Photo: Mike Burns. Flickr/CC
Epidemiology used to rely on aggregated data, reports gathered from public health clinics and hospitals, VA hospitals and military bases.
But with individuals so eagerly coughing-up their intimate details to Google and Facebook, scrubbing health data (presuming that’s what government scientists *want* to do) will be impractical, the feds will tell us.
If you actually come down with the flu, and the doctors want to know who you’ve been in physical contact with, your trusty cellphone could soon tell them.
And someday, scientists hope, this “infodemiology” might help forecast and track a flu epidemic the way experts monitor the weather.
It is exquisitely, darkly beautiful how we will document our demise. Then again, maybe it’s just chasing our tail…