Out if the box ways to improve Covid tracking
I think we can all agree that opening up the economy would be a good thing. I also think that we can agree that the better we can monitor potential outbreaks, the easier it will be to get broad consensus on being able to do that.
There has already been significant discussion on this blog about Kinsa digital thermometer data. I’m sure lots of other interesting ideas may have been buried in the myriad of covid posts. Thought it might be interesting to try to gather them in a single thread.
I’ve highlighted a few including; smartwatch heart rate data, monitoring wastewater, saliva tests rather than nasal swab tests (this was in an earlier thread but since it used the eord Rutgers, I don’t think many people read it) and google search data.
In a paper posted Tuesday to the preprint server medRxiv, researchers collected samples in late March from a wastewater treatment plant serving a large metropolitan area in Massachusetts and found that the amount of SARS-CoV-2 particles in the sewage samples indicated a far higher number of people likely infected with Covid-19 than the reported cases in that area.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/07/new-research-wastewater-community-spread-covid-19/
“The impact of this approval is significant,” said Andrew Brooks, chief operating officer and director of technology development at RUCDR, who also is a professor in the School of Arts and Sciences Department of Genetics at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. “It means we no longer have to put health care professionals at risk for infection by performing nasopharyngeal or oropharyngeal collections. We can preserve precious personal protective equipment for use in patient care instead of testing. We can significantly increase the number of people tested each and every day as self-collection of saliva is more quick and scalable than swab collections. All of this combined will have a tremendous impact on testing in New Jersey and across the United States.”
https://www.rutgers.edu/news/new-rutgers-saliva-test-coronavirus-gets-fda-approval
Vasileios Lampos, a computer scientist at University College London, and other researchershave found that a bevy of symptom-related searches — loss of smell as well as fever and shortness of breath — have tracked outbreaks around the world.
Because these searches correlate so strongly with disease prevalence rates in parts of the world with reasonably good testing, we can use these searches to try to find places where many positive cases are likely to have been missed.
April 15th, 2020 at 10:23 AM ^
The nerdy scientist-quant in me is giddy about the prospects of aggregating and analyzing big data to quickly tease out public health threats. However, the George Orwellian notion of being constantly monitored by a fitbit or other device without knowing how the data is (are?) truly being used is conversely quite unnerving. I'm flummoxed by this inner tension.
April 15th, 2020 at 12:37 PM ^
I can help you decide. Your inner nerd will blow a gasket trying to figure out data that is tainted by people who have simply taken off the Fitbit and never put it back on again.
April 15th, 2020 at 10:38 AM ^
After 9/11 people willingly accepted communication suveillance because we were told it was necessary to protect us from the big bad terrorists.
Now we will be told that medical surveillance will be neccessary to protect our health.
Any surveillance measures implemented using Covid as the reason will not go away.
I'm not saying we'll turn into a police state overnight but if you give an inch, a foot will be taken.
April 15th, 2020 at 11:25 AM ^
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither & will lose both." -Benjamin Franklin
April 15th, 2020 at 11:56 AM ^
And he said this at a time when one-fifth of the population was human property. A lot of “liberty” they had.
April 15th, 2020 at 12:38 PM ^
Doesn't really disprove what Franklin said. After all, that segment of the population didn't really have any safety, either.
Actually one of the many absurd justifications for slavery at the time was that it did provide security to slaves - that they would be worse off without the "protection" of their masters.
It's useful to note the actions of our founding fathers, and not just their lofty rhetoric, which they appear to have only intended to apply to a narrow segment of society. Jefferson wrote many beautiful things about liberty and even fretted about the moral wrongs of slavery - yet was a slavemaster to the end.
April 15th, 2020 at 10:48 AM ^
nice ideas, we really need a vaccine
April 15th, 2020 at 10:59 AM ^
If we want the economy opened up soon, it will most likely be because of ideas like this as well as advancements in treatment options, not the vaccine.
April 15th, 2020 at 11:54 AM ^
totally agree about treatments. It will be an enabler before the vaccine.
I was just part of a tech transfer for a drug to treat pneumonia. In 1 month we did what normally takes more than a year. Filled our first batch over Easter. Shipping it out this week once we get FDA approval with hundreds of thousands more vials to come. It will save lives for sure, but doesn't directly treat the virus.
I think the ideas in your post can help, but we still need to rapidly detect who has it on an individual basis and even then things won't be "normal." The tools in your post are good for a macroscopic view to help leaders manage this thing.
nice post.
April 15th, 2020 at 12:34 PM ^
I really question our ability to do testing, contact tracing and quarantine on the scale that will be needed. I think we’ll need a mix of other measures including more social distancing than people will be happy about and measures like these.
April 15th, 2020 at 12:15 PM ^
He's a Mechanical Engineer who claims to have invented email, I'd take this with a block of salt
April 15th, 2020 at 12:29 PM ^
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/13/anti-vaccine-activists-fire-fauci-furor-185001
He is not credible and neither is this "news" program.
I really wish that I had hoarded tin foil. Based on the message board there are far more conspiracy theorists in our midst than I would have thought.
Good luck trying to tell people that hes not credible
He has a massive following and it's only growing.
The media is trying to discredit the truth so they have all of their bases covered. Always an argument against and labeling it as a "conspiracy theory".
April 15th, 2020 at 11:52 AM ^
Singapore's contact tracing app appears to have been a good tool but would raise privacy concerns in the US probably...
In the U.S., we'd need to use an "opt in" method for that, but personally, I'm willing to opt in until I feel safe. It would be a confidence booster to have this. Some protection from the random people your path crosses on a daily basis. Opt-in will decrease participation, but success might change their minds.
April 15th, 2020 at 12:11 PM ^
I'm not doing any of that. I'll just keep working from home.
Yea, I read your OP about how well quarantine is working out for you. Not surprising that you won't do "any of that" which may help the community at large. Selfish to the end!
April 15th, 2020 at 12:21 PM ^
There are countless medical and societal advances that could be made if we just compromise on the ethics of performing the studies required to get the data. But that does not mean we should.
These feel like crossing that line or getting uncomfortably close to it.
An even easier way: track all the trash in Lansing today. Video I'm seeing on a couple different TV station websites show nobody but news reporters wearing any masks, show little or no social distancing on the Capitol steps and lawn, shows a number of innocent kids who've been dragged along in damp cold weather perfect for spreading cold, flu and much worse viruses. Total disregard for personal safety and especially safety for the innocent who they'll pass it on to.
They'll bring it back to their own homes and communities and especially the elderly, so it should be easy to track AND to build up herd immunity for the survivors.
Essentially you're trying to say
" SEE, theirs the proof!! People cant be trusted to take care of themselves and will get us all killed !! "
Give us a break...
I'm so proud to see so many people at the capital protesting today.
Wouldn't it be a more effective protest demonstration if they followed the rules appropriately to show they don't need to have the government put out executive orders?
Like if the protest had everyone properly masked and protected with gloves and groups that did not come together practice social distancing?
Two things are true so far:
1. social distancing has helped flatten the curve. We can see that the growth of new cases has flattened after the initial steps were taken
2. This is still a real disease. My wife got transferred to a COVID unit at the hospital and has seen multiple people die on a shift. Some of their patients are workers who contracted the disease helping patients. Our medical infrastructure is not set up to handle a massive spread of disease
The hope is that after we take aggressive steps, we start to reduce those restrictions to help get society back to normal. We are all in this together. It's us against the disease, not political party vs political party.
Let's assume we can actually stop covid-19 in this manner. Where do we draw the line on this type of approach, in the name of public safety?
Unfortunately, this crisis brings up many complex questions where the answers aren't so easy.
Even right now, there's a rush to judgment every time someone steps outside of his or her home and is seen talking to someone or seen without a mask. I don't like where this is headed, but I'm quite reluctant to allow the government too much control, whatever too much is.
That’s precisely the problem. We are not going to be able to stop this pandemic. We can’t totally lock everything down. Whitmer more or less said today that these protesters probably will cause the lockdown to be extended. This lockdown will probably go on well past July, so unemployment will run out. If the lockdown ever does get lifted, there aren’t going to be many jobs to go back to. So we will have a pandemic and 75% unemployment that we will be dealing with. My company that I work for that’s on its 5th generation and over 100 years old will probably be in very bad shape in a few months while this lockdown drags on. Fun times!