Facebook is mapping Coronavirus symptoms on a county-by-county basis

[Shawn Knight]

Bottom line: Notably, Facebook said the map is not intended for diagnostic or treatment purposes, nor should it be used for guidance on any type of travel. Zuckerberg did say, however, that understanding how Covid-19 is spreading is critical for local governments and public health officials to help allocate resources and to assist in determining when it is safe to start re-opening the economy. “Researchers believe these symptom survey maps can be an important tool in making these decisions,” he added.

Facebook has partnered with Carnegie Mellon University to launch an interactive Covid-19 map that shows the estimated percentage of people exhibiting symptoms of the virus on a county-by-county basis.

The map uses aggregated public data from a survey conducted by Carnegie Mellon University Delphi Research Center. Worth reiterating is the fact that it only shows estimates for people with Covid-19 symptoms, not confirmed cases.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said they’ll update the maps daily through the duration of the outbreak.

Zuckerberg said Facebook is uniquely suited to run such surveys because they serve a global community of billions of people. “We do this in a privacy protective way where only the researchers at Carnegie Mellon see individual survey responses -- and Facebook only sees aggregated data,” he said.

Facebook is just one in a growing list of tech giants that are using their power and reach to track the virus. Apple and Google are co-developing a contact tracing system and Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger are monitoring the spread through a metric called Rt which measures the number of people who become infected by an infectious individual.

Masthead credit: Marish

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https://www.techspot.com/news/84898-facebook-mapping-coronavirus-symptoms-county-county-basis.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Mapping "symptoms" isn't the same as mapping INFECTED.

The biggest problem with our testing is it's too slow.

I've been home from my office since February and only by logic of me still being alive do I know that if I had Covid-19, I've gotten over it, and if I didn't have it, I'm still susceptible.

There were people who I know from my office who contracted it and have transmitted it.

We have a denominator problem. The death count continues to rise and we have no idea how many are infected.

The government originally suggested there could be as many as 250,000 dead.

That's not a huge number compared to the fact we have over 300,000,000, but there's no telling how many more will be infected - and there's no telling when social distancing will end.

 

[p51d007]

Bunch of us at work, got upper respiratory virus's in late January, early February. I had chest congestion, headache, fever. After the 3rd day, went to an urgent care clinic. 3 days later, after prescribed anti viral medication and stuff for the congestion, it went away but took another 2 weeks to get rid of the coughing and another week after that to get all of my voice back.
We had all attended a company meeting in late January, around 50 or so people, at a local hotel that caters to a lot of travelers since it sits right off an interstate highway.
Wouldn't surprise me if we all have had it. One of these days, late summer hopefully all this craziness will go down and on my yearly checkup, I'll ask my doctor if I should be tested. Otherwise, I'm not going to worry about it.

 

[EClyde]

Symptoms? Bad data right out the gate.