How Weather Apps Could Predict Your COVID Risk
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Imagine an app that uses COVID data into a disease-tracking model, charting the path from at-risk, to exposed, to infectious, and finally to recovered, hospitalized, or deceased. The data would include the obvious – results from rapid tests and antigen tests, self-reported symptoms – along with the more unexpected, like data from smartphones and the amount of virus in local wastewater, which is rapidly becoming a valuable tool for predicting COVID outbreaks.
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@deepankar It's just as effective as a lockdown, except that at any given time, only a small fraction of the population isolates. Another potential challenge: overcoming privacy concerns, even though the data would be anonymized. Starting with smaller communities, like college campuses or workplaces, might promote more widespread acceptance, says Schneider, as people see the benefit of sharing their data. Younger people, he observes, seem more comfortable with disclosing health information, meaning they may be more willing to use such an app, especially if it could ward off another lockdown.