"Follow the Money" - to track diseases

This news story is a testament to
some innovative scientists. I'm been
reading a lot of books that bemoan
the devolution of the public health
system, which includes tracking
diseases.

new disease tracking method

Now some public scientists have come
up with a way to track diseases by
tracking money at www.wheresgeorge.com

That's a site I never understood, myself.
I've seen $1 with the url written on them,
but never felt the desire to look them up
to see where they've been or to add my
possession to their record.

It seems a crazy thing to spend time on, even
though I'm sure that some of the entries for
some of the money I've handled are interesting.

But would it really enhance my life to know that
a particular $1 was once given to a Wal-Mart in
St. Joseph Missouri?

The really interesting stories are probably not
put on the site -- drugs deals etc.

I had to think about this, but I guess the
scientists involved know as well as I do that
many people will handle the bills without
logging onto the wheresgeorge.com site.

People who do log onto the site and enter their
bills probably travel no less and possibly more
than average.

And of course one weakness is that this process
can't track diseases coming into North America.

And I could be wrong, but I doubt that many money
changers outside the United States log on to the site to
record that they were just handed these particular
bills in exchange for 5000 pesos. Yet those bills
could then go back to the U.S. after floating
around some foreign countries, but that would not
be recorded.

Anyway, since I'm now reading about the Ebola
outbreak in 1995, I was glad to read something
lighter on the topic of disease tracking and
control.