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Google Can Predict the Flu
An anonymous reader mentions Google Flu Trends, a newly unveiled initiative of Google.org, Google's philanthropic arm. The claim is that this Web service, which aggregates search data to track outbreaks of influenza, can spot disease trends up to 2 weeks before Centers for Disease Control data can. The NYTimes writeup begins: "What if Google knew before anyone else that a fast-spreading flu outbreak was putting you at heightened risk of getting sick? And what if it could alert you, your doctor and your local public health officials before the muscle aches and chills kicked in? That, in essence, is the promise of Google Flu Trends, a new Web tool ... unveiled on Tuesday, right at the start of flu season in the US. Google Flu Trends is based on the simple idea that people who are feeling sick will tend to turn to the Web for information, typing things like 'flu symptoms; or 'muscle aches' into Google. The service tracks such queries and charts their ebb and flow, broken down by regions and states."
Thats a seriously great idea ...
It totally sidesteps the problem of early symptoms not typically getting people to the doctor where it can potentially be reported/tracked.
There's probably a lot of trends that can be detected the same way beyond just disease.
Buy stock in companies that sell treatments for Beri-Beri, Trench Foot, and Jungle Rot, and then have your botnet look them on on google.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
In the future, Google will be able to record your eating habits and predict when you are going to poop.
This, of course, won't work on female users since we all know that girls don't poop.
Now big brother can track outbreaks of penis enhancement and epidemics of monkey punching.
The flu isn't exactly a major killer, it just makes people be a little ill for a few days, even the CDC says that only about 250 people died from it in 2001 in the USA, not the 36,000 that is promoted.
on antivirus software.
For starters, most people's first reaction to getting sick isn't to google their symptoms. It's to hit the medicine cabinet or go to the drug store and get some cold meds, and then call into work sick. And right after that, he spends his afternoon staring at the "Whoa cowboy, slow down!" screen on slashdot, wishing he had friends to call. On a slow news day, he might watch 'Oh, My Goddess!' or slave away on stumbleupon for hours, occasionally laughing and then dribbling snot onto the keyboard. Then they ask for another Dew.
If you want to track a flu outbreak, talk to the employers or the drug store clerks, not google. But don't ask the annoyed girlfriend, she's too busy figuring out if that story about putting a keyboard in a dishwasher is true...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
What if people start searching for "impeach Obama" or "repeal PATRIOT Act" or terms like "ELF" or "NRA" ? Will Google start reporting that to the government and selling that type of info to the media ? Will they sell the IPs ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
If Madagascar detects anyone googling "flu" they'll close their ports.
So what point will a "national emergency" of some kind emerge and compel them to turn over data? Could the Government then force Google, yahoo, etc, to turn over the requested search results for say...aids clinics?
Handguns?
Recounts?
Recall election?
How long until we see people getting subpoena's for google's information about a user for things like divorce cases (e.g. husband with a vasectomy subpoenas wife's search history for info on condoms in order to prove she has been having an affair for years).
I'm sure some proto-libertarian is going to say "well, just don't use google if you don't want that information to be collected about yourself" but a real libertarian would respond with "'don't use google' is not an answer that helps google's business, so what are they going to do about it?"
How about Google Ebola, or maybe Google Gangrene? Google Dirty Bomb?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
For "Dirty Slut"... probably indicates to google that whorehouses are low on soap?
Do to the /. effect thousands of /.ers started googling flu symptoms causing the predictor to indicate a flu outbreak.
Thousands of hypochondriacs responded by checking themselves into hospitals complaining about flu-like symptoms.
If you've received a flu shot in the past 6 years the only thing you got was a chance at a bad immune reaction and a concoction of mercury, detergent and some other nasty compounds.
That's blatantly untrue. The flu strain predictions have been fairly good in the last few years, with the exception of 2003-2004 when it was only marginally protective for one of the more common strains. Even that year, it was largely protective for most strains. Get your damn flu shot and protect the rest of us. For reference:
wikipedia
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Umm...
You're TOTALLY wrong. WHO-recommended flu vaccines are very effective. See here for an example: http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/ccdr-rmtc/06vol32/acs-07/index.html
And: "...the only thing you got was a chance at a bad immune reaction and a concoction of mercury, detergent and some other nasty compounds..." is just a stock anti-vaccination quackery.
1. Invest in Tamiflu (the leading medication to treat flu symptoms)
2. Organize a massive effort to do web searches for "flu symptoms"
3. Wait for Google to sound the flu alarm
4. Profit!
or else!
Either they don't have a problem or they don't use the google and those internets.
Every time I say it I get modded down, but I won't let that deter me because this is just a message board.
Google does 2 things really well:
- Search (including getting advertising revenue from search, and specialized search tools and engines like scholar)
- Maps - Google Earth and Google Maps
I haven't seen another product or service from Google that I like. That includes Chrome, Picasa, Mail, Apps, Web Toolkit. It's all just buggy junk and typically it collects information about your usage of the product (sometimes in shady ways such as installing an update app that's hard to get rid of even if you uninstall)which raises privacy concerns).
Yet everything I hear, here and elsewhere is propaganda about how Google is revolutionizing this or that, or how it's such strong competition to Microsoft etc. That's just plain bullshit. I'm getting very tired of the Google propaganda, and even more tired of the attitude here that criticising Google means you should be modded into oblivion as a troll.
Look at how ridiculous this latest claim is. It should be reported as nonsense but instead it gets put on the front page as if it was a credible news story. I think Google could claim to cure cancer, find God and have a chat with him, end poverty and achieve world peace and there would still be people defending the claims. Google is just a company with a funky motto and a decent search engine that happened to appear at the right time. All you fan boys just get over it already.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
My concern here would be the potential to cause a public panic. I recall a google bot malfunctioning once before. To wit: Google's automated search engine's crawlers brought a news story from December 10, 2002 that detailed United Airline's file for bankruptcy to the top of its listing and confused a large amount of UAL shareholders, causing them to sell their shares and drop the value of UAL significantly. (Reference: http://www.googlechromeboard.com/post193.html)
Let's say their automated data mining for flu information goes wrong. The google public page erroneously reports this data. The CDC (and other health organizations) now have to respond to "Well, Google says this..". Hopefully, large groups of people would critically think over information they read and not panic. However, the previous example shows differently.
Compounding this is the tone of the page. Google's arrogant statement that "...Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional flu surveillance systems" I infer to mean "Don't trust those slow-pokes at the CDC; trust us!" If GOOG really wanted to help the CDC, offer free colo, bandwidth and security for their public facing servers so they can broadcast to the public.
"It's one thing to talk about the poetry of machines. Quite another to listen to it for yourself."
As a capitalist, and an incubator, I've spent tens of thousands of dollars (per project) on market analyses. For me, finding if a particular good or service, even a niche or very specific on, is desired in a given area is expensive. It's often the MOST expensive thing I do before starting a business.
I've always harbored the idea that Google's grasp of data, even just raw data, is their most important resource. As they make this information available, the market will prosper. I've been able to use Google Trends (national, not local) to profit from the so-called "long-tail" and enter a business market I might otherwise not have.
When Google starts making trend data available based on region, it will be a huge boon for guys like me -- the risk takers. I'd love to know if a certain term is growing in popularity in given regions, or even in given regions at certain times (say "Where can I get vegan food?" in Chicago after 10pm but before 4am). I'd love to know if it's from a desktop or mobile, or even a Mac versus PC. By digging deeper into a customer-base's desire, Google trending can offer me a profitable business, but it can also offer the customer base more competition (or even a product that isn't readily available in their market).
The flu trending is just an eyewash to push Google's strength in raw data retention over time. That's their reason for doing it. Will it help people? Certainly. But to those anti-capitalists, this is exactly where capitalism reaches those in need, but still can provide a profit for the charitable person or company.
A very long time. How on earth is this "interesting?" Is crazed paranoia on /. really the most interesting thing you've seen all day? I think some of the mods need to get out more.
Go away, racist!
m!m
5-10 years ago I had a somewhat similar idea:
We all know that animals act odd, hours or days before things like earthquakes. The morning before a 6.8 quake in Washington State in 2001, my neighbors dog that normally will do anything to force it's way out of the front door and run for hours when the door is opened the slightest bit, wouldn't even get close to the door when the neighbor opened it. By itself, 1 animal acting weird means nothing, but a large group of animals over a localized area acting weird at the same time would point to something about to happen. The problem is that it is always after the "catastrophe" that people say, "You know sparky was acting odd this morning". If there was an online database that you could quickly go to and report that at your address your pet is acting weird at this moment, you might be able to predict the event by looking for groups of "odd acting" pets. I know it seems like a weird & far fetched idea, but tell me why it wouldn't work.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
If you've received a flu shot in the past 6 years the only thing you got was a chance at a bad immune reaction and a concoction of mercury, detergent and some other nasty compounds.
Thimerosal (mercury) is only used in multi-dose vials. Although these are legal in the US, they are in practice not used here. The chances you received any thimerosal in your flu shot if you got in the US is almost nil.
I do agree with the OP that two years of the last decade the WHO predicted which strains would be dominant in the US incorrectly and thus the shot didn't immunize the recipient properly against the strains they would actually face.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Seriously, everyone in the Slashdot crowd needs to read Wired. It is a fantastic magazine, which wrote about this like two months ago.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
It's a flugle bomb!
At least over the last two weeks I've noticed a sudden increase in people who either out sick, or are running around the office with suspicious coughs, sniffles, etc. Of course, bring up the possibility of the flu and you are met with adamant denial- "it must just be allergies," "nah, it's way too early for flu season".
So, it was no big surprise to see that the graphs for several midsouth states (Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana) have jumped recently, while other parts of the country (and the US overall) remain fairly level.
You're TOTALLY wrong. WHO-recommended flu vaccines are very effective
You're correct, for the majority. There are those of us though who end up having immune system reactions for a good month to 6 weeks following a flu shot every single time.
I specifically do NOT get a flu shot for this reason, but if one does not have this kind of reaction then you're exactly correct. I may not be a carrier with the vaccine but i cannot risk being guaranteed under the weather for almost 10% of the year as opposed to the risk of possibly contracting the flu during the winter myself.
The following is more of a way the hell out there probability:
There is the other side of the coin that we have yet to get a long term enough sample set to verify. Imagine a world where humanity has been vaccinating for a few generations and suddenly due to one event or another, the supply of vaccines is no longer available.
I hope those practice runs on the vaccines is enough to keep our immune systems able to cope. The chances of vaccination having a negative effect on us being naturally able to cope with new strains is a non-zero to keep an eye on if nothing else. Not saying OMG FLU SHOTS EVIL EACH INNOCULATION KILLS A KITTEN or anything, but theres a lot of outliers like this that many people avoid considering. Personally i think it has a lot to do with the years of grooming patients to accept a doctor as god as opposed to another human, with all the possible error conditions that applies, who happens to know a shitload about medicine and biology.
Just an aside.
How the hell does WHO predict Flu strains for immunization? I am honestly ignorant and would like to know.
Nice map, Google! Does influenza not happen anywhere outside the United States then? Excellent.
I'm too lazy to drudge up some facts for this but the only people benefiting from flu vaccines are the sick, elderly, and those with lowered immune responses. If you are healthy it's minimally effective and it isn't entirely safe for young children.
I prefer using strategies which don't put extra evolutionary pressures on viruses: vaccinating those at high risk of exposure or death from exposure, and letting the adaptive immune response work for everyone else.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
This is fascinating, but it does make me wonder what else they could be predicting.
For example, if they're correlating searches from at-work employees, I bet they could turn up all manner of interesting things - predicting layoffs or other adverse business conditions, see who HR is googling (are they interviewing Google employees?).
Or keeping tabs on start-ups that are doing research into areas that Google is looking to make acquisitions. (Imagine when you're trying to sell your company to Google, they pull your employees' search history to see how long you've really been working on your flux capacitor.)
Sounds a lot like the early pages of "Rainbows End"
This reminds me of the fellow that used google records for his area to prove in court the "Community Standards" relating to obscenity were not as conservative as one would think.
So long as it's anonymous and stays that way(isn't that always the rub), I'm all for google using their info like this.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
Mondays
While the healthy won't die or have any serious consequences, they can still pass it on the others, who may be a greater risk.
I posted models of it almost three years ago.
http://www.realmeme.com/Main/dailymeme/2005/Aug/coughcoldDejanews.png
Web searches are co-incidental indicators.
Want to see something that Google hasn't shown you?
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=sars_versus_avian_flu_meme
It's quite likely that the Internet retains knowledge and alters its behavior over time. Compare the group reaction time between the SARS and avian flu viruses.
There are actually many programs out there tracking this exact same thing. Many retailers/grocery stores provide data on sales of pharmaceuticals to track possible biohazards like the flu.
Other very successful projects have utilized the wisdom of crowds, and I think google has a good chance of success considering how many data points it can track.
"That, in essence, is the promise of Google Flu Trends, a new Web tool... unveiled on Tuesday, right at the start of flu season in the US. Google Flu Trends is based on the simple idea that people who are feeling sick will tend to turn to the Web for information, typing things like 'flu symptoms; or 'muscle aches' into Google. The service tracks such queries and charts their ebb and flow, broken down by regions and states.""
Hmmm. *types in Google "Dick falling off"*
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Sounds like Larry Brilliant's TED Prize-winning idea is starting to bear fruit. The ultimate goal is "To build a powerful new early warning system to protect our world from some of its worst nightmares." I'm not sure I'd call influenza one of our "worst nightmares," but clearly Google.org's focus since bringing Dr. Brilliant on board seems to pointing in the right direction. Good going, guys.
If any of you are more interested in this and aren't familiar with the TED conference or of Brilliant's work, both are featured in Daphne Zuniga's 2007 documentary about TED 2006, TED: The Future We Will Create . And yes, it is that Daphne Zuniga. For U.S. subscription TV viewers, Showtime shows this documentary occasionally.
and there you go. The fact that it's LEGAL to inject a highly poisonous substance into an otherwise healthy adult is why I avoid doctors like the plague. We'll look back at this the way we looked back at their use of leeches.
FYI I have not been sick in over a decade. Whenever the sheep in my workplace go and get their flu shots as instructed, I make sure to take 3000mg of Vitamin C, some alpha-lipoic acid, and selenium to give me extra protection against their artificially induced colds, which they usually come down with shortly after their injections.
Everybody knows influenza symptoms and we are bombarded with cold and flu remedies on TV. I cannot imagine that anyone will do searches on that.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Actually, you are totally wrong. There is good evidence that estimates of high flu-vaccine effectiveness in older people are a result of poor methodology. http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/35/2/337
Actually we still use leeches. They are very useful for reattaching tiny blood vessels by preventing clotting. Link
Usually they are close to 90% effective. Last years in the US was only 45% effective, due to a bad strain prediction. That was according to an interview with a CDC person on my local NPR station this morning.
risk in Oregon: low
Being sick is not fun, stay home if you are sick!
Now... Time to play some more left4dead.
my associative arrays can kick your hash - TCL
And vaccinating the healthy just mutates the virus to a different strain faster ensuring that the old/sick will die since the shots against it are now useless.
Here is the problem: Most people are brainwashed by propaganda over the last several decades. Sad but true.
Try this primer on vaccines in general
More info on flu.
Liberty.
My workplace (in the US) offers flu shots and is quite clear about thimerosal being in the vaccine. They have an extra stash on the side for pregnant women that are explicitely non-thimerosal.
...I'm just getting over the flu now. Sucks to be an early adopter.
I was actually a little skeptical, until I saw that my state is one of the 4 they highlighted, despite being somewhere you wouldn't expect to find a lot of "wintertime illnesses"
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
While the healthy won't die or have any serious consequences, they can still pass it on the others, who may be a greater risk.
That's why I said those at risk should be the ones who are vaccinated, otherwise, like I said before, you are putting unnecessary pressures on the virus to mutate by blanket vaccinations. As far as I know the seroprevalence of influenza isn't as problematic as other diseases and virii, so why innoculate the healthy?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
What a ridiculous statement. Yes, viruses and bacteria mutate, but a vaccine is a good way of fighting it. Small pox didn't suddenly get worse when everyone got vaccinated, on the contrary, it was pretty much eradicated, save for lab samples. Vaccines have made a number of diseases practically unknown to the modern world thanks to their incredible effectiveness (polio anyone?), and here you are spreading completely wrong information about vaccination.
A realistic assessment of the flu vaccine can pretty easily show its value- it's around 60-70% effective, according to the sheet they gave me when I got vaccinated this year. If a majority of the people you come in contact with are vaccinated, it clearly reduces the probability of infection. This becomes especially important if you plan to visit anyone in a nursing home or hospital, in terms of protecting them as well as yourself from the flu.
So stop trying to out-think the logic of vaccination just to be different and go get vaccinated. It won't hurt you, it doesn't cause autism, and you won't turn into a zombie (and even if you do, brains may just be pretty tasty)
You claim that people have been "brainwashed by propaganda" and criticize wikipedia then link to some random anti-vaccine site written by a bunch of people who wouldn't know the scientific method if it beat them over the head multiple times (large sample size of beatings necessary). This website has the audacity to suggest that there is a link between vaccines and AIDS, and the hilarious statement that there are no control group studies performed on vaccines. Every damn vaccine on the market has been tested in control group studies, a simple google search will turn up thousands of them. How can anyone take such an absurd website seriously?
I believe it's called "confirmation bias".
How about all the people who haven't gotten smallpox? How about the people who haven't been crippled from polio? Or maybe the people who have avoided tetanus, measles, mumps, and rubella?
Oh right, you forgot about all of those people, even though that pretty much describes everybody.
So, if people start relying on google warnings, two things will result: Increased searches for "flu symptoms" after a google warning (increasing the size and scope of a warning), and almost no searches for "flu symptoms" when no warnings are issued (reducing the frequency of the warnings).
You really should watch the video I linked in the other post since it addresses these directly.
Liberty.
This sort of thing has been floated around for a while under the banner of 'syndromic surveilance'. I spent most of the last three years working on a research project that involved gathering data on water quality and developing statistical software to find subtle indications of contamination. The intent was always to extend the approach to syndromic data, incorporating things like over-the-counter medicine sales, ER visits, and so forth.
Unfortunately, it turns out that none of us on the team knew enough about statistics to manage a fantasy football league. I'm now happily self-employed doing stuff absolutely unrelated to statistics. I think some of my hair has grown back, and I hardly even cringe when someone says 'generalized least squares'.
If you're interested, though, here is a paper from the CDC on the subject. I'm pretty sure they have a better idea what they're talking about. Or at any rate, they've got nicer graphics.
"out" ?
Are you sure? [mp3]. 146 million flu shots were made for the 08-09 flu season. Of those, 100 million of those contain a full dose of mercury. That's 250 times the EPA safety limit. It's been shown that adults who regularly get the flu shot have a 10 fold increased chance of Alzheimer's. Educate yourself.
Be relentless!
I'm not commenting on who of the two is the lesser evil. If you want to know my political views, read my other posts or ask me. I claim to be indifferent to race; I'm a white male in a white culture and an independent observer is a better judge of whether my behavior matches my thoughts, so take it with a grain of salt, but at the same time compare it to people who explicitly say they prefer one race over another in some way.
Sorry for the self-reply. I just don't want people to be unclear about whether I'm only joking or also bringing out implicit racial slurs. I'm only joking :)
Some animals seem to have "Extra Sensory Perception" (the cat Oscar, for example, seems to be able to predict the impending death of terminally ill patients (Oscar_(cat))), although I am more inclined to the opinion that these animals are paying attention to (for them) quite obvious things which we just have not identified yet.
It works only for US. Just because there are 46 million people in US without health insurance, who can't go to the doctor, therefore they consult Google instead. See?
Really, their unique access to web search logs, the content of the Internet and the free access to Goggle mail content, allows Google to know just about every trend before the rest of us know about it.
Knowledge is power and Google already have too much of both.
Bzzzzt! Wrong!
The study you are quoting found a statistically significant decrease in mortality in vaccinated persons. So vaccines work.
However, it also found that some methods of assessing vaccine efficacy might be biased. But all vaccines must undergo double-blind trials which are NOT susceptible for biased selection.
Ok, smallpox vaccines are crappy.
But we managed to eradicate smallpox with these vaccines. Same for polio.
Well, if they're just paying attention to obvious things, then that wouldn't be extrasensory.
If ESP exists, there is no a priori reason to believe humans are unique among animals in lacking ESP abilities.
Also, no conclusive proof of ESP, either in humans or in animals, has ever been discovered. As the decades pass, and the tiny statistical effects studies subscribe to ESP get smaller as the studies get done more thoroughly, there comes a point when absense of evidence does become evidence of absense.
Here is the page for for Dr.Jim Berkland, director of the Syzygy project. He uses collated "odd animal" stats, spikes in pets lost and found postings (dogs and cats seem to either hide and cower or go nuts and run away before quakes), along with other stuff like tracking tidal influences and whatnot for earthquake predictions.
Here is a well researched and referenced article on anti-vaccinationism that you might want to read:
http://www.csicop.org/si/2007-06/novella.html
(Article discusses it mostly from an autism angle, since that's where most of the anti-vaccinationists are at.)
Yes, vaccines can contain thimerosal (which contains mercury). And lots of other scary sounding things. But scary sounding and harmful are not the same thing, and there is always the question of dose, and whether the negative effects, if any, outweigh the negative effects of cancelling vaccine administration.
If you still maintain there are good reasons not to vaccinate, then you had better present us with something better than a silly YouTube video. You've got to back up your claims with evidence, especially when you say things like 'WHO, the worldwide eugenics organization'.
Which brings me to another point: your whole post has all the tell-tale signs of a typical conspiracy theory. A big organization that conspires to something nefarious and everyone you meet - 'sheeple' - is with them. If people would just look at it, they would see. Anyone denying your claims is just part of them. That kind of thinking has lead you to take a position that is both ridiculous in the extreme (the same author of the article above has discussed conspiracy theories as well) as conspiracy theories always collapse under their own weight, and sort of pre-immunised (oh sweet irony) against reality by being constructed as a totally circular and unfalsifiable belief system.
Influenza (the flu), originates in China pretty much every year. Different strains of RNA viruses arise (mutations in antigens, the process is called antigenic drift), in pigs. These are different enough to be able to get past the immune system (which is resistant to last year's strain, but unable to recognize recombined (new) antigens).
Pigs share a common receptor with people which is hijacked by these RNA viruses; this allows the virus to jump from pigs to humans. (Aside: they also share a different receptor with birds, which is why we're so paranoid about avian influenza: it could jump to pigs, mutate to our receptor, and then jump to humans.)
Every year you'll have dozens of different strains of influenza arising in pigs; only and handful of these use the common receptor and are able to jump to people. From there, only a handful of these are spread (through migration) to other parts of the world. IIRC, the flu spreads west with the climate, eventually encountering a city where it's able to hitch a ride to America (and the rest of the world) on a boat or an airplane.
WHO relies on being able to look at previous strains which reached epidemic and pandemic proportions, and on being able to artificially recombine antigens to create this years major strains. Sometimes they miss a few critical ones (2003-2004), but they're remarkably good about predicting which strains will mutate.
Basically, there are only a few different antigens, and we rely on creating the same new set that nature will create (there's a finite number of viable recombinant strains, after all). I doubt they look at pigs in China; there's simply too many in areas that are too remote.
If there's an epidemiologist reading this, he can probably give you a more detailed answer.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
almost pathetic that its even attempted.
That's great! Google strikes again... We can now "predict" a flu season when it is already happening. The timing of a flu season is more or less regular for a particular place (one of the mysteries of flu) and the big problem is not to predict when it will happen, but what will be the strain of choice for this year. This is the effort of CDC/WHO and it is a tricky problem because the flu virus mutates a lot (hence the need to be vaccinated every year). The mutation sometimes is such that an avian and a human virus combine to produce a new human virus. That's when bad things happen (predicted vaccines fail, 1918 pandemic, etc.). Google's idea is at best very interesting as a tool for monitoring the spread of flu amongst people with access to internet, but I fail to see its predictive power in general.
Thimerosal (mercury) is only used in multi-dose vials. Although these are legal in the US, they are in practice not used here. The chances you received any thimerosal in your flu shot if you got in the US is almost nil.
No, you are almost guaranteed to get a shot with thimerosal because most flu shots are multi-dose. Since they guess as to the strain that will be prevalent, they generally make shots that protect against several strains at once.
In addition to mercury, these shots also have aluminum and formaldehyde. Mercury and Aluminum are neurological poisons-they accumulate in the brain. Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen and is used to embalm the dead. There is no safe level of formaldehyde established for injection into a living organism.
I do agree with the OP that two years of the last decade the WHO predicted which strains would be dominant in the US incorrectly and thus the shot didn't immunize the recipient properly against the strains they would actually face.
Since I have never had the flu (in the past 10 years anyway) I fail to see why I should get an injection. If you are susceptible or if it would be hazardous to get the flu, then by all means if you choose to do it then get the shot. But injecting a perfectly healthy person with chemicals known to cause problems simply doesn't make any sense. My body, my choice as to what goes into it.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
They look at what strains were on the rise at the end of the last season. Their success rate is low because of the long lag time. The long lag time is needed because it takes a long time to prepare the vaccine. If we could speed up the vaccine preparation process it would be much better.
During the summer in the northern hemisphere, when it is winter in the southern hemisphere, they have a pretty good idea of what strains we will see because it is the flu season in places like Australia. The vaccine is created with weakened versions of the most common flu strains in countries from the southern hemisphere.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
I'm no expert, but it was something like a particular flu season's flue hit elsewhere in the world first, or first inklings of it happen a few months ahead of the big wave. By keeping close watch on new and early flu cases around the world, they can establish a trend on which ones are going to spread widely.
or something like that, and as mentioned elsewhere in the discussion, they sometimes get it wrong.
-- "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
How the hell does WHO predict Flu strains for immunization? I am honestly ignorant and would like to know.
No magic, really.
Basically, they pick the dominant strain that is circulating at the time that they have to make a recommendation to the vaccine producers.
The vaccine strain has to be picked ~6 months before it is needed (it takes that long to grow it up in eggs in sufficient quantity). Typically, that is right at the peak of flu season for the other hemisphere (north/south).
The selection is based on the RNA sequence for the virus, and on antigenic tests (antibodies to the strain, grown up in ferrets usually).
The selection is made much earlier than the CDC/WHO would like, but the long lead time for vaccines means you have to do it. So the track record for picking vaccine strains the last few years is pretty remarkable.
The only 'wrong' strain that got picked was the H3N2 strain in 2003. Everyone knew which strain to pick, but they couldn't make it grow in eggs. So they picked another one that did grow (better than nothing) and a lot of people died. Since then, there has been a lot more interest in getting a cell-based vaccine pushed through the FDA here in the US...
-V-
Who can decide a priori? Nobody.
-Sartre
Polio had a MUCH lower transmission rate was much MUCH slower to mutate or pass between people. The vaccine killed all varieties of polio not 60%. Polio was also stalled by stopping drinking water with shit in it. People with polio didn't go to work to spread it. Yes country wide vaccinations may severely stall one strain of the flu but that will just give other strains a chance to spread. Oh and i'm not doing it just to be different I had no idea there were mandatory vaccinations in the US...there aren't in most countries.
with the exception of 2003-2004 when it was only marginally protective for one of the more common strains
It goes even further than this. The CDC and WHO knew which strain to pick that year. And it didn't grow in eggs, so it couldn't be picked.
It is very frustrating to know what you want, not be able to get it, and then watch a bunch of people die because of it...
Get your damn flu shot and protect the rest of us.
Amen! Flu is one of the biggest disease causes of morbidity and mortality on a yearly basis. And it is vaccine preventable. Why wouldn't you get a flu shot? You doctor will tell you if you have any risk factors that would prevent you from getting one.
Go get vaccinated, people.
-V-
Who can decide a priori? Nobody.
-Sartre
It's the only one, though; the vaccine was extraordinarily effective, the vaccine was not prepared from the same virus, and probably most importantly, there was (and is) no non-human reservoir for the disease.
Flu vaccine is notoriously ineffective and there are plenty of non-human reservoirs.
Flu vaccine won't cause autism and won't turn you into a zombie (that's what Nyquil is for), but IME there's a strong positive correlation between getting the flu vaccine and getting the flu. I'll pass.
Uh, yeah. That's because adults who regularly get the flu shot tend to be a lot older than average.
Google: I know Kung-Flu.
User: Show me.
Just an aside.
How the hell does WHO predict Flu strains for immunization? I am honestly ignorant and would like to know.
They Google it.
In Russian "Oh sh*t we're all gonna die!" sounds like "Chert poderi! Mi vse umrem!" Pronounce as "chyort po-deree, mi vse umryom".
The polio vaccine was actually responsible for causing polio outbreaks. It also infected people with sv40 and other harmful viruses.
Liberty.
Any knowledge derived in this way can be manipulated.
I'm sorry, but this video is a stock anti-vaccination agitprop. It's stupid beyond belief.
All vaccines are controlled by double-blind trials. And they show that vaccines WORK. That's a FACT, you have to live with it.
Polio had been stopped ONLY because of vaccines. Here's a bit of statistics for you:
Number of polio incidents in Moscow in 1959: 9471
Number of polio incidents in Moscow in 1961: 23
Guess what made this difference?
Of course, vaccines are not TOTALLY safe, especially they were not safe 50 years ago. But by now our vaccine manufacturing methods have improved greatly.
I would have thought that with the stress of the holidays and people traveling all over, that there'd be a peak around Christmas/New Years. But it actually seems to dip in that period. I wonder what to make of that.
Since when is western Michigan connected to eastern Wisconsin?
A nearly identical study from Yahoo!, Harvard, and the University of Iowa was published on October 27:
Using Internet Searches for Influenza Surveillance
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/593098
You're sorry but you didn't watch it right?
It's ok, I'm done discussing this. People who've never studied the subject or looked at any of the actual studies come out on slashdot like they are the pre eminent authorities.
For anybody not as hard headed as the guy I'm responding to, here is the section on polio, since he brings it up. If you watch it and find your preconceptions melting away, think to yourself about why you ever had them in the first place.
Vaccination is a medical procedure, and as such a thorough risk assessment needs to be undertaken to evaluate it's need. The beliefs that it is very effective and carries no risk are in direct opposition of carrying out a proper risk vs reward evaluation.
Liberty.
I watched it. It's S_T_U_P_I_D. It's full of lies.
It's a black hole of stupidity. It's idiocy. It would have made doctor Goebels proud.
It's cretinism and anybody who believed it is an idiot.
Polio is like a sore throat, yeh sure. I wish SHE got polio. Vaccine-associated polio incidence is about 1 case for every 10 _millions_ of vaccinations. A wild polio strain has about 1 in 1000 incidence rate. That's one _thousand_ times more.
So now maybe each other year one child in the US gets vaccine-associated polio with serious permanent effects.
Back in 50-s there were 50000 cases in New York _alone_. And 2% of people with permanent disabilities translates to 1000 people each year.
And don't get me started on her LIES about smallpox eradication.
Google seems to have a profound inability to deal with color in their overall impressive graphs.
Why for example do we have green, yellow, red color coding in the lien chart, but in the interactive country map we do have different shades of blue?
Why do in Google Analytics colors in a pie chart change by rank and not by type. That means if search is this period the largest share, it is blue. If next period referrals are the largest share it is also blue and search becomes green. That is sooooo not user friendly. When do we get a Google Usability lab?
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
No, you are almost guaranteed to get a shot with thimerosal because most flu shots are multi-dose. Since they guess as to the strain that will be prevalent, they generally make shots that protect against several strains at once.
In addition to mercury, these shots also have aluminum and formaldehyde. Mercury and Aluminum are neurological poisons-they accumulate in the brain. Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen and is used to embalm the dead. There is no safe level of formaldehyde established for injection into a living organism.
Multi-dose doesn't mean it has inoculations against multiple strains. It means that the same liquid in a single vial is used to inject multiple people. A larger vial is used and several people get shots from it. This reduces costs. In the US, they are more concerned about getting sued if you catch something that could be traced to a contaminated vial than the cost of the vial, so they use single-dose vials where one person gets a shot from it and then the vial is thrown away. Thimerosal is not used in these vials.
See this chart:
http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/thi-table.htm
The 0s are single-dose preparations. For example Fluarix "FLUARIX is supplied as a 0.5 mL dose in a prefilled syringe." These are what is used in the US.
Are you sure you know what you are talking about?
In addition to mercury, these shots also have aluminum and formaldehyde. Mercury and Aluminum are neurological poisons-they accumulate in the brain. Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen and is used to embalm the dead. There is no safe level of formaldehyde established for injection into a living organism.
Formaldehyde is used to prepare the deactivated viruses used in the shot. It is not part of the final shot (of course there could be trace amounts).
There's no aluminum used in flu shots either it seems.
You might want to look into the idea of not spreading false info.
Since I have never had the flu (in the past 10 years anyway) I fail to see why I should get an injection. If you are susceptible or if it would be hazardous to get the flu, then by all means if you choose to do it then get the shot. But injecting a perfectly healthy person with chemicals known to cause problems simply doesn't make any sense. My body, my choice as to what goes into it.
I don't get flu shots either. That's my choice. But it isn't because I feel they are unsafe.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
lewrockwell?
Sorry, I don't get my info from cranks.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Thimerosal is not used in these vials. See this chart ... Are you sure you know what you are talking about?
Yes, but do you know what you are talking about? Your chart clearly shows that the only flu shots with no mercury or thimerosol are the single dose version from CSL Limited (an Australia company not likely to distribute widely to the US), FluMist which is not a shot but a nasal inhaler, and no preservative FluZone which is not widely available. Glaxo SmithKline is the major US distributer of flu shots and they use both mercury and thimerosol as preservatives.
Formaldehyde is used to prepare the deactivated viruses used in the shot. It is not part of the final shot (of course there could be trace amounts).
Formaledehyde is what deactivates the viruses, I don't see how you can say there isn't any in the final shot when its clearly part of the manufacturing process. The data sheets even say there is about 25mcg of formaldehyde per dose.
There's no aluminum used in flu shots either it seems.
Every study I find states that there is aluminum in flu shots. Where do you see that there isn't any?
You might want to look into the idea of not spreading false info.
And you might actually want to read your own information. Everything I stated can be found as true in the data you provided.
This only works when the searcher uses the correct "medical semantics" and specific clinical terminology. "Muscle aches" do not equal "flu outbreak." There was actually a task force sponsored by Consumers Union and HHS/Disease Prevention several years ago that studied this, found Google searching was too uncontrolled and random to actually predict an outbreak (see: http://www.urac.org/savedfiles/URAC_CWW_Health_Search_White_Paper1203.pdf).
This is the sort of shit that continues to seriously impress me about Google. Every now and then, beyond simply serving excellent web search results (and ads), they roll out some project that by its nature turns raw, incomprehensible data and statistics into user-parsable information. They're creating the William Gibson data matrix in realtime.
I just wish they'd bring back Google Answers. I am more than willing to shell out $10-$50 (plus tip) to have a group of expert researchers find the answer to the few questions that can't be wrung out of their own search engine. Quite frankly I simply can't understand why they axed the project, as it seemed to have a fair amount of activity and most questions were answered successfully, despite their lack of advertising and promotion of the service. I daresay it was a better business model than spending however many kabillion overinflated dollars they spent for YouTube.
clearly, my friends and I are going to spend the next three weeks googling flu symptoms daily..
I don't trust single point data.
At least here someone will call out another for proffering me bullshit.