Multiple social and environmental factors affect wildland fire response of full or less-than-full suppression.

Wildland fire incident commanders make wildfire response decisions within an increasingly complex socio-environmental context. Threats to human safety and property, along with public pressures and agency cultures, often lead commanders to emphasize full suppression. However, commanders may use less-than-full suppression to enhance responder safety, reduce firefighting costs, and encourage beneficial effects of fire. This study asks: what management, socioeconomic, environmental, and fire behavior characteristics are associated with full suppression and the less-than-full suppression methods of point-zone protection, confinement/containment, and maintain/monitor? We analyzed incident report data from 374 wildfires in the United States northern Rocky Mountains between 2008 and 2013. Regression models showed that full suppression was most strongly associated with higher housing density and earlier dates in the calendar year, along with non-federal land jurisdiction, regional and national incident management teams, human-caused ignitions, low fire-growth potential, and greater fire size. Interviews with commanders provided decision-making context for these regression results. Future efforts to encourage less-than-full suppression should address the complex management context, in addition to the biophysical context, of fire response.

Protective Effects from Prior Pneumococcal Vaccination in Patients with Chronic Airway Diseases during Hospitalization for Influenza-A Territory-Wide Study.

Influenza is an important respiratory viral pathogen in adults, with secondary bacterial pneumonia being a common complication. While pneumococcal vaccines can prevent pneumococcal pneumonia and invasive pneumococcal disease, whether they can also prevent the severe in-hospital outcomes among patients hospitalized for influenza has not been examined. A territory-wide retrospective study was conducted in Hong Kong, which included all adult patients having chronic airway diseases (asthma, bronchiectasis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) hospitalized for influenza and who had received seasonal influenza vaccine. The occurrence of secondary bacterial pneumonia, mortality, and other severe in-hospital outcomes were compared among subjects with or without pneumococcal vaccination. There was a total of 3066 eligible patients who were hospitalized for influenza in public hospitals in Hong Kong from 1 January 2016 to 30 June 2023. Completed pneumococcal vaccination with PSV23/PCV13 conferred protection against secondary bacterial pneumonia, all-cause mortality, and respiratory cause of mortality with adjusted odds ratios of 0.74 (95% CI = 0.57-0.95, p = 0.019), 0.12 (95% CI = 0.03-0.53, p = 0.005), and 0.04 (95% CI = 0.00-0.527, p = 0.0038), respectively.