Evidence Proves that Stay at Home IS WORKING!

The World is more connected than ever, so it's no surprise that as the Coronavirus spreads we are watching each other struggle, sicken, cry, and come together to fight the virus online.  We watch videos of New Yorkers meeting from their rooftops and balconies and Italians singing across their squares to each other.

We stay at home and the isolation is a burden to us.  We feel alone and we have no evidence that our efforts are working as we hear growing cases and death tolls on the evening news.  But it IS WORKING.  Staying home is working.

Kinsa Health has developed internet-connected thermometers through which they can track the growth rate of new fevers.  They can show you, days in advance of when the hospitals become overwhelmed by the new cases, just how fast or slow the fever rate is growing.  And Stay at Home is a success!  It's the best news we can possibly have.

We stay at home and wait fearfully thinking our efforts are not enough to save ourselves, our neighbors, our loved ones, our communities.  But it's not so.  The efforts are working.  Shutting schools, bars and restaurants has dropped the infection rate.  The growth rate of new fevers is dropping.  In San Diego County and even in LA where the concern was mounting ever faster, the growth of fever rates has dropped roughly 8%.

Health Weather Map - fevers plotted per county

Staying at home has not only stopped the growth rate it is dropping it!  We are making a difference.  We are saving lives.

Manhattan is a great example.  According to an article in the New York Times about the restrictions and fever rates, the fever readings are predicting the hospitalization rates faster than anyone else can make predictions.  This is because people start to get a fever days before they require hospital care.  And the CDC gets data from the hospital and doctors.  So these fever readings from the internet-connected Kinsa Health thermometers are giving us data two to three weeks before the CDC can.  This is huge.  In the same article the data from the thermometers has shown how fast the restrictions on people's movements can start making an impact:
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For example, in Manhattan, reports of fevers steadily rose during early March, despite a declaration of emergency on March 7 and an order on March 12 that public gatherings be restricted to less than 500 people.

The turning point began on March 16, the day schools were closed. Bars and restaurants were closed the next day, and a stay-at-home order took effect on March 20. By March 23, new fevers in Manhattan were below their March 1 levels.

Last Friday, New York State’s own data showed the same trend that Kinsa’s fever readings had spotted five days earlier.

“People say these requirements — no restaurants, no nonessential workers — are burdensome,” he said. “And they are burdensome. But they are effective, and they are necessary. The evidence suggests that they have slowed our hospitalizations, and that is everything.”
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- From the article in the New York Times Restrictions Are Slowing Coronavirus Infections, New Data Suggest

This is the most hopeful, and informative thing I've read in quite some time.

If you are feeling like your efforts aren't working, think again.  Evidence is being collected that our efforts are really making a difference.  We will make it through this.  Staying home started to curb the rate of infection in only three days in Manhattan.  We still have a long way to go, but we will get there.  Slowly, we will.  There is hope and with the evidence of the decline in new fevers with Stay at Home directives there is a lot more hope than before.

And if you are interested in watching the progress of new fevers declining with our Stay at Home orders, you can watch this Health Weather Map created by Kinsa Health.

Stay at Home.  Stay safe.  And keeping helping where you can.