Improve indicator of accuracy

[apiology]

how accurate do you think microCOVID is currently, with the (fairly subtle) helper text urging users to manually look up weekly new cases per 100k from covidactnow?

If folks think it's reasonably accurate, would it be possible to make that guidance more prominent (@jhwgh1968 's suggestion above - "remove the location-based prevalence data and force the user to enter it themselves before the other parts of the form show up" - would be best, but if we don't have the available skillsets for that, would be helpful to even just put the current text in red and also add a note in red above the November, 17, 2022 update towards the top of the page)?

If folks don't think it's accurate enough to do more good than harm, could we pursue @apiology 's suggestion above ("Mild frontend effort: Ordered shutdown of site with a note at top, disabling users from further use to avoid the hazard of using that stale data.") or if lacking resources for that, add a clear and prominent warning to that effect (perhaps red text in the updates section and under Step 1)?

There are local event venues in SF which are making decisions to loosen safety requirements citing microCOVID data as a source, which makes me think what we currently have in place is misleading. (I don't see a "bright data is stale" warning come up when I run an estimate, contrary to what @apiology mentioned in his "No effort" option #1 in the post at top.)

Unfortunately, I don't have the skills to write any code, but wanted to flag this in case anyone with the relevant skills has bandwidth to pursue some of the lower-effort options.

Originally posted by @sameerjain0123 in #1792 (reply in thread)

[zerotrickpony]

TLDR I still like / use / recommend this tool, because the relative risk research + math still seems sound to me. But mc.org is "garbage in garbage out", and reported case rates are often garbage. So yes I vote for more angry red text to warn that reported case rates are an increasingly poor starting point for estimating prevalence.

I'm not a scientist or anything, but I'm pretty convinced that daily case rates undercount factor continues to change, and is currently probably in the territory of 30X-50X and climbing (evidence available upon request). So I tell my friends and family to manually type in one of only 3 values in the "cases per 100k" box: 250, 500, or 1000, depending on whether their local sewer data shows a dip, a plateau, or a spike, respectively. (These translate roughly to 0.5%, 1%, or 2% true prevalence, which I believe closer to right based on data from prevalence studies with better methodology.) I might change this guidance in the future based on variants or waves so I wouldn't be comfortable hard-coding these guesses permanently into the tool.

If public policy or event policy is being set based on garbage in, then I guess I have to agree that it's a harm in locales where test reporting has fallen off.

[apiology]

There's a few intertwined ideas in the above and a few potential approaches to address them, but know that contributors are considering them in the time they can offer. Thanks for speaking up, @sameerjain0123 and @zerotrickpony!

[sameerjain0123]

Glad to hear, thank you!

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On Sat, Apr 1, 2023 at 6:09 AM Vince Broz ***@***.***> wrote: There's a few intertwined ideas in the above and a few potential approaches to address them, but know that contributors are considering them in the time they can offer. Thanks for speaking up, @sameerjain0123 <https://github.com/sameerjain0123> and @zerotrickpony <https://github.com/zerotrickpony>! — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1835 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AVPHVOYBPTFTFM427RNDX2DW7ASI5ANCNFSM6AAAAAAWNFB6TM> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>