McHenry County made the news in Boston Sunday.
The story was about how social media identified the whooping cough outbreak “about two weeks before local health officials issued a public statement.”
The gist of the story is that public health officials want to replicate what
a “small business called Sickweather LLC said it detected the online flare-up on Twitter and Facebook postings in early October that year.”
Federal officials at the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services have conducted a contest to find the best social media prediction program. Results will be announced June 20th.
I did a lot of volunteer work, as a member of the medical reserve corps, for the county health department during the H1N1 situation.
Unfortunately, even though the county is fully aware of outbreaks, there is a lot of legal red tape that must be removed before alerting the public.
It takes a lot of time and effort.