About that Kinsa Fever Map...just a tiny portrait of fairly well off people?

[BamaRefugee]

I just looked up the price of the Kinsa Smart Phone Thermometer, and it seems to be around $45 (if you can find one). And although I can't seem to find the specs on it, I would imagine it needs a fairly new cell phone with latest upgraded software to work.

It's just my hunch, as the fat orange anal wart would say, but I don't think a whole lot of vulnerable people have, or had, an extra 50 bucks to throw away on this when they needed to feed their families. And in fact, I doubt many knew about it, I didn't, and I stay fairly up to date on modern electronics.

So what are those maps really telling us? Fevers in gated neighborhoods?

I'm not putting it down, it seems like a great invention, I'm just curious how accurate these maps are in illustrating the condition of the vast majority of the population?

[drray23]

1. Well I dont think you need to live in a gated neighborhood

To afford a thermometer. Same for cellphones. No contract smartphones are out there and many people have them.

[JustAnotherGen]

2. Not sure - but good points

There were three thermometers at my local walgreens two weeks ago - and two couples looking at them. Farily affluent area - but the have nots really have NOT. Only for baby thermometers at $40 a pop. None of the old school ones. I didn't take the third but bought the other two for them. I figure someone with a baby is really going to need it. Just couldn't imagine those two young couples, having to make a decision like that about their childs health. And yes - fairly certain they did not have a lot. If I see a woman on the verge of tears at the cost - I'm assuming she didn't have the money for it.

[LAS14]

3. Their stats sound pretty sophisticacted. I would think they'd factor in...

... prevalence of the phone/population. nt

[MoonlitKnight]

4. They give away a lot of them through schools

https://www.kinsahealth.co/

[BamaRefugee]

6. That's excellent. Too bad schools are closed right now.

[hlthe2b]

5. They were apparently widely available & far less expensive prior to COVID-19

and targeted to parents in stores like Target, on Amazon, CVS, and some other drugstores.

Now, they are impossible to find and the price has increased significantly. So your argument would certainly hold true now, but I'm not sure when first introduced they were only purchased by the wealthy. I suspect a lot purchased not even realizing they could use an app with it when it was first put into stores. That was the case with my neighbor who only picked it up because it had a large numerical read-out. The app works on a lot of older cell phones too--certainly as old as an iPhone 5s, which I still own and use.

[BamaRefugee]

7. Thanks I was wondering about the phone because just before this crisis, i was forced to buy a car

(my beloved Prius died) and the new car would not link with my Samsung Note 2 (they had stopped updating the software), which was working absolutely perfectly in all other respects. So I had to get a new phone!

Last thing I need now is a car payment. I could have limped along with my 14mpg truck til this was over, but who knew?

[PA Democrat]

8. Kinsa has donated thermometers to elementary school children all around the US

More info here:
https://www.kinsahealth.co/enterprise/kinsa-for-schools/

[beachbumbob]

9. using statistical analysis and predictive analytics, its not too hard to extrapolate

where next large centers of virus outbreaks will be

[gldstwmn]

10. Is there a link to it?

[Hekate]

11. As was pointed out by Rachel the first time she reported on Kinsa, many were *given away* ...

...in Health classes to school kids. They were also sold in many ordinary pharmacies as pediatric (baby) thermometers.

About a million were already out there, generating data that the inventor, Inder Singh, was publishing in papers in scientific/medical journals and hoped would be useful to the CDC in tracking influenza. Apparently the CDC could not be bothered.

Singh went public with his map only when the CDC persistently refused to acknowledge that his data could be useful not only for flu but for "anomalous" (non-flu, non-cold) fevers. He has turned out to be very right.

I went to the Kinsa website a few days later out of curiosity, and it's great. I checked to see if I could purchase one, and was directed to retail outlets (Target, CVS, and Amazon were among the links). Went to Amazon for a price check: under $30. Sold out. Not even an option to put it in my cart to buy later. Checked elsewhere, also sold out.

I think the price you see reflects opportunism, all right, but not by the Kinsa group. When I checked later they had an option to sign up to purchase one & donate one *when available.*

No gated communities involved. It's a science project, and via the app he's collecting information as widely as possible.