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posted by martyb on Sunday July 05 2020, @02:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the Panopticon,⠀M.D. dept.

How Infrared Images Could Be Part of Your Daily Life:

A fever is one indicator that someone may be exhibiting coronavirus symptoms, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends temperature screenings in a variety of environments, including schools and businesses.

[...] When the pandemic took hold, I started seeing more and more companies like Amazon using this technology to help identify sick people in their warehouses. Thermal imaging cameras are beginning to appear in Subway restaurants. Carnival Cruise Lines, whose ships became hot spots for the virus’s spread, said all passengers and crew would be screened when it began sailing again.

The rapid adoption of infrared technology had me wondering how helpful it could be. Several systems are being rolled out, including camera-based ones and others that make people walk through thresholds like metal detectors. Could they actually help contain the spread of the virus while we wait for a vaccine?

A Harris Poll conducted in late March, just after the majority of the shelter measures went into place across the United States, found that 84 percent of respondents favored mandatory health screenings to enter public places.

[...] The growing use of the technology has raised privacy and other concerns.

Civil liberties experts have warned about data being collected on employees and used without their permission. Democratic and Republican lawmakers have proposed bills to help protect people’s information and privacy as data like temperature readings is collected, but the legislation has so far stalled in Congress.

“The road to hell is paved in good intentions, and the mass rollout of cameras should be seen for what it is: the mass rollout and further normalization of cameras,” said Ed Geraghty, a technologist at Privacy International, a British nongovernmental organization focused on privacy rights.

“We already see police repurposing streetlight cameras, put in place to monitor traffic and environmental data, in order to form criminal cases against those accused of vandalism — it would be naïve to believe the same will not be the case with these cameras,” he added.

All of this being said, could this technology work if used correctly? Yes. Is it better than nothing? It depends who you ask. But while we wait for a vaccine to be made, many see the benefits.

But will throwing infrared cameras up all over society make us safer from the virus? How might a grade school student react to seeing a classmate set off an infrared-based alarm walking into school? Will the time it takes to screen everyone trying to get into a building create problems for schools or offices? These are important questions that we will face in a post-quarantine world.


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  • (Score: 1) by Zinnia Zirconium on Sunday July 05 2020, @06:48PM (1 child)

    by Zinnia Zirconium (11163) on Sunday July 05 2020, @06:48PM (#1016576) Homepage Journal

    I've been calling it chroma virus for fun but yeah if you catch chroma virus you do turn bright infrared don't ya.

    Augmented reality goggles to show virus spreaders in neon pink might be a nice accessory.

    Honestly I expect all the peeps who wear masks around their necks instead of on their face are infected.

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday July 05 2020, @09:18PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Sunday July 05 2020, @09:18PM (#1016654) Journal

    No. I know you were only expostulating, but most people of (nearly) whatever source haven't been exposed to COVID. The exception that occurs to me is health care workers...and it's probably true for them too, for certain meanings of exposed.

    COVID doesn't seem to be exceptionally capable of infecting people who actually encounter it. It's just that many find it deadly or debilitating (perhaps permanently). My guess is that it usually depends on a sufficiently small particle (possibly aerosol) getting deep into the lungs. Don't that that too seriously, but it would account for most of the cases I have enough info on to have an opinion about. So just touching someone that has COVID, or bumping into them in an elevator wouldn't suffice, you need to breathe in a piece of air they've breathed out. But that "piece of air" can float a fairly long distance. 6 feet is not the limit, but there's a sort of inverse of the distance effect, and 6 feet is usually enough. Depending on air flows...so you can't really measure the effect in distance, that's just usually a reasonable proxy. If my guess is correct, essentially all COVID transmission is actually aerosol transmission. It's just that particles of spit, etc., are always accompanied by the aerosol, so their presence is another good proxy, i.e., if they're present, so are the infective particles. And beyond their reach the diffusion of the particles is so great that you're less likely to breathe them in. Some people have claimed that you could probably eat COVID viruses safely...but I haven't heard of anyone doing the experiment.

    So. People who wear their masks around their necks are more likely to transmit COVID if they have it, but I know of no basis for claiming that they are more likely to have it to transmit....unless you mean because their friends probably have the same habit, or some associated reason.

    Caution: I am not a medic of any flavor. This is just my conclusions and hypotheses derived from much casual reading.

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