What Are the Signals Among the Noise?

A lot of the social media feeds coming out of Wuhan I would describe as sketchy and unreliable but taken collectively are a signal amidst the noise. In the beginning of any outbreak it's very quiet. Sometimes because the government is sweeping it under the rug you have to go looking for hints anywhere. And that's why I've described my job as local health officer or even state health officer as a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Indiana Jones. There was no formalized intelligence network. It really followed that algorithm of you collect a vast number of atypical data sources with variable reliability. You assimilate those together and look for the signal and the noise that meets a pattern recognition or it doesn