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The Internet Medicine Microsoft

Microsoft Bing Team Launches COVID-19 Tracker (zdnet.com) 43

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Microsoft's Bing team has launched a website for tracking coronavirus (COVID-19) infections across the globe. From a report: "Lots of Bing folks worked (from home) this past week to create a mapping and authoritative news resource for COVID19 info," said Michael Schechter, General Manager for Bing Growth and Distribution at Microsoft. The website, accessible at bing.com/covid, is a basic tracker. It shows up-to-date infection statistics for each country around the globe and all the US states. Data is aggregated from authoritative sources like the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
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Microsoft Bing Team Launches COVID-19 Tracker More

Microsoft Bing Team Launches COVID-19 Tracker

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  • Thank you Slashdot for bringing us last week's news, today!

  • City level? (Score:3)

    by aoism ( 996912 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @11:34AM (#59840542)
    For a while Johns Hopkins had city level data displayed for at least the US. It helped to identify cases closer to your community. The data they use still contains county and lat/long but they stopped displaying it, and it looks like MS'es is doing the same. I am not sure why they did it, but are there any trackers out there that have better resolution than state level for COVID cases?

    • Re: City level? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @11:50AM (#59840598)

      The only thing it seems to track are hospitalizations where symptoms were consistent enough to warrant testing. If you don't test you wont have anything to graph.

      They wont test unless you meet every criteria. You have to have a fever. You have to have respiratory issues. You have to have traveled to an outbreak or come in contact with someone one who did. 14 day incubation period people... if an a-symptomatic person had the virus, rubbed his nose, and pushed a shopping buggy around the store, for up to 3 days someone else could have touched that cart and have answered NO on the travel question.

      Fever. I have a HUGE issue with this requirement. I have had doctors deny me a flu test because my temp was not > 102. My normal temp runs anywhere from 96.9 - 97.7. So if my temp reads 99.7 thats a real fever for me. I feel like shit. But because it doesnt check all the boxes they wont do a test. So I lie. I tell them I just took 4 Tylenol, or I tell them my daughter just tested positive and we took a road trip stuck in the same car for 8 hours. They run the test and lo-and-behold.. positive for a flu strain.

      So if they are going to limit their testing to only perfect matches they will _never_ contain this. People under 20 dont even show a single sign and can shed the virus for weeks. People 20-30 might have a bit of a sore throat or dry cough. Thats it. Declared not infected without a single test.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • if an a-symptomatic person had the virus, rubbed his nose, and pushed a shopping buggy around the store, for up to 3 days someone else could have touched that cart and have answered NO on the travel question.

        That is me. I mean I probably just had a cold (or have, the tail end of it), but I actively went to the doctor and was told to go home and get bed rest and that they'd test me if and only if I ended up with pneumonia after asking me only a couple of questions. To say nothing of the 4 countries I visited, 8 plane trips I had, 3 major festivals I attended with hundreds of thousands of people in the street. I only got within 50km of the Italian border so I answered no to the "have you been to Italy" question.

        N

      • Only info for some cities. See the Johns Hopkins data here:
        https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis... [arcgis.com]

    • You may find more information in the Reddit tracker: Map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/... [google.com] and submission page: https://old.reddit.com/r/Covid... [reddit.com]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      See what South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore had ready as apps and tracking in time.
  • Not sure if we needed yet another tracker, but hey, if they had spare time to do it, good for them.

  • Great... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @11:42AM (#59840580)
    That's all the world needs.. yet another m$ piece of crap that doesn't work right 30% of the time.
  • Some respectable scientists predicted that such virus epidemics were quite possible. Why do not we have an infrastructure for this?

    Doctors and nurses overwork, there are not enough intensive care units, not enough hospitals, not enough masks, and so on, and so forth.

    At the same time, trillions were spent on defense, but basically the society turned out to be defenseless. Such a computer program could also be developed (and tested) well beforehand.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Merk42 ( 1906718 )

      Some respectable scientists predicted that such virus epidemics were quite possible. Why do not we have an infrastructure for this?

      Because the ones who would make such an infrastructure possible didn't believe it and/or didn't care because it wouldn't affect them (or their donors) personally.

    • The system was based on a weaponized virus with higher mortality and shorter incubation. This is quite the opposite. With incubation outliers as high as 28 days, no containment is going to work. Short of time travel its impossible to rewind 14 days of exposure. Can you really remember everywhere you have been? What surfaces you touched on which days? And then go through days of video surveillance to track down every indirect contact? Then if they test positive repeat the entire process for each of those? Wh

    • Scientists pointing out problems are often labelled alarmist (see also, Climate Change, Cigarettes are Carcinogens). A lot of infectious disease research that does get sponsored ends up getting sponsored through Defense, but I agree that it shouldn't have to be that way and it should be more.

      • I note that Ebola vaccine research was funded by the US military because they felt a need to vaccinate forces that might be deployed in an area where Ebola was present. There is a perspective that says that health security might need much more funding as it clearly represents a threat that is as severe to the economy and peoples lives as terrorism or nation state shooting wars .

        • I note that Ebola vaccine research was funded by the US military because they felt a need to vaccinate forces that might be deployed in an area where Ebola was present. There is a perspective that says that health security might need much more funding as it clearly represents a threat that is as severe to the economy and peoples lives as terrorism or nation state shooting wars .

          Clearly this is demonstrating the worst. And, I know this is an unpopular opinion, it's compounded by our current population density. We wouldn't even need to exercise social distancing if we weren't stacked on each other day-in-day-out, and that's really only a problem because our medical systems haven't at all kept pace; they never will. Rationing is the de facto to keep costs down; there are no JIT medical systems, AFAIK, and the logistics in sci-fi where everyone receives treatment either has a known sm

        • I note that Ebola vaccine research was funded by the US military because they felt a need to vaccinate forces that might be deployed in an area where Ebola was present.

          Regardless of the justification, we need to be working on a vaccine for Ebola, and continue to hope and pray that it never becomes an airborne pathogen. If it ever mutated to that level, it could easily affect our entire human race.

          There is a perspective that says that health security might need much more funding as it clearly represents a threat that is as severe to the economy and peoples lives as terrorism or nation state shooting wars .

          And let's hope that "perspective", has now significantly changed. Unfortunately, that would mean prying trillions from the cold dead hands of warmongers, so good luck with that.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Should I take Bing of my blocking list just for this?

  • N. Mariana Islands reports 0 Active, 0 Recovered, 0 Fatal cases, yet is shown on the map. https://imgur.com/a/MZ4oYWi [imgur.com]

  • Seriously??? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The MS site is a rehash of the Johns Hopkins site that's been up for months -
    https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis... [arcgis.com]

    The only thing better than the Johns Hopkins site - a better URL.

    • It loads faster, but it seems so much like they're trying to steal the thunder of the real workers on this, that I'll continue to use the Johns Hopkins site for authoritative information.

  • European Centre for Disease Control ... They should print T shirts with EC/DC on them but a corona virus instead of lightning bolt separating the the pairs.
    "For Those About to Cough" .. fire! We saluuuute you.."

  • Literally every other website provides more info from this, and the Bing site even stole their world info graphic display from a site which has existed for well over a month.

    This was a colossal waste of time and effort. Kind of like the rest of Bing and Microsoft's attempts to get into the Search engine industry ... and the mobile phone industry.

  • This is nothing but a rehash of the site from John Hopkins... Nothing more, same info... Useless...

    Microsoft "stealing" other's ideas as usual...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Haydn ( 592455 )
      It looks like Microsoft's data is somewhat older than the sources they're obtaining it from.

      Why do they bother with such poor quality crap?
  • If U.S. has no tests available how accurate are those numbers?

  • Follow the threads to see how and why..
    https://twitter.com/StevWork/s... [twitter.com]

  • Looks like Greenland is winning. :D

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