Private sector versus Big Government ...
Who will predict the onset and magnitude of this year's influenza incidence peak first? Last November, Google published a paper in Nature reporting that it could use search engine query data to accurately estimate the current level of weekly influenza activity in each region of the United States with a reporting lag of about one day relative to the two week delay by the CDC. Google validated its findings using data from 2007 - 2008 which were initially excluded during model creation.
Well, its a brand new year folks and the question is whether the Google model is going to be validated again. This is what things are looking like so far, Google and CDC respectively:
Follow the bout live: Google , CDC
I'm putting my money on Google.