How do they determine how many folks get the flu each year if most just wait it out at home and never tell their health care provider? Wonder if there would be value in an on-line "risk assessment tool?" Go to the CDC website and fill out a questionnaire if you have symptoms which then would categorize them as just the common cold, maybe stomach or respiratory flu or possibly COVID-19. Would include questions of recent travel, contact with sick people, extent of social distancing and so on. You would do a series of yes-no questions on symptoms including your temperature. You would give risk factors such as age, location, underlying illnesses. It would return a qualified opinion, maybe with a percentage, of your likelihood of having a suspected condition as well as whether it warrants a doctor visit, trip to the ER or getting a test for COVID-19.

This would give them a huge database to analyze.

This concept could be taken to the extreme and be used to screen for most any disease, particularly those with a rare combination of symptoms. Just a thought. Too many of those as we sit in semi-quarantine with both of us hacking and in the high risk group.

I went to five stores yesterday just to find a thermometer. Found the last one at a CVS, reason it was the last one is that it was the $50 Exergen Temporal scanner. No toilet paper to be found, we are down to 2 rolls. Good news is that I got out into the Gulf fishing yesterday with my BIL, got to soak up some vitamin D. No luck on keeper size fish though. But we went out last Friday in Tampa Bay and I landed a big 5# 10 oz sheepshead though!