I thought Schneider’s comments about the affects from negative social media reports were valid.
Not convinced TBH. There’s negativity in social media about everything if you look. His explanation on why he made the statement…
‘My problem with contact tracing apps is that they have absolutely no value’
seems tenuous at best. He mentions GPS inaccuracy (the apps don’t use GPS), he says the tech can’t be 100% (we know that, but if it helps what’s the problem?), he says walls are a problem (a virus is unlikely to pass through walls, so non-issue), it’s a given that contact-tracing does not address virus transmission via surfaces and so on.
what about some of the treatments being investigated? They seem to have to be totally effective and completely safe to be considered by some… To be just able to help seems to be not enough for most other things. I think his point about walls was to point out that it will report false contacts if behind them
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what about some of the treatments being investigated? They seem to have to be totally effective and completely safe to be considered by some… To be just able to help seems to be not enough for most other things. I think his point about walls was to point out that it will report false contacts if behind them
I think treatments and vaccines are separate and it’s correct to follow the appropriate process with those IMO. Yes, expedite as much as poss but you don’t want to start treating a population with something that has some negative impact.
But us coexisting with a novel virus with no immunity (while they progress any treatment or vaccine) is where these various approaches come in. None of them are 100%, but you combine distancing, masks, good hygiene, contact trace+test etc. to keep the infection rate low.
Healthy Together Beta App
"Bluetooth on its own gives a less accurate picture than bluetooth and GPS location data. The goal of Healthy Together is to allow public health officials to understand how the disease spreads through the vector of people and places, and both location and bluetooth data are needed to accomplish that.
Bluetooth helps us understand person-to-person transmission, while location/GPS data helps us understand transmission zones — having both of these important data points provides a more effective picture of how COVID-19 spreads. This data helps policy makers make the best possible decisions about how and where we begin to relax and modify restrictions as our community and economy begin to reactivate."
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OK, the contract-tracing element of the apps are predominantly not using GPS.
Is that a tracing app or something else? There’s no need to use GPS. If you’re positive and getting treatment, then the health service have your name/address anyway and I’d imagine this is a valid scenario to use that data to have an idea where people who test positive are.
The point I was trying to make was that it seems like some approaches are required to provide 100% safety & efficacy before being considered (also some try to add the politics of the issue). It seems in a dire situation like this the overall danger needs to be considered…risk versus benefits. We already are not going to be able to stop this cold, so a reasonable solution with the least overall bad things will be necessary. One thing I hope for is that once this is controlled as much as possible sane, non-political use of data will provide the information needed to handle future crises, blame from or about either side will hopefully not be allowed to be taken advantage of. Sadly that may not be possible given the current population of political …, I was going to say a$$hats, but… it is already occurring in campaign adds. Kind of comical that some adds are now accusing the other side of virtually
the same thing.
Listening to Security Now 764, just as Steve begins his description of the Apple Google Exposure Notification API, @leo (11:47) makes a comment about the Australian COVIDSAFE app being terrible, saying he was talking about it earlier. As an early adopter of the app because I feel it is important to help track the infection to help wipe it out, or at least minimise it’s effects, I would like to hear what his objections to it are. Anyone know if it was discussed on any other TWIT shows I can listen to?
I’m with you @Bgeeoz. I’ve noticed many TWiT contributors are dismissing the approach. Owen JJ Stone, Georgia Dow (although she relaxed her position on iMore this week). @MikeElgan posted about it yesterday. Jeff Jarvis seems to be the only positive person at the moment.
It does seem to match the wider view though. It was discussed at our UK daily briefing yesterday as a key part of starting to adjust our lockdown measures.
Once the briefing had finished, Dr Chris Smith who is part of the BBC Radio team for Covid immediately launched into ‘can’t see that working’, ‘it’s tracking everybody’s location and giving it to the government’ and used an example of someone having a extramarital affair being caught out as an example of why people won’t use it.
I think right now, nobody knows what the best approach is. The best for privacy are the on-device apps that give off no data and relies on Bluetooth LE “tracking”. Whether this will be effective or not is not known, and I don’t think we’ll know until the apps are out in the wild. Even then, we won’t know fully as users will not be able to access and telemetry - that would be an advantage of a centralised system.
It is important that some effort is made to guard privacy, but I really think we need effective exposure tracking at the price of giving up a small amount of privacy.
@MikeElgan “4 reasons why Apple’s and Google’s Exposure Notification won’t work” he stated “Exposure Notification is well-designed, and it will help.” If true, then tech will have produced another weapon against COVID-19. Anything that moves us closer to controlling the virus will be positive.
Isn’t M. Elgan’s article a bit confusing? The title says there are 4 reasons why Exposure Notifications won’t work, then he says it is well designed and will help.
Interesting reading from Apple/Google on the Exposure Notification design and implementation:
The iOS Framework Documentation document shows an example where the API can be used to notify both primary and secondary exposure participants, contrary to M. Elgan’s comments.
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Isn’t M. Elgan’s article a bit confusing?
It is slightly. I think the TLDR is that the tech looks good, but takeup will be limited, as people don’t trust the government (or Google/Apple to a slightly lesser extent.) and also the health service doesn’t have good process/resources to respond to the results.
Yes, it’s reliant on an efficient testing and isolation process - but everything is.
Yes, contact tracing only addresses human to human transmission, but that doesn’t mean we don’t do it. We have all the good-hygiene measures that aim to address that.
And the bit about it only working for primary contacts is an assumption. Apple/Google provides the framework. It’s up to the health service how to use it. A positive contact alert could invoke a manual contact tracer for example.
The UK non-Apple/Google solution (i.e. has a central DB, stores personal info) is being tested this week on the Isle of Wight. Population is under 150,000 I think, be interesting to see what takeup they get.
A little xkcd comic relief:
In case the alt-text doesn’t work in the hotlinked cartoon:
As the ‘exotic animals in homemade aprons hosting baking shows’ YouTube craze reached its peak in March 2020, Andrew Cuomo announced he was replacing the Statue of Liberty with a bronze pangolin in a chef’s hat.
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"Apple and Google also said Monday they will allow only one app per country to use the contact system, to avoid fragmentation and encourage wider adoption. The companies said they would, however, support countries that opt for a state or regional approach, and that U.S. states will be allowed to use the system.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/
So Apple-Google will decide who the national app developer will be but allow individual states 3rd party apps access the contact system and some states are already using their own home-brew systems. Let the data sharing fight begin.
Hopefully this will scupper the NHS plans for their more invasive app and force them to make do with deanonimised data
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Hopefully this will scupper the NHS plans for their more invasive app and force them to make do with deanonimised data
Makes no difference, unfortunately. They can still do their own thing. Also using the Apple/Google APIs doesn’t stop them doing whatever they want with the app that uses the APIs. The only restriction at the moment is no GPS allowed.
I installed it this morning to look at the privs it needed. This will put people off I think (even though it’s actually needed for the Bluetooth LE bit to work).
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Some reports now @Dr.Flay that NHSX might be looking into switching over to the Apple/Google approach.
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