Over the past weeks I've read of many things such as herd immunity, flattening the curve, etc, but the one thing I keep reading is the only way out with the coronavirus is for a vaccine to be developed.
I can't help feeling this may be wrong. Why? Because I think back to the recent past. Where's SARS now? Where's the Swine Flu? Where's the Aussie Flu? They're gone. Once the virus runs it's course it's gone. Perhaps they evolve, but basically from the general populations point of view they're gone.
Whilst we did move slower at closing the borders than I feel we should have, and perhaps slower at isolating people returning from overseas instead of relying on people to self isolate at home (which we know human nature means some won't), but overall I feel we've got there.
We need to social distance as a community because there's pockets in our community where the infection exists and there's no way to know where those pockets are until an outbreak occurs.
In time however, if we persist with social distancing and isolation strategies I'm hopeful the virus will die out. Then we need to keep the borders closed until the virus dies out overseas as well.
The one thing I feel that is missing is useful data that lets us know where the public exposure locations are happening right now, each day as the authorities find out. Then we can see if we've been exposed in any of those locations and minimise our chances of infecting others.
Yes the government is providing data daily, but it's what I'd call useless data. It's data that's counting things that's happened, not data that helps us.
Each day in Victoria there's now a relatively small number of new cases of coronavirus. Each of those cases is a person who has recently visited a number of places. All each state government needs to do is to make that raw data available and others will present the data in a form that's useful to the general public. Each day in each state there's potentially only a few dozen to perhaps the low hundreds of data points. If we have access to that data we can then use applications that track where we've been to see if we were at or near any of the public exposure locations. We could at the simplest level just check an online map each day.
My real concern is governments are going to look at technology to track all of us, and frankly that's not the type of data I'd be confident they'd use in ways we'd be happy with. I know where I've been, my car's dashcam lets me know and I'm sure we can all find apps to track our location without providing the data to large organisations that want to mine that data for other reasons. All I need to know is the public exposure locations and I have what I need for myself, my family and my friends. That means everyone who wishes to, would have what they need too.
If I felt I'd been in a public exposure location I'd closely monitor my health for anything unexpected. I'd self isolate (within 5 days there's 95% certainty you've not been infected) and I'm sure the majority of other people would as well.
Right now we have no real data. When we walk out on the street, go to the shops, go to work, we don't know anything about who has been infected around us. What shops they've visited, what trains or buses they've taken, nothing. This creates fear and uncertainty and that brings out the worst in people.
At the moment the state governments are not sharing the public exposure location data. That's a pity. Yet really there's also one other group that could change that tomorrow. Those who are infected. They could easily share the locations they've visited.
Unless we have data really the only thing we can do is assume everywhere is a risk. Every shop, every food establishment, every petrol station. Yet if you think about it, that's absurd. There's only a few dozen or less new cases in each state each day. That's a fairly small number of public exposure locations each day and knowing those locations, would give everyone peace of mind.
Kelvin Eldridge
www.Mapz.com.au/coronavirusvictoria/
NOTE: The ideas and thoughts in this post are mine alone and should not be taken as advice or guidance.
I can't help feeling this may be wrong. Why? Because I think back to the recent past. Where's SARS now? Where's the Swine Flu? Where's the Aussie Flu? They're gone. Once the virus runs it's course it's gone. Perhaps they evolve, but basically from the general populations point of view they're gone.
Whilst we did move slower at closing the borders than I feel we should have, and perhaps slower at isolating people returning from overseas instead of relying on people to self isolate at home (which we know human nature means some won't), but overall I feel we've got there.
We need to social distance as a community because there's pockets in our community where the infection exists and there's no way to know where those pockets are until an outbreak occurs.
In time however, if we persist with social distancing and isolation strategies I'm hopeful the virus will die out. Then we need to keep the borders closed until the virus dies out overseas as well.
The one thing I feel that is missing is useful data that lets us know where the public exposure locations are happening right now, each day as the authorities find out. Then we can see if we've been exposed in any of those locations and minimise our chances of infecting others.
Yes the government is providing data daily, but it's what I'd call useless data. It's data that's counting things that's happened, not data that helps us.
Each day in Victoria there's now a relatively small number of new cases of coronavirus. Each of those cases is a person who has recently visited a number of places. All each state government needs to do is to make that raw data available and others will present the data in a form that's useful to the general public. Each day in each state there's potentially only a few dozen to perhaps the low hundreds of data points. If we have access to that data we can then use applications that track where we've been to see if we were at or near any of the public exposure locations. We could at the simplest level just check an online map each day.
My real concern is governments are going to look at technology to track all of us, and frankly that's not the type of data I'd be confident they'd use in ways we'd be happy with. I know where I've been, my car's dashcam lets me know and I'm sure we can all find apps to track our location without providing the data to large organisations that want to mine that data for other reasons. All I need to know is the public exposure locations and I have what I need for myself, my family and my friends. That means everyone who wishes to, would have what they need too.
If I felt I'd been in a public exposure location I'd closely monitor my health for anything unexpected. I'd self isolate (within 5 days there's 95% certainty you've not been infected) and I'm sure the majority of other people would as well.
Right now we have no real data. When we walk out on the street, go to the shops, go to work, we don't know anything about who has been infected around us. What shops they've visited, what trains or buses they've taken, nothing. This creates fear and uncertainty and that brings out the worst in people.
At the moment the state governments are not sharing the public exposure location data. That's a pity. Yet really there's also one other group that could change that tomorrow. Those who are infected. They could easily share the locations they've visited.
Unless we have data really the only thing we can do is assume everywhere is a risk. Every shop, every food establishment, every petrol station. Yet if you think about it, that's absurd. There's only a few dozen or less new cases in each state each day. That's a fairly small number of public exposure locations each day and knowing those locations, would give everyone peace of mind.
Kelvin Eldridge
www.Mapz.com.au/coronavirusvictoria/
NOTE: The ideas and thoughts in this post are mine alone and should not be taken as advice or guidance.
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