Three Different Things: March 31, 2020
Three Different Things: March 31, 2020

Fever Maps, Who’s Growing During the Coronavirus Crisis?, and What the Left and the Right Get Wrong About the Crisis

Kinsa’s Fever Map

The company, Kinsa Health, which produces internet-connected thermometers, first created a national map of fever levels on March 22 and was able to spot the trend within a day. Since then, data from the health departments of New York State and Washington State have buttressed the finding, making it clear that social distancing is saving lives.

Take a look at the fever map — it shows atypical fever levels in the US by county. Pretty impressive application — and a reason why health-related IoT will be a winner from this.

2. Who’s Growing During the Coronavirus Crisis? Pizza Chains

(Domino’s) has rejected third-party delivery providers in favor of a fortressing strategy. The brand clusters markets to reduce delivery radiuses and delivery times, improve the wage rate equation for drivers and franchisees, and bolster carryout business and service times.

Will this end up the right strategy? I think about how Uber improved the taxi experience with free water and snacks. A third-party provider could be the catalyst to improve the delivery experience.

3. What both the left and the right get wrong about the coronavirus economic crisis

It’s on the fiscal policy side where I think we are at risk of running in the wrong direction, because the real economic measures that we’re adopting are completely unprecedented. To think about what we need as a kind of wartime mobilization seems to me to miss the point completely. This is a much more peculiar task than that. The job is maintaining the economy on life support during a period of an artificially induced coma while we address the public health challenge.

So maybe the message shouldn’t be so much “go back to work,” but “here’s how we’ll help you to work during this crisis.”
["Sean O'Brien"]
['Economics', 'Business', 'Data Visualization']