ZOE Health Study 12+

This app took 5 minutes to make my profile, and 2-3 minutes at most a day at MOST to record my symptoms. If all neighbors used this, we’d have an easy way to identify the number of people coming down with symptoms that may or may not be Covid I leave that for the scientific people to evaluate. What’s helpful to us as a community is if we’re seeing a spread within the community that we might not be talks to each other about, or perhaps we live far enough away we’ve never met, this app can identify areas of concern where Covid infections might be rising and identify it for us before it grows out of control. I’m using this bks I know there are many dedicated professionals trying many different ways to slow the spread of this virus and this makes sense to me. I’ll try anything thrown at me to help myself my family my friends and neighbors through this as safely as possible. The more people to download and use this app, the more helpful it is to those trying to identify future “hotspots “ before they become hotspots. Please take a few minutes of your day and use. It could save you or a loved one by early identification of the virus in your community. Thanks and stay healthy everyone!

I think many are able to understand physical ways to give back that assist the medical sciences. We applaud those who donate plasma, organs, bone marrow, and blood. We may even understand the concept of being in a drug trial or donating our antibodies for research.

However, my own personal experience trying to share this app with my community is that they did not have the same level of competency and preparedness to understand the value of social inquiry to the medical field. Some folks I asked to participate responded with fear the app could record their personal lives or track their whereabouts. Advocating for use of this app was an eye opening experience for me as someone with a graduate degree from a social research institution of how far we need to go in bringing the public into competency with social research methods.

I would not have downloaded this app and would not be participating if the researchers were not vetted, the methods were unsound, or the institutions were not reputable. If that means anything to anyone, I hope it encourages you to please voluntarily participate with the scientific community to help figure this virus out faster than it figures us out. Thank you to those donating their time and symptom feedback for this important work.

The app is super easy to use but I think it needs to include additional dataset requests. Given the rate of new cases, adding datasets for testing availability, known incidents of exposure including where that exposure occurred ( work, church, school etc), and what protective measures were being utilized when the exposure occurred (ie mask, social distancing, hand sanitizer, vaccination without any additional measures etc). The only truly accurate way to disseminate false information regarding this virus is through data collection from individual personal experience. Have you lost a friend or family member to Covid/Covid complications, have you had a family member or friend test positive?
In the area we live doctors and nurses aren’t reporting information accurately due to personal and political biases. I’ve been told by countless people that their doctors & healthcare professionals have told them not to get vaccinated, that this isn’t that big of a deal, etc and I experienced the same commentary from emergency room staff in two separate facilities in two separate states , both small town hospitals in dominant politically conservative areas, even though their hospitals are at or over capacity with Covid patients who are critically ill. The line between political beliefs and scientific evidence skewed to support the political belief over scientific evidence to the contrary.