Re:The Parable of Google Flu: Traps in Big Data Analysis [pdf]
by Fomite on Monday March 24, 2014 @01:03AM
(#7456810)
Diagnosing viral illness is a pain. There are a huge number of winter circulating viruses with roughly the same pattern as the flu, and diagnostic tests for influenza are often very specific but not very sensitive. Meaning if they come up positive, you have it, but if they come up negative...shrug
Beyond that, no, it's not likely to be a virus treated in a similar manner. If by manner you mean "drugs". Oseltamivir (aka Tamiflu) only works against influenza, so if you have RSV or some other virus, it won't do you much good. The other way to handle viral diseases is to let them run their course and manage the complications, at which point a strictly accurate diagnosis isn't particularly necessary.
TL;DR: It's very hard, fairly expensive, and the payoff per-patient isn't strong.
I guess the flu epidemic is just a conspiration created to distract us from the fact that nobody walked on the moon or something.
On a more serious note, what's exactly the deal with misdiagnosis? If the real thing is another virus, it could also be a virus that we should treat in a similar manner? Or the doctors are loosing precious time often with a wrong first diagnosis in a significant number of cases?