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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.
If Madagascar detects anyone googling "flu" they'll close their ports.
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!
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.
You obviously haven't heard much about The 1918 Flu Pandemic
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
Yes, but not without violating the privacy of the users of google. We don't ask for their personal information from the clinic because it's a privacy violation, but we apparently have no moral objections to using their browser histories to get pretty much the same data.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
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.
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.)
everyone knows it starts in arnette, tx.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
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.
....Penicillin is an anti-biotic. Not going to do a thing against the flu. About the only development that has helped us fight the flu is vaccination. And maybe a small bit of improvement in personal hygiene.
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.
"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"
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)
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).
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.
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
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.
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