Feeling sick? Post your pain online

Are you sniffling and sneezing? Coughing up black bile? Move over CDC: If there’s a plague in the offing, we, the people can spread the word as well as the germs. This morning we read an article about Who Is Sick, a website launched in March that allows you to tell the world about every last headache.

First you type in your ZIP Code. Then you check boxes for the symptoms you have (skin sores, bloody stools, gas, in addition to the more workaday coughing-sniffing ones). Finally, your plague symptoms get placed in a searchable map. Eventually, goes the idea, this system will be able to track epidemics faster than the folks at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can.

To let the world know just how poorly you’re feeling, go to whoissick.org/sickness.

To read the supermarketguru.com article on the topic, go to www.foodnutritionscience.com/index.cfm/do/monsanto.article/articleId/16.cfm.

According to the Who Is Sick map, right now there’s a lot of runny noses and coughs in West L.A. (No black bile, though. Feel free to drive there — if you can.)

And one poor soul in La Puente has a whole, multicolored pie chart of symptoms: runny nose, cough, fever, headache, muscle ache and stomachache. If we weren’t under budget constraints, we’d send flowers.

— Rosie Mestel