Linked List: April 26, 2020

Sunday, 26 April 2020

A Message From Dr. Anthony Fauci 

“‘Relatively soon’ is an interesting phrase.”

Visualizing Apple’s COVID Mobility Data 

Kieran Healy:

Apple recently released a batch of mobility data in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. The data is aggregated from requests for directions in Apple Maps and is provided at the level of whole countries and also for a selection of large cities around the world. I folded the dataset into the covdata package for R that I’ve been updating, as I plan to use it this Fall in a course I’ll be teaching. Here I’ll take a quick look at some of the data. Along the way — as it turns out — I end up reminding myself of a lesson I’ve learned before about making sure you understand your measure before you think you understand what it is showing.

Healy recently published Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction, one of my favorite books from last year.

When Should You Wear a Mask in Public? 

Katie Notopoulos, writing BuzzFeed’s How To Plague advice column:

A good way to gauge the amount of distance where it’s OK to dangle your mask around your neck or off one ear is to imagine your mouth is your asshole. If you were completely alone, it would be fine to let your nude tushy hang out, but you’d want to pull on your pants as soon as you saw anyone coming, even from 100 feet away. Basically, if someone can see you, mask up.

Privacy Tweaks in Version 1.1 of Apple and Google COVID-19 Exposure Notification Spec 

Joe Rossignol, reporting for MacRumors:

Apple and Google are now referring to “contact tracing” as “exposure notification,” which the companies believe better describes the functionality of their upcoming API. The system is intended to notify a person of potential exposure, augmenting broader contact tracing efforts that public health authorities are undertaking.

A name is just a name, but names matter, and I think “exposure notification” is clearly a more accurate name for what this joint effort is enabling. This system can be a tool for governments conducting contact tracing, but it is not contact tracing in and of itself.

Reuters: ‘Germany Flips to Apple-Google Approach on Smartphone Contact Tracing’ 

Douglas Busvine and Andreas Rinke, reporting for Reuters:

Germany changed course on Sunday over which type of smartphone technology it wanted to use to trace coronavirus infections, backing an approach supported by Apple and Google along with a growing number of other European countries. […]

Chancellery Minister Helge Braun and Health Minister Jens Spahn said in a joint statement that Berlin would adopt a “decentralised” approach to digital contact tracing, thus abandoning a home-grown alternative that would have given health authorities central control over tracing data.