Saturday, January 19, 2013

Trends in Flu Trends


If you're not already familiar with it, Google Flu Trends (see above) has proven amazingly good at predicting outbreaks of flu a week or so in advance of the CDC, by analyzing search terms on Google. However something interesting is happening right now - CDC is showing a drop in positive flu tests and Influenza-Like Illness (ILI) hospital visits in latest data, but it's not reflected in the Google Flu Trends data (although there is a slight reduction in the increase). We'll see what happens next!