Scrutable

How about adapting the Wetherspoons app? I know other pubs are available, but Spoons is often the largest and busiest in a town, so it might be better than nothing.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... racing-app

The app seems to have had some sort of positive effect on the Isle of Wight. So either the app itself actually worked or people felt like they were being watched and so didn't go across town to bang someone else's wife or drive to castles to check their eyesight or whatever it is that they normally do.

headshot wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 23, 2020 6:54 pm

shpalman wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 23, 2020 5:27 pm

France's app doesn't seem to have been very useful so far.

https://www.thelocal.fr/20200623/france ... its-launch

(it appears to work on a centralised model https://www.france24.com/en/20200617-fr ... icial-says )

And that minister appears to have put his hair on backwards.

And O, his surname.

Apparently our Italian app gave its first alert, somewhere in Abruzzo.

6.7 million have installed the Italian app Immuni, corresponding to 17% of smart phones.

Now 8 million downloads because obvious second wave.

Portugal's recently released an app called STAYAWAY COVID which seems pretty similar to all the others. I've just installed it, will have to remember to turn on all the connectivity things when I go out though, as I've normally got it on WiFi only to save battery.

Over 1M downloads already (out of 10M in the country), but doesn't seem to say more than that.

Something I hadn't realised is that all the European countries' apps are supposed to talk to each other, which is sensible.

https://stayawaycovid.pt/frequently-asked-questions/

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 19, 2020 4:42 pm

Something I hadn't realised is that all the European countries' apps are supposed to talk to each other, which is sensible.

https://stayawaycovid.pt/frequently-asked-questions/

My version of the Italian app Immuni has just updated to work with the interoperability framework.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 20, 2020 1:24 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 19, 2020 4:42 pm

Something I hadn't realised is that all the European countries' apps are supposed to talk to each other, which is sensible.

https://stayawaycovid.pt/frequently-asked-questions/

My version of the Italian app Immuni has just updated to work with the interoperability framework.

... and apparently the app has now been downloaded 9.1 million times.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 20, 2020 5:22 pm

... and apparently the app has now been downloaded 9.1 million times.

That's one person in 7... which, grossly oversimplifying, suggests that 2% (1/(7*7)) of potentially infecting interactions are going to be caught by the app. If the technology works as advertised.

Every little helps, of course, but apps aren't going to dig us out of this hole. In places with less than 10% uptake of the app, I wonder if they are a good use of limited resources.

I have the NHS Covid-19 app running in the background on my phone, just in case it records a contact who tests positive.

This morning the phone coughed up a housekeeping message saying that, to be helpful, little-used apps had been sent to sleep and rarely used apps had been prevented from running. I almost dismissed the message without checking but clicked through to find which apps had been prevented from running. Just one. NHS Covid-19.

FFS. How many people think this is running on their phone but it isn't?

I predict that when the post-mortem is done on how the world handled COVID, apps will be shown to have largely failed, worldwide, because of a combination of low takeup, low virus prevalence (still, today, probably only about 1-2% of people are infectious at any given time), and other technical limitations. I'm not aware of a country where there have been more than a handful of reports of apps detecting contacts and telling people to get checked out. Apart from anything else, they seem to be set (when they're calibrated correctly, that is) to trigger if you've spent 15 minutes less than 2 metres from someone. How many people are doing that anyway, other than with people they know quite well and who will hopefully tell them if they test positive?

But they were something that every government had to be seen to do, because (a) everyone else was doing it and (b) in a Rule 34 type of way, if it exists there must be an app for it. Imagine being the the government minister who said "We're not going to do an app because we think the benefits will be marginal, and probably outweighed by the ammunition they give to the NWO loons". (Kind of like the Polish minister of health in 2009, a medical doctor, who was the only health minister in Europe not to pay for a billion zillion doses of Tamiflu --- she got screamed at at the time, but she was proved right.)

OTOH, the colleague I was working with for 3 days last week got an alert on his phone just as we were finishing up saying he had to self-isolate for 9 days.

It made me feel less silly about all the careful social distancing and wiping down of tools and equipment I had done. But a 9 day countdown means his contact was the previous week. Another colleague who was working with him then now wonders if they made the same contact and should isolate too but, inevitably, they don't use the app so have no idea.

Another group who worked with him over the weekend (at the Cenotaph so, y'know, nothing important or likely to involve older people) are particularly cross because they had to keep warning him about mask use and distancing. Happy days.

two vaccine doses completely prevent transmission if your job is like really important apparently.

Other half just had a 'close contact' ping from the NHS app with an 'encounter date' of 31st August. We're double jabbed so don't need to isolate but it's advising taking a PCR test, I've got lateral flow tests so tempted just to do that.

31st August we slept in a hotel room, got up, packed, checked out (receptionist at check out was the only person we talked to, or were close to all day, and that was through masks and a plastic screen, and only for a couple of minutes max) - drove home - he and his phone then stayed home all day...

we didn't actually think anyone was in the adjacent hotel rooms that night either, as all the noisy buggers seemed to have left the morning of the 30th.

Any ideas? Is this sort of mystery contact usual? Could it have been a through walls job, and if so is that anything to worry about?