agencies in Texas and Massachusetts; each has received subawards under the UMass-UT plan. In Massachusetts, the Department of Public Health’s senior informatics epidemiologist Meagan Burns will work with Reich and Meyers to strengthen the team’s academic-public health core and develop strategies for decision support during crises.

“We are excited to continue our work with UMass Amherst as well as engage with UT Austin,” says Dr. Catherine M. Brown, state epidemiologist. “This collaboration will allow us to leverage the expertise of our partners and result in critical tools to respond to public health threats. DPH will help inform the development of those tools and will use them to enhance our implementation of modeling and analytics to support public health.”

Also as part of the award, the UT-UMass group will receive $500,000 a year to develop staffing and data-sharing plans when emergency activation needs to happen. “The plan is to have this network of academic and industry partners that are standing by ready to be activated when another outbreak emergency occurs, and not necessarily just the once-in-a-century pandemic,” Reich says. “Once every couple of years there’s something like an Ebola or monkey pox outbreak, or SARS or pandemic flu.”

The national network will move the U.S. forward in efforts to better prepare for and respond to disease outbreaks, says Dylan George, director of the CFA. “We are committed to working alongside these outstanding partners to achieve our goal of using data and advanced analytics to support decision-makers at every level of government,” he says. 

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International

Fighting the Surveillance State Begins with the Individual

It’s a well-known fact at this point that in the United States and most of the so-called free countries that there is a robust surveillance state in…

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October 23, 2023

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It’s a well-known fact at this point that in the United States and most of the so-called free countries that there is a robust surveillance state in place, collecting data on the entire populace. This has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by people like Edward Snowden, a National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower who exposed that the NSA was conducting mass surveillance on US citizens and the world as a whole. The NSA used applications like those from Prism Systems to piggyback on corporations and the data collection their users had agreed to in the terms of service. Google would scan all emails sent to a Gmail address to use for personalized advertising. The government then went to these companies and demanded the data, and this is what makes the surveillance state so interesting. Neo-Marxists like Shoshana Zuboff have dubbed this “surveillance capitalism.” In China, the mass surveillance is conducted at a loss. Setting up closed-circuit television cameras and hiring government workers to be a mandatory editorial staff for blogs and social media can get quite expensive. But if you parasitically leech off a profitable business practice it means that the surveillance state will turn a profit, which is a great asset and an even greater weakness for the system. You see, when that is what your surveillance state is predicated on you’ve effectively given your subjects an opt-out button. They stop using services that spy on them. There is software and online services that are called “open source,” which refers to software whose code is publicly available and can be viewed by anyone so that you can see exactly what that software does. The opposite of this, and what you’re likely already familiar with, is proprietary software. Open-source software generally markets itself as privacy respecting and doesn’t participate in data collection. Services like that can really undo the tricky situation we’ve found ourselves in. It’s a simple fact of life that when the government is given a power—whether that be to regulate, surveil, tax, or plunder—it is nigh impossible to wrestle it away from the state outside somehow disposing of the state entirely. This is why the issue of undoing mass surveillance is of the utmost importance. If the government has the power to spy on its populace, it will. There are people, like the creators of The Social Dilemma, who think that the solution to these privacy invasions isn’t less government but more government, arguing that data collection should be taxed to dissuade the practice or that regulation needs to be put into place to actively prevent abuses. This is silly to anyone who understands the effect regulations have and how the internet really works. You see, data collection is necessary. You can’t have email without some elements of data collection because it’s simply how the protocol functions. The issue is how that data is stored and used. A tax on data collection itself will simply become another cost of doing business. A large company like Google can afford to pay a tax. But a company like Proton Mail, a smaller, more privacy-respecting business, likely couldn’t. Proton Mail’s business model is based on paid subscriptions. If there were additional taxes imposed on them, it’s possible that they would not be able to afford the cost and would be forced out of the market. To reiterate, if one really cares about the destruction of the surveillance state, the first step is to personally make changes to how you interact with online services and to whom you choose to give your data.

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Government

Forget Ron DeSantis: Walt Disney has a much bigger problem

The company’s political woes are a sideshow to the one key issue Bob Iger has to solve.

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October 23, 2023

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Walt Disney has a massive, but solvable, problem.

The company's current skirmishes with Florida Gov. DeSantis get a lot of headlines, but they're not having a major impact on the company's bottom line.

Related: What the Bud Light boycott means for Disney, Target, and Starbucks

DeSantis has made Walt Disney (DIS) - Get Free Report a target in what he calls his war on woke, an effort to win right-wing support as he tries to secure the Republican Party nomination for president. 

That effort has generated plenty of press and multiple lawsuits tied to the governor's takeover of the former Reedy Creek Improvement District, Disney's legislated self-governance operation. But it has not hurt revenue at the company's massive Florida theme-park complex.  

Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger addressed the matter during the company's third-quarter-earnings call, without directly mentioning DeSantis.

"Walt Disney World is still performing well above precovid levels: 21% higher in revenue and 29% higher in operating income compared to fiscal 2019," he said. 

And "following a number of recent changes we've implemented, we continue to see positive guest-experience ratings in our theme parks, including Walt Disney World, and positive indicators for guests looking to book future visits."

The theme parks are not Disney's problem. The death of the movie business is, however, a hurdle that Iger has yet to show that the company has a plan to clear.

Boba Fett starred in a show on Disney+.

Image source: Walt Disney

Disney needs a plan to monetize content 

In 2019 Walt Disney drew in more $11 billion in global box office, or $13 billion when you add in the former Fox properties it also owns. In that year seven Mouse House films crossed the billion-dollar threshold in theaters, according to data from Box Office Mojo.

This year, the company will struggle to reach half that and it has no billion-dollar films, with "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" closing its theatrical run at $845 million globally. 

(That's actually good for third place this year, as only "Barbie" and "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" have broken the billion-dollar mark and they may be the only two films to do that this year.)

In the precovid world Disney could release two Pixar movies, three Marvel films, a live-action remake of an animated classic, and maybe one other film that each would be nearly guaranteed to earn $1 billion at the box office.

That's simply not how the movie business works anymore. While theaters may remain part of Disney's plan to monetize its content, the past isn't coming back. Theaters may remain a piece of the movie-release puzzle, but 2023 isn't an anomaly or a bad release schedule.

Consumers have big TVs at home and they're more than happy to watch most films on them.

Disney owns the IP but charges too little

People aren't less interested in Marvel and Star Wars; they're just getting their fix from Disney+ at an absurdly low price. 

Over the past couple of months through the next few weeks, I will have watched about seven hours of premium Star Wars content and five hours of top-tier Marvel content with "Ahsoka" and "Loki" respectively. 

Before the covid pandemic, I gladly would have paid theater prices for each movie in those respective universes. Now, I have consumed about six movies worth of premium content for less than the price of two movie tickets.

By making its premium content television shows available on a service that people can buy for $7.99 a month Disney has devalued its most valuable asset, its intellectual property. 

Consumers have shown that they will pay the $10 to $15 cost of a movie ticket to see what happens next in the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the Star Wars galaxy. But the company has offered top-tier content from those franchises at a lower price.

Iger needs to find a way to replace billions of dollars in lost box office, but charging less for the company's content makes no sense. 

Now, some fans likely won't pay triple the price for Disney+. But if it were to bundle a direct-to-consumer ESPN along with content that currently gets released to movie theaters, Disney might create a package that it can price in a way that reflects the value of its IP.

Consumers want Disney's content and they will likely pay more for it. Iger simply has to find a way to make that happen.

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International

Stock Market Today: Stocks turn higher as Treasury yields retreat; big tech earnings up next

A pullback in Treasury yields has stocks moving higher Monday heading into a busy earnings week and a key 2-year bond auction later on Tuesday.

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October 23, 2023

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Updated at 11:52 am EDT U.S. stocks turned higher Monday, heading into the busiest earnings week of the year on Wall Street, amid a pullback in Treasury bond yields that followed the first breach of 5% for 10-year notes since 2007. Investors, however, continue to track developments in Israel's war with Hamas, which launched its deadly attack from Gaza three weeks ago, as leaders around the region, and the wider world, work to contain the fighting and broker at least a form of cease-fire. Humanitarian aid is also making its way into Gaza, through the territory's border with Egypt, as officials continue to work for the release of more than 200 Israelis taken hostage by Hamas during the October 7 attack. Those diplomatic efforts eased some of the market's concern in overnight trading, but the lingering risk that regional adversaries such as Iran, or even Saudi Arabia, could be drawn into the conflict continues to blunt risk appetite. Still, the U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six global currencies and acts as the safe-haven benchmark in times of market turmoil, fell 0.37% in early New York trading 105.773, suggesting some modest moves into riskier assets. The Japanese yen, however, eased past the 150 mark in overnight dealing, a level that has some traders awaiting intervention from the Bank of Japan and which may have triggered small amounts of dollar sales and yen purchases. In the bond market, benchmark 10-year note yields breached the 5% mark in overnight trading, after briefly surpassing that level late last week for the first time since 2007, but were last seen trading at 4.867% ahead of $141 billion in 2-year, 5-year and 7-year note auctions later this week. Global oil prices were also lower, following two consecutive weekly gains that has take Brent crude, the global pricing benchmark, firmly past $90 a barrel amid supply disruption concerns tied to the middle east conflict. Brent contracts for December delivery were last seen $1.06 lower on the session at $91.07 per barrel while WTI futures contract for the same month fell $1.36 to $86.72 per barrel. Market volatility gauges were also active, with the CBOE Group's VIX index hitting a fresh seven-month high of $23.08 before easing to $20.18 later in the session. That level suggests traders are expecting ranges on the S&P 500 of around 1.26%, or 53 points, over the next month. A busy earnings week also indicates the likelihood of elevated trading volatility, with 158 S&P 500 companies reporting third quarter earnings over the next five days, including mega cap tech names such as Google parent Alphabet  (GOOGL) - Get Free Report, Microsoft  (MSFT) - Get Free Report, retail and cloud computing giant Amazon  (AMZN) - Get Free Report and Facebook owner Meta Platforms  (META) - Get Free Report. "It’s shaping up to be a big week for the market and it comes as the S&P 500 is testing a key level—the four-month low it set earlier this month," said Chris Larkin, managing director for trading and investing at E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley. "How the market responds to that test may hinge on sentiment, which often plays a larger-than-average role around this time of year," he added. "And right now, concerns about rising interest rates and geopolitical turmoil have the potential to exacerbate the market’s swings." Heading into the middle of the trading day on Wall Street, the S&P 500, which is down 8% from its early July peak, the highest of the year, was up 10 points, or 0.25%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which slumped into negative territory for the year last week, was marked 10 points lower while the Nasdaq, which fell 4.31% last week, was up 66 points, or 0.51%. In overseas markets, Europe's Stoxx 600 was marked 0.11% lower by the close of Frankfurt trading, with markets largely tracking U.S. stocks as well as the broader conflict in Israel. In Asia, a  slump in China stocks took the benchmark CSI 300 to a fresh 2019 low and pulled the region-wide MSCI ex-Japan 0.72% lower into the close of trading.
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