People worldwide can now estimate their personal risk of contracting and becoming critically ill from coronavirus using the
covid19riskcalculator.com
Created by a health education entrepreneur and contributed to by public health experts, the impetus for developing this resource was hearing about the beach goers over spring break, and many others like them around the world, defying NHS, CDC and WHO social distancing guidelines. The covid19riskcalculator.com mission is to help people better understand the precautionary measures being put into place by quantifying risk and, subsequently, encouraging better adherence by citizens to official recommendations.
This simple free tool is not designed to cause additional alarm in an already frightening situation. Its aim is threefold: to clarify risk more clearly for individuals who are not taking the pandemic seriously at this juncture, to encourage people to adjust their behaviours before it’s too late, and to share expert information about pandemic safety.
Users are asked to enter simple answers to multiple-choice questions such as their age, geographic region, lifestyle habits, and health (no personal information is collected other than an email address). The calculator takes this information and provides a percentage likelihood of the user to contract Covid-19 and their fatality risk in that occurrence. Even if younger people assume the risk stats shared by the calculator are reasonable for themselves, by entering information for their parents and grandparents, perhaps perspectives and choices will shift.
The calculator provides estimates based on the current stats available. For example, reported data to date indicates that people with heart disease have an increased fatality risk of approximately 10% with coronavirus, people with diabetes have an increased fatality risk of approximately 7.3%, etc. As new data becomes available, the calculator will be reprogrammed accordingly.
However, the purpose of this tool is not exactitude — as information adjusts daily — nor does the Covid-19 Risk Calculator replace advice from medical experts. Rather, its purpose is to use best estimates to quantify the danger coronavirus poses to public health while simultaneously empowering people to see how individual disciplines such as social distancing and hand washing can make a very real, very positive difference during this crisis.
Some medical experts are already praising the impact the calculator can have on shifting public behaviours:
“I had the opportunity to preview the Covid-19 Risk Calculator. It utilises current known co-morbid medical factors to give an estimate of risk. As a physician I think it educates the public as to the correlation between their behaviours/medical issues and public health outcomes. In this time of high mortality due to the Covid-19 pandemic, social distancing is a must to reduce overwhelming our hospital systems.” – Kecia Gaither MD MPH FACOG, Director, Perinatal Services, NYC Health + Hospitals/Lincoln
www.keciagaither.comIt’s going to take getting everyone on the same page to flatten the curve as quickly as possible and save lives.
