Well this is pretty neat: New York Times has noted that Google is getting in on flu tracking. http://www.google.org/flutrends represents Google's non profit side. The company will use key words, relating to flu like symptoms, typed online to track regional outbreaks of influenza.
The flu is caused by a genera of the RNA virus family Orthomyxoviridae. This virus genome is composed of a single negative sense RNA strand, broken into many segments (8). The strains differ every year based on the glycoproteins found in the virus's envelope (or outer cell structure). These glycoproteins allow the viral cell to bind to a human cell (hemagglutinin) and release of the viral cell from the host cell (neuraminidase). A mutation in either one of these "peplomers" creates a new strand of virus.
Ultimately, it is very important to track the influenza virus to implement appropriate vaccine measures and also to identify the most prevalent strand in the years flu outbreak. One of the biggest difficulties in vaccination is that three strains of virus have to be selected 6 months prior to flu season. While Google has validated their keyword based tracking system with the tracking system currently used by the CDC, there is still much more work to do to be able to predict not only where but which strain of the flu is coming for us.
A joke at every end:
A famous champion is in bed with flu. A doctor visits him.
“You’ve got a high fever, my friend,” says the doctor.
“How high?” – asks the champion.
“39.5˚C,” the doctor nods.
“Yeah? And what is the world record?”
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