"But we just did some real time data. We took a look at two locations, Santa Clara California, and
Miami Dade Florida. The reason we looked at those two cities is
because Santa Clara and San Francisco and that area put into place some very
strict stay at home, #stayhome, rules and messaging, and Miami Dade was, to be
kind, a little more lax, a little more late to it. And we looked at the data.
The data we looked at was real time
temperature data from people's thermometers that load to the cloud. And we compared it to average temperatures
you'd expect during 'flu season. And we
graphed decisions that were made politically, such as closing bars and
restaurants, closing schools, having people stay home, and we saw sharp drops
in the number of cases with this disease in Santa Clara compared to Florida."
The data is from
Kinsa, a company that sells smart thermometers.
According to a NY Times article
"Can Smart Thermometers Track the Spread of the
Coronavirus" https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-fever-thermometers.html
"Kinsa Health has 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.
For the last few years, Kinsa’s interactive maps have
accurately predicted the spread of flu around the United States about two weeks
before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s own surveillance tool,
the weekly FluView tracker"
They have years of
data on what to expect to see. Covid-19
is new. Subtract what you expect to see
from their data and you may be looking at Covid-19 fevers.
"Just last Saturday, Kinsa’s data indicated an unusual
rise in fevers in South Florida, even though it was not known to be a Covid-19
epicenter. Within days, testing showed that South Florida had indeed become an
epicenter."
The interview of Slavitt conducted by Preet Bharara is from the "Tracking and Tackling COVID-19" episode of the "Stay Tuned with Preet" podcast.
