Technocrat

Tracking the Flu Online

zogger
Tue Nov 11 16:56:00 -0800 2008
Health+and+Medicine.
manage

Google has been analyzing search queries related to influenza and found that by collating and graphing the data, they have been able to predict flu outbreaks faster than the CDC, sometimes by as much as one or two weeks. Google Flu Trends

We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for "flu" is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries from each state and region are added together. We compared our query counts with data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and discovered that some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in various regions of the United States. ed.z.: they need to expand this into bird watchers, veterinary and poultry/avian/ hobbiest bird fanciers(pigeons, parrots, etc) enthusiasts online forum and newsgroup postings, perhaps get an early warning of a bad *avian* flu outbreak. Seems to be quite a few really thinking about it, food contamination scares (stomach ache, nausea whatever), or say unsafe consumer products -a lot of people complaining or looking for information with batteries burning up their gadgets, unexplained flat tires with new cars..whatever. I guess the intel folks call this "chatter".

Tracking the Flu Online
Thomas Lord
Tue Nov 11 18:17:26 -0800 2008
 manage

In other news, scientists at Google have quietly developed no less than 12 models of search patterns each of which accurately predicted election results, in considerable detail, as early as October 15th (and on each subsequent day), according to sources. Moreover, Google found that with better than random success it could accurately predict the swings in polling numbers resulting from major announcements from campaigns by first "floating" the announcements (in disguised form) on low-traffic blog sights and measuring their impact there up to 3 days before the actual announcement.

This new work builds on the same Theory of Click-Trail and Search Term Psychohistory recently successfully employed at the highest level of law enforcement to accurately identify all 100 of the recently rounded up terrorists now sitting on death row.

"Google gives humans a new and profound view of who they are," said one of the terrorists as he pondered his fate. "I simply had no idea that I was in any way inclined to violence or terrorism and made no efforts at such. And yet, when I saw the click-stream report from Google, it was so obvious. Google has the power to tell us who we are. At least they got me in time! Thank Google!"

-t

THX1138

Michael Smith
Tue Nov 11 18:32:06 -0800 2008
 manage

The camera in the back of the medicine cabinet is not so far off...

Tracking the Flu Online
the_rajah
Wed Nov 12 10:24:37 -0800 2008
 manage

Hari Seldon, is that you?

Tracking the Flu Online
phred14
Wed Nov 12 07:17:35 -0800 2008
 manage

OK, as long as we're inferring stuff...

Maybe we don't need dragnet surveillance to find terrorists.  Maybe all we need are google statistics.

Wonder how the false positive rate compares between the two.

 

Do you have questions about the site? Write to bruce at perens.com . List of all articles we've ever published. Source Code Developer's Documentation RSS XML Sitemap XML News Sitemap Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict Valid CSS! [Valid RSS]