Growing fears of a flu pandemic sparked by the spread of the H5N1 strain of avian flu are providing a rich seam of online news, information and speculation for bloggers to mine.
A number of niche blogs and wikis have been set up as information clearinghouses on the threat in a concerted attempt to inform readers about the potential risks of bird flu.
Senior public health scientists and practitioners blogging anonymously at Effect Measure provide detailed analysis of the latest headlines on the spread of the virus that's hard to match in the mainstream media. Other blogs, such as Silviu Dochia's Avian Flu blog, Crawford Kilian's H5N1 blog, Armchair Epidemiologist's blog and the Bird Flu Updates blog, along with the Flu Wiki site, offer readers updates on every possible angle of the story. (For a more extensive list of bird flu links and resources, the FluWiki resources page is a great start.)
Back in June the Guardian reported on "the probability of the pandemic's start being better covered by bloggers than "accredited" media". Given this week's news that the H5N1 strain of avian flu may be spreading to Europe from Asia, it's likely that blogs such as these - and increasingly the mainstream media - will be on high alert. As Chet of the blog Science Musings put it:
Only a week or so ago I was lamenting that few Americans were aware of the threat of avian flu. Now suddenly, the story is everywhere. No need to rehash here the potential catastrophe that has in recent days been splashed all over the media.
