17-Year-Old Figures Out How To Put All The Data About Coronavirus Into One Website And Now Millions Are Using It

The spread of the new coronavirus around the world is bringing out the best in some people. 17-year-old high school senior Avi Schiffmann living in Washington state created a website to monitor the coronavirus, as well as to provide facts about the illness.

The teenager is incredibly dedicated to his project: he spends up to 6 hours each day to improve the website that has millions of views. Before the second version of his website went live, he spent the entire weekend in his room, working through the night and staying up until 7 AM.

Bored Panda spoke with The Doctors’ Association UK to learn more about the virus, how it spreads, and who is most vulnerable to the illness. Scroll down and read on for the informative interview.

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Avi, who goes to Mercer Island High School, launched his website in December 2019 and has been tinkering with it ever since. His website updates the number of people affected by the illness every 10 minutes by collecting and cross-referencing data from sources such as the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as local health departments.

“I thought it would be cool if there was a website that could pull in all the information from all kinds of sources," the teenager told TODAY. "I mainly wanted to create something that would show the data as accurately as possible because there has been a lot of misinformation."

He continued: I’m always adding new features. It’s going to adapt as it goes along. In the future, it might be less interesting to know there are five cases in France. We might be more interested in knowing the percentage increase from last week to this week.”

According to the teen, people send him messages if they spot anything inaccurate. “A while ago, there was a massive bug, where it doubled all the numbers of coronavirus cases. And I got hundreds of messages. But overall, I’ve done a good job of managing my server.”

He also included the numbers of people who’ve recovered from the coronavirus to show a more nuanced picture of the situation.

In an interview with Bored Panda, The Doctors’ Association UK provided us with relevant and up-to-date information about the coronavirus.

“A coronavirus is the name for a large group of viruses that can cause illness and COVID-19 is the most recently discovered type. It is contagious, which means it can be caught from other people infected with the virus,” the Association explained. “COVID-19 has spread quickly partly due to the fact that it spreads through droplets in the air, which are expelled when somebody coughs or exhales. Others breathe the droplets in or touch surfaces contaminated with them and then touch their own eyes, nose or mouth. It has therefore spread quickly and easily in places where people are in close contact with others.”

“We also live in a world where people travel often and quickly between countries and continents which further added to the speed at which it spread. Another factor is that it has only recently been discovered which means that it is unlikely that our bodies will have encountered the virus before and therefore will not have built an immune response to it already. We also do not currently have a vaccine for it although this is being developed.”

According to The Doctors’ Association UK, it’s incredibly difficult to predict the spread of the coronavirus. Especially when you consider the fact that it may develop new mutations and change. With regards to the UK, the Association said that the British government “has been taking the threat of COVID-19 seriously and developed some predictions and contingency plans as well as monitoring the number of cases and trying to track the sources of these. What could have been improved so far is communication and distribution of resources to frontline staff.”

“COVID-19 was newly discovered when it broke out in China, which means we knew very little about it until a couple of months ago. However new information is coming in all the time which helps to guide the measures we take to combat it. This makes it hard to compare to something like the flu which we know much more about and also have developed vaccines for as well as having people in the community who are immune to it already,” the Association told Bored Panda.

“For the majority of people, COVID-19 will cause mild symptoms with around 80% recovering without needing medical attention. However, for more vulnerable groups, for example, the elderly or those with underlying medical conditions, there is a higher chance of becoming seriously ill requiring treatment in hospital.”

The Doctors’ Association UK explained that learning more about the virus means that we can more accurately understand which techniques are the most effective in preventing how the illness spreads. “Therefore, it is vital that we listen to information from the World Health Organization and Public Health in this country. Currently, the best advice is vigilant hand washing and self-isolation when indicated. We have a collective responsibility to listen to the advice given to protect the most vulnerable in our society and ensure that the resources we have are used in the most effective way.”