
Show HN: Stop Covid-19 by taking your temperature - carsonbaker
https://www.takeyourtemp.org/
======
exabrial
I really want to call upon any engineers/managers at
Apple/Google/Garmin/Fitbit: please start working on body temperature
monitoring. It doesn't have to be a realtime readout like a heart monitor, but
something that could work overnight to find an average. This could stop entire
pandemics.

~~~
raphlinus
Kinsa is doing a lot of this already. Check
[https://healthweather.us/](https://healthweather.us/) for their published
maps.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
So what's going on with Florida?

~~~
raphlinus
Really good question. One hypothesis is that they're massively under-testing,
but there's not a lot of data to support that. If you look at
[https://covidtracking.com/data/](https://covidtracking.com/data/) for
example, you see a positivity ratio of about 9% for FL, compared with 86%
(!!!) for NJ, where it is really clear that the situation is dire but we're
not seeing it because of lack of testing.

The other one to watch is Michigan. There the "data quality grade" from
covidtracking is a D.

~~~
Gibbon1
I think Iceland pop 300,000 tested everyone. The result is 50% of the cases
are asymptomatic. That's terrible in two ways, one is potentially it's
spreading undetected. And two natural herd immunity comes at an enormous cost.

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ExtremePopcorn
The usefulness instantly clicked when I saw this - awesome work, and I wish it
were government promoted.

I'm no good at writing copy, but I'd work on the homepage's phrasing. Link to
[https://healthweather.us/](https://healthweather.us/) as well as the NYT
article on them, rather than making a reference to Maddow elsewhere (it'd be
dumb for someone to be turned away by that, but someone will be.) Explain that
CDC data lags three weeks behind historically, and point out all the counties
without data. Say all this on the front page, and run A/B tests once you have
enough visitors.

Again, great work!

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Jamesbeam
May I ask how is any of the data you collect of any use if there is zero
verification that said data is from actual people with symptoms?

I was just able to enter a US Zip code and normal temperature 98.6 without any
verification. The site doesn't even check for location. I was able to enter
data for a "US citizen" from Europe. Then clear cookies and do it again.

Verification of data is a huge thing if you want to make any kind of decision
based on that data.

~~~
x0xMaximus
[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.19.20038844v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.19.20038844v1)

[https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/1/2/e000234](https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/1/2/e000234)

[https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h3480.full](https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h3480.full)

~~~
Jamesbeam
Ok cool, you give me three links.

The first one says

This article is a preprint and has not been certified by peer review [what
does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated
and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.

The second one has a sample size of less than thousand people and concludes
"Self-diagnosis does not accurately predict influenza seropositivity"

The third one is the only one that has a good set of data in terms of sample
size ( 50+ Million ) but concludes "Symptom checkers had deficits in both
triage and diagnosis" and that said I have no idea if those websites need some
kind of verification as well, so if not someone who's bored could have just
added bogus data to that as well.

I am not sure what's your point.

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samizdis
Is anosmia worth including in the symptoms options?

~~~
samizdis
In case anyone's interested -
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-
sympto...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-symptoms-
smell-taste.html)

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Daviey
> contributing to the most important crowdsourcing operation in US history.

Why is this US centric?

~~~
tylerhou
Because presumably they are working with US health officials.

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psychometry
I'm curious about something: Is fever is a symptom that would appear without
someone noticing it? Wouldn't other symptoms like chills/coughing manifest
first?

~~~
prostheticvamp
People often don’t know they have a fever. Not necessarily because they feel
well, but because they fail to identify their ill feeling as “fever”. I’ve had
tons of patients deny fever, endorse fever symptoms, and then have a fever on
thermometer.

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mNovak
Will this track individual's symptom progression over time? e.g. if I submit
everyday as suggested, are these uncorrelated datapoints, or do you get trend
info?

~~~
carsonbaker
Yes, we get trend info. We're storing a cookie in your browser with a UUID
that is associated to your temperature reading. If you submit temperatures for
multiple people in your household, they all get that UUID, which we assume to
be a household identifier.

------
carsonbaker
Carson here, site developer. Thank you for the positive response so far, but
also feel free to leave us constructive criticism. If you want to contribute
to this effort, the GitHub is
[https://github.com/carsonbaker/takeyourtemp](https://github.com/carsonbaker/takeyourtemp).
We're working on it with frenetic energy.

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
Celsius would be good. It'd save me a manual conversion. And 98.6 is just a
conversion from 37C anyway that ignored the rules of significant figures...

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x0xMaximus
Make the data public like [https://covidstudy.com](https://covidstudy.com)

~~~
carsonbaker
We might. There's some worry that e.g. showing a heat map of the data might be
alarming, so we're trying to figure out where the balance is between
transparency and cautiousness.

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mofojed
I would love to, but I don't have a thermometer and the stores are all sold
out :(

~~~
Gibbon1
My GF and I have a single thermometer that is over 20 years old. It seems to
still work but still.

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sesuximo
Just keep in mind that fever plus flu like symptoms is probably the flu!

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ipunchghosts
wont let me enter my temp

~~~
carsonbaker
You might be on Firefox. I just fixed this!

~~~
strict9
Still broken on FF :(

~~~
carsonbaker
Sorry! Try again.

------
blackrock
I had an idea, that one way to eliminate this COVID-19 coronavirus, as well as
the H1N1 influenza virus from civilization, is to shut down all human movement
for 30 to 60 days.

You have to go 2 or 3 weeks, without any new reported infections to be sure.

This would require that all the countries and governments of the world, act in
unison, to ensure that all 7 billion people are tracked, and monitored.

But the reality is, good luck, as this will never happen. The economic cost is
too high, but the alternative, is that the COVID-19 virus will hunt down the
human race.

