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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.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday July 05 2020, @08:17PM (1 child)
There's not a lot that prevents the spread of this virus.
But there's lots that reduces the spread. We should be using as many of these reduction tactics as are practical.
Fever detection will reduce the spread, even if it doesn't prevent it.
-- hendrik
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Sunday July 05 2020, @08:52PM
FWIW, one of the better measures would be to create vertical air flows within indoor places. That would be expensive to implement, but possibly less expensive than the results of extended lockdown. And it could REDUCE (NOT eliminate) the amount of social distancing needed. How effective this would be is partially determined by the amount of aerosol transmission happening, which is being argued about, but it would also be effective on particle transmission, though less so. What it wouldn't affect is contact based transmission, but that's considered to be much less frequent. (Not hugely less frequent, but much less. More exact numbers don't seem to be available.)
This is the major reason outdoors is generally a lot safer than indoor. UV plays a smaller role, and that could be added indoors, also. (There appears to be a specific band of UV that's effective, and that won't penetrate skin or tears, so I assume it's blocked by water. But it's safe to use where people are present at effective dosages. OTOH, I haven't seen that report followed up on.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.