trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Using smart thermometer data to estimate the number of coronavirus cases
by Unnamed — 2020-03-23T04:26:32.890Z

Kinsa Smart Thermometer Dataset

Kinsa is a company that makes smart thermometers. A few years ago, they found that they could use the data that they got from their smart thermometers (most importantly the temperature reading and location of the user) to track flu trends across the United States. (FitBit has done something similar.)

Kinsa's data science team has now turned their attention to Covid-19 trends and started a tracking website using their thermometer data, using methods which they explain in more detail on their technical approach page. It looks like the most impressive thing that they've been able to do with this dataset so far is to identify new hotspots before other people do, like the increase in cases in southern Florida. But potentially there are a lot of other things that can be done with these sorts of data.

Estimating the Number of Coronavirus Infections in the US

One of those other things which might be doable with these sorts of data: coming up with more accurate estimates of the number of people with coronavirus. Testing in the US (and many other places) is spotty and delayed a great deal, estimating the number of infections based on the number of deaths involves a very long delay and a bunch of assumptions, etc. But if you can count the number of people in America with a fever (or extrapolate from a sample), and subtract off the baseline estimate of how many fevers you'd expect from influenza or other causes, then you can get an estimate of the number of people in the US with a fever due to coronavirus. And that gets you close to an estimate of the total number of coronavirus cases.

The coronavirus tracking website that Kinsa set up is already doing much of this - their graph (also shown below) shows something like the number of people with a fever and the baseline expected number of fevers.

So I decided to give it a try and use their graph to estimate the total number of coronavirus cases in the US.

My calculation is here, a longer (more "thinking aloud" style) writeup of my method is here, and a more concise summary of what I did is below.

It's a fairly rough first-pass analysis, which may contain errors, and could definitely be improved with some more work. The number I got at the end is that about 1% of Americans have gotten coronavirus, through March 20.

My Estimation Method, in Brief

The graph above shows som...
March 21st: Daily Coronavirus Links
by habryka — 2020-03-23T00:43:29.913Z

As part of the LessWrong Coronavirus Link Database, Ben, Elizabeth and I are publishing daily update posts with all the new links we are adding each day that we ranked a 3 or above in our importance rankings. Here are all the top links that we added yesterday (March 21st), by topic.

Dashboards

US Map of General Seasonal Illnesses Data

Uses current data to show seasonal illnesses in the US, and indicates whether this is abnormal or expected. Oregon State University.

DIY

Guide to Oxygen Supplementation (by amateur)

Clear explanations of why you need oxygen, how the various devices work, links to open source projects for building them, etc.

Guides/FAQs/Intros

List of things to do during a pandemic for happiness/meaning

List of 40 activities to do indoors that are cheap/free.

(BP) ClearerThinking always do things competently and well, and I think the list is genuinely good.

Spread & Prevention

Paper modelling R0 and doubling rate with interactive graphics

Lots of up-to-date info and good graphics. Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases.

Work & Donate

Paul Graham recommends donating to mRelief, which helps people get government benefits

He claims they have a 114x return on donations. Donation page is mrelief.com/donate.

Other

Description of historically plausible path from democracy to authoritarian state via COVID-19

Short concrete outline of how it might happen. Briefly explains that the lockdown is not a likely path to authoritarianism, but instead that healthcare tracking could become necessary and go alongside location tracking in a way that becomes overpowered.

Full Database Link
Using the Quantified Self paradigma for COVID-19
by ChristianKl — 2020-03-22T21:14:16.909Z

Petri Hollmén

traveled to Tyrol on the 5th of March. He had a bottle of hand sanitizer with him, used it a lot and washed his hands like never before.

Sunday, the 8th he returned home to hear a day afterwards that Tyrol was declared a COVID-19 epidemic area. He decided to work from home given the higher risk of having been in an epidemic area. On Thursday the 12th he woke up feeling normal but his Oura ring measured that his

readiness

was down to 54 from being normally at 80-90 which was mostly due to having a 1°C elevated temperature at his finger at night.

Even though he felt normal, he went to the doctor and given that he was from an epidemic area, they decided to test him. He tested positive and went to self-quarantine for 14 days. He measured his temperature several times during the following day and it always came back with 36.5°C. The Oura ring provided evidence that led to his diagnosis that wouldn't have been available otherwise.

While he didn’t have true fever as defined by the official gold standard he did have a kind of clinical relevant fever. It’s my impression that our medical community is too focused on their gold standards that are based on old and outdated technology like mercurial thermometers.

Even when new measurements like nightly finger temperature don’t match with the gold standard there are still cases where the information allows for better clinical decision making.

Today, we have cheap sensors and machine learning that provide us with a different context of making medical decisions then going to the doctors office.

Testing by doctors is very important in the fight against COVID-19 but people need to know when it’s time to go to the doctor. Hollmén needed his Oura to know that it was time to get tested professionally.

We need to get good at catching cases of COVID-19 as fast as possible when they happen in the wild if we want to avoid that millions die without us choking our economy by long-term quarantines.

Analysis of

Fitbit users

found that their resting heart rate and total amount of sleep can be used to predict the official state numbers for influenza-like illness.

It’s very likely that lower heart rate variance and a higher minimum of the nightly heartrate happens in at least some of the COVID-19 cases. Unfortunately, the WHO is

stuck

in the last century and the offici...
Virus As A Power Optimisation Process: The Problem Of Next Wave 
by avturchin — 2020-03-22T20:35:49.306Z

Biological global catastrophic risks were neglected for years, while AGI risks were on the top. The main reason for this is that AGI was presented as a powerful superintelligent optimizer, and germs were just simple mindless replicators. However, germs are capable to evolve and they are very extensively searching the space of possible optimisations via quick replication of viruses and quick replication rate. In other words, they perform an enormous amount of computations, far above what our computers can do.

This optimisation power creates several dangerous effects: antibiotic resistance (for bacteria) and obsolescence of vaccines (for flu) as well as a zoonosis: the transfer of viruses from animals to humans. Sometimes it could be also beneficial, as in the case of evolving in the direction of less CFR.

In other words, we should think about coronavirus not as of an instance of a virus on a doorknob, but as a large optimisation process evolving in time and space.

Thus, the main median-term (3-6 months) question is how it will evolve and how we could make it evolve in better ways. In other words, what will be the next wave?

There was a claim that second wave of Spanish flu was more dangerous, because of the large hospitals: the virus was “interested” to replicate in hospitals, so it produced more serious illness; Infected people had to go to hospitals, which were overcrowded after the war, and they infected other people there, including the medical personal which moved it to the next hospital.

Another point is that the size of the virus optimisation power depends on the number of infected and of the number of virus generations, as well as on the selective pressure. The idea of “flattening the curve” is the worst, as it assumes a large number of infections AND a large number of virus generation AND high selective pressure. Cruel but short-term global quarantine may be better.
Can crimes be discussed literally?
by Benquo — 2020-03-22T20:17:05.545Z
Link: http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/can-crimes-be-discussed-literally

Suppose I were to say that the American legal system is a criminal organization. The usual response would be that this is a crazy accusation.

Now, suppose I were to point out that it is standard practice for American lawyers to advise their clients to lie under oath in certain circumstances. I expect that this would still generally be perceived as a heterodox, emotionally overwrought, and perhaps hysterical conspiracy theory.

Then, suppose I were to further clarify that people accepting a plea bargain are expected to affirm under oath that no one made threats or promises to induce them to plead guilty, and that the American criminal justice system is heavily reliant on plea bargains. This might be conceded as literally true, but with the proviso that since everyone does it, I shouldn't use extreme language like "lie" and "fraud."

This isn't about lawyers - some cases in other fields:

In American medicine it is routine to officially certify that a standard of care was provided, that cannot possibly have been provided (e.g. some policies as to the timing of medication and tests can't be carried out given how many patients each nurse has to care for, but it's less trouble to fudge it as long as something vaguely resembling the officially desired outcome happened). The system relies on widespread willingness to falsify records, and would (temporarily) grind to a halt if people were to simply refuse to lie. But I expect that if I were to straightforwardly summarize this - that the American hospital system is built on lies - I mostly expect this to be evaluated as an attack, rather than a description. But of course if any one person refuses to lie, the proximate consequences may be bad.

Likewise for the psychiatric system.

In Simulacra and Subjectivity, the part that reads "while you cannot acquire a physician’s privileges and social role simply by providing clear evidence of your ability to heal others" was, in an early draft, "physicians are actually nothing but a social class with specific privileges, social roles, and barriers to entry." These are expressions of the same thought, but the draft version is a direct, simple theoretical assertion, while the latter merely provides evidence for the assertion. I had to be coy on purpose in order to distract the reader from a potential fight.

The End Us...
Reflections on a no content January 2020 experiment
by Elo — 2020-03-22T15:32:29.797Z

In January 2020 I did a zero content life. This was partly justified by the book “the info diet” but mostly based on a philosophy that proposes,

in a lifetime with limited hours, there is a choice to either consume or create. And I’d rather create than consume.

To be honest, the idea for me was born in response to a meme complaining that if you think art should be free, try going without art for a month. This sounded like a fun and interesting idea.

My main sources of content were:

Facebook feed
Books (paper and TTS audiobook)
Some music
Youtube videos

I decided to not get fussy about content that I was actively reciprocal in creating. For example a dance form and a conversation are two different types of content that I am engaged in. The difference would be between playing sport and watching sport (I’m allowed to play sport but not watch sport). I wanted to make an exception for live music but I would not usually see live music anyway.

So how did I go?

On the 1st of January I rearranged my phone screen to make my content less accessible than my creation pathways. I don’t think I recorded anything, but in the first week I wrote 5000 words with all that time I had. In the silence I noticed my mind go quieter. In the time that I spent not reading, I did thinking. I drove places in silence. I started having phone calls with my friends. I just let myself go with whatever I wanted to go towards.

Without music coming in I started to get earworms appearing in my mind. Without content ideas coming from books I had to start generating my own, or applying my existing methods. Even making my own.

I didn’t realise how badly an entrenched habit of reading (134 books in 2019) could limit my growth. I was doing a good thing adding more information to the parts of me that needed more information and also, now that I’ve slowed down, I’m more balanced.

I probably only needed to do book free for a day to get the benefit but I committed and I wasn’t sure if there was a deepening after more time. There wasn’t but one of the major benefits I retained was that I freely chose to think or read a book or call a friend. This was previously a more compulsive choice to urgently read books.

I spend a lot more time having phone calls and exploring relationally now. For the handful of people that I am talking with, ...
Could we use current AI methods to understand dolphins?
by Daniel Kokotajlo — 2020-03-22T14:45:29.795Z

I am told that unsupervised machine translation is a thing. This is amazing. I ask: Could we use it to understand dolphin language? (Or whales, perhaps?)

I don't currently see a convincing reason why not. Maybe dolphins aren't actually that smart or communicative and their clicks are mostly just very simple commands or requests, but that should just make it really easy to do this. Maybe the blocker is that dolphins have such a different set of concepts than English that it would be too hard?
When to Donate Masks?
by jefftk — 2020-03-22T13:20:02.401Z

As people start coming into hospitals with the coronavirus, the number
of masks we go through with

standard
protocols goes up enormously. These masks are normally
single-use, and you put on a new mask every time one is needed.
Roughly, a hospital could increase its daily usage of masks 100x as
they get their first few covid-19 patients, and then even more as the
full force of the epidemic hits. This is a ton of stress on the
supply chain, and not surprisingly suppliers haven't been able to ramp
up. Running your factory around the clock and bringing on extra
workers can help some, but when even doubling output would be
impressive this is nowhere near enough.

There are many types of mask, but the two main ones in health care are
surgical masks and N95 respirator masks:

A surgical mask is primarily
intended to protect others from the wearer by catching droplets, but
provides limited protection to the wearer.

A vented N95 mask
protects the wearer against not just droplets but also airborne
transmission.

An unvented N95 mask protects both the wearer and others.

When I say "mask" below, I'm talking about N95 masks. We can get
something to replace surgical masks, even if it's people
sewing reusable cloth ones, but N95 production is bottlenecked on
machines that can make good
enough melt-blown fabric.

Luckily, health care is not the only field where people need
respiratory protection. Industrial N95 masks are very widely used in
construction, demolition, and other situations where there's
moderately hazardous dust. These masks aren't rated as surgical N95
masks, and they're more likely to be vented, but their requirements
are very similar and the government is now allowing them to be used.

As hospitals are unable to get resupplied with their regular masks,
they're asking for donations from the
community and industry.
This makes a lot of sense: people and organizations that use masks
generally keep extras, and medical use is now much more urgent.

On the other hand, donations of masks will not get us through this
epidemic on their own: hospitals also need to make massive adjustments
in how quickly they go through masks, and this is a hard adjustment.
Reusing masks is moderately dangerous, but it's much less dangerous
than the very likely prospect of later not having them at all. It
looks like hospitals used masks at nearly their ...
Pulse Oximetry & the Oxygen–Haemoglobin Dissociation Curve
by leggi — 2020-03-22T07:05:53.483Z

Since I can't post an image in a comment I've created this post.

I've seen a fair bit written about digital oxymeters (pulse ox) and percentage figures but no mention of the underlying physiology to increase understanding of the significance of those figures.

Haemoglobin (in red blood cells) takes up oxygen in the lungs to then carry around the body.

Oxygen disassociates from haemoglobin (Hb) when the partial pressure of O2 in surrounding tissues is reduced according to this graph:

Note the steep drop in oxygen saturation (the % given by an oximeter) when PO2 (level of oxygen in surrounding tissues) is low i.e. a lot of oxygen leaves red blood cells quickly at those levels so there isn't enough oxygen in the blood to get round everywhere.

SOURCE: (and much more info.)
Loss of sense of smell as marker of COVID-19 infection
by trseeker — 2020-03-22T02:27:52.915Z
Link: https://www.entuk.org/loss-sense-smell-marker-covid-19-infection

Excerpt:

In Germany it is reported that more than 2 in 3 confirmed cases have anosmia.
In South Korea, ... 30% of patients testing positive have had anosmia as their major presenting symptom in otherwise mild cases
There is potential that if any adult with anosmia but no other symptoms was asked to self-isolate for seven days, in addition to the current symptom criteria used to trigger quarantine, we might be able to reduce the number of otherwise asymptomatic individuals who continue to act as vectors, not realising the need to self-isolate.

Simple clinical test for anosmia (from Davidson & Murphy, 1997):

Standard 70% isopropyl alcohol preparation pad is opened such that 0.5 cm of the pad itself is visible. The alcohol pad is placed beneath the patient's nostrils while the patient inspires twice, to familiarize himself or herself with the alcohol odor, and the subject is asked if he or she detects an odor. Odor thresholds for alcohols are 2 or more orders of magnitude lower than trigeminal thresholds for the same stimuli.6 Thus, an anosmic will detect the presence of alcohol trigeminally only when it is extremely close to the nose. The alcohol pad is withdrawn and the threshold test begun. The subject is asked to close the mouth and eyes, breathe normally, and indicate when the odor is detected. Active sniffing and deep inspiration are discouraged. The basic procedure follows the method of limits. A standard metric tape measure is extended downward from the patient's nares and held in place (Figure I ).

The alcohol pad is placed 30 cm below the nose and, with each expiration, is moved 1 cm closer to the nares until the subject detects the presence of odor. The distance from the anterior nares to the alcohol pad is measured in centimeters at the point at which the subject first detects the odor. The procedure is repeated 4 times and the mean distance defines the threshold.

Threshold For purposes of comparison, all of the subjects completed a standard olfactory threshold test. A series of 10 concentrations of butanol ( -butyl alcohol) was used to determine absolute olfactory threshold sensitivity. The highest butanol concentration consisted of 4% vol/vol in distilled water. Each successive dilution was one third of the preceding dilution. Two "blanks," containing only distilled water, were also prepared. All bottles, including blanks, co

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Coronavirus Tech Handbook
by Linda Linsefors — 2020-03-21T23:27:48.134Z

The Coronavirus Tech Handbook is a crowdsourced collection of tools, websites and data relating to the coronavirus outbreak.

If you are working on something to prevent or mitigate the Coronavirus pandemic, this might be a good place to share information and find collaborator. There is also a facebook group for discussions, and a newsletter.

I'm not involved in this but I know the people who built the Coronavirus Tech Handbook. I be happy to put you in touch with them, or forward any feedback.

If you know of anything you think should be added to the Coronavirus Tech Handbook, but are to busy/lazy/whatever (no judgement) to add it yourself, pleas tell me and I'll add it for you.

I have not followed the corona related discussion here on LW so I don't know what projects you've been up to here.
How long should someone quarantine to be sure they aren't contagious with Covid?
by Raemon — 2020-03-21T22:39:30.829Z

A key question for people figuring out good longterm isolation practices is "how long do I have to be symptom-free before I'm 'certified safe'?"

This post on the typical-course-of-COVID-19 provides some studies that inform on the question, but doesn't directly answer it yet.

I recall hearing something like "most cases last less than two weeks", but I'm not sure if two weeks is actually a strong enough upper bound that I'd feel comfortable encouraging lots of people to act on it.

This contains two subquestions:

If you get sick with COVID-19, during what period will you be contagious?
If you are isolated, and don't appear to have symptoms, how long before you can be confident that you are not a carrier?

(I'm personally most interested in the answer to the second question right now, but both seem important)
Tagging (Click Gear Icon to filter Coronavirus content)
by Raemon — 2020-03-21T22:16:26.092Z

A couple weeks back, as coronavirus content took over LessWrong, we thought "Hmm, so... we've almost finished this new tagging feature. Maybe we should hurry to finish that up so that we can use it to help manage this avalanche of COVID-19 posts?"

For the past week we've been rolling out features to help with this. Right now, since Tagging is still in beta, we're testing it out just with a Coronavirus tag.

1. You can now filter out Coronavirus-tagged posts from the Home Page.

If you click the gear icon to the right of the "Latest Posts" section, you'll open up a settings tab where you can test the new tag filtering system. You can currently filter on Personal Blogposts, and Coronavirus-tagged posts. You can choose to hide them, or to only show posts with a matching tag. (Later on, once we've implemented a wider-ranging tag system, you'll be able to filter arbitrary combinations of tags).

Right now the filter system only applies to the Latest Posts section, but soon we'll most likely extend this to the Recent Discussion section and the "/allPosts" page.

2. Home Page Coronavirus Section

We've also recently added a section at the top of the home page which displays the top 3 posts on the Coronavirus Tag Page. We found that we wanted more than one stickied post, to keep multiple conversations going on the Justified Advice Thread, Open Thread, and Link Database, and other important posts we wanted people to be able to keep track of.

But! If you are sick of CV content, you can open up the gear-icon in the Recommendations section, and hide Top Coronavirus Content widget.

Meanwhile, it you want all the CV content...

3. There's a Coronavirus Tag Page!

If you want to catch up on all the COVID-19 content, it's all available over at https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/coronavirus.

Currently, only admins can add a tag to a post. But all users can upvote or downvote the relevance of a tag to a particular post. On the Tag Page, you'll see a little vote button to the left of the karma. Voting affects the post's Tag Relevance Score, which determines the sort order on a tag page.

(It's fine to be a bit more strategic about how to upvote or downvote on tag-relevance. The goal is not to determine "how good is this post overall?" but "how high on the tag page should the post appear?". The system is designed so that the collective decision-making of the LessWrong userbase can out

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