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David Carr (7:25 p.m.) #nerdprom security alert: tiny nathalie [sic] portman getting smushed and adored by throng at same time...
...these systems have many moving parts, relying on state, local and even community health-care workers to both recognize and report anything out of the ordinary. Once a community doctor sees what he thinks might be an unusual series of flu cases, for example, he would have to alert his local or state health departments, which would then investigate further by testing samples from the sick patients - a process that could take up to two weeks...
Where Google Flu Trends may prove more useful, however, is in the tracking of an epidemic once it is under way. If the current H1N1 outbreak were to worsen and start to spread more quickly, then Google's system may be able to keep pace with it and alert health officials immediately as the problem grows. "If the disease starts spreading in a particular area, for example, and affects thousands of people, then we hope that our system would detect that within 24 hours," says Ginsberg. The idea would be to catch the rise in cases before too many people...
...relatively young, which is unusual for the flu, or why this strain seems to be spreading at a time of year when the flu usually levels off. "These viruses mutate, these viruses change, these viruses can further reassort with other genetic material," said Michael Ryan, the WHO's global alert and response director. "So it would be imprudent at this point to take too much reassurance." (Read "CDC Readies Swine Flu Vaccine...
...Still, a little more than a week after the WHO first swung into high alert, it's easy to wonder whether H1N1 might turn out to be much ado about not that much. Certainly the actions of some countries - like Egypt's impulsive move to cull some 300,000 pigs and China's apparent decision to preemptively quarantine hundreds of Mexican nationals - smack of panic. In the U.S., too, hundreds of schools have temporarily closed down because of suspected or confirmed swine flu cases, with Fort Worth, Texas, making the decision to shut down all city schools until...