[ExtremePopcorn]

I'm the last to disagree with your assessment of myself, but I'll defend the idea. Aggregating data during a global pandemic isn't a stupid thing to do. Rather - and stay with me here - it's a smart thing.

Edit: Oh you were calling me stupid because you thought researchers wouldn't understand the concept of self-reported medical data. Give them some credit.

[Jamesbeam]

I can also give you a real life example on how unverified data actually hurt people.

There is no scientific evidence and proper data yet that Plaquenil ( hydroxychloroquine ) is actually helping most covid patients to beat the illness or get better.

The President mentioned the drug in his press conference without getting interrupted immediately by Dr.Fauci, who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US.

After the Press conference people in Africa started raiding the pharmacies for Plaquenil which is widely available in Africa because some people have complications with the newer Malaria meds and it's dirt cheap.

It was even worse after the President tweeted about this new wonder drug. Again neither Dr. Fauci or Dr. Birx immediately published a statement that the president is false and not a physician.

Multiple people ended up in the Hospital with Plaquenil poisoning because of that.

People got hurt because experts did not shut down the presidents false claims that were only based on anecdotal data immediately.This is how easy unverified data can hurt or potentially kill people.

[Jamesbeam]

I am sorry if you took this as a personal attack and will apologize if i hurt your feelings, i forget that words sometimes mean something different for people than what they were intended for.

I should have made clear that I think you have poor judgement if you think this is a good idea to use unverified healthcare data to base any decisions on that could cause people severe harm or the restriction of their rights.

If you look at how the US handled the Covid-19 crisis until now, especially at the CDC and the Expert level that the president assigned to guide him, that is really troubling evidence that not every researcher or healthcare official understood the concept of self-reported data or properly verified data at all.

There is a good reason why no other country in the world during this crisis suggested citizens to self test or go on a website to enter data there and based on that get tested.

That's what we have doctors and lab work for. You call the doctor tell him you might have an infectious disease, he looks at you and your symptoms. He makes the decision that you need to get tested. This is also good advise for the regular flu. And especially with Covid-19 it's important that people get tested early and hospitalized with risk factors before they turn into severe ICU cases. Many people end up in the ICU right now because they go to the hospital while already dying. A lot of the reports you read from Hospitals in the US and in other countries where people don't have universal healthcare is they already arrive with blue lips and fingers in the emergency room and do not any longer have a fighting chance to beat the virus.

I have also seen this before, I have been one of the PMCs training a lot of the military repsonse teams to the Ebola Outbreak in 2014 in west africa and it was very frightening to see on who's advise and what data the governments were basing decisions on. So excuse me when I get a bit temperamental about this topic.

Stupid people or let's say people with poor judgement are at all levels of society, sometimes in positions that they shouldn't be in a crisis.

And I understand that the guy who made the website probably has good intentions. But if you do something, do it right or not at all.

[ExtremePopcorn]

I've had my moments during all this too, no worries.

> I should have made clear that I think you have poor judgement if you think this is a good idea to use unverified healthcare data to base any decisions on that could cause people severe harm or the restriction of their rights.

Check out this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-fever-...

> 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.

You buried the lede a bit on your prior experience (that's significant context!) but I'm not advocating anything more than data collection in the interest of identifying mass trends and hotspots.

I also disagree that the US' current inept response means software engineers have a moral duty not to hand them any complicated information (if I understood you correctly) but am having a harder time phrasing that.

[Jamesbeam]

I'll check out the article. Thanks for providing that additional information.

>But I'm not advocating anything more than data collection in the interest of identifying mass trends and hotspots

If you word it like that that is a legit goal yes. We just need to be aware that when something is on the Internet people are going to abuse it. There are also state actors who could be interested in manipulating data like that in the worst case. Imagine you got a country to shut down or divert ressources to certain places by feeding them false data. This is not something too far fetched these days.

>I also disagree that the US' current inept response means software engineers have a moral duty not to hand them any complicated information (if I understood you correctly) but am having a harder time phrasing that.

I understand what you want to say and yes it's the governments obligation to verify the accuracy of the data they want to act on and not the software engineers, but it does help if they already get data that they can work with.

From years of working for governments, if you work with/for the Government always pretend they have no clue what they are doing and prepare for the worst.

[carsonbaker]

I'm one of the guys who made the website, and I thought a lot about these things too. You have good concerns. My group talked to doctors and epidemiologists before starting this project and we proceeded with these thoughts in mind.

If it were actually possible to go to your doctor or get tested for COVID-19, I would agree that this is not the best way to collect medical information. The reality is we don't have that fortune right now, and this is the best fallback we can propose.

If you have specific criticism that we can take to improve the form, I'd be happy to implement it.

We're biased towards action, not sitting on our hands.

Thank you, James.

[Jamesbeam]

Thank you for your effort, and apologies for being a bit hot headed about this.

Like I said I am sure you just have the best intentions. If you could add some kind of geo restriction/verification so that people are not able to enter at least ZIP codes outside the country they live that would probably be helpful already