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Fact-based info about swine flu

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April 27, 2009 12:36 am
By Sheila Lennon

Questions & Answers Swine Influenza and You U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) | The current U.S. case count. Later: The CDC has created a Swine Flu page.

The CDC emergency Twitter account is issuing fact-based reports about swine flu, as is The World Health Organization's Disease Outbreak News.

Biosurveillance's Swine Flu in Mexico- Timeline of Events

April 6: ...a municipal health official (in La Gloria, Perote Municipality, Veracruz State, Mexico) stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms. It was unclear whether health officials had identified a suspected pathogen responsible for this outbreak.

At Foreign Policy, the Net Effect blog looks at Swine flu: Twitter's power to misinform. Unfiltered rumors are not more factual because somebody typed it out. For example,

Swine flu? Wow. All that pork infecting people....beef and chicken have always been meats of choice

CDC: "Swine influenza viruses are not spread by food. You cannot get swine influenza from eating pork or pork products."

Web comic XKCD strikes the same note: Twitter is great for watching uninformed panics unfold live.

Google Maps: H1N1 Swine flu in 2009

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