Swine Flu information

Every day I hear someone else mention Swine Flu, often in the form of questioning whether they should be worried.

The best way to deal with worry and anxiety is to be informed. (I know, that’s a sweeping statement that might be worth a blog post-- or a book-- down the line...) Where do you go to get information on Swine Flu?

• Let’s start “at home”-- the PCA’s Disaster Relief division (a part of Mission to North America) has put together this helpful factsheet, available in PDF format. This two-page resource has links to other helpful pages (where you may obtain factual information, not just hearsay, hype, or hysteria), as well as brief advice for some things to think about.
• Wikipedia is a very good place to go for information that has been updated about as frequently as possible. (Some people are skeptical about Wikipedia, but I’ve found it to be quite adept at self-policing.) If you don’t know what a “wiki” is, think of it as a user-edited website-- thus, Wikipedia is a user-edited encyclopedia. The Wikipedia page for the 2009 Swine Flu outbreak is a rich resource for up-to-date information.
• Another wiki that might be even better than Wikipedia’s Swine Flu page is this one: Flu Wiki, which is a resource about ALL Flu strains, including Swine and Avian Flu. There is more there, and the participants seem to frequently be a part of the medical community (not to say that the ones on Wikipedia are not, but simply commenting on the Flu Wiki).
• If you’re interested in following when new cases of Swine Flu are detected, this page has an ongoing report to that effect: Veratect, which is actually a Twitter feed that reports them.