Jump to: General | Activity Modeling | Custom Person Modeling | Risk Budget

General Risk Tracker FAQ

The points for an activity I entered recently just changed... What happened? (Automatic Location Data Imports)

By default, the Risk Tracker automatically imports the latest data for each of the locations you’ve selected in the Locations sheet. We update the prevalence data every few days, which may cause an activity you’ve already entered to change points.

Note: We adjust activities before the date of the last import to match the prevalence that has been observed, and activities after the date of the last import to account for a ”delay factor” if COVID prevalence is increasing in your area. Because of this, it’s possible to enter the exact same activity on two different dates and see slightly different microCOVID scores.

What do all the colors mean?

Colors	What they indicate
Black text, white background	Something you can fill in or edit.
Gray text, white background	Contains a formula. Editing a formula may break the spreadsheet.
Gray text, gray background, strikethrough	An activity row that is older than the max days (7 or 9) and is no longer counted toward your total.
Gray sections	A setting that you can adjust if you’d like to.
Teal & purple sections	Summary sections that give you an overview of your statistics. Contains formulas. Editing a formula may break the spreadsheet.

Activity Modeling

How do the different precautions affect the risk score?

For the purposes of calculating the microCOVID risk score for an activity, we assume a default activity is indoors, no mask, 3 feet (1 meter) apart, normal talking volume. Any variation from that decreases/increases the risk. You can read the explanation behind each of these modifiers here and the in-depth research here.

Risk modifiers to me

Type of precaution	Risk modifier TO ME
Location	🏠 Indoors: Baseline 🌲 Outdoors: x1/20 ✨ Indoors with a HEPA filter (flow rate 5x room size): x1/4 🚂 A train with air filtration: x1/4 ✈️ An airplane: x1/4 🚙 A moving car with the windows rolled down: x1/4 🌞 A space with one or more sides open to the outdoors: x1/4
Mask I am wearing	💨 No mask: Baseline 😷 My cotton mask (thick, secure): x2/3 ⚕️ My surgical mask: x1/2 ⚕️ My mask w/ PM2.5 filter insert: x1/2 ⚔️ My KN95: x1/3 ⚔️ My N95 (fits, but you're NOT sure it is sealed): x1/3 🛡️ My N95 (airtight seal): x1/8 ⚔️ My 🔒 P100 respirator (NIOSH-certified reusable, with covered outflow valve): x1/20 Read more about masks on our blog
Mask they are wearing	💨 No mask: Baseline 😷 Their cotton mask: x1/3 ⚕️ Their surgical mask: x1/4 ⚕️ Their mask w/ PM2.5 filter insert: x1/4 ⚔️ Their KN95: x1/6 ⚔️ Their N95 (fits, but you're NOT sure it is sealed): x1/6 🛡️ Their N95 (airtight seal): x1/16 ⚔️ Their 🔒 P100 respirator (NIOSH-certified reusable, with covered outflow valve): x1/3 Read more about masks on our blog
Distance	☕ 3 feet (1 meter): Baseline ↔️ 6+ feet (2+ meters): x1/2 🏈 10+ feet (3+ meters): x1/4 ❤️ 0 feet: x2
Volume	💬 Normal volume: Baseline 🤐 Silent: x1/5 ❗ Loud / Singing: x5
Symptoms	❓ Didn’t ask before: Baseline ✅ Ask about symptoms before: x3/6

Risk modifiers to podmates

Modification	Less risk TO PODMATES
Symptoms reporting	❓ No reporting: Baseline 📞 Contact promises to report symptoms in the 10 days after your interaction: x1/2

Specific activities Q&A: friend using our bathroom, cuddling/kissing/hugging, taking a Lyft, public transit, flight in an airplane, stores & haircuts, protests.

How do I insert new rows into the Activity Log?

Because everyone is using the _ Pod Activity Log_, you will eventually run out of space need to enter activities.

Here is a video that demonstrates how to do so:

🎥 Watch video →

You can follow these same steps to insert rows on the Pod Activity Log sheet and the Custom People sheet. If you do not follow these steps, the calculations won’t work for the new rows you added.

How do I log interacting with multiple different people over a period of time? (Example: an outdoor party)

If some people are circulating, you only need to account for the people who are near you.

Some examples:

• if you are at a backyard party where you are usually near 5 people at any given time, but the specific people change as you mingle, that is still just 5 nearby people on average.
• If you see 5 different co-workers outdoors for brief interactions throughout the day, and you are near each person for 10 minutes at a time, you can either log that as “5 people for 10 minutes” or “1 person for 50 minutes.”
• If you’re in a store, you want to model the number of people who are 3+ feet (1+ meters), 6+ feet (2+ meters) and 10-15 feet (3-4 meters) away from you on average. You can use the tool in the Utilities sheet to help you convert those 3 distances to a total number of people who are 6 feet away.

When the people you’re seeing all have the same risk profile, with the same precautions, you can enter them all as one "Custom Person" because they function together as a unit. If you're seeing people at different times or for different lengths of time each, you'll need to model them as separate Custom Person sections.

Custom Person Modeling

If I am seeing a house of multiple people at once, do I need to create a custom person row for each of them?

If you are seeing them all at once, you can model all their activities as if they are one “person” under a single person section.

If you are only seeing one person in the household, it is more accurate to model that person and list the interactions they have with their housemates/podmates.

What if I don’t want to keep updating the Custom Person activity log every time I see the person?

If you’d rather overestimate your points and not need to do as much up-keep on the Risk Tracker, you could do the following: Model the person and overestimate each of their activities. For example, on any given week they spend anywhere from 1-5 hours of social time with a single friend at a time. You could just model it as 5 hours of time and not worry about updating it each time.

Note: Then you could work out an agreement with the person to notify you if their activities go beyond the range that you’ve modeled (for example: if they take a flight). It is very important that you trust that they will report any changes, since one risky activity on their part could make a huge difference in your budget. We also suggest proactively asking your contacts if they’ve had any additional activities.

What if I am seeing someone who is using microCOVID to track their risk?

Option A: You can select a built-in category like “1% risk per year adherent (using microCOVID).”

Option B: to be even more precise, you can do the following:

1. Ask them what their current microCOVID score is. If they are using the Risk Tracker, they can find this number in the Pod Overview sheet on the “Risk to other people you see outside of the house” row under the column for their name.
2. Enter their name and their score on your Risk Tracker in the INTERNAL_PERSON sheet under the “Manual Entries” section.

Risk Budget

What’s the difference between “risk to me” and “risk to pod”?

The Risk Tracker is designed to ensure that you are only exposing your podmates to the budget you have specified. Certain features allow you to take on more risk but reduce the risk you pose to your podmates.

One main place this occurs is with the “contact will report symptoms” checkbox, which reduces the risk to the pod by 50%.

For example, If you log an activity that is 300 points, and the person you’re seeing agrees to report symptoms, you still incur all 300 points as a risk to yourself. However you are only exposing your pod to 150 points, since you would quarantine after the person notified you about symptoms, and you would have spent less potentially-contagious time around your podmates.

How do I know the risk I pose to other people outside my pod?

On the Pod Overview sheet, there is a section (in pink) called "Other Pod Stats." The row titled "Your risk to other people you see outside of the house/pod" contains your current risk score to other people outside the pod.

While your "risk to pod" is calculated over the last 0-7 days to make budgeting easy, your actually current risk to other people includes any activities in the 2-23 days and includes the risk your podmates pose to you.

Assuming you currently have no symptoms, your activities over the last 2-23 days "decay" over time, meaning they are contribute fewer and fewer points toward your total (compares to how much they originally cost). That's because the longer you go without showing symptoms from that activity, the less likely you are to have contracted a case of COVID.

Can I “save up” my points and use them later? Do points “roll over”?

Though you could track your budget along any time frame you want (weekly budget, monthly budget, etc), the Risk Tracker is built to consider a weekly budget timeframe.

If you want to “save up” points and use more in a future week, it’s possible to do so and still hold true to the "X% risk of getting per year" budget you've chosen. However, if you have others in your pod, you’ll be temporarily increasing the risk they pose to the people they see beyond the usual amount. For example, if you go 2 months without using any points, you could use them all in one week, which might put you at, say, 1,000 microCOVIDs. Your podmates are being exposed to 30% of that risk, which in this example would be 300 microCOVIDs. If one of them is going to see a loved one for a few days who is more vulnerable to COVID (and only has a budget of 20 microCOVIDs), your activities make it difficult for them to do so safely. It’s important to discuss this situation as a pod and come to agreements about how you’d like to handle situations like this.

One way some pods have addressed this is by allowing you to “save up” your points over time, and set a max on how many you can use in a given week (for example, your pod might agree that any person can use up to 2x your weekly budget in a given week as long as it still fits within their overall annual total.)

The Risk Tracker is not currently built to assist you with calculating your annual total points used and points remaining. You’re welcome to adapt it to that situation.

What’s up with the 0-7 day range and 2-9 day range? What are they for? Why the difference?

You may notice that the Pod Activity Log sheet calculates your risk in the last 0-7 days. This is because a 0-7 day range is easiest to work with for the purposes of helping you stay within your budget.

A 2-9 day range is when you would most likely be contagious to others if you were exposed (or when they are most likely contagious to you). In the Custom People sheet, we total the activities in the last 2-9 days because activities in the last 0-1 days wouldn’t yet present a significant risk of transmission to you.

A note here: We use a 2-9 day range because it is convenient for working with a weekly budget. This is fine when working with lower microCOVID values. But when working with higher risk scenarios (100x or more over your weekly budget), a 21-day range without symptoms would be important to ensure full safety. Higher risk activities to think about might include: flights, parties/bars, or contact with someone who has COVID. If you want to include a higher risk activity in the Custom Person model, the easiest way is to just not put a date next to the activity when you enter it, and then remove it after day 21.