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How can we understand the process by which an attack type popularized in the West Bank became the tactic of choice for a white supremacist in the United States? The best way to do so—and to predict the spread of new tactics—may come from an unconventional source: epidemiology, the science of the spread of disease.
[...] Just as in epidemiology, where an outbreak in one area triggers concern in neighboring regions, so too should an outbreak in one operational area serve as a warning to other, geographically related areas. Thus, at this point the outbreak in Israel should have indicated the likelihood that the tactic would spread, at least elsewhere in the region. Here an understanding of vectors is key. A fairly broad definition of a vector is that it is a carrier that transmits a given infectious agent between organisms.
[...] Employing an epidemiological perspective will give security forces and operational planners more time to prepare for the arrival of the tactic and may ultimately save lives. Understanding when the prevalence of a tactic has reached outbreak levels can provide a warning to other operational environments. Monitoring vectors can provide warning of how and where a tactic may spread and whether it is likely that the tactic will reach pandemic or hyperendemic proportions. Even if epidemiological language is not employed, there is still value in an epidemiological approach to describing the prevalence and media coverage of tactics in operating environments.
VEHICLE RAMMING, FROM THE MIDDLE EAST TO CHARLOTTESVILLE: HOW DO TACTICS SPREAD?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday March 15 2018, @08:32PM
First, for something to be epidemiologically valid, it has to be passed from A to B. Just because A and B exist does not mean they are connected - this is the epidemiological equivalent of a post hoc fallacy. You have a flu case in the United States and you have a flu case in Israel. Until you've confirmed transmission occurred between the two, or genetically linked them, you don't have a transmission - you have a coincidence. It is equally possible that these are isolated instances with no connection unless it is proven that one borrowed the idea from someone else or reasonably knew of it.
Second, the author misuses vector in a way common to laypeople as a synonym for "method of transmission." There are differing defintions (see here [nih.gov] for a discussion which has the author's version as an acknolwedged way it is used, and then rejects it.) Yes, there are at least seven ways it is used in that article, but generally a vector is very specifically an animal which transmits the virus (as different from droplet contact, fecal-oral, direct (fomite / non-living), airborne, intimate contact / mucosal contact). I used to misuse it the same way.
The author's knowledge of epidemiology is superficial if not flatly wrong. The comparisons are therefore invalid both literally, but also analogically.
This sig for rent.