{"id":5,"date":"2008-07-07T18:10:56","date_gmt":"2008-07-07T22:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/maxim\/2008\/07\/07\/epidemic-part-2\/"},"modified":"2008-07-07T18:10:56","modified_gmt":"2008-07-07T22:10:56","slug":"epidemic-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/maxim\/2008\/07\/07\/epidemic-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Epidemic! part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>More thoughts while reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Epidemic-Infectious-Disease-American-Natural\/dp\/1565845463\/\">Epidemic!<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The public health field uses the term &#8220;non-vector-borne diseases&#8221; to refer to those that spread directly from infected host to infected host, such as HIV\/AIDS, and &#8220;vector-borne diseases&#8221; to those that are carried by mosquitoes or other &#8220;vectors.&#8221; [p. 60] In contrast, the malware world always refers to the mechanism of infection (e.g., e-mail, IM, web, network) as the vector.<\/li>\n<li>Virulent pathogens (those that kill their hosts) have to use techniques to enhance their survival, since their hosts won&#8217;t be around to continue harboring them. These include multiplying faster within the host, spreading faster to other hosts, and infecting as many hosts as possible. [p. 61] The same would have to be true for a computer-based infection to survive if it was cannibalizing its own host machines.<\/li>\n<li>How common are &#8220;infectious&#8221; malware diseases? How exactly do we define &#8220;infectious?&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Patient history is the most important diagnostic criterion. How do we collect accurate PC or user history? [p. 69]<\/li>\n<li>PCs to a large extent are not self healing and do not produce antibodies like the human body. This is a significant difference in thinking about how we treat malware.<\/li>\n<li>In fighting infectious disease, prevention and making preventative care affordable are key. [p. 73] In fighting malware, the issue is less about affordability and more about education and making the right tools available to users in an easy-to-use way.<\/li>\n<li>Mary Wilson is a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health who focuses on global patterns of infectious disease. [p. 74] It might be interesting to see if she has any perspective on the parallels and contrasts between infectious disease and malware.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>This entry is part of a series. See the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/maxim\/2008\/06\/20\/the-public-health-of-the-internet\/\">introduction<\/a> for more information.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More thoughts while reading Epidemic!: The public health field uses the term &#8220;non-vector-borne diseases&#8221; to refer to those that spread directly from infected host to infected host, such as HIV\/AIDS, and &#8220;vector-borne diseases&#8221; to those that are carried by mosquitoes or other &#8220;vectors.&#8221; [p. 60] In contrast, the malware world always refers to the mechanism [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2696],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publichealth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/maxim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/maxim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/maxim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/maxim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1845"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/maxim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/maxim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/maxim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/maxim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/maxim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}