Tag Archives: Facebook

We like the social media stuff: barfblog is now active on Facebook

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Someone asked me about the history of barfblog this week – stuff like how it started and where the name came from.

Here’s how I remember it: Doug had been editing a bunch of daily listservs (FSNet, Agnet, Animalnet and FFnet) in some form since 1993. These were a big source of food safety-related news for risk managers (folks in industry, academia and the regulatory agencies) Screen Shot 2014-01-17 at 1.28.41 PM before Google Alerts, RSS feeds and Twitter existed. Beyond sharing what was going on in the food safety world, Doug encouraged the students and staff who worked for him to write evidence-based commentary and submit op-eds and letters to the major publications (back when there were actual newspapers).

I came along in 2000 and became a news junkie and jumped into the whole share-your-thoughts-in-an-interesting-way thing. Even with my grammar, spelling and general logic challenges. In 2005, when self-publishing was all the rage, we decided to start a forum to post stories about food safety experiences, the stuff that others didn’t publish or didn’t fit the format of the traditional newspapers.

And we started a blog. It wasn’t really a blog at the start, but a forum. And it got bombarded by porn spam. So we left it for a while and relaunched the whole thing in 2007.

But it needed a name.

Christian, a particularly creative undergraduate, came up with the name – barfblog (all in lowercase as Dave Stanley always told Doug uppercase was a waste in e-mail, and he agrees) – and then created a video of him guzzling vermouth and actually barfing.

The idea was (and still is) to write stories about what makes people barf and take current news items and highlight what we thought was important – based on the literature and our experiences.

Doug’s more concise description is this:

Every time I talk to someone on a plane, train or automobile, they find out what I do, and then proceed to tell me their worst barf story. barfblog.com was created to capture those stories, except most people don’t want to be bothered writing, so we did it for them.

Since 2007 we’ve embraced social media as a channel to carry out that dialogue and increase discussion. But we’ve really sucked at Facebook. Until now. We’ve got a somewhat new, but now active space where we’ll be posting our, uh, blog posts as well as pictures and links. And we’re looking for folks to jump in on the discussions.
Check out barfblog on Facebook at Facebook.com/safefoodblog

Two Canadian E. coli patients moved to regional hospital after conditions worsen

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A Fredericton teenager battling E. coli O157 has been sent to the Saint John Regional Hospital after her condition took a turn for the worse Monday afternoon.

The New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal reports Micaella Boer, 18, was transferred from the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital at about 3 p.m. after a test revealed the disease is attacking her body’s red blood cells.

For at least the next six days, she is to undergo blood transfusions and plasma exchange treatments to fight off the bacteria.

Victoria Boer, Micaella’s mother, said the turn of events happened only days after her daughter’s condition appeared to be improving.

Public Health officials confirmed Tuesday that the second patient has also been transferred to the Saint John Regional Hospital for treatment. Victoria said her daughter could be kept there for some time.

On Monday, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health, Dr. Denis Allard, said lab results wouldn’t be available before the first of next week and public health will provide more information when possible.

Of the four confirmed sick in the latest outbreak, one sought treatment after seeing Micaella’s Facebook post describing her symptoms.

CBC News reports that Micaella’s friend sought help for the illness after he saw her Facebook post describing her symptoms and realized his were similar.

Doctors sent him home with anitbiotics.

But Micaella and her father, Scott Boer, did some online research on the effects of E. coli and taking antibiotics.

They found that, in certain cases, antibiotics may make E. coli-related illness worse. Micaella also immediately messaged her friend, telling him not to take the medication.

Food server fired for Facebook post

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 I keep telling my kids, what you put on facebook or anywhere will follow you around, so be sure you want it public.

I also tell them I walked 5 miles to school in massive piles of snow and that things aren’t as good as they used to be (I walked about 50 yards).

Eater reports that a California Chili’s waitress was fired for posting the following on Facebook: "Next time you tip me $5 on a $138 bill, don’t even bother coming in cause I’ll spit in your food and then in your fuckig [sic] face you cheap bastards!!!!!!!!!" The Daily Dot breaks down the story, which involves the websites Reddit, 4Chan, and a Chili’s customer service rep repeatedly insisting "the quality of food we serve is of utmost importance."

Jeremy Lin throws up for Facebook, so does Sorenne

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Three-year-old Sorenne is doing her best Jeremy Lin.

Started at 9:30 p.m. Brisbane time with explosive vomit involving volume and chunks of undigested and curdled stuff.

Then another.

She’s at about vomit number seven, lying beside me on the couch, sleeping for 15 minutes and then gasping before the next vomit. Little containers don’t work so well with little kids; I have a pail on the floor.

It’s classic foodborne illness, which means I’m wracked with guilt. I buy all the food; I prepare all the food; I make her lunch; I nag at the school about petting zoos and handwashing. Even the French professor chimed in with her diagnosis of norovirus.

That’s how food safety infects and inflects our lives.

Yesterday was the Easter celebration at school, so lots of chocolate was involved, but that’s not what’s involved here. Just a feeling of helplessness, self-doubt and concern. It happened with all my other kids growing up, it’ll probably happen again, but it sucks.

And then there’s the laundry.

Famed basketball star Jeremy Lin tried to run an online Facebook Q&A yesterday just hours after undergoing knee surgery.

Until he threw up.

As reported by Mashable, the numbers and demographics of the Facebook chat are pretty astounding. According to The Wall Street Journal, 90% of participants were Asian and 50% were evangelical Christian. The average age of the chatters was 15, with males and females equally represented. And the thousands of participants asked more than 8,000 questions — a rate of about two per second.

Lin answered a range of questions including his biggest pet peeves, the video games he plays, how he stays humble and plans for rehabilitation.

With the sheer volume of participants and the rate of participation, the session turned out to be a “tremendously disorienting experience,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

And it wasn’t just that way for the viewers. Lin, still reeling after his surgery, had to interrupt his own chat for some post-surgery puking — which he announced on Facebook as well:

“WOW just threw up in the middle of the Q&A lol. time to get some rest but before i go just wanna say much love to all you fans! thanks to you guys who make MSG the best arena and thanks to all the NY media/beat writers for all your hard work in getting information to the fans. goodnight!”

More than 43,000 people liked his vomiting update alone.

We’re not famous. Explosive diarrhea three just accompanied vomit eight.

9 sick including 3 HUS from E. coli O157; is Pennsylvania lake the source?

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From the I-wish-I-hadn’t-said-that files, Terry Brady, a spokesperson with Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources said Monday that the lake at Cowans Gap State Park remained open, despite links to three cases of E. coli O157. “The beaches are open and actually there was a good turnout today. A link to the park has not been established."

The lake was closed Tuesday afternoon, as the number of people, primarily children, confirmed to have contracted E. coli O157:H7 rose to six, with an additional three suspect cases.

At least three of the infected have developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, including a 3-year-old Mercersburg girl who has been hospitalized since Wednesday, and a 12-year-old Chambersburg boy, who is now recovering after spending his birthday in the hospital.

Spokesman Brady said in an email Tuesday night that the closing of the lake at Cowans Gap is a precautionary measure "to protect the public’s health and safety until the investigation can be completed."

He said the decision was made after interviews showed that swimming in the lake before becoming ill was a common factor between all individuals.

Over the weekend, Nikki Gordon, a friend of the three-year-old’s family and another family friend, Amanda Stauffer, came up with the idea for a Facebook group to raise support. As of Friday evening, the group had 955 members, featuring hundreds of well wishes and regular updates on the girl’s condition.

Through her Facebook group, Stauffer has heard from several other people who say their children got sick after swimming in the lake at Cowans Gap, she said. They include a 6-year-old girl, a 15-month-old boy and several children who apparently suffered "mild symptoms" but did not require hospitalization.

"All of these kids have one thing in common, and it’s Cowans Gap. The only thing we do know is that they were all there," Stauffer said.
 

Burger King employee thinks management doesn’t check Facebook

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I try to tell my four daughters – five counting Sorenne but at 15-months-old she’s not on Facebook yet — don’t put everything on Facebook, someone may actually read it.

They ignore me, which is the bane of every parent, but I can at least blog about it and then be able to say, it’s all fun and games until someone reads your Facebook page.

A Burger King employee in the Detroit metro area likely regrets making his Facebook messages public after recently warning everyone to stay away from the store he works at because "we spit in your food for sh*ts and giggles."

"I’m guessing it’s cause he was really stressed out, having a bad day at work," said Nick Klingensmith, who works alongside his 21-year-old brother at Burger King.

He said his brother was just joking.

"I think he’s more scared, he’s worried about what’s going to happen to him, he don’t wanna lose his job," Klingensmith said.

Customer Carolyn Stevens said,

"Even if he’s joking around if I’m eating something that someone spit in, even if they’re joking, I don’t want to take that chance."

Social media spreads word on flu: CDC

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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that a modest 2,500 people followed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Twitter feed, CDCEmergency, when it was launched during the outbreak of Salmonella linked to Peanut Corp. of America products earlier this year. Now that the CDC is tweeting about the H1N1 flu (aka swine flu), over 100,000 members of the interested public are following.

In addition to the Twitter feed, CDC’s National Center for Health Marketing has responded to public demand for information with a Flickr photo stream, podcasts, videos and a Facebook page. These are the media familiar to today’s consumers.

The director of the National Center for Health Marketing, Dr. Jay Bernhardt, explained that the effectiveness of the agency’s communications through these media is dependent upon public trust, which is developed by speaking the audience’s language.

For example, Berhardt said of the CDC’s Tweets, “The social media team has learned to use a lot of exclamation points in these kinds of things.”

This lit review that I’ve been working on is full of evidence of the effectiveness of communicators that target an audience and then reach out to them with relevant, reliable, rapid and repeated information through the media they use every day.

The review also supports the evaluation of communication efforts to determine their effectiveness (and make changes, if necessary).

Polls by the Harvard School of Public Health have attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of the CDC’s efforts. And while direct observation of actual consumer behaviors would provide a more accurate evaluation, results of the consumer polls have been promising:

“[T]he poll shows that 67% of Americans are now washing their hands or using sanitizers more often, compared with 59% who said the same thing a week ago,” stated a report by MedPage.

“61% of respondents said they were not concerned that they or a family member would get the H1N1 flu within the next year. That’s up from 53% who weren’t worried a week ago.”

People can handle more information—not less—about the risks in their lives. Kudos to CDC.
 

Tweeting about Food Safety

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Do you remember how you first heard about the latest round of Salmonella in the peanut butter?  Was it on the evening news, in the paper, or did you hear about it through Facebook or Twitter?  If you’re in the under 30 crowd you might fit into the latter category.  Social networking sites, like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are increasingly being utilized for up-to-the-minute recall information.

During the recent Salmonella outbreak, the United States Department of Health and Human Services – specifically the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – engaged in a heavy social media push to inform citizens about the health risks and product recalls.  As a result, the CDC Social Media Center was created as a central hub for harnessing the power of social networking to spread recall information.

Twitter is one of the sites currently used in the assortment of links.   Twitter allows users to “follow” one another’s “tweets” about what they do during the day.  The website is on the rise among medical professionals and there are accounts for all ranges of industry available.  Why not food safety?

Federal health agencies have been experimenting with new Internet tools, dubbed Web 2.0, that make it easier to deliver information directly to the public. The "Health 2.0" movement got a big boost with the arrival of President Barack Obama, who is pushing federal agencies to use the tools to make the federal government more transparent and participatory.

Current news about FDA recalls can be found @FDArecalls and public health updates from the CDC can be found @CDCemergency. The only snag is you have to sign up in order to receive tweets from the FDA, but hey, its free.  After all, you’re no one if you’re not on Twitter.