I'm one of the guys who made the website, and I thought a lot about these things too. You have good concerns. My group talked to doctors and epidemiologists before starting this project and we proceeded with these thoughts in mind.
If it were actually possible to go to your doctor or get tested for COVID-19, I would agree that this is not the best way to collect medical information. The reality is we don't have that fortune right now, and this is the best fallback we can propose.
If you have specific criticism that we can take to improve the form, I'd be happy to implement it.
We're biased towards action, not sitting on our hands.
We might. There's some worry that e.g. showing a heat map of the data might be alarming, so we're trying to figure out where the balance is between transparency and cautiousness.
Yes, we get trend info. We're storing a cookie in your browser with a UUID that is associated to your temperature reading. If you submit temperatures for multiple people in your household, they all get that UUID, which we assume to be a household identifier.
Carson here, site developer. Thank you for the positive response so far, but also feel free to leave us constructive criticism. If you want to contribute to this effort, the GitHub is https://github.com/carsonbaker/takeyourtemp. We're working on it with frenetic energy.
If it were actually possible to go to your doctor or get tested for COVID-19, I would agree that this is not the best way to collect medical information. The reality is we don't have that fortune right now, and this is the best fallback we can propose.
If you have specific criticism that we can take to improve the form, I'd be happy to implement it.
We're biased towards action, not sitting on our hands.
Thank you, James.