Student SPHere 2008-09

Well on Tuesday night the Twins ended their season. It was a disappointing loss, but it was in the tiebreak game for the division title, so you really can’t complain. Very few experts thought the Twins would be in contention for first place at the end of the season. Most were thinking the Twins would be in last place. Well these experts were wrong. I wonder what there assumptions where? I have been thinking about assumptions a lot this semester. Primarily for my Validity Concepts in Epidemiologic Research class taught by Dr. Maldonado, in which I have learned that statistics are based on assumptions. This somewhat obvious statement is actually profound. When was the last time (if you ever have) thought about the assumptions inherent in the formulas you use frequently?

Well the Twins were not the only ones to defy assumptions this week. Solvay, a vaccine manufacturer, among other things, announced plans this week that they were not going to build a cell-based vaccine manufacturing plant in the US. They would have made seasonal influenza vaccines at this plant and it would have been the second seasonal influenza vaccine plant in the US. HHS really wants more seasonal vaccine manufacturing capacity inside the US, so that during a pandemic these plants, inside the US can be used to produce a pandemic vaccine. HHS put 1 billion taxpayer dollars toward this goal in 2006 by providing contracts to 5 pharmaceutical firms to develop this capacity. HHS had an underlying assumption that if seasonal influenza vaccine demand increased then so would manufacturing capacity. Maryn McKenna, the author of a Beating Back the Devil (highly recommended, I almost missed my bus stop twice reading it) explains why this assumption caused problems.

Continuing with my assumptions theme, I have also been doing a lot of thinking about assumptions. Most of this thinking has been directed to the assumption in my master’s project and how these assumptions need to be addressed more directly in my PhD research. Making assumptions about the future is hard, especially if nothing in the past resembles what you’re trying to make assumptions about. The big question is what will an influenza pandemic look like in a modern just in time economy?