Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports • Hacker News Board

Re: Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports

#61

Post by grey-area » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 11:46 AM UTC

jaclaz wrote: post #57

grey-area wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deaths have doubled in 3 days so Sweden is growing exponentially too, it just started a little later than other countries so it's in the part of the curve that feels pretty innocuous. It's quite remarkable how similar the trajectories are starting from around the 1st death (though of course later trajectories might differ markedly depending on the measures taken now). The FT has some good charts of this: https://www.…

IMHO these are better (counting in cases/deaths per million inhabitants is much more comparable than absolute counts): http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/ Namely (Sweden): http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#covid-eu-norm2 http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#rates-nordic

Those show cases not deaths, I'm not sure that's very reliable as a measure - the testing varies dramatically, it will be tempting for governments to undertest and it's hard to get hold of tests now.

Just to pick one example the US has shot up to top place by cases in the last few days mainly because they started seriously testing.

Personally I prefer graphs of deaths (normalised for population would be fine I guess), starting from 1st death or similar rather than arbitrary offsets in date as the spread only begins from the first cases (usually undetected).

Re: Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports

#62

Post by swebs » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 11:50 AM UTC

usr1106 wrote: post #43

Why would anybody turn on location history? (Serious question, I don't even have Google Play Services in my phone). 95 % users are known not to touch any settings. I guess Google has a trick to make more of them do it. Which one?

They make it very difficult to keep location data turned off. If you accidentally open Google Maps, a pop up appears where dismissing it turns on location tracking. I also think they make you enable it nowadays to use Bluetooth.

Re: Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports

#63

Post by pi-squared » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 12:08 PM UTC

moonchild wrote: post #12

Is this data available in structured format anywhere, or do you have to scrape the pdfs?

I started a repo [1] that parses data for at least some of the national data tried. PRs welcome

[1] https://gitlab.com/pisquared/scrape_google_mobility

Re: Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports

#64

Post by drivingmenuts » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 12:26 PM UTC

bradfa wrote: post #46

I think that Google and Apple will be extremely helpful in the coming months, at least in the USA, for tracing the spread of COVID-19. Google and Apple know where probably 90+% of adults/teens in the USA are located in real time. If they are able to anonymously tell you that you were in the same building as someone who has tested positive for the virus then you could take extra precautions or further isolate yourself…

I would prefer that they track only with permission of the tracked, but I realize that we are little better than tagged animals to them.

Re: Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports

#65

Post by danielrpa » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 12:32 PM UTC

creato wrote: post #19

sixstringtheory wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? At least with government you have theoretical recourse at the polls. With a megacorp you can’t do shit if you don’t like what they’re up to.

Right, you can't do shit... except not turn on location history, which as this page says, is off by default.

In this case the government wouldn't have that information either.

Re: Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports

#66

Post by danielrpa » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 12:34 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #47

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using a VPN, your location won't show up as mainland China.

VPN goes not affect GPS signal as far as I know

I think that the location services use a mix of IP-based and GPS-based localization - GPS doesn't work too well indoors, while getting your IP from your wireless router (ie internet provider) is much more reliable.

Re: Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports

#67

Post by nicoburns » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 12:48 PM UTC

sheldoneth wrote: post #35

newsbinator wrote: post #21

Here's the one for the country where I live, Belarus: https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-03-29_BY_Mobil... Notice anything unexpected?

I'm curious, does that look accurate to you? Do you know why it jumped by 41% for parks?

One factor is that for many countries, that's the only activity that people are now allowed to do outside of the house.

Re: Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports

#68

Post by nicoburns » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 12:49 PM UTC

usr1106 wrote: post #43

Why would anybody turn on location history? (Serious question, I don't even have Google Play Services in my phone). 95 % users are known not to touch any settings. I guess Google has a trick to make more of them do it. Which one?

The maps app pops up a notification asking for the permission every time it opens.

Re: Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports

#69

Post by lihaciudaniel » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 12:52 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #54

bradfa wrote: post #46

I think that Google and Apple will be extremely helpful in the coming months, at least in the USA, for tracing the spread of COVID-19. Google and Apple know where probably 90+% of adults/teens in the USA are located in real time. If they are able to anonymously tell you that you were in the same building as someone who has tested positive for the virus then you could take extra precautions or further isolate yourself…

Having your medical records broadcasted to anyone nearby you, how could it go wrong?

Exactly this is creepy dystopian. And also think how much it tracks everything you do including opening apps and everything you search

Re: Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports

#70

Post by wbronitsky » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 1:09 PM UTC

drivingmenuts wrote: post #64

bradfa wrote: post #46

I think that Google and Apple will be extremely helpful in the coming months, at least in the USA, for tracing the spread of COVID-19. Google and Apple know where probably 90+% of adults/teens in the USA are located in real time. If they are able to anonymously tell you that you were in the same building as someone who has tested positive for the virus then you could take extra precautions or further isolate yourself…

I would prefer that they track only with permission of the tracked, but I realize that we are little better than tagged animals to them.

With Apple and Google they already have the permission of the tracked. It’s in the terms of service for your phone, or your phone’s OS, or any of the other vectors they control that you carry around with you all the time.