A ROC curve shows the relationship between a sensor’s sensitivity and specificity. If the sensor is sensitive but can’t discriminate a true positive signal from a false signal it is useless. That was the problem I have written about on the subject of mid course missile defense and the problem of discrimination of real targets from decoys. Since we could not find a practical approach to discrimination, we could not make mid course intercept work. We expected the interceptor missile would have a terrible ROC curve if the adversary deployed effective decoys.

Let’s say the problem is to deploy a sensor in a coal mine to protect the miners. Since a canary succumbs to CO before the miners are affected, the canary provides a useful warning. The ROC curve for the canary makes it an excellent sensor to detect a poisonous environment. We could instead find a particularly weak miner and use  the miner as a warning indicator, but waiting to see if miners show some symptoms would not be a reasonable approach. To improve the miner as a sensor, we could try to create a ROC curve for miners based on if they they have CO in their lungs, are pre symptomatic,  slightly sick with a fever,  or just becoming unconscious, but the canary is certainly the preferred approach.

So  would we  use coal miners as sensors and then shut down coal mines if miners die on the job? Instead we could ventilate the coal mines to avoid CO build up and still use the canary, or maybe install a more modern CO sensor and keep the coal mines operating. I admit  coal mines are going away, but the metaphor might be useful.

So I wondered, why we are using people as sensors for detecting virus containing aerosols that are inhaled? The ROC curve for the RNA sensor has not been published, but I suspect its performance depends on when the sample is collected relative to time of the exposure of the person, how well the swab is stuck up somebody’s nose,  and the sensitivity of the analysis. One article claimed the false negative rate was 25%, but no ROC curve was published. An additional sensor such as fever detection could result in excessive false positives. If just a fever detector is used there would be unacceptable false negatives.

If instead, if  we have a closed space, such as an assisted living center, a business, air plane, restaurant, movie theater  or factory,  it could be ventilated with filtered air, sterilized  and an aerosol analysis sensor such as  an optical bio sensor could be used as a detector.

The optical sensor might be extremely sensitive and specific to the virus molecule. Except it does not exist as yet, but it is not impossible….I guess since considerable research is under way.

People would enter the protected environment through a revolving door that has its own aerosol sensor to instantly detect if the person entering has contaminated breath or clothing, and if so, the person would be rejected. This suggestion would require a major architecture redesign approach involving reliance on this as yet unavailable canary.