Got the flu? Odds are you’ll tell everyone in your SM network before you’ll tell a doctor.
And tracking flu outbreaks by watching hash-tags has become a research pursuit for a U of G grad student.
Adam Beswick, a master of science student in epidemiology in the department of population medicine, says that millennials who hash-tag their flu season blues may help to track the spread of influenza, which is on the rise everywhere.
For example, the number of flu cases reported in Wellington-Guelph-Dufferin increased from 200 confirmed cases in 2013-2014 to 239 during the last fiscal year.
Nationwide, flu cases showed a similar spike in the 2014-2015 flu season. More than 5,000 Canadian cases were reported by the World Health Organization last year, compared to 4,000 two-years-ago.
But thanks to SM, no one has to wait a year to get the specific numbers to know there’s a problem. Beswick says when millennials get sick, their first reaction may be to tweet about it, rather than visit a doctor’s office, where flu cases are normally recorded and reported.
He says flu sufferers’ e-reporting is meant for social discussion among friends or followers, rather than for medical reasons.
But it’s an aid for public health organizations tracking the spread of disease and make effective recommendations. There may be valuable information to be gained by exploring online platforms for disease surveillance for this tech-savvy age group.
“Social media is being used everywhere—from tracking natural disasters to social trends—so it’s only a natural step for it to be used in public health research,” he says. “Canadians are among the highest social media users in the world. We’re very well connected online.”
Beswick is focusing his pilot project on human influenza because so many people have experienced the flu. It’s a hot discussion topic on Twitter.
He says Twitter is an excellent channel for obtaining data because a large percentage of the millions of tweets posted every day are publicly available. This activity has allowed Beswick to collect a dataset of 400,000 unique tweets from every province and territory in Canada, posted between August 2013 and July 2014.
Tweets were selected based on having one or more of 17 specific keywords pertaining to the flu, including “flu,” “influenza,” “cough,” “fever,” “vaccine,” and “H1N1.”
Part of the tracking involved confirming that keywords are used in the right context. For example, there was an unexpected spike in the use of “fever” during the summer months, but a closer look revealed most of these tweets were discussing unrelated topics such as “Bieber fever” or “cabin fever.”
Beswick’s analysis showed a spike in the use of influenza-related keywords in December and January. This mirrors the typical spike of influenza cases in the winter months.
He says the correlation between the use of flu-related keywords and actual spikes in flu cases suggests this method of using social media as a disease surveillance tool is effective, and could be used to track outbreaks of the flu and other diseases.
Tracking self-reported health information using the Internet could also fill gaps in disease surveillance among a variety of populations around the world, where a typical disease surveillance structure is not present. For example, Beswick says that cell phone and social media use is widespread in developing countries; in the continent of Africa, cell phone use exceeds 80 per cent of the population.
“This type of research is something that I think will be emerging in the next few decades because of the ubiquity of Internet usage, social media and cellphone usage,” says Beswick.
Collaborating faculty members in the department of population medicine include Profs. Cate Dewey, Zvonimir Poljak, Amy Greer and Andrew Papadopoulos.
How you can stop the spread of the flu
Influenza can be a very serious disease, especially among young children, seniors and individuals with suppressed immune systems. The Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph public health offers these tips to help you protect yourself, and others, from the flu:
- Get the flu shot. It not only builds up your immunity towards the flu, but it can also help you protect others who are unable get the flu shot due to age or pre-existing health conditions.
- Wash your hands often. This prevents flu viruses from transferring by hand-to-hand or hand-to-object contact.
- Cough and sneeze into your arm, not your hand. Here’s a simple step that can prevent the flu from spreading through hand contact.
- Stay home if you’re sick. It confines the flu to your residence, and prevents you from spreading it further, especially to those who have compromised immune systems. “Laying low” may also help you to recover more quickly.