Scientists Use Twitter To Track Flu Shot Attitudes

What are our attitudes toward flu shots? It could be as simple as turning to Twitter.

A new study in the journal PLoS Computational Biology shows it's also possible to use the social media platform to track flu shot vaccination rates and attitudes.

Pennsylvania State University researcher Marcel Salathé gathered 477,768 tweets that contained H1N1 vaccination-related words or sentiments between August 2009 and Jan. 2010. Then, his students assisted him in rating each tweet as negative, positive, neutral or irrelevant toward flu vaccinations.

Because many of the Twitter users also included their location in their profile, Salathé was also able to see where vaccination rates were highest in the United States (well, at least according to Twitter). People who were the most positive about getting the H1N1 vaccine were located in New England, the region that also had the highest rate of vaccinations, he found.

"These results could be used strategically to develop public-health initiatives," Salathé, who is an assistant professor biology, said in a statement. "For example, targeted campaigns could be designed according to which region needs more prevention education. Such data also could be used to predict how many doses of a vaccine will be required in a particular area."

Salathé also found that people had the most negative attitudes toward the flu vaccine when it was first introduced, but then the reaction grew increasingly positive the more time passed.

Recently, sociologists from Cornell also found that it's possible to use Twitter to track global mood swings. Their work showed that people seem to be happiest early in the morning, but that they get increasingly negative as the day wears on. However, the world's positivity peaked again at midnight.

Comments

[farmilyman]

10:31 AM on 10/20/2011

Flu shots don't work.

[ddanimal]

12:31 AM on 10/18/2011

The flu shots are a scam, and a clear and present danger to unborn children.

Flu shots given to pregnant women cause autism and schizophrenia.

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~phplab/images/whatwedo/EngSci31006.pdf

[palindrom]

10:19 PM on 10/18/2011

Patterson himself says that if all pregnant women were vaccinated against flu, the incidence of schizophrenia would go down by about 20 percent.

Look at this blog, and look at comments number 3 (mine) and number 9.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/10/the_nonsense_that_is_vaccine_injury_awar.php?utm_source=networkbanner&utm_medium=link

[shotinfo]

04:28 PM on 10/17/2011

In Australia, there was a situation were over 200 children were hospitalised with seizures because of an experimental flu shot less than 2 years ago. It now turns out that this flu shot's package insert 'omitted' to include information on the greatly increased risk of high fevers and seizures it posed to young children. The drug company left that information out and the drug 'regulator' allowed that to happen because they are a toothless tiger.

We need real data from double-blind studies comparing the completely unvaccinated with the completely vaccinated - not the garbage studies we have now that compare the vaccinated with flu vaccines to the vaccinated with other shots or with toxic aduvants. This is not science.

The cochrane collaboration found that flu shots are worthless in those under 2 years of age (no better than placebo at preventing flu) and yet we recommend these vaccines from 6 months of age.

Stop trying to convince parents to vaccinate by using junk science like this 'study' and give us what we really need - proof of safety and effectiveness.

Meryl Dorey
Australian Vaccination Network

[ddanimal]

12:33 AM on 10/18/2011

See the lecture i linked to above describing research at the Patterson laboratory at Caltech.

[D Davis]

01:25 PM on 10/17/2011

Humans have survived all this time without the unsafe toxic poison they want to brainwash everyone into thinking is "safe" and is necessary to stay "healthy." The fact is, the carcinogenic and mutagenic effects have not been evaluated nor the potential to impair fertility. Read the vaccine package ingredient labels, your doctor doesn't bother to. Just know you are taking vaccines at your own risk since they are not liable for any injury you may have. In fact, they may just label it all in your head or a "coincidence." But they can't explain why it's a good idea to give live virus vaccines that can make recipients contagious to other people for up to SIX weeks. I thought the entire idea was to prevent the spread of illnesses, not increase it. ?

[ddanimal]

12:37 AM on 10/18/2011

Actually, some of the effects of vaccines have been researched, and they have been found to be devastating:

http://www.safeminds.org/research/library/GenerationZeroPowerPoint.pdf

[wrobbins]

01:47 PM on 10/20/2011

The small meta-analysis you linked didn't begin to make your point, nor was it intended for that purpose by its authors. With that said, I also couldn't find the parts where vaccine side effects were implicated in hundreds of millions of deaths...you know, something that compares to the number of lives they've saved.

[palindrom]

10:19 PM on 10/16/2011

I would be very surprised if this story did not draw a swarm of anti-vax people.

The reason their opinions have any adherents at all is because the terrible diseases that were wiped out or controlled by vaccination have, for the most part, faded from living memory. Vaccinations carry some risk, and very rarely do have serious adverse effects, but all in all are far, far preferable to the awful scourges they prevent.

[onionboy]

03:40 PM on 10/17/2011

Yup. No education in history.

[ddanimal]

12:36 AM on 10/18/2011

But you ignore research like this:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~phplab/images/whatwedo/EngSci31006.pdf

Which clearly shows that vaccinations given to pregnant women are a clear and present danger to unborn children. And despite this research, the corrupt CDC persists in recommending the flu shot to pregnant women, mercury and all.

And dont overlook these results regarding thimerosal from the corrupt CDC's secret internal studies:
http://www.safeminds.org/research/library/GenerationZeroPowerPoint.pdf

These are the true results, before the corrupt CDC figured out clever ways to bury and hide the devastating effects of the vaccines they pushed on the public.

[palindrom]

07:05 AM on 10/18/2011

My original post's prediction is thereby borne out.

Of course, this is nonsense.

[debbielechner]

03:37 AM on 10/16/2011

Vaccinations: How Crucial are they to Young Health? http://bit.ly/qKSjo1