
Visualization map of seasonal illness/fever from smart thermometers - bloobityblurp
https://healthweather.us/
======
geuis
If you have an opportunity, watch the Rachel Maddow show from 3/18\. They talk
about this in depth.

Kinsa has been selling a digital thermometer for a while. As part of the
device, it uploads readings to both your phone and then sends the data back to
Kinsa.

Based on their reporting (part of what you're seeing visualized on this map),
they have been able to see trending signs of flu outbreaks for a while up to 2
weeks before the CDC issues its reports.

The key difference is that the CDC relies on hospitals compiling reports and
sending them in, where Kinsa gets the data directly. This causes a delay of up
to 2 weeks in the CDC reports.

Where this ties in with covid-19 is that in the last few months, when they
layer recent data over historical data from the last few years, they see an
atypical increase in fevers being reported. This can be seen in the graph
where the expected trend is going down, but they're now seeing abnormal
increases since February.

From the news report, Kinsa is selling thousands of thermometers per day right
now and is running into manufacturing issues.

Another point that gets mentioned in the report is that Kinsa has tried
offering their data to the CDC before but due to CDC policy, they (CDC)
require taking ownership of the data in order to accept it. I'm honestly very
uninformed about this part so expect some inaccuracy in what I'm saying. If
someone who has more details could reply to this comment, I think that would
be very helpful to know.

On the positive side, the Bay Area isn't looking bad at the moment. On the
negative side, all of my family is in Florida and I wasn't aware until just
now that it was getting that bad state wide.

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kjaftaedi
Florida having outliers like that does not look good.

Florida's governor is still refusing to close beaches, which are packed with
people, many of them traveling long distances to get there (spring break),
with countless people being interviewed on camera saying they don't care..

Some cities are finally taking measures into their own hand and closing
beaches, but at the moment it's only a few.

Given the fact that Florida's population tends to skew older, the data mixed
with the public response is concerning.

~~~
coldcode
Or there is sampling bias in Florida, maybe insufficient thermometers or some
other error? It' seems bizarre to me that one state has way more problems, yet
the numbers are not terribly high compared to Washington of CV19.

Our governors incompetence is alarming in any case, though not unexpected.

~~~
MiroF
I believe that Florida is also one of the oldest states which might skew the
numbers. Too many thermometers doesn’t seem to me like it would naturally skew
the data in the way that it has.

This info, paired with the recent infection of a US congressman from Florida,
makes me suspect they may have a lot of unrealized cases.

~~~
GrayShade
What do you mean by oldest and how would it skew the numbers? Are you
referring to the age distribution of the people living there?

~~~
MiroF
1\. Age distribution of people living there

2\. It would skew the numbers (by conjecture) if a higher proportion of people
were old because then a higher proportion of people acquiring the disease
would have high fever.

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jcims
I think it would be good for them to indicate the relative penetration of
their device into the region. For example, in Ohio the 88 confirmed cases are
in counties that don't correlate well with the data presented. Most of the
cases are in the northeast of the state.

List of counties with confirmed infections -
[https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/](https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/)
(right under the number of cases)

Map of infections in Ohio -
[https://www.datawrapper.de/_/etm2H/](https://www.datawrapper.de/_/etm2H/)

Map of Ohio counties by population - [https://www.maps4office.com/us-ohio-map-
county-population-de...](https://www.maps4office.com/us-ohio-map-county-
population-density/)

Map of Ohio child poverty (red is more) -
[https://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/2020/01/every-ohio-
cit...](https://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/2020/01/every-ohio-city-and-
county-ranked-for-poverty-child-poverty-census-estimates.html)

The child poverty map correlates a bit better with the data from
healthweather.us (esp if you factor in the population (density) of each
county). The south and east counties in Ohio are pretty sparsely populated.

------
gigo2017
Super misleading data.

1) y is CDC ILI activity, % outpatient visits for flu-like symptom, not actual
% population that are ill,

[https://academic.oup.com/ofid/article/6/11/ofz455/5610164](https://academic.oup.com/ofid/article/6/11/ofz455/5610164)

2) how can you tell credibly from this data it’s just more healthy ppl taking
temperature now vs a true decline in fever rate? Feel this is a marketing
stunt or a poorly done study.

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stareatgoats
This shows some of the potential of health-related data-collection everywhere,
and cross-referencing it with time and geography (among other dimensions). It
is obviously already happening, but these types of overviews are largely kept
behind closed doors as of yet. Releasing the data in such an easy digestible
manner would democratize the knowledge and enable crowd-sourcing of solutions.

The technical issues are solved, and there are only 4 main hurdles IMO: 1.
privacy, 2. data is privately owned (it costs to have it released), 3.
professional gate keeping and 4. that governments are not yet tasked with
addressing the problem. Surely all of these can be overcome, with various
multi-pronged approaches.

~~~
mvcalder
I just listened to a recent episode of 99% Invisible: The Weather Machine and
I'm struck by the similarities. In the podcast they discuss the evolution of
the data sharing agreements to do weather prediction and the birth of the idea
that with that data weather was predictable. Your list of 4 could have been
lifted right from that episode about weather. So, someday maybe!

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gruez
How are they inferring sickness rates from smart thermometer data? I skimmed
the article and their technical paper and got nothing. Presumably sick people
stay home and they're correlating stay-home rates with sickness rates?

~~~
macinjosh
FTA:

> The U.S. Health Weather Map is a visualization of seasonal illness linked to
> fever

I think the assumption they make is fever == sickness.

~~~
shmageggy
Ok I feel dumb but I was thinking this was a thermometer for a home, not a
body.

~~~
sxv
I had the same confusion. Thanks for taking one for the team.

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kbutler
Or people are scared about illness, so they are using their thermometers more
frequently and thus finding small fevers/incidents of increased body
temperature that they wouldn't have checked in a normal year.

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robocat
Amazing level of detail. I wouldn’t want to be in Florida at present - implied
infection rates are extremely high. Good independent data sampling whole
population (well, biased, but different bias from other sources).

I would love to be able to go back in time for a few weeks (animated), and
also to be able to see a comparison against last year.

Edit: also this is a fairly leading indicator of problems (and includes many
that are sick but get better), compared with confirmed cases which lags and
underestimates, or deaths which severely lags (but fairly reliable indicator
there is a serious problem)

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jfk13
Interesting that King County, WA doesn't appear as a hotspot on this map,
whereas widespread news reporting strongly suggests otherwise.

~~~
vannevar
A couple possibilities:

\- There's a lot more testing in Washington state, so there aren't as many
undocumented cases as, say, Florida.

\- Sparse Kinsa device coverage in Washington, and since the infection rate is
still low vs the population at large, the elevated rate of actual disease is
within the wide variation in data due to the sparsity.

------
m1
Anyone have any recommendations for decent smart thermometers?

~~~
macinjosh
I have been taking my temperature regularly with a WiThings 'Thermo' smart
thermometer and am pleased with it. I was able to purchase it using my FSA
funds:

[https://www.withings.com/us/en/thermo](https://www.withings.com/us/en/thermo)

