I am a microbiologist and molecular biologist turned tenured biotech faculty turned bioinformatics scientist turned entrepreneur. My passion is developing instructional materials for 21st century biology (
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Last night, the phone rang at 9:22 pm. I quickly glanced at the caller ID. Hmmm. Why is the Seattle School district calling us at this time of night?
Apparently the swine flu has come to Seattle and the school district thought we should know.
Those messages are helpful if you're a parent, but they don't tell much about the rest of the world.
Health Map is a really wonderful, user-friendly, resource for following the epidemic.
When you get to Health Map , choose Select None to clear the map.
Then select Swine Flu.
You'll see a Google map with markers representing reports. The colors show the numbers and severity.
To see more detail, click the map markers. Then, you get to learn interesting things, like this:
Luckily for us, if Seattle schools close, they'll call us and let us know.
Medicine & Health
Education & Careers
Comments
Surely you love the Seattle School District phone alert system, right? Especially the first at o-dark-o-clock telling us that snow caused the schools to close!
Only one school is closed now. I don't want to see anymore closed, this weekend is Senior Prom and next week are the AP tests.
Posted by: Chris | April 30, 2009 4:07 PM
I do like the alert system! And I don't want to see the schools closed either. I'm doing all kinds of characteristically superstitious things: crossing my fingers and knocking on wood.
Posted by: Sandra Porter | April 30, 2009 4:50 PM
Love the health map. Do you have friends who could tailor it by county in Wash state? That would be helpful and interesting for students. May is a tough time for them to concentrate.
Posted by: Sally James | April 30, 2009 5:13 PM
Hi Sally,
It was fun meeting you last night!
There's no need to tailor anything. This is a Google map, you can click the zoom bar and look at counties.
However, the map can only show the data that get entered. I just send them the URL from the Seattle Times, so they could add some of that data to the map.
Posted by: Sandra Porter | April 30, 2009 6:31 PM