Working From Home - Impacts of Coronavirus

[EEVblog]

This shit may quickly become weaponized... Say, airlines may deny you boarding the flight if you do not have the app installed.

The free market will ultimately take care of that. But they already know who sat next to who, so no need for that.

At that point it is too late. There is a delay between getting infected and becoming contagious. One of the points of using an app is to get an announcement you have been in touch with an infected person a couple of days ago.

It's called tracing app for a reason. It traces who you have been intact with. In the plane example, they already have mandatory contact tracing, in fact it's already one of the best forms of contact tracing currently available. Adding a tracing app adds little value when it comes to airline travel.

[EEVblog]

And government and businesses are slowly losing the ability to capitalise on people's fear, all this stuff isn't going to last too much longer, people's patience is already starting to wear thin.

Maybe. I mean, you're right that people are getting restless and if it all blew over right now we'd be back to where we were pretty soon. But that assumes it will blow over. Suppose we all start going back to work and it blows up again, like it's doing in Singapore

That's the 2nd time someone here has claimed it's flaring back up in places that have eased lockdowns. Do you have data for that? Because it looks like that's not the case, daily case totals have not increased.

[floobydust]

Putting aside my hate and distrust for google, apple, facebook and their monetizing our private data...
I'm still skeptical this tracking is bullshit, despite our hopes and wishes and the need for tech to save humanity.

An app can't know your distance to another person with any crude accuracy without GPS.
If I'm stopped at a red light, nearby cars or the transit bus passengers beside me- will get proximity logged despite the glass.
People living in the same apartment building, living above, next door, below - there's a wall between us but an app would consider the people within a few metres of each other. A cashier at the grocery store sees hundreds of customers, behind PPE.
So I see many false proximity events being recorded.

Coronavirus tests are doing poor for accuracy, 15% false negatives (Abbott ID NOW) and false positives are there too. No test has been approved by the Canadian government, many countries returning contaminated test kits to china.

The signal/noise ratio will not be enough to make it helpful. Logistics on undoing a false positive test result, after notifications have been sent out, well- people are screwed because a false +ve can propagate far unless you are known hikikomori.

[EEVblog]

Putting aside my hate and distrust for google, apple, facebook and their monetizing our private data...
I'm still skeptical this tracking is bullshit, despite our hopes and wishes and the need for tech to save humanity.
An app can't know your distance to another person with any crude accuracy without GPS.
If I'm stopped at a red light, nearby cars or the transit bus passengers beside me- will get proximity logged despite the glass.
People living in the same apartment building, living above, next door, below - there's a wall between us but an app would consider the people within a few metres of each other. A cashier at the grocery store sees hundreds of customers, behind PPE.
So I see many false proximity events being recorded.

Yep, and apart from the obvious well earned distrust of our government when it comes to security, that's the other reason why I refuse to use it. I won't contribute to a flawed solution.

[Bud]

This shit may quickly become weaponized... Say, airlines may deny you boarding the flight if you do not have the app installed.

The free market will ultimately take care of that. But they already know who sat next to who, so no need for that.

At that point it is too late. There is a delay between getting infected and becoming contagious. One of the points of using an app is to get an announcement you have been in touch with an infected person a couple of days ago.

It's called tracing app for a reason. It traces who you have been intact with. In the plane example, they already have mandatory contact tracing, in fact it's already one of the best forms of contact tracing currently available. Adding a tracing app adds little value when it comes to airline travel.

When i wrote that i meant the airline at the boarding gates  may consider you a higher risk because since you did not have the app you were not aware of notification that you could met with sick people before.

[Bud]

If I'm stopped at a red light, nearby cars or the transit bus passengers beside me- will get proximity logged despite the glass.
People living in the same apartment building, living above, next door, below - there's a wall between us but an app would consider the people within a few metres of each other. A cashier at the grocery store sees hundreds of customers, behind PPE.
So I see many false proximity events being recorded.

I take the objective of this initiative as a generic statistic based reconnaissance trying to identify hot spot areas. Big numbers do not lie. Proximity or not, if many positives come from an area it is better to look into it what is going on.

[vodka]

Putting aside my hate and distrust for google, apple, facebook and their monetizing our private data...
I'm still skeptical this tracking is bullshit, despite our hopes and wishes and the need for tech to save humanity.

An app can't know your distance to another person with any crude accuracy without GPS.
If I'm stopped at a red light, nearby cars or the transit bus passengers beside me- will get proximity logged despite the glass.
People living in the same apartment building, living above, next door, below - there's a wall between us but an app would consider the people within a few metres of each other. A cashier at the grocery store sees hundreds of customers, behind PPE.
So I see many false proximity events being recorded.

Coronavirus tests are doing poor for accuracy, 15% false negatives (Abbott ID NOW) and false positives are there too. No test has been approved by the Canadian government, many countries returning contaminated test kits to china.

The signal/noise ratio will not be enough to make it helpful. Logistics on undoing a false positive test result, after notifications have been sent out, well- people are screwed because a false +ve can propagate far unless you are known hikikomori.

Neither with gps, now you imagine that pass below of building  of 9 plants or subterranean peatonal pass. The gps won't work

[EEVblog]

This shit may quickly become weaponized... Say, airlines may deny you boarding the flight if you do not have the app installed.

The free market will ultimately take care of that. But they already know who sat next to who, so no need for that.

At that point it is too late. There is a delay between getting infected and becoming contagious. One of the points of using an app is to get an announcement you have been in touch with an infected person a couple of days ago.

It's called tracing app for a reason. It traces who you have been intact with. In the plane example, they already have mandatory contact tracing, in fact it's already one of the best forms of contact tracing currently available. Adding a tracing app adds little value when it comes to airline travel.

When i wrote that i meant the airline at the boarding gates  may consider you a higher risk because since you did not have the app you were not aware of notification that you could met with sick people before.

I knew you'd say that.
So why wouldn't other businesses that currently have zero or lesser current tracing ability also reject people? Like movie theaters, concerts/events, gyms etc anywhere that has people congregating in close confines for at least several hours. There is nothing special about airlines here. It would be commercial suicide to even try and they know it. Not going to happen.
The whole point is pretty moot anyway when you could have (more easily) picked up something from a surface touching anything on your way in, nothing to do with proximity for a given time at all.

[james_s]

I knew you'd say that.
So why wouldn't other businesses that currently have zero or lesser current tracing ability also reject people? Like movie theaters, concerts/events, gyms etc anywhere that has people congregating in close confines for at least several hours. There is nothing special about airlines here. It would be commercial suicide to even try and they know it. Not going to happen.

There is one thing that is "special" about airlines that doesn't apply to other businesses. When you walk into a movie theater, concert, gym or other venue while infected with a virus, you don't walk out hundreds if not thousands of miles away, potentially in a different country or even continent along with all the people you've infected. Airlines are a special case, without airlines it's unlikely that Covid would have ever escaped from China and the surrounding areas.

[Someone]

And government and businesses are slowly losing the ability to capitalise on people's fear, all this stuff isn't going to last too much longer, people's patience is already starting to wear thin.

Maybe. I mean, you're right that people are getting restless and if it all blew over right now we'd be back to where we were pretty soon. But that assumes it will blow over. Suppose we all start going back to work and it blows up again, like it's doing in Singapore

That's the 2nd time someone here has claimed it's flaring back up in places that have eased lockdowns. Do you have data for that? Because it looks like that's not the case, daily case totals have not increased.

Depends what graph you look at, people were lauding Singapore early on when they kept the local transmission under control and stabilised at 100 cases (see log plot from wikipedia below).
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-25/singapore-hoped-they-contained-coronavirus-but-second-wave-hit/12172446
https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/what-did-singapore-and-hong-kong-do-to-control/12065046
https://thediplomat.com/2020/03/how-singapore-connected-the-dots-on-coronavirus/

[EEVblog]

I knew you'd say that.
So why wouldn't other businesses that currently have zero or lesser current tracing ability also reject people? Like movie theaters, concerts/events, gyms etc anywhere that has people congregating in close confines for at least several hours. There is nothing special about airlines here. It would be commercial suicide to even try and they know it. Not going to happen.

There is one thing that is "special" about airlines that doesn't apply to other businesses. When you walk into a movie theater, concert, gym or other venue while infected with a virus, you don't walk out hundreds if not thousands of miles away, potentially in a different country or even continent along with all the people you've infected. Airlines are a special case, without airlines it's unlikely that Covid would have ever escaped from China and the surrounding areas.

Of course, but it was a government directive that closed airline travel, not the airlines.
Once the government(s) clear air travel again airlines are going to be doing everything they can to get people back flying. The last thing they are going to do is independently decide to turn away passengers that don't have a tracing app installed, that's madness.
As for the government mandating compulsory use of the app for airline passengers, that's not going to happen either. Doing so would be political suicide, as the people and the airlines would be dead set against it.
It's already been seen here in Australia, our PM hinted that the app could become compulsory, and everyone went instantly "!@#$ that!" and he was forced to back down and make it very clear the app would never be made mandatory.

[paulca]

People might want to read up on how it works before actually making that assumption. This is not positional tracking. The governments asked for that and Google and Apple told them to get fucked.

If the app can't trace a person's activity, and who they were near, isn't it just useless feel good fluff?

Your phone knows who you have been near by recording IDs it has seen in proximity for longer than a moment or two.  Periodically it downloads a list of "reported infected" hash IDs.  If you have been near any of them it lets YOU know.  That's all.  That's enough.  "The System" online is literally just a list of infected hashes.  Nothing more.  No location, no identify (beyond the BT hash).

It seemed to work pretty well for South Korea who never really did do mass lockdowns.

As long as it's temporary, doesn't ask for out-of-proportion permissions on the phone and it's voluntary I'd install it.

[bd139]

I'm not going to install it myself because of "feature creep" and the fact iOS auto updates everything. That's my only worry.

[paulca]

I knew you'd say that.
So why wouldn't other businesses that currently have zero or lesser current tracing ability also reject people? Like movie theaters, concerts/events, gyms etc anywhere that has people congregating in close confines for at least several hours. There is nothing special about airlines here. It would be commercial suicide to even try and they know it. Not going to happen.

There is one thing that is "special" about airlines that doesn't apply to other businesses. When you walk into a movie theater, concert, gym or other venue while infected with a virus, you don't walk out hundreds if not thousands of miles away, potentially in a different country or even continent along with all the people you've infected. Airlines are a special case, without airlines it's unlikely that Covid would have ever escaped from China and the surrounding areas.

Of course, but it was a government directive that closed airline travel, not the airlines.
Once the government(s) clear air travel again airlines are going to be doing everything they can to get people back flying. The last thing they are going to do is independently decide to turn away passengers that don't have a tracing app installed, that's madness.
As for the government mandating compulsory use of the app for airline passengers, that's not going to happen either. Doing so would be political suicide, as the people and the airlines would be dead set against it.
It's already been seen here in Australia, our PM hinted that the app could become compulsory, and everyone went instantly "!@#$ that!" and he was forced to back down and make it very clear the app would never be made mandatory.

The UK being slimey business-comes-first Tories, did NOT direct airlines to stop flying.  They simply put out advisories to discourage travel.  The borders are still fully open and never closed.  You are free  to fly anywhere you like still, though I believe you will be questioned as to why you believe it's essential.  The reason behind this is that all airlines and tour operators would have had to issue refunded or insurance companies pay out cancellation costs if they made it mandatory.  So my £1400 holiday I was lucky the operator allowed me to reschedule it in October.  But it's still not secure.  In October if it's still not wise to travel the airline could put the onus of cancellation onto me and I lose the whole £1400 as a result.

On "air travel made the pandemic worse".  The effect of international air travel is over stated.  There are many instances of pandemic before air travel.  Air travel is not the cause of it spreading internationally, it just makes it faster.  Getting on a ship that takes 2 weeks to cross the atlantic with 1 infected person, means the ship docks with 100s or of infected.

[Muttley Snickers]

I don't know about the other Covid-Virus applications elsewhere but our newly released version of Covidsafe currently has precise location marked as GPS and Network Based in the permissions section. Also Dave posted a link to a youtube video which shows some initial bugs in the Apple version.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.gov.health.covidsafe

[nctnico]

This shit may quickly become weaponized... Say, airlines may deny you boarding the flight if you do not have the app installed.

The free market will ultimately take care of that. But they already know who sat next to who, so no need for that.

At that point it is too late. There is a delay between getting infected and becoming contagious. One of the points of using an app is to get an announcement you have been in touch with an infected person a couple of days ago.

It's called tracing app for a reason. It traces who you have been intact with. In the plane example, they already have mandatory contact tracing, in fact it's already one of the best forms of contact tracing currently available. Adding a tracing app adds little value when it comes to airline travel.

It does because with 'airline contact tracing' you can only act after the fact. With an app you can deny people to board who have been in contact with an infected person in the last couple of days. Same for cinemas and other crowded places.

You have to divide the process of dealing with the Corona virus in phases. Phase 1 is the initial outbreak. The end of phase 1 is in sight and things are getting under control. Phase 2 is getting back to a situation where the virus is contained; this means keeping track of the outbreak and isolating infected people. There won't be a 100% coverage but that isn't needed. For as long as the reproduction factor of the virus is below 1 health care doesn't come crashing down.

In phase 3 there will be herd immunity so the virus won't spread that fast naturally. Assuming a worst case scenario Corona outbreaks will become seasonal for the next few years. I would not be surprised if the southern hemisphere is going to show an increase in Corona infections during the winter.

So in the end the choice is simple: Covid tracking app or full lock-down. Pick your poison. I don't like it too but at some point you just have to make the best of a bad situation. Calling it a hoax, a government ploy, etc is not going to make Corona go away. That is just sticking your head in the sand. Also be very careful with interpreting numbers by yourself trying to wish the problem away. Modelling viral outbreaks is a science in itself.

[Nusa]

You're very much in the minority, likely less than 0.001% of the population. The number of people who don't own a smartphone is statistically irrelevant, there's no need to develop a standalone device. If you really wanted to volunteer, I'm sure someone would give you an old smartphone that could be used strictly for the tracking app if that was the desire.

The problem with exaggeration is how silly it looks if you actually do the math: 0.001% = 0.00001 * the population, which in the case of the USA comes out to a mere 3300 people. Enough said, you're way low.

Here are some actual stats for last year, with demographic breakdowns. Top statistic was 81% smart phone penetration with another 15% using cell phones that don't qualify as smart, for a total of 96%. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/

I've got two separate elderly neighbors who don't own smartphones. They both have tracfones they keep powered off in their car for emergency situations, but otherwise have not become part of the connected society. One of them (she's almost 90) doesn't even own a computer.

Me, I have a smart phone and can use it. But in reality, I only make sure to keep it with me when I take long-distance trips. It generally stays at home on local trips. And at home, it's really just a phone, even if it's smart. I'd rather use my desktop for everything at home.

[nctnico]

You're very much in the minority, likely less than 0.001% of the population. The number of people who don't own a smartphone is statistically irrelevant, there's no need to develop a standalone device. If you really wanted to volunteer, I'm sure someone would give you an old smartphone that could be used strictly for the tracking app if that was the desire.

The problem with exaggeration is how silly it looks if you actually do the math: 0.001% = 0.00001 * the population, which in the case of the USA comes out to a mere 3300 people. Enough said, you're way low.

Here are some actual stats for last year, with demographic breakdowns. Top statistic was 81% smart phone penetration with another 15% using cell phones that don't qualify as smart, for a total of 96%. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/

I've got two separate elderly neighbors who don't own smartphones. They both have tracfones they keep powered off in their car for emergency situations, but otherwise have not become part of the connected society. One of them (she's almost 90) doesn't even own a computer.

Me, I have a smart phone and can use it. But in reality, I only make sure to keep it with me when I take long-distance trips. It generally stays at home on local trips. And at home, it's really just a phone, even if it's smart. I'd rather use my desktop for everything at home.

That is true but it doesn't factor in what people will do if they see a good reason to own / bring a smart phone. Just like you I leave my smartphone mostly at home and only bring it if there is some added value to bringing it along.

[thinkfat]

The tracer app being done in Germany is not designed to prevent transmissions as such, no realtime alarm, no Zaphod-style blackening of sunglasses. It's allowing faster tracking of potential transmissions to help with containment. Since we're not under total lockdown (like Spain and Italy or France have been), the app will only alarm you after the fact. Infected people are not expected to break quarantine, though it has happened (recently there was a big "Razzia" in an apartment building where two quarantined infected families were repeatedly leaving home and roaming about. All inhabitants were mass-tested).

The app will be useful only to guide people to seek medical assistance if a past contact has been recently tested positive. No GPS positions will be tracked, no geofencing like in South Korea.

But as usual, we first have to discuss the potential data protection implications for another fortnight or two 

[PlainName]

Because it looks like that's not the case, daily case totals have not increased

Yes, I'd have to agree with you. And here where that last step could be mistaken for a new start. Seems that most of these are in foreign workers too.

However, that doesn't negate the point I was raising. There seems to be a consensus by actual experts that a second wave should be expected (as happened in all previous pandemics - I can probably source links if you need them) if we aren't careful, and come out of preventative measures too soon. IF that happens, which was what I was saying, then we could see a different scenario to the one you proposed.

[PlainName]

So why wouldn't other businesses that currently have zero or lesser current tracing ability also reject people?

Strange how we see things differently. I took his airlines thing to be a single example - other examples would apply, but the forum page isn't long enough to list them all explicitly, and if a single one were missed it would no doubt be flagged and argued over. His 'say' would be my 'for example'.

And, actually, this kind of thing is already done. Some insurance companies stiff young drivers unless they have in-car trackers fitted (sure,  they say it's a discount, but that's like the 'discount' you get for paying a fine early). Some companies charge you what they think you can afford to pay, so they are keen to know what social class you are in before quoting a price.

[SiliconWizard]

This shit may quickly become weaponized... Say, airlines may deny you boarding the flight if you do not have the app installed.

The free market will ultimately take care of that. But they already know who sat next to who, so no need for that.

At that point it is too late. There is a delay between getting infected and becoming contagious. One of the points of using an app is to get an announcement you have been in touch with an infected person a couple of days ago.

It's called tracing app for a reason. It traces who you have been intact with. In the plane example, they already have mandatory contact tracing, in fact it's already one of the best forms of contact tracing currently available. Adding a tracing app adds little value when it comes to airline travel.

That's true, although the app could still help, not for tracing per se, but for detecting infected passengers. Of course airlines have names and seats of all passengers, so everything to trace them, but they won't necessarily know who is or isn't infected...

And then, there are other settings in which it could be that some private services require that too, although it seems a bit unpractical.

[SiliconWizard]

The last thing they are going to do is independently decide to turn away passengers that don't have a tracing app installed, that's madness.

You may be right, we'll see. At this point I'm not completely sure.
As I said earlier, I'm looking at what happened for fighting terrorism. There were a number of things that changed regarding boarding planes after that, and that are here to stay. Granted that those measures are only mildly annoying for the passengers, so if something like that was decided for fighting virus spreading, that would have to be relatively light as well. But at this point, I'm not completely rejecting the idea that at least something is going to change for traveling, especially in planes. Just don't know what.

Maybe nothing will change in the end, and maybe this parallel with anti-terrorism is not quite relevant, but I'm really still wondering.

[SiliconWizard]

The signal/noise ratio will not be enough to make it helpful. Logistics on undoing a false positive test result, after notifications have been sent out, well- people are screwed because a false +ve can propagate far unless you are known hikikomori.

I agree with this, and as said earlier, had already concerns about how/why infected people would declare it through the app to begin with. We still have no idea. It sounds like something responsible to do? But there could be also myriads of reasons for not doing so.

And then, even if enough people do this, there's the false detection ratio as you said.

Another related thought - if someone is tested infected, IMO they should NOT get out. As I remember, I think in South Korea, people tested infected would be quarantined - either at home if this is possible (and a quarantine is not just confinement, you don't get out at all), or in hotel rooms if you can't stay at home. I admit I haven't really completely understood how the tracing app worked in SK, but I know they had this quarantine thing.

If we just allow infected people to move around freely - even if there is a high enough probabilty of tracing whoever gets in contact with them (obviously not 100%), this may be questionable.

Yet another point - by the time someone would be tested infected, they may already have been for a little while, without anyone being able to know.

Many dark spots in this thing IMO.

Again it seems to be inspired by some asian initiatives such as in SK, but, while I admit I don't completely know what exactly what the system in SK, I'm sure it was a lot more effective (but a lot more problematic for privacy too), and just one thing among a lot of measures. For instance, I've seen over there, they would disinfect public transports several times a day, something that's probably not possible in many other countries. As to the app itself, it did report everything to central servers so that people could actually look at maps in advance, seeing which spots could be more or less risky to go to. That's prevention, and more effective than just getting out anywhere waiting to be close enough to someone. But yeah it poses major privacy issues.

All in all, the benefit/drawback ratio of this app thing is largely questionable IMO, especially in the way we are thinking of implementing it in the West.
And deeply embedding contact tracing in OSs for future use is a privacy concern, nothing tells us it will be only temporary (it likely won't be).

[paulca]

I still think you miss understand what the proposed apps do.

Having the app installed would not help airlines or anyone else for that matter.  It's not an immunity nor "clean" passport.  It will tell you nothing.

The best you could do as an airline is ask to the see the notifications the contact tracer warned you about.  To which the response would be, fuck off.