See https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-fever-thermometers.html for more information
Kinsa Health has been using their net-connected thermometers to predict with great accuracy the spread of the flu for the last few years. They have “sold or given away more than a million smart thermometers to households in which two million people reside, and thus can record fevers almost as soon as consumers experience them.”
Their interactive maps have accurately predicted the spread of flu in the USA about two weeks before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s own surveillance tool, the weekly FluView Tracker (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm). “Having millions of data points allows Kinsa to produce daily maps showing which counties are seeing spiking fevers.”
”Normally, Mr. [Inder] Singh [company founder] said, the company submits its data to peer-reviewed medical journals. But because of the national emergency, it will post its maps and data Friday on Medrxiv (https://www.medrxiv.org, an online repository of medical articles.
“The latest data will be available on Friday on a new website, healthweather.us (https://healthweather.us), he said.”
The company is now selling 10,000 new thermometers a day, resulting in production problems but also in more data points for more accurate flu and Covid/coronavirus/SARS maps.
I saw this first on Rachel Maddow’s show Wednesday, March 18 and immediately realized what it means. With this data, public health officials can begin targetted testing and healthcare to stop a hotspot before it erupts into the general population. We now have a tool that can be used like a scalpel to help spot and stop this pandemic, locally, at least here in the USA.
There are things we can do individually and collectively to survive and truncate this pandemic. Mutual aid networks are springing up all over the place and give us a chance to “be the change we want to see,” to build a world based upon human decency rather than profit. As Albert Camus wrote in The Plague: "There's no question of heroism in all this. It's a matter of common decency. That's an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is — common decency.”
Mutual Aid Networks
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/15/1927820/-Mutual-Aid-Networks
We can even make our own masks so that healthcare workers do not have to do it themselves.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/17/1928552/-Home-Made-Face-Masks
Once we start exercising our freedom to build mutual aid networks that support and empower each of us individually and collectively we will have reclaimed some of our own liberty and power. Mutual aid networks are what Gandhi called swadeshi, local production, the heart of satyagraha, nonviolence, and a daily practice.
While I believe too many people are focused exclusively on electoral politics (looking at you Kos and waaaay too many dkos’ers), many others are doing what needs to be done on the ground through common human decency and mutual aid. Those ground-level efforts may mean more in building a better common future than electing a Democrat to every office in the country. But then, I’ve always been a direct action and positive protest kind of guy.
PS: I’m taking my temperature every day now. The temperature at which you should call your doctor seems to be around 100ºF (check my data, please, as I’m just another online fool) and friends who’ve just returned from Taiwan reported WEEKS ago that thermometer guns, laser infrared thermometers, were being used to screen people before they could go into a restaurant. Taiwan, if you don’t know, is another country which seems to have handled this health crisis well (although my friends report they have identified a new disease cluster there recently).
Stay safe, be well, practice kindness for yourself and others.