Thursday, May 28, 2009

The CDC ~ Takin' it easy


I went to check the Center for Disease Control updated Swine flu stats (yes scientists did in fact discover/confirm the virus IS related to actual Swine).

I checked the chart on Tuesday, and it still had the numbers from Monday posted.

Had they taken a little vacation?

Budget cuts?

I thought this was a serious issue!

Then I saw new verbiage they had added, just above the chart "(Updated Mon, Wed, and Fri)"

Previously, they had been updating EVERY day, including weekends- although they were very slow in posting updates.

If this is a test of our ability to handle a pandemic, the CDC updates get a low mark.
Why do we have just one official testing lab location? That slows down the whole process of updating. The more people that were sick & the more samples sent in, the slower they got.

What does not make sense to me is that we now have 15 deaths in the U.S. from Swine flu, & 8,975 cases - officially confirmed.
We really should have daily updates, this being the information age & all.
If there were a sudden rise in deaths from this disease in your state, wouldn't you want to know sooner?

It is not that difficult to update a simple spreadsheet chart. Jeez!

Right now, Texas, Wisconsin & Illinois have the highest number of cases.
Texas, New York & Arizona have the most deaths from the virus.

1 comment:

Fran said...

About the graphics- #1 molecular structure of the virus, #2 Photo of H1N1 under a microscope.

I realize this flu is behaving like a "normal" flu & people do die from the flu every year.

Still, at least daily updates Mon thru Friday seems like a reasonable expectation.