Get Swine Flu Updates Via Text Message On Your Phone
You can’t go anywhere without hearing about the Swine Flu pandemic and rightly so, as it’s a serious situation with the potential to be horrific. The folks at cellphones.org have it covered by offering free Swine Flu updates via SMS messages on cell phones.
Text PIGFLU to 41411 and we will send updates as news develops about the Swine Flu. The only cost is your cost for receiving regular text messages, and there will be no other billing. We are providing this service in the public interest.
Daily Updates will include:
- CDC/WHO Updates
- Information about New OutBreaks
- Information From Health Authorities
We aim to send out info between 1-3 times daily, with urgent information such as new outbreak information, messages from health authorities and travel warnings as they develop.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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Please don’t contribute to the hype. Swine flu hasn’t shown itself to be deadly like SARS or the bird flu. Cases are quite mild? So there are now 330+ cases around the world? Take a look at the CDC Influenza page for March 1 to March 9 (a typical week, long before swine flu tracking became a national obsession).
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2008-2009/weekly09.htm
* 1252 confirmed cases of influenza out of 5446 samples tested (a small fraction of all the flu cases in the U.S. at the time).
* 5 pediatric deaths resulting from normal influenza, for a total of 26 pediatric deaths in the U.S. by week 9 of the 2008-2009 flu season (again, a small fraction of the total number of flu deaths).
Here’s some “Perspsective Statistics”
* 15 million to 60 million Americans come down with influenza each and every year
* Each and every year in the U.S. influenza (the garden variety) kills 36,000 people
(Source: http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-sci-swine-reality30-2009apr30,0,3606923.story)
So in a normal year, tens of thousands of people die from the flu. Yet do you see people obsessively creating iPhone apps tracking every flu infection and death, closing entire schools, with Vice Presidents warning the population of the horrors of public transportation become some kid got sick?
People need to get real. Swine flu deserves concern because it’s a “novel” virus but the level of panic and fear is ridiculous. Please don’t contribute to it in the interest of a “public service announcement.”
I think I am going to hack together a greasemonkey script that blocks all web pages that contain the word swine flu. Jeez!
the use of face masks and boosting your immune system by taking lots of vitamin-C is still an effective way of preventing the spread of the Swine Flu virus.
i always advice my kids to wear face masks when going into crowded areas. swine flu is really scary and i dont want my kids getting infected by it.