Why Shutting Airports Is Not the Best Way to Halt a Global Flu Pandemic

Today05/17/2012There are obvious factual problems with this article. In the paper, the alternatives considered were closing airports or removing specific flights with the number of flights removed held constant. In other words, the impact in terms of the number of flights canceled is the same. The abstract itself says: "Simulated spreading in this network showed that spreading infected 37% less individuals after cancelling a quarter of flight connections between cities, as selected by betweenness centrality. The alternative strategy of closing down whole airports causing the same number of cancelled connections only reduced infections by 18%."
 
You can argue that closing airports versus canceling targeted flights is less dramatic, but it affects about the same number of flights and given that these are international flights about the same number of people. In fact, the article states that: "Although this was not tested directly, cancelling fewer flights might also lead to fewer passengers that are affected by these policies compared to the approach of cancelling mostly flights from highly connected nodes (hubs)."

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