Letter: Concerned about false positives in tracking flu
A reader expresses his concern that a Google tool can accurately track flu trends by state.
Regarding "Google tool seeks to track flu trends."
I
suppose I am too much of a skeptic. However, there are times in my
geographical area that there is much respiratory disease that is
thought to be influenza but later turns out to be caused by some other
virus or bacterium.
My concern would therefore be about false
positives or a pseudo-epidemic. If the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention data correlates, then I may be overly cautious?
Samuel Merritt
North Carolina State Lab of Public Health
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