[alwillis]

I’m using the Watch and with my iPhone. The Health and Activity apps work great together.

The visualizations are clear and understandable. For example, I’m significantly less active this spring than last spring—average of 2.2 miles walking per day in 2019 vs. about 1 mile in 2020.

That’s mostly due to stay at home orders due to COVID-19 the past 3 months. Once the weather got better and the number of cases subsided, I started taking walks in my neighborhood due to the actionable data I had.

Remember, the Watch and the iPhone can do machine learning on the device.

What’s missing is an easy way to do more advanced health data processing on my Mac if I wanted to.

I’d like my public health department release an app for COVID-19 exposure notification, using the Apple/Google API.

You could also envision broad clinical trials of treatments for COVID-19 using these components.

[paulcole]

What valuable question did you answer with the data? You didn’t need a watch to know you were walking less.

> Remember, the Watch and the iPhone can do machine learning on the device.

Great, what is the machine learning?

[alwillis]

It’s not just the amount of walking; it was also calories burned, heart rate not getting into an aerobic range, my VO2 max and other data that I’d have no idea about if I didn’t have a device monitory this during my waking hours.

Regarding on device machine learning: https://developer.apple.com/machine-learning/

[paulcole]

Neat! You managed to not answer either of my questions:

1. What valuable question was this data answering?

2. What is the machine learning?

[clairity]

you should never have stopped walking. the chances of covid infection outside on a walk are essentially zero.

this is one of the many little harms of blanket stay home orders rather than just distancing (with masks only when you can’t), where you get nearly all of the benefits with nearly none of the downsides.

[alwillis]

I live in New England; in addition to the stay at-home orders, it was also cold and rainy much of the spring, in addition to living in a state with the third most infections and deaths from COVID-19 in the country during March–May.

As of today, we’ve had 8,860 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in my county alone.

I have pre-existing conditions and live with a septuagenarian that clearly made it not worth the risk to be out and about.

[clairity]

i completely sympathize with the need to be cautious in the face of elevated risk, but taking a walk outside doesn't by itself present additional risk. the virus doesn't exist ambiently in the air. you need an infected person breathing into your face for some period of time for the risks to accumulate enough to successfully transmit the disease.