My own consciousness/anxiety level about H1N1 has been sharply on the rise over the last few weeks (this could have something to do with a pediatricians’ office asking patients to call in daily to find out when the vaccine is available. Seriously? You want all your clients to call you every day to check? This is the 21st century, people! But I digress…), so I was wondering if Google searches are showing a similar pattern.
The answer: not so much. Searches have been gradually rising over the past 6 months, and are high overall, but not showing a sharp uptick in the last few weeks. To get a sense of scale, I compared “swine flu” and “h1n1″ against “pelosi” and “health care”:
Twitter trends are similar — a chart of usage of the words “swine flu” on Twitter over the last 30 days shows no upturn:
I guess I’m the only one obsessing – for now.
UPDATE 10/24/09: Oh, there you are! It looks like the president declaring swine flu a national emergency was enough to get the gopher to pop its little head out of the hole (see Twitter trends, below). Now… where did I put that pediatrician’s phone number?
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