The US is making coronavirus plans and Tesla’s has new demands, but first: a cartoon about tricky beauty tutorials.
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Could the US contain a coronavirus outbreak?
On Tuesday, a top US health official urged the American public to begin preparing for “severe” disruption to their daily lives due to the Covid-19 outbreak. And while strict quarantines imposed by Chinese officials may have saved hundreds of thousands of people from infection, public health law experts in the US say there’s no way such an aggressive approach could be enforced here. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, says its time for citizens to start contacting their employers, health care networks, daycare providers, and children’s schools about contingency plans in the event of an outbreak in their community.
A safety board faults Tesla and regulators in a fatal 2018 crash
Yesterday, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded an investigation into a March 2018 incident in which a Tesla Model X on Autopilot slammed into a concrete barrier on the highway, spun, collided with two other vehicles, and then caught fire. Bystanders pulled the driver from the vehicle, but the man, a 38-year-old Apple engineer named Walter Huang, died soon after at a local hospital. The NTSB found that the automaker bears some responsibility for the crash and should restrict the use of its Autopilot feature and better detect when drivers are paying attention; however, the agency also criticized the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s hands-off approach to regulating new vehicle technology like Autopilot, saying that it had overlooked risks of advanced driver-assistance features.
Fast Fact: 34
That’s how many hospitals in China have deployed AI software to help diagnose Covid-19. The software, created by Bejjing startup Infervision, had primarily been used to detect cancer in readings of CT lung scans. Now, it’s been retooled to look for signs of pneumonia caused by coronavirus.
WIRED Recommends: Nature Apps
You don’t have to lose your phone to experience nature. In fact, you can use your phone to enjoy it even more. Download apps like iNaturalist—a social network of people helping each other learn more about nature, or Seek, which can help you identify plants on the fly.
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