identify flu outbreaks weeks before the CDC can do so<\/a>. While CDC reporting based on doctors’ reports lags by a few weeks, Google has found that doing analytics on search terms like “flu symptoms” and “muscle aches” provides graphs showing upticks that mirror (a week or two later, when the reporting catches up) the CDC info.<\/p>\nSure, not all the searches on “flu” indicate that someone has the flu — but over vast numbers, it seems to track pretty well. It’s vaguely creepy (though Google says it is not tracking or reporting individual queries), but also really interesting, and it could provide a few critical weeks advance notice if a flu epidemic or pandemic gets started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What if you could see people wandering around the streets saying, “Can you tell me about the flu? I might have the flu? Do you think I have the flu?”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[70,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-hi-tech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15990,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/10\/12\/flu-vs-flu-whats-the-diff-between-seasonal-and-swine-flus.html","url_meta":{"origin":13573,"position":0},"title":"Flu vs. Flu – what’s the diff between Seasonal and Swine Flus?","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 12-Oct-09 1:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The following info is from Kaiser (slightly abridged), and provides a nice highlight between \"normal\" flu (which kills people) and N1N1 (which also kills people). The latter is not that different from the former; we're not talking about one of the horsemen of the apocalypse here, but it should still\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Health"","block_context":{"text":"Health","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/health"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":39419,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/31\/get-your-flu-shot.html","url_meta":{"origin":13573,"position":1},"title":"Get your flu shot","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 31-Oct-13 7:02am","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay, laziness and procrastination and forgetfulness I can appreciate (cough), if not approve of. \u00a0But if you're making a conscious decision to avoid a flu shot for quasi-scientific reasons ... don't.Reshared post from +George WimanRichly documented article on flu shot myths. Never mind if YOU get sick, please don't be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":33407,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/30\/who-can-catch-which-flu.html","url_meta":{"origin":13573,"position":2},"title":"Who can catch which flu?","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 30-Apr-13 8:51am","format":false,"excerpt":"Very cool infographic \/ Venn diagram on different flu strains\u00a0and the critters affected by them (go to the source site for actual visible details).Reshared post from +Les JenkinsA useful flu infographic from the folks at\u00a0http:\/\/www.informationisbeautiful.net\/visualizations\/which-flu-virus\/ View this post on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16109,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/10\/31\/evil-death-flu-update.html","url_meta":{"origin":13573,"position":3},"title":"Evil Death Flu Update","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 31-Oct-09 9:22pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Today was my first \"it's been 24 hours since I was running a fever\" day, so I declared myself well-ish from the flu. Which was good timing, because Margie is overrun with office work, and I still had a crud-load of NaNoWriMo prep to do. Plus, of course, it's Halloween.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Health"","block_context":{"text":"Health","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/health"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16125,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/11\/02\/a-note-on-post-flu-coughing.html","url_meta":{"origin":13573,"position":4},"title":"A note on post-flu coughing","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 2-Nov-09 10:38pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It's freaking exhausting. Good night.","rel":"","context":"In "Health"","block_context":{"text":"Health","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/health"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11235,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/10\/16\/flu_shots.html","url_meta":{"origin":13573,"position":5},"title":"Flu shots","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 16-Oct-07 11:22am","format":false,"excerpt":"Is it my imagination, or are flu shot clinics fricking ubiquitous this year?\u00a0 It seems I can't swing a dead cat without seeing a poster\u00a0about when flu shots will be...","rel":"","context":"In "Health"","block_context":{"text":"Health","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/health"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}