MB Comment: Google’s ten-year old Flu Trends monitor overestimated the prevalence of this year’s flu season by almost two times. Google’s peak flu trend prevalence showed that 10.1% of the US population had flu. CDC data says the peak was 6% – and the CDC itself exaggerates disease statistics with phony estimates.
This Nature article admits ‘the problems may be due to widespread media coverage of this year’s severe US flu season, including the declaration of a public-health emergency by New York state last month. The press reports may have triggered many flu-related searches by people who were not ill.’
No shit Sherlock!
Here is the CDC’s own blueprint for creating media flu hysterics, by Glen Nowak, Ph.D. Associate Director for Communications National Immunization Program CDC
Recipe that Fosters Higher Interest and Demand for Influenza Vaccine
‘Medical experts and public health authorities publicly (e.g., via media) state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes) and urge influenza vaccination …
which results in
Significant media interest and attention
Continued reports (e.g., from health officials and media) that influenza is causing severe illness and/or affecting lots of people helping foster the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza …
Vaccination demand, particularly among people who don’t routinely receive an annual influenza vaccination, is related to heightened concern, anxiety, and worry …
Some component of success (i.e., higher demand for influenza vaccine) stems from media stories and information that create motivating (i.e., high) levels of concern and anxiety about influenza.
Given this deliberate CDC media propaganda campaign to frighten the public into getting the ineffective and toxic flu vaccine, is it any wonder that Google Flu Trends was thrown for a loop? In fact, Google isn’t wrong – it is measuring actual public flu searches. In that sense, CDC flu fearmongers succeeded in deceiving the public into believing flu risk was twice what it really was.
But the majority of Americans aren’t falling for the phony flu shot campaign. According to Dr. Tom Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control: ‘As of mid-November, more than 60 percent of Americans had not taken advantage of flu vaccination.’
In that sense, the CDC and its drug lord pharmaceutical company masters have failed at bushwacking the majority of Americans into submitting to their bogus flu shot.
Listen to the Refusers song Do You Want a Flu Shot
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Nature | News
When Google got flu wrong
US outbreak foxes a leading web-based method for tracking seasonal flu.
When influenza hit early and hard in the United States this year, it quietly claimed an unacknowledged victim: one of the cutting-edge techniques being used to monitor the outbreak. A comparison with traditional surveillance data showed that Google Flu Trends, which estimates prevalence from flu-related Internet searches, had drastically overestimated peak flu levels. The glitch is no more than a temporary setback for a promising strategy, experts say, and Google is sure to refine its algorithms. But as flu-tracking techniques based on mining of web data and on social media proliferate, the episode is a reminder that they will complement, but not substitute for, traditional epidemiological surveillance networks …
If you are going to base an argument on an article in Nature, *Link to the article please*. You discredit yourself when you fail to do this, and I can’t share it to help convince others when you don’t!!
Try clicking the READ THE ARTICLE link at the bottom of every Refusers’ article.
Takes less time than leaving a comment.
DUH
Michael,
I used to call up your song lyrics to read them while I listened. I just looked for that to read while I listened to “Do you want a flu shot?”, but it wasn’t there. Would it be hard to restore that option? The only thing I could understand was the title in the chorus. Thanks!