Believe it or not, the "plain old flu" is a big deal; it shares a category with pneumonia -- the two combined are amongst the top 10 causes of death [usually closer to 6th] in the U.S. Organizations like the American Lung Association go to great lengths to get the word out on the importance of flu shots, early symptom detection, likely complications, etc.

While our primary (beta) functionality focus at Healthline is on providing medically guided search results, our meta-mission is connecting people with the health information they need, when they need it.

To that end, we've built Flu Central (officially launching tomorrow AM), a one-stop resource for information on the 2005-2006 flu season, including:

- Guidelines (from the CDC) on whether or not you should get a flu shot; believe it or not, there are many folks who should not get a shot!

- An interactive, real-time Flu Threat Map with zip code level data on the state of the flu (None, Watch, Alert, Warning, Epidemic) near you.

- A flu shot locator; type in your zip code, and you'll get a list of professional providers of flu shots near you.

- Flu news and articles

My thanks to Stephen Baker of BusinessWeek's Blogspotting for helping to get the word out (early). Please consider passing this along if you know of others that need to know.