The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Richard Besser, was quoted over the weekend as saying although we’re near the end of this year’s flu season; his agency is viewing the newly-declared public health emergency, Swine Flu, as more of a marathon.  He further states how difficult it would be to give any timeline regarding its containment.  This could not have come at a worse time.  An outbreak such as this and with the government announcing it would be releasing close to 13 million doses of anti-viral

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medications as well as millions of face masks and other precautionary items, this just might be what finally brings the insurance sector to its knees.  For an already overburdened and unpredictable economy, few things could be worse.

In these situations, panic reins.  With Mexico reporting over eighty deaths, the U.S. is dealing with its own number of both confirmed and suspected cases.  As of Sunday, there have been twenty confirmed cases in five states, with another eight awaiting confirmation in Suffolk County, NY alone.  Before now, there were only fourteen cases reported in this country since 2005. Still, Mexico is reporting the most alarming numbers; more than 1,300 have tested positive in the country over past two weeks alone.

Insurance companies are feeling the heat, no doubt, and they’re probably pulling some late hours in their own efforts to encourage proactive reactions versus reactive fears.  They, along with the government and medical profession, all have the same message: don’t panic.  The fact is, many medical professionals insist its symptoms aren’t nearly as bad as some other influenza strains and despite there being no vaccine, Swine Flu does respond well to anti-viral medications.

The World Health Organization is providing assistance as necessary and PR officials in the White House are working double time to assure a jittery public that despite its name, Swine Flu is not transmitted via pigs in any way.  Add pig farmers to the groups of people who’ll be losing sleep for the next several weeks.

Finally, health officials are encouraging those who are sick to not attend school, work or otherwise place themselves in situations that could jeopardize the health of others.  Visit the CDC’s Swine Flu page here and to see a breakdown of which states have confirmed cases, see this page.

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There’s some interesting news with Google’s latest venture. By using keywords and keyword phrases that are put into its search box, they have a new formula to determine if there are any “hot areas” for flu activity. When I first heard about this new trend, the way it was being reported had me thinking Google would be providing personal information to faceless people who would be ready to quarantine anyone who might be getting a head cold or flu. I’ve heard two separate reports that suggested invasion of privacy issues would be of great concern. I can’t seem to find anything that would jeopardize our privacy; well, on the surface anyway. What it boils down to is collecting data for keyword combinations relating to the flu. Phrases and words like “fever”, “headache” will kick Google’s data collection efforts up a notch. From there, the information will be fed in real time to the Centers for Disease Control. For instance, there might be ten residents in Oklahoma City who are feeling achy and sick and head straight for our old friend, Google. Based on formulas I will never understand, Google will know those ten searches come from Oklahoma City, which might be indicative of a flu outbreak. The CDC loves this new tool because of its ability to provide data as soon as it’s typed into Google. They say the information from the search engine will provide instantly what used to take a week to compile.

This new service offered by Google is just now weaving into what will eventually evolve into a powerful tool, and is being called “collective intelligence”. That sounds a little threatening, but if the efforts now are truly based on random information regarding searches for some new product to ease flu symptoms, then it seems relatively harmless. But what happens if it continues to evolve and eventually results in information collected that would reveal identities? The truth is, there have been times in my efforts to find a culprit that’s making my pc run slow I’ve found Google, along with a few other search engines, running in my background. It’s simple to end the process, but it’s still an autorun that’s planted itself and the executable kicks in every time I restart my computer. It’s at least aggravating and at most, it feels invasive. I guess the most disconcerting aspect is we really don’t know what’s being collected at any given time -whether it’s Google or some other site. My grandma used to say, “Don’t put into writing what you wouldn’t want anyone else to know.” I think we’ve just defined the electronic version of this wise advice. The only difference now is that I’m not a 13 year old girl who’s concerned her mother will find her diary. Even though most of us have nothing to hide and our computers aren’t used to hack into government computers or surf sites that reveal the darker sides of human nature, you can’t help but be concerned your search for a new laptop as a Christmas present will result in spam in your inbox with declarations of the best prices for the news models.