I’m confused about the nature of the raw data here—if it’s just spontaneous temperature-measurements, why would we expect it to show anything meaningful? They’re showing a “% ill” which is presumably the percentage of people who took their temperature with a Kinsa thermometer recently who have a fever. But people generally only take their temperature when they think they might be sick. In a normal year, after calibration against some sort of ground-truth, I can see how you might still be able to use the data to track flu rates. But during a pandemic, won’t people’s pattern of temperature-taking completely change? I’ve taken my temperature way more in the last two weeks than I would normally (which is close to zero) and I bet the same is true for many other people. So the base rates will have changed a lot.
Plenty of women take their temperature daily for getting knowledge about their period. It’s plausible that Kinsa has enough daily users to make these kinds of predictions.
I’m confused about the nature of the raw data here—if it’s just spontaneous temperature-measurements, why would we expect it to show anything meaningful? They’re showing a “% ill” which is presumably the percentage of people who took their temperature with a Kinsa thermometer recently who have a fever. But people generally only take their temperature when they think they might be sick. In a normal year, after calibration against some sort of ground-truth, I can see how you might still be able to use the data to track flu rates. But during a pandemic, won’t people’s pattern of temperature-taking completely change? I’ve taken my temperature way more in the last two weeks than I would normally (which is close to zero) and I bet the same is true for many other people. So the base rates will have changed a lot.
Plenty of women take their temperature daily for getting knowledge about their period. It’s plausible that Kinsa has enough daily users to make these kinds of predictions.