While we’d like to think that pandemics and lockdowns are behind us, the reality is that a warming climate and the fast-paced travel of modern life are a perfect storm for nasty viruses. One thing that could help us curb the spread of the next pandemic may already be on your wrist.
Researchers at Aalto University, Stanford University, and Texas A&M have found that the illness detection features common to modern smartwatches are advanced enough to help people make the call to stay home or mask up and avoid getting others sick. They note we’re already at 88% accuracy for early detection of COVID-19 and 90% for the flu. Combining data from a number of other studies on smartwatch accuracy, epidemiology, behavior, and biology, the researchers were able to model the possible outcomes of this early detection on the spread of future diseases.
“Even just a 66-75 percent reduction in social contacts soon after detection by smartwatches — keeping in mind that that’s on a par with what you’d normally do if you had cold symptoms — can lead to a 40-65 percent decrease in disease transmission compared to someone isolating from the onset of symptoms,” says Märt Vesinurm.
We’ve got you covered if you’re looking for a smartwatch that looks a bit like a hospital wristband and we’ve also covered one that’s alive. That way, you’ll have a slimy friend when you’re avoiding other humans this time around. And when it’s time to develop a vaccine for whatever new bug is after us, how do MRNA vaccines work anyway?
“Smartwatches Could Flatten The Curve Of The Next Pandemic” Yeah OK – now just do it without compromising my right to privacy as stated in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Ah yes, they forgot to model the fact that many people insist on finding any justification they can to do the opposite of the right thing.
Lockdowns weren’t the right thing.
Didn’t say anything about lockdowns (and I live in Melbourne, which had arguably the longest lockdowns in the world) but you’re essentially proving my point.
Lockdowns were the absolute right thing. Just as they were in the Spanish flu epidemic. Where they were used they saved lives.
They did nothing.
Depopulation is the right thing. The black plague gave us the renaissance, yet we failed to learn from history and stopped COVID out of cowardice.
We didn’t stop covid at all, and the jury is still out on whether or not there will be a renaissance. We’ll see
And yet, you haven’t stepped to the front of the line to volunteer… Cowardice??? Why refuse to post your name?
yup
It’s sanctimonious quasi-puritan moral panics all the way down
If you are trying to model something as complex as the spread of a pandemic among a global population with billions of people from thousands of different cultures and local governments and you don’t take into consideration the fact that people will resist their livelihoods being restricted… And that a significant number of people will act selfishly/”do the wrong thing….”
If you did that and forgot to factor in these elements you are INCOMPETENT. This is basic shit that you people still don’t get five years later. Incredible.
If you aren’t playing the game with the way human nature currently exists (not the way you imagine it should be on reddit dot com) then you aren’t playing the game at all. You’re not serious.
you’re not serious. because you don’t think it’s worthwhile to try to get people to stop spreading a disease that can kill others. but go off king
Measles and parties are the current test. We’ll see what all those vitamins do.
If you are talking about predicting the successfulness of lack thereof attempts to combat the spread you are correct.
If your goal is to come up with a policy that will succeed, how do you account for that? What policy could there possibly be that takes that into account and succedes?
Seems to me you have to just go with the policy that would work, if people weren’t asshats and then hope for the best. But if you have a better idea, spill it!
“stated in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights”
I think you will find that the Federalist Society hacks on the Supreme Court say there’s no such thing.
There is no right to privacy from purchasing an item that tells you exactly the information its going to give out and you actively seek out that item to wear.
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Yash, but I don’t wear a watch! Haven’t worn one in probably 20 years now.
i dont even carry a phone. leave the computers at home.
Yeah, I will not wear a smartwatch until they can match the 5+ year battery life of my cheap Casio watch.
Unlikely because you cannot beat weaponized stupidity. Idiots who refuse to take basic precautions (e.g. wearing a mask) because long-term exposure to anti-government propaganda has rendered them irrational, will continue to undermine social efforts.
Masks don’t protect against respiratory viruses.
Masks are for protecting other people from your germs. But you’re too selfish to care about that, I guess.
“Read the Science” isn’t that what people like you say? Cloth masks did/do absolutely nothing, seriously read the studies. Yet we were still forced to wear them.
The “6 foot rule” was completely made up.
Our health “experts” are the ones that did long term damage to society by abusing public trust.
“Read the studies”. Point to the studies, don’t just assume they exist and back your position. I certainly don’t. And I remember those studies, they were always testing whether masks protect the wearer, not other people.
And I bet you’re still going to insist your surgeon wears one if/when you find yourself on the operating room table. You’ll care about their effectiveness when it’s your health on the line, but you refuse to accept even the slightest amount of inconvenience when it’s about someone else’s.
You people make me sick, both figuratively and literally.
I’m trying to imagine all the offence some people take to the 6′ rule. I find not being crammed up close to stinky strangers is awesome regardless if it’s helping me stay healthy or not. What’s wrong with you? Were you hoping to hump someone’s leg in line at the checkout counter?
@pelrun Masks are worn in the operating room, with a fiber gap of .5-.3um gap, to prevent bacteria(5-.2um) and not to prevent viruses(.3-.02um). Granted the mask isn’t the only precaution or PPE. To prevent such a contamination it would be best for the surgeon not to be present, remote. The point I am trying to make in no world will/did the mask(N95), alone, prevent a virial infection with even 50% certainty, to believe that would be nothing but insanity.
They don’t do that either. Show me a study with an actual live virus and a control group. Not a dummy spraying water particles with no virus and no human subjects. Which is what they used to override the decades-old convention wisdom that surgeon-masks are useless (and they were still used solely for PR reasons)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10446908/
Basically, a big maybe and obviously for ethics reasons one can’t intentionally infect people to see what’s best. Leave those studies for the Nazis.
If changed regularly. 2 hours max wear time, if I remember correctly.
I’m sure that video of a sneeze flying through the air is different with a mask.
when you exhale you put positive pressure on the mask, and unless it is properly fitted (most people couldn’t even keep their nose in), positive pressure will leak out along the path of least resistance, that is, around the seams rather than through the fabric. and because the flow is constricted it accelerates the air and can spread the germs farther. people lacked mask discipline, access to properly fitted masks. facial hair can also cause leaks. tests of efficacy were done with properly fitted masks and clean shaven individuals. expecting controlled laboratory conditions from the public at large was a non starter from the get go.
the inhale is the opposite, in that due to pressure differential the best seal is achieved. so the notion that mask’s protect others is completely bogus. a mask is a binky, that those in power gave the public at large to show they were doing something, even though they really didn’t have a clue what it would do. having people leave their homes so frequently for testing probibly didn’t help either.
Last I heard in places where they had mask mandates there was less spread then where they didn’t.
Maybe it’s because those are the areas that culturally were more inclined to avoid spreading while the other areas were the ones that people just mingled and spread more out of spite. Or maybe the masks actually helped.
I know a virus particle can fit through the pores but it still makes sense that reducing the airflow is going to cause them to travel less distance. And just because they fit through the holes doesn’t mean they don’t lose momentum banging in to the fibers on the way out.
Randomized controlled trials say that N95 respirators do offer protection against Covid when used by medical personnel, but surgical masks are much less effective. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10509348/
(Anecdotally, the first time my family got Covid, I wore an N100 or P100 respirator for weeks pretty much all the time around them. Family member after family member got sick. I’d watch TV sitting right beside the sick person on the sofa, and I was fine. Then I proctored an exam without a mask, one of the students had Covid, and I got it.)
In my (small European) country it was not anti-governmental propaganda that drove people irrational, but greed, corruption and inconsistency of the government that undermined trust of society. Anyone who treated government as main source of information would have to be stupid to believe that social distancing and masks do anything because both were ignored by government in front of cameras in the first place.
Anyway, organizing football, boxing or MMA events all over the world “with limited public” (UFC 261 had only 15 000!) was a clear sign what governments think about social distancing and wearing masks.
Lol no. Many people won’t even wear masks if there’s a respiratory disease pandemic.
We’re through the Stupid Lookingglass.
Incidentally I never got a single exposure notification through my iPhone.
Yeah, people like you have gone insane. I can’t believe you’ve still learned nothing. Enjoy the future.
Post-covid public opinion on public health measures is an interesting topic, and will likely influence the spread of future disease, as evidenced even by this comment section. Some people suffer from derangement so severe that they have an extreme reaction to even the notion of having to restrict themselves for public health, and others fell right in to crackpot territory.
People still don’t get what has happened to the landscape post-2020. You’re in for some surprises which are far outside of the limited field of “public health.” You pushed the global under-30 demographic about sixty points to the right in less than five years, something which would have been considered impossible very recently. You can’t damage control this kind of thing. Have fun
And by the way: crackpots can still vote. You don’t just get to discount “crackpots.” If your policies create crackpots, you have to deal with them. If you create hardened crackpots in their teenage years, you have to deal with them for half a century or more. Even if you call them stupid and make fun of them. Get it?
So do you support the right-wing shift or do you want to do something constructive about it?
I would guess that there is a good chance MAGA is going to cause enough problems to result in an even larger shift to the left, I just hope that when they are done we still have the freedom to do anything with that.
Sweden no mask, no lockdowns, no school closing, and lowest deatch than UK, US.
On skimming the paper I don’t think it mentions the feature set required to detect you’re ill. Could my smartwatch with heart rate and heart rate variance do it or would I need blood oxygen and skin temperature monitoring?
How long did it take to find the animal reservoir for SARS? A couple months
How long did it take to find the animal reservoir for MERS? A couple months
How long did it take to find the animal reservoir for covid? They’re still looking
But it definitely certainly absolutely isn’t the bat coronavirus gain of function research laboratory funded by NIH down the street from the epicenter of the pandemic. We are absolutely certain it isn’t that.
Idk seems like we might be able to take a couple other very simple precautions to reduce the millions of deaths next time. Do you think it’s worth investigating to prevent 20 million deaths? Or is the idea that the bat coronavirus with new functions came from the local bat coronavirus gain of function lab just too chuddy to even consider. Too wild to even look at for five seconds to save the entire world from a pandemic, right?
The pangolins and bats causing the disease were found hundreds of miles from the centre of the outbreak, near a copper mine. Rather ask how the virus travelled to the city with the virology institute.
Probably bought a ticket for the hyperspeed train :)
I hear that pangolins can learn teleport, just like a pokemon
That makes more sense than what they are telling.
Pocketpango: I’m gonna catch all the zoonotic viruses!
coughs
That’s not what animal reservoir means. An animal reservoir for a virus is a population of animals where the virus will survive even if all humans are cleared of it thus making it impossible to get rid of completely forever. It keeps coming back.
You are talking about the original source. At the time massive numbers of people were dying and yet everyone was fighting over what to do about it that wasn’t the most urgent matter. If you had a magic wish that would grant the answer to one question would you chose “how to avoid catching it” or “where did it come from”. Come on, think at least a little logically on this one!
If you want to go search for the answer today… go for it. I’m not sure how far to trust information out of China though so good luck.
What a terrible article. There have been numerous studies that showed cloth masks do nothing, and only an properly fitted N95 made any difference.
Couple that with the absurd made up “6 foot rule” yeah no. Don’t cite fake “science” as real especially on a technical website.
Cloth masks prevent people from rubbing their hands over their runny noses and sneezing in public places, in Asian countries people regularly wear them for regular colds, in the west it became a cause celebre for loonies
-They don’t do anything against sneezing. Sneezing still projects plenty of viral particles outside the mask. Even an N95 will not maintain a seal through a sneeze.
-I’ve never heard about “preventing people from rubbing their hands over their runny noses” before. Sounds like an after-the-fact triangulation to be honest. If this was the point during the pandemic, the messaging would have been very different.
-Asian countries wear masks out of superstition and an instinct towards politeness. They also do not have any credible scientific support for masking. It does not prevent them from getting sick (or getting other people sick) during the cold months. At all.
You’re right about it becoming a flagellant religious rite for western loonies. Still is for some!
i probibly touched my face more trying to get the damn mask to fit right. i gave up after the first week. handwashing turned out to be really effective so there is some truth in the face touching. i didn’t wear masks and i didn’t get covid. my sister did, and she got it.
I view the next pandemic as an opportunity to rid ourselves of the stupid people who refuse to follow the advice of people who know what they are doing.
Most of MAGA then.
Not about the post itself, but about the average comments… Well, most people just trust whatever their pet politicians says, so they can’t bear to deal with logic and good reason.
there are so many different aspects to this sort of approach, it’ll be hard to work it together into a cohesive strategy. false positives will erode people’s patience for whatever restrictions are recommended, and false negatives will erode the effectiveness of those restrictions. on top of that, watches suck so most people won’t wear them. and on top of that, i’m just not convinced watches work. on a lark, i got a temu smartwatch that gave entirely bogus results. so i did a little research into the more reputable fitness monitors and i’m not convinced they give any better results than ‘bogus’ for a lot of users! details of lifestyle and phenotype seem to have a huge effect on whether these monitors can give any useful information at all. in the best cases, they work very well, but in the real world it turns out they’re mostly unreliable garbage. presumably by now we all know someone bragging about their completely erroneous step counts, don’t we?
i’m a little disappointed in the comments section here but it well represents the struggle we face. people have a hard time talking about trade offs without engaging in the most ridiculous glosses of their friends and neighbors. trade offs are real, though, and people will inevitably have different feelings about what to do about them.
but i do believe in a technological monitoring resolution…the most astonishing ‘discovery’ of the covid era that i think did hold up to scrutiny is that there is such a thing as a superspreader. there’s 6+ orders of magnitude difference in viral shedding between regular people and superspreaders. and it seems to be a consistent phenomenon across different diseases.
and it explains a lot of past phenomena that were well described but poorly explained. for example, there was a MERS outbreak where one guy infected nearly every person in his hotel, but then those people didn’t even infect their own families and the outbreak stopped. until i learned about superspreaders, i considered that an implausible result, hard to explain. how could the disease possibly be so contagious that people were getting it from strangers who had used the same hallway an hour before, but then so non-contagious that it didn’t spread beyond those hundred people??
there’s so much more to learn about this phenomenon but at a minimum, a virus-sniffing-machine at the gate to an airport could conceivably detect active superspreaders. the magnitude of viral shedding is so enormous that they are relatively easy to detect. i suspect once it’s more thoroughly understood, there may be other ways to identify them, which may open a whole other kettle of fish though
HaD sure stepped in something with this one.
More generally, expecting technology to repair a fundamentally societal problem is usually futile (see comments for an example).
I don’t think any amount of math or equations will help understand how erratically and irrationally people will behave during a pandemic.
Wearable devices do seem to be a good fit for tracking symptoms. They have a microphone to listen to you cough, sneeze, and sniffle, they can measure your pulse and blood 02, they can notice if you’re walking and going up stairs slower than normal. The linked paper lists 3 references which go into wearable diagnostics
Seems like a genuinely useful bit of research, but ultimately this capability should be reserved to individuals to use or not use, and the information should only be pooled voluntarily, and NEVER given to governments