Flu-Frenzy

People, relax.

Words like "pandemic" really get blown out of proportion.

Check out information about another pandemic flu in Spain in 1918:

It's estimated that about 28 per cent of Canadians and Americans contracted the Spanish flu. Worldwide, an estimated 2.5 per cent of the sick died of complications, which made the pandemic one of the most lethal flu outbreaks in recorded history. But there's another way to look at those statistics. You might observe, for example, that they mean that even during the worst ravages of the 1918 flu, 97.5 per cent of those infected survived and recovered...So, even if we had a repeat of the 1918 flu, the chances were seven out of 10 that you wouldn't catch it and if you did, the odds were better than nine out of 10 that you'd survive.

I did find something cool though. Search trends can tell you a lot about where and why a topic has become of interest. This is reminiscent of the Lycos50 (from Deano!) and the cRANKy top ten search I worked on.

One way to possibly track the spread of the swine flu is to look at where spikes in search activity around related terms is occurring. Google already does this with its Google Flu Trends, and has now extended that analysis on an experimental basis to Mexico with a site it just put up called Experimental Flu Trends For Mexico. These maps represent Google’s estimates of actual flu outbreaks based on correlations between search activity and how many of those people are really sick.

Check it out: Google trends for "swine flu" AND you can do this with any term, play around with it! For example, the top state searching for gonorrhea is Tennessee...better be careful at Bonnaroo!!!!

Oh yeah, and if you think you have swine flu, check this out: http://doihaveswineflu.org/