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If this an experiment? Is it the 1% being magnanimous? Is this that he doesn't want his employees to get the flu?

Nevertheless a nice gesture - though there may be more effective ways to spend the $$$ on the public good.



> Is this that he doesn't want his employees to get the flu?

Google already provides free on-site flu vaccines for Googlers, and vouchers for Googler family members.


I suspect all Google employees already have good enough health care to get a free flu shot for their family without this, he's making sure all others do too?

The flu makes society horribly unproductive (and cranky) so it's a public good.


It would be nice if he's just being magnanimous, but I actually hope it's an experiment ... will there be a notable difference in flu rates in the area as a result of this? will there be any other statistical blips that can be correlated to fewer infections? I'm hoping they're tracking the heck out of this effort :P


I vaguely remember Google had a flu tracker last year.

Ah here it is http://www.google.org/flutrends/

You are right, it will be interesting to see if this makes a difference statistically.

Unfortunately their tracker doesn't go down to metro areas, only state.

Oh wait, there are a few cities, here is SF http://www.google.org/flutrends/us/#1014221


It probably won't even show up. There have been some unintentional experiments with the flu vaccine, such as the year production got botched or that the people in charge of predicting which strains to include guessed wrong. There were no noticeable increases in sickness or morbidity in those years.

Don't take this too far; the data is very noisy and maybe it was there and we just didn't see it. Flu vaccines do seem to work in labs and in small community experiments.


This is nice... though with a universal health system it doesn't need to be limited to one city.


HUGE response -- I guess the sarcasm was a little subtle.


Is it the 1% being magnanimous?

The class warfare rhetoric is B.S.


Blame the Republicans who created the conditions for class warfare in the first place.


"Blame the people who bring it up in irrelevant contexts" sounds like something people would actually do.


A good thing is still a good thing even if it's done for bad reasons.

(Hell, a good thing is a good thing even if it's done for completely insane reasons, too.)




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