Just so people have the early timeline and other facts so far:
- The first patient that needed hospital care in Wuhan was Dec. 6, indicating infection around Dec. 1. (See timeline link below.) I suspect this started earlier in November, but the majority of Covid-19 cases don't involve the lungs. [0]
- a powerful unknown flu (same symptoms as Covid-19) was circulating in mid-Dec. throughout SE Asia. I was in Shanghai and aware of this around Dec. 15. I still don't know who I would contact if I had that kind of information next time.
(I'm American, so that makes me one of the very first Americans to know about this.)
- Bluedot parsed Chinese newspaper account and communicated around Dec. 30
- one Youtube documentary says there's 2 virus labs in Wuhan, with one focusing on bats, FWIW.
- Wuhan International Airport is a 2 hour flight from Shanghai Pudong International Airport. The latter is a major international hub, #8 in the world by passenger volume.
It looks like BlueDot just scans news reports, so is not a primary source. I read the article/press release and didn't learn anything new aside from the Top Corona Cities paragraph, all linked by airports.
What's interesting is that both BlueDot's Khan and myself followed Toronto SARS-1 in 2002/2003, and that experience motivated each of us to investigate SARS-2 very early. That should be a lesson for policymakers - staff with experienced people who've seen it before.
Regardless of whether this is really AI or not, had it told the right people quicker, that would be valuable since obviously there was a serious communications problem here, and an on-going problem for the Chinese government if the virus labs are involved.
So the AI is not predicting new events, but summarizing and communicating events of interest.
I think it would be worthwhile for somebody else to treat the BlueDot article/press release as raw material for more analysis. I have a feeling there is valuable information in it that needs more massaging, after discarding the PR component.
To some extent, what BlueDot is doing is what:
- people have used Google search or trending for
- US police fusion labs were doing with Twitter and Facebook API access, before those were reported to "have been turned off."
Just so people have the early timeline and other facts so far:
- The first patient that needed hospital care in Wuhan was Dec. 6, indicating infection around Dec. 1. (See timeline link below.) I suspect this started earlier in November, but the majority of Covid-19 cases don't involve the lungs. [0]
- a powerful unknown flu (same symptoms as Covid-19) was circulating in mid-Dec. throughout SE Asia. I was in Shanghai and aware of this around Dec. 15. I still don't know who I would contact if I had that kind of information next time.
(I'm American, so that makes me one of the very first Americans to know about this.)
- Bluedot parsed Chinese newspaper account and communicated around Dec. 30
- China informed WHO around Dec. 31
https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unk...
- one Youtube documentary says there's 2 virus labs in Wuhan, with one focusing on bats, FWIW.
- Wuhan International Airport is a 2 hour flight from Shanghai Pudong International Airport. The latter is a major international hub, #8 in the world by passenger volume.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_airports_by_pa...
It looks like BlueDot just scans news reports, so is not a primary source. I read the article/press release and didn't learn anything new aside from the Top Corona Cities paragraph, all linked by airports.
What's interesting is that both BlueDot's Khan and myself followed Toronto SARS-1 in 2002/2003, and that experience motivated each of us to investigate SARS-2 very early. That should be a lesson for policymakers - staff with experienced people who've seen it before.
Regardless of whether this is really AI or not, had it told the right people quicker, that would be valuable since obviously there was a serious communications problem here, and an on-going problem for the Chinese government if the virus labs are involved.
So the AI is not predicting new events, but summarizing and communicating events of interest.
I think it would be worthwhile for somebody else to treat the BlueDot article/press release as raw material for more analysis. I have a feeling there is valuable information in it that needs more massaging, after discarding the PR component.
To some extent, what BlueDot is doing is what:
- people have used Google search or trending for
- US police fusion labs were doing with Twitter and Facebook API access, before those were reported to "have been turned off."
[0] Covid-19 Timeline (Starting Dec. 1, 2019)
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/chinas-devas...