If you have an opportunity, watch the Rachel Maddow show from 3/18. They talk about this in depth. Kinsa has been selling a digital thermometer for a while. As

If you have an opportunity, watch the Rachel Maddow show from 3/18. They talk about this in depth. Kinsa has been selling a digital thermometer for a while. As part of the device, it uploads readings to both your phone and then sends the data back to Kinsa. Based on their reporting (part of what you're seeing visualized on this map), they have been able to see trending signs of flu outbreaks for a while up to 2 weeks before the CDC issues its reports. The key difference is that the CDC relies on hospitals compiling reports and sending them in, where Kinsa gets the data directly. This causes a delay of up to 2 weeks in the CDC reports. Where this ties in with covid-19 is that in the last few months, when they layer recent data over historical data from the last few years, they see an atypical increase in fevers being reported. This can be seen in the graph where the expected trend is going down, but they're now seeing abnormal increases since February. From the news report, Kinsa is selling thousands of thermometers per day right now and is running into manufacturing issues. Another point that gets mentioned in the report is that Kinsa has tried offering their data to the CDC before but due to CDC policy, they (CDC) require taking ownership of the data in order to accept it. I'm honestly very uninformed about this part so expect some inaccuracy in what I'm saying. If someone who has more details could reply to this comment, I think that would be very helpful to know. On the positive side, the Bay Area isn't looking bad at the moment. On the negative side, all of my family is in Florida and I wasn't aware until just now that it was getting that bad state wide.