Apple and Google, bitter rivals in a more normal time, have come together to develop technology that could help track the spread of COVID-19. The technology, which will hopefully be released to the public in May, would have people who test positive anonymously input their result into an app, and eventually, users of the app who had been in contact with this person would be alerted. It seems that there are still some details to be hammered out. President Trump said that the technology is “very interesting but a lot of people worry about it in terms of a person’s freedom” and went on to say that “We’re going to take a look at that.”
This technology is particularly innovative and revolutionary because as far as I know, the world has never seen such a service that can track a virus electronically. While there have been some positive signs in the past few days, the world, along with us, are still struggling to track and slow COVID-19. I think that if this type of technology can become widespread, it can have two extremely positive effects. First, it should help us track how the virus moves so we can better contain it and more effectively quarantine those infected or exposed. Secondly, and in my opinion most intriguing, could this technology give an individual “all clear” for healthy and non exposed people to return to normal life? What if we had something on our phones that indicated that we are free of COVID-19 exposure that allows those to resume things that we enjoy such as sports, restaurants, and public parks? Over time, as people who are infected are cleared of the virus, they too would rejoin society and soon life would be back to normal. There is no indication that this technology would be utilized in this fashion, so it is just a thought on my part. I think we all want our country and the economy to open back up as soon as possible and I think this technology could be critical in doing just that.
SOURCE: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/tech/apple-google-contact-tracing-technology/index.html
In my opinion, technology will play an immensely crucial role to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. Many technological firms and researchers are coming up with solutions to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. An interesting article I came across, comprised of the development of a mathematical model which can effectively track pandemics. The model was created by researchers at Princeton and Carnegie Mellon universities. While the Apple-Google collaboration model focuses on the creation an app and using its data, the stated model tracks the flow of information across various social media platforms. In particular, the model analyzes changes in the rate of transmission of circulating information. I believe, through this information analysis, the spread of the virus can be tracked, certain areas can be prioritized over others, and timely countermeasures can be implemented. The model uses a similar approach based on information theory which resulted in the creation of cellular networks. The model is currently in effect now and has been adopted by multiple firms, to slow down the effects of this pandemic. I look forward to a continuous improvisation of this model, so that the spread of the virus can be controlled as soon as possible, as I think it is the need of the hour.
Rashad Eletreby, Yong Zhuang, Kathleen M. Carley, Osman Yağan, H. Vincent Poor. The effects of evolutionary adaptations on spreading processes in complex networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020; 117 (11): 5664 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1918529117