Swine Flu Tracker

jonm [ 5 May 2009 04:35 AM]

This is a godawful visualization. The icons are presented as pie charts, but the size of the slices bears no relation to the number of cases of each type. At first glance, the impression is that 300+ people have died from swine flu in the US, whereas only one person has.

Josh Knauer [ 5 May 2009 05:35 AM]

Thanks for mentioning our work, Brady!

JonM: Sorry you don't like the iconography used in the visualization. The good news is that you can go to the site and create your own! Users are able to make their own visualizations based on the data, and can then share them across the web as "snapshots". Maybe you could post a map here that you think better represents the data? If we like it, we'll be happy to post it on the http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com main page.

-Josh Knauer
CEO, Rhiza Labs

Californian [ 5 May 2009 08:14 AM]

The first commenter is right. People are going to read those circles as pie charts. And in doing so, they will misread the map in a way that's panic-inducing (what? 300 new deaths in the US?) and misses a key aspect of the data (deaths have almost entirely been confined to Mexico).

To the Rhiza labs people: this isn't a matter of taste (whether we "like the iconography" or not). This chart is broken, in the sense that it communicates the wrong information.

Nigel Thomas [ 5 May 2009 09:59 AM]

We really need to put this pandemic into perspective. At time of writing, there have been 26 confirmed deaths out of 1140 confirmed cases. That's about a 2.2% mortality rate, or one death for every 40 or so infections. Not many countries have exceeded this number of infections yet.

This is in fact down from 2.5% thanks to (more recently implemented) early detection and anti-virals being administered, which seem to have stopped the deaths from occuring and made the sickness 'milder'. It cannot stop the spread though, with a further 10% being added daily. The 1918 pandemic killed about 2.75%, and they had no antivirals. When will ours run out?

Nigel Thomas.
Bird Flu Manual Online.
2009 H1N1 Flu preparedness for businesses.

Jim [ 5 May 2009 03:37 PM]

I prefer just the straight raw data you get from FluCount.org .. without all the nuts and bolts

Dharmendra [ 5 May 2009 03:47 PM]

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Archie Belaney [ 5 May 2009 04:41 PM]

Caaaarefullll about the sources here. The good Dr. Niman has a company that is trying to sell rapid-development services for antivirals. Where the data are sourced is another question to be answered before these circles and numbers are accepted as gospel.

Remember, garbage in -||make a map||- gospel out.

I'll take my information from the authoritative sources at CDC, thanks. (BTW - where's YOUR map, Dr. Besser?!)

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Josh Knauer [ 5 May 2009 05:28 PM]

New map visualization up that may address some of the concerns raised by JonM and Californian: http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com

Matt [ 8 May 2009 02:07 PM]

I thought this was a good visualization but I had some of the same concerns. I came across this post discussing various media visualizations of the swine flu pandemic.

http://visualizeit.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/visualizing-the-swine-flu-pandemic/

Jim [ 9 May 2009 02:01 PM]

Thanks Brady, Love the Map.

http://the-h1n1-virus.com

Tommy [11 May 2009 06:46 AM]

Great info Brady, I found another great site to get great updates and some very interesting videos check it out at:

http://www.the-swine-flu-virus.com/

Mitch [13 May 2009 01:08 PM]

An interactive timeline using the rhizalabs data:
http://h1n1.mesaac.com/