Last November, ITP posted a story about Google Flu Trends, a tool developed by Google that allows the company to monitor search terms to detect flu outbreaks faster than traditional disease surveillance methods — a tell tale sign that more and more Americans are turning to the Internet for information about their health.

In the case of the swine flu, Google Flu Trends indicates general flu search activity across Illinois is low.  However, Internet chatter and media furor would lead people to believe the virus is the next great American pandemic.  Google itself has seen an upswing of searches on “Swine Flu Ohio” and “Swine Flu Symptoms”.  Likewise, trends on Twitter and the throughout blogosphere has erupted since the CDC’s announcement.  In a recent blog post TechCrunch reported:

Although Federal officials are urging Americans not to panic about the disease, fear of contracting the potentially deadly flu is quickly spreading over Twitter, Google, and blogs across the web.

On Twitter, hashtag “#swineflu” is the site’s top trending topic.  Over a 10 minute period on Monday 4/27, ITP counted nearly 200 new Tweets added to the online conversation feed.

Mentions of the Swine Flu throughout the blogosphere have also greatly increased.  According to TechCrunch:

Technorati’s index, which graphs the number of times the search term occurs in blog posts across the web, shows that mentions of Swine Flu in blog posts has risen sharply from Friday to nearly 2800 blog post mentions today.

Discussion of swine flu on the Web shows us how quickly information can spread; we can only hope the virus won’t do the same.

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