The Swine Web: CDC, Mash-ups, tweets, & more

Google Flu Trends, has been updating itself with data and news stories about the swine flu pandemic. One might question the veracity of the tracking given the potential interest in pandemic possibilities. In describing how Flu Trends tracks outbreaks: "We've found that there is a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms," reads an explanation on the site. "Some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening, and are therefore good indicators of flu activity. Our estimates, based on up-to-date aggregated Google search data, may indicate flu activity up to two weeks ahead of traditional flu surveillance systems."

However, the site still registers United States flu activity as "low." Areas of the country affected by the new strain of flu, particularly California and Texas, are also noted as having "low" activity. A graph on the site shows the level of flu-related search activity on a week-by-week basis.

On Google Trends, as of mid day 27 April, flu-related topics have appeared on the rankings of most-searched terms, including "swine flue" in sixth place, "CDC.gov" at tenth and "swine flu site CDC.gov" at twenty-first.

CDC Swine Flu Webpage has a running tally of laboratory confirmed cases in the US, broken down by state. At 1300 ET, US, the totals are as follows: California 7; Kansas 2; New York City 28; Ohio 1; Texas 2. Total = 40.

Symptoms of the disease include fever, muscle aches, headaches, cough, and sometimes diarrhea and vomiting. The incubation period for H1N1 is still being debated, but typical flu strains take one to two days to begin manifesting symptoms.

CDC recommends the following for treatment and or prevention of infection with swine influenza viruses:

* Oseltamivir (brand name Tamiflu ®) is approved to both treat and prevent influenza A and B virus infection in people one year of age and older.
* Zanamivir (brand name Relenza ®) is approved to treat influenza A and B virus infection in people 7 years and older and to prevent influenza A and B virus infection in people 5 years and older.

Recommendations for using antiviral drugs for treatment or prevention of swine influenza can, and most likely will, change as we learn more about this new virus.

Clinicians should consider treating any person with confirmed or suspected swine influenza with an antiviral drug. This page gives specific recommendations from CDC.

In a typical year, flu kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people, according to the World Health Organization, although larger outbreaks such as the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic have killed millions. WHO Epidemic and Pandemic Alert (EPR)Disease Outbreak News provides global update news. However, the WHO reports may be less than timely, given the Web 2.0 era in which Twitter, Facebook and other social-networking tools have combined with Google and other search engines to create a "social Web" capable of providing up-to-the-minute information... though admittedly, the accuracy of the web 2.0 info is sometimes to be questioned.

Some have already taken matters into their own hands and started using Google’s collaborative tools to trace out the infection on Google Maps. One of the best disease alert mashes is the HealthMap Swine Flu Alerts which seem to give the best "heads-up" to what is happening and where. HealthMap brings together disparate data sources to achieve a unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases. They combine outbreak data of varying reliability, ranging from news sources (such as Google News) to curated personal accounts (such as ProMED) to validated official alerts (such as WHO).

Twitter, the social-networking site whose members can post 140-character microblogs, or "tweets," is busy with Swine Flu postings. Twitter being what it is, includes a mix of hard information, pre-emptive suggestions, near panic jitters, and sarcasm. "Swine Flu" has become the most-searched term on the site, beating out "Pontiac" and "Bea Arthur." If you want to track the reactions of the Twittersphere to the Swine Flu outbreak this Google Map is tracking the latest tweets that mention 'Swine Flu'. The map animates as tweets are made. You can zoom into a specific location should you wish to see what is tweeting by area.