Mike the Mad Biologist

Healthmap.org: It Will Make You More Paranoid Than the Weather Channel

Posted by Mike on July 11, 2008
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One of the things I find fascinating about the Weather Channel is that after watching it for a while, you actually start to worry about that cold front moving through some other part of the country. You become quite paranoid about things that won’t affect you. Well, I’ve got an even better way to drive yourself nuts about scary things that won’t affect you: HealthMap.org.

I’m kidding. Healthmap.org is actually really interesting–it gives you a visual representation of all of the disease outbreaks globally. You can change the dates, diseases, and locations you want to look at. It also links to the primary source of the information about the outbreak. A companion article in PLoS One describes it in more detail.

Now, about that anthrax outbreak in Vietnam, I’m very worried….

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Comments

  1. #1 Edward
    July 11, 2008

    Interesting. But is the issue of reporting bias addressed in the article? It seems like there are a lot more dots on the US than, say Europe.

  2. #2 Mike the Mad Biologist
    July 11, 2008

    Edward,

    I think you will see the U.S. and U.K. overrepresented, along with any of the diseases tracked by ProMed because these have the best public health outreach (frightening as that is). You’re right, there’s a lot of bias.

  3. #3 biber hap
    September 7, 2009

    I think you will see the U.S. and U.K. overrepresented, along with any of the diseases tracked by ProMed because these have the best public health outreach (frightening as that is). You’re right, there’s a lot of bias.