ZOE Health Study

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.

First, I’m glad there is an app developed for tracking & research of COVID-19. It was simple to set up an account & allowed me to also add a profile for my 90 year old mother. I found the process easy to log in daily with my symptoms (feeling well thankfully at this point). I DO recommend people sign up as it could be helpful in understanding more about the disease & how it spreads. However, they are missing some questions/info that I feel should be asked & included: 1) It should be tracking your potential exposure by monitoring what you’ve been doing/ where you’ve been (I.e., at home, getting outside/exercising, shopping, visiting friends/family, going to work, social distancing or gathering in groups, etc), 2) include symptoms such as lower grade fever and loss of taste & smell 2) asking more specifically when/where you traveled 3)city/county where you live 4) whether you’ve been wearing mask while shopping/going out in public 5) if you do suspect you have COVID-19, have you consulted with a doctor or self-quarantined. Overall, it’s simple & may provide some useful data and worth participating.

I was watching the news and caught a quick glimpse of this app after a doctor from Mass General Hospital was being interviewed and I quickly went online and downloaded it and started self reporting my symptoms while on a 14 day self quarantine just having returned from A week vacation in London. The Imperial College of London was also working on this tracking app so I really thought it was good to join in! (Seeing as. Probably caught it in London) The app helped me feel more secure about what symptoms are common or some even uncommon associated with the COVID 19. I did report a fair number or them and am now feeling as if I have recovered at home so I thank the researchers for allowing us regular folks to share and self monitor ourselves so that during this time alone I did not necessarily feel completely separate and apart from the rest of the human race and even felt good about having been able to lend a hand and play a bit part in helping those much smarter than me to get a little closer to understanding and ultimately solving this global problem.

There is no way that I can tell to report a problem with the app so I am reporting it here in reviews! Neither on my IPhone or my iPad can I easily put in the date of my COVID text. The date scroll only shows June through December when you are on 2020 (and it does not actually show 2020 - you have to assume it is in the slot before 2021 but it does not show up. Also no actual numbers for dates show up either so you have to scroll through and by trial and error do it several times until you get it right. The first time it asked me the date I gave up after trying several times figuring I would email about the problem but looking all through the app, (and even on the app support tab on the App Store, there is still no way to send an email. So I hope someone sees this and fixes it. I think the app is a great idea and I really agree with the idea behind it but it does need to work in order to get accurate data.

Even if you healthy please do this app I live in a huge apartment complex in which a man died five day’s before the first official COVID-19 fatality for our county. He wasn’t tested at hospital because hadn’t been out of the country in years, he went in with chest pains & 104 temperature on a Saturday and died on a Monday. His widow shared the horrific details with me on the Wednesday and we hugged etc. Within 8 days I developed symptoms but couldn’t and still can’t get a test. 3 weeks later I find this app and I am grateful that data is being collected without bias of location, age, travel history, insurance etc. I believe the biggest exposure and spread of CoViD19 happened a week before my neighbor died when 20,000 people attended Kobe Bryant’s memorial service, they wiped eyes and noses without social distancing for 2 hours in LA Staple Center then majority rode metro & rideshares Uber / lyft after the event. If anyone who was at the memorial service is contemplating getting this app please please please do the inquiry