# 4445
Over the past 4+ years I’ve spent nearly every day locked in pursuit of the latest `flu’ and emerging disease news. In addition to the tremendous assistance provided by the newshounds (see Newshounds: They Cover The Pandemic Front), I do a fair amount of news hunting myself.
One of the tools I use is an RSS Feed aggregator, that pulls in `flu and disease’ related stories from (currently) 188 different sources to my desktop every 15 minutes.
Yes, I know. It’s a sickness. I really need a life, to get out more.
Here is a snapshot of what my RSS feed program looks like (I use BlogBridge). On an average day, this software pulls a thousand stories to my desktop. I then have to `read’ them.
Most I just skim, to make a quick determination of their worth.
And sad to say, 95% of them are total crap.
What passes for influenza, infectious disease, and/or health news on the web is in large part unsubstantiated speculative drivel, agenda driven propaganda, or tabloid `newsertainment’ simply designed to drive curious traffic to a website.
And since the Internet abhors a vacuum, the slower the `real’ news, the greater the number of these `dubious’ web reports we tend to see.
Most don’t pass my personal `litmus test’ for being credible or even worthy of comment.
Constant readers have probably noticed that the number of blog entries I’m making of late have dropped. The reason is simple: There’s not that much `flu news’ to blog about right now.
I don’t expect this lull to last forever, but as long as it does, I’ll not attempt to publish `filler material’ simply for the sake of publishing something.
Unless there is important `breaking news’, you can expect that most of my blogging will be done in the morning (EDT). I may even take a day off from time to time.
Novus Gratia Novus, in my estimation, would be a disservice to my readers. I’ve no desire to waste your time, or mine with mindless dreck.
Besides, there’s this strange yellow orb that I’ve seen rising in the eastern sky each morning through my bedroom window. It illuminates and warms the landscape as it traverses the sky over about 12 hours, and it seems to be lasting a little longer each day.
I’ve plans, during this slow news cycle, to venture outside and try to identify it.
I’ll report back when I figure out what it is.
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