@slomobile - Yes, gathering data is vitally important. I'm persuaded to "flip" the project management sequence. Or even discuss several "aspects" in parallel. If we can brainstorm and agree the important stuff, then maybe the project framework needed will become clearer.
You make many good points in your opening paragraph. I'm supporting all of it. Now consider your bullet points (alphabetically labelled) in turn:
(a) Monitoring body temp. (b) Begin logging. My wife and I have started this for the last four days. We both use our own (individual) digital thermometers - the type that has a long pointed stalk with presumably a thermistor as the active sensor. These give a reading to 0.1 degC. Is the DS18B20 good for tenths of a degC? The ideal may be something body-worn giving continuous logging, but that could be overkill - depends what time profile we are looking at, minutes or hours or days.
The body temp profile is going to vary throughout the day. It is going to raise when metabolism peaks. I asked my wife to make three recordings, one first thing in the morning, one in mid-day, and the other before sleep. So far mine varies from 35.9 to 36.3, but I'm dieting and losing weight, so that can account for the sub 36.5 (which the thermom thinks is the median).
So what's the objective here? I'm looking for any unusual upward turn and the time/date when it happens. I don't know how fast an infected person changes from norm to the 37.8 that is stated as "high temp" - anyone got any further info on this aspect? They say "...you will know about it, when it happens".
(c). Get concensus on a web site. No doubt readers will have suggestions, but it has to be simple, so at first I would suggest we use a separate thread (if Paul agrees) and then we nominate a person (bullet (d.)), maybe, to take the data from there and put it somewhere in a more professional form. Its going to be a very varied dataset with some missed readings.
(e) (f) (g). Fully support lots of argument/debate about designs. We also need agreement on what we are searching for. Why we are searching for it.
(h) (i). If we get "mass" data that is "normalised" by a specific design or product then that will at least be something. From the debate, I think other project ideas will emerge.
If I can end this post with some upbeat (whimsical) overnight thinking... pipe dream I know... Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) is used for detection of organic and non-organic chemical substances. That "detection" then goes on to produce spectrums and even brilliant 3D imaging. But it might also produce a cure (WHAT? yes, wild speculation). How? If a molecule can give out energy as NMR (perhaps that should be MMR - Molecular Magnetic Resonance), then it can also take it in. If we generate Radio/Light of the correct frequency, or combo of frequencies, and at the appropriate/safe power levels, we can make the virion molecule increasing resonate and oscillate - possibly to destruction?
Such a pipe dream would be good for the next Pandemic event, which we know is coming when this one has been forgotten.
Why do I even think this might be possible? My reason is history, and it goes back to 1975/76. At that time I worked for a medical firm in the UK. I was ask to go visit a guy called Ray Lightwood (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Lightwood). Ray was the technical guy behind the world's first pacemaker (Leon Abrams/Ray Lightwood). Ray showed me another project he was working on. It was a Radio Tuned Induction Coil in a plastic box attached by cable to a power oscillator. Various consultants in the QE Hospital would invite Ray to use his Heath-Robinson contraption on infected surgical wounds that refused to respond to antibiotics. The findings were that, in some cases, healing amazed the consultants who were in charge.