Coronavirus – Page 23

Analysis, Coronavirus, Human Behavior, privacy, Science & Technology News

Smartphone data reveal which Americans are social distancing (and not)

April 1, 2020

D.C. gets an ‘A’ while Wyoming earns an ‘F’ for following coronavirus stay-at-home advice, based on the locations of tens of millions of phones

Location data firm Unacast identified places where residents are engaging in more social distancing in green — and less in orange.

If you have a smartphone, you’re probably contributing to a massive coronavirus surveillance system.

And it’s revealing where Americans have — and haven’t — been practicing social distancing.

On Tuesday, a company called Unacast that collects and analyzes phone GPS location data launched a “Social Distancing Scoreboard” that grades, county by county, which residents are changing behavior at the urging of health officials. It uses the reduction in the total distance we travel as a rough index for whether we’re staying put at home.

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Analysis, Coronavirus, Healthcare, Science & Technology News

How to understand – and report – figures for ‘Covid deaths’

April 1, 2020

Every day, now, we are seeing figures for ‘Covid deaths’. These numbers are often expressed on graphs showing an exponential rise. But care must be taken when reading (and reporting) these figures. Given the extraordinary response to the emergence of this virus, it’s vital to have a clear-eyed view of its progress and what the figures mean. The world of disease reporting has its own dynamics, ones that are worth understanding. How accurate, or comparable, are these figures comparing Covid-19 deaths in various countries?

We often see a ratio expressed: deaths, as a proportion of cases. The figure is taken as a sign of how lethal Covid-19 is, but the ratios vary wildly. In the US, 1.8 per cent (2,191 deaths in 124,686 confirmed cases), Italy 10.8 per cent, Spain 8.2 per cent, Germany 0.8 per cent, France 6.1 per cent, UK 6.0 per cent. A fifteen-fold difference in death rate for the same disease seems odd amongst such similar countries: all developed, all with good healthcare systems. All tackling the same disease.

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Coronavirus, Electric Vehicles, Energy, Environment, Science & Technology News

The coronavirus is showing us how clean the air can be if electric cars were the norm

March 31, 2020

With all the loss of lives and financial destruction that the coronavirus has brought us, it’s hard to look at silver linings from this crisis, but there’s one that’s becoming obvious: cleaner air.

It might not last for long, but it’s giving us a glimpse at what we could experience if the world was to rapidly transition to electric transportation.

With shelter-in-place and stay-at-home orders all over the world, passenger car traffic has been way down and people have been burning way less petrol.

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Automation, Coronavirus, Healthcare, Robots, Science & Technology News

Coronavirus: Robots use light beams to zap hospital viruses

March 31, 2020

The UVD robot takes about 20 minutes to treat a room

“Please leave the room, close the door and start a disinfection,” says a voice from the robot.

“It says it in Chinese as well now,” Simon Ellison, vice president of UVD Robots, tells me as he demonstrates the machine.

Through a glass window we watch as the self-driving machine navigates a mock-hospital room, where it kills microbes with a zap of ultraviolet light.

“We had been growing the business at quite a high pace – but the coronavirus has kind of rocketed the demand,” says chief executive, Per Juul Nielsen.

He says “truckloads” of robots have been shipped to China, in particular Wuhan. Sales elsewhere in Asia, and Europe are also up.

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Coronavirus, Culture, Environment, Housing, Science & Technology News

Americans on the move to escape the coronavirus

March 30, 2020

Lisa Pezzino brushes her teeth at her retreat in Big Sur, Calif., 140 miles from her city home in Oakland.

The mass migration looks urgent and temporary but might contain the seeds of a wholesale shift in where and how Americans live.

This story and all coronavirus stories are free to the public. Please support us as we do our part to keep the community safe and informed.

Back home in Oakland, California, Lisa Pezzino and Kit Center built a life that revolved around music and the people who make it – the musicians who recorded on Pezzino’s small label and performed in places where Center rigged the lights and sound equipment.

Where they are now, deep in the redwood forest near Big Sur, 140 miles south along the California coast, there is mostly the towering silence of isolation. A tiny cabin, an outdoor kitchen, just one neighbor. This is life in the flight from the virus.

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Analysis, Coronavirus, Healthcare, Science & Technology News

A new FDA-authorized COVID-19 test doesn’t need a lab and can produce results in just 5 minutes

March 29, 2020

There’s a new COVID-19 test from healthcare technology maker Abbott that looks to be the fastest yet in terms of producing results, and that can do so on the spot right at point-of-care, without requiring a round trip to a lab. This test for the novel coronavirus causing the current global pandemic has received emergency clearance for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and will begin production next week, with output of 50,000 per day possible starting next week.

The new Abbott ID NOW COVID-19 test uses the Abbott ID NOW diagnostics platform, which is essentially a lab-in-a-box that is roughly the size of a small kitchen appliance. Its size and that it can produce either a positive result in just five minutes or a negative one in under 15 mean that it could be a very useful means to extend coronavirus testing beyond its current availability to more places including clinics and doctor’s offices, and cut down on wait times both in terms of getting tested and receiving a diagnosis.

Continue reading… “A new FDA-authorized COVID-19 test doesn’t need a lab and can produce results in just 5 minutes”

Coronavirus, Employment, Food, Science & Technology News, Shopping

Instacart is hiring 300,000 grocery shoppers

March 29, 2020

The company will provide with paid sick leave in case they’re diagnosed with COVID-19.

Instacart plans to hire an additional 300,000 “full-service” contractors to help it deliver groceries to people during the coronavirus pandemic. With so many individuals and families stuck inside as a result of social distancing measures and shelter in place orders in states like California, Instacart says order volume has increased by 150 percent over the last few weeks, with people buying more per cart as well.

The company currently operates in about 5,500 cities across the United States and Canada. Instacart’s plan will see it hire broadly in states like California and New York. In the former, for instance, it plans to bring on approximately 54,000 new full-time shoppers. In other states like Texas and Florida, it will hire thousands of new contractors as well, and provide them with paid sick leave if they’re diagnosed with COVID-19 or need to self-isolate.

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Coronavirus, Healthcare, Historical Perspectives, Medicine, Science & Technology News

The coronavirus isn’t alive. That’s why it’s so hard to kill.

March 28, 2020

This novel coronavirus is a sneaky variety similar to those that have been responsible for the most destructive outbreaks of the last 100 years.

Viruses have spent billions of years perfecting the art of surviving without living – a frighteningly effective strategy that makes them a potent threat in today’s world.

That’s especially true of the deadly new coronavirus that has brought global society to a screeching halt. It’s little more than a packet of genetic material surrounded by a spiky protein shell one-thousandth the width of an eyelash, and leads such a zombie-like existence, it’s barely considered a living organism.

But as soon as it gets into a human airway, the virus hijacks our cells to create millions more versions of itself.

There is a certain evil genius to how this coronavirus pathogen works: It finds easy purchase in humans without them knowing. Before its first host even develops symptoms, it is already spreading its replicas everywhere, moving onto its next victim. It is powerfully deadly in some, but mild enough in others to escape containment. And, for now, we have no way of stopping it.

Continue reading… “The coronavirus isn’t alive. That’s why it’s so hard to kill.”

Coronavirus, government, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

What should the government spend to save a life?

March 28, 2020

Economists have a way of measuring the cost of protecting people from COVID-19.

Economists have done the math.

The staggering economic toll of the new coronavirus is becoming abundantly, unavoidably clear. On Thursday, a Department of Labor report showed that a record-shattering 3.3 million people applied for initial unemployment claims last week. And with entire industries shuttered for the foreseeable future, economic output will almost certainly shrink dramatically.

As economic forecasts grow darker, talk of tradeoffs is getting louder: Is protecting Americans from COVID-19 really worth all this disruption and economic pain?

On March 22, before President Trump floated the idea of reopening the economy by Easter, against the recommendations of his own public health experts, he tweeted, “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF.” Other politicians, meanwhile, rejected the idea that economic costs should be a factor at all. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo dismissed Trump’s push to get the economy moving again, saying, “No American is going to say, ‘accelerate the economy at the cost of human life.’ Because no American is going to say how much a life is worth.”

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Coronavirus, drones, Human Behavior, Humor, Science & Technology News

Man “walks” dog with a drone while in quarantine

March 28, 2020

This is some next level problem solving

As preventative measures against COVID-19 are increasing around the world, more and more folks are staying inside. This is especially fantastic news for pets. They have no idea what’s going on, but suddenly their humans are home all the friggin’ time. Literally pet heaven.

However, stricter lockdown rules mean those pets are in danger of becoming just as bored and stir crazy as their owners. Just because pets can’t contract or infect humans with coronavirus, (the strains that affect humans and animals are completely different) pet owners are still under strict social distancing orders and cannot all congregate in the same place. So no more human-run dog daycares, no more pet playdates, no more busy park visits.

Continue reading… “Man “walks” dog with a drone while in quarantine”

Coronavirus, government, Money Talk, Science & Technology News, Uber

For the first time, Uber drivers and other gig workers qualify for unemployment insurance as part of the Senate’s $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill

March 27, 2020

A protester outside Uber’s office in Massachusetts.

The Senate’s $2 trillion coronavirus economic bailout bill includes help for gig-economy workers, like Uber and Lyft drivers, who have seen their livelihood dissolve during the coronavirus crisis.

For the first time, these workers would qualify for unemployment insurance.

They would also qualify for the additional four months of extra payments this bill would provide to everyone who collects unemployment.

It isn’t clear exactly how much money a month drivers, contract workers, and freelancers could get, but they should qualify for a weekly payment equivalent to if they were a laid-off full-time employee.

The maximum weekly amount varies by state, but the extra unemployment insurance would add up to a maximum of $600 more a week.

Continue reading… “For the first time, Uber drivers and other gig workers qualify for unemployment insurance as part of the Senate’s $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill”

Automation, Coronavirus, Robots, Science & Technology News

Coronavirus pandemic could prove ‘tipping point’ for robots looking after humans, scientists and experts say

March 27, 2020

A hotel in China used a robot to deliver food to people in coronavirus quarantine ( XHN )

Robotics experts say AI and machines could save lives by performing the ‘dull, dirty and dangerous’ jobs

The development of robots to save lives and reduce human exposure to the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak could lead to a new era of robotic human helpers, researchers have said.

Robotics professor Henrik Christensen from the University of California San Diego, was among a group of leading experts who outlined how robots could be used to combat the coronavirus pandemic by doing the “dull, dirty and dangerous” jobs.

“Already, we have seen robots being deployed for disinfection, delivering medications and food, measuring vital signs, and assisting border controls,” the scientists wrote in an editorial in the journal Science Robotics.

Continue reading… “Coronavirus pandemic could prove ‘tipping point’ for robots looking after humans, scientists and experts say”