Tracking the swine flu outbreak online

As if we didn't have enough to worry about with all the computer virus activity these days, now comes news -- I'm sure you haven't missed it -- of a real-world virus which has people around the world becoming increasingly concerned.

I'm not going to tell you whether to panic about the Swine Flu virus that's infecting people across the globe -- I'll leave that to the medical experts to determine -- but I do want to point you to some online resources that can show you where outbreaks are being reported, so you can more easily figure out whether that guy on the bus just has the sniffles or if you might want to think about finding a different seat.

The best place to start is this Google Map created by one dedicated individual tracking the potential H1N1 pandemic, which offers color-coded markers for confirmed (purple) and suspected (pink) cases of the illness each noting the location of each reported case of the virus. Markers without a dot in the center indicate a patient that died due to the virus (or suspected virus).For a one-stop look at the issue, it's probably the best map going.

This "collaborative" Google Map offers similar data but is open for editing by anyone in the general public, so it's likely to be less reliable, though conceivably more up to date.

The CDC also has a more general spreadsheet page of its own, outlining the areas in which only lab-confirmed cases of Swine Flu have been detected. It's more general in the information it offers (mostly showing only the state of each infection and only in the U.S.), but at least you know it's 100 percent legit.

Surprisingly, overall flu activity seems relatively light this year so far, at least according to Google Flu Trends (which I covered here late last year). But I'll be curious to see how much that graph spikes up as 2009 and the concern over Swine Flu roll along.

Even more Swine Flu maps and mash-ups are available here.