
Smartphone contact tracing has failed everywhere - zdw
https://eclecticlight.co/2020/07/25/smartphone-contact-tracing-has-failed-everywhere/
======
quicklime
I'm surprised this isn't mentioned in the article or any comments, and I'm
wondering whether I'm missing something about the significance of this.

But I thought the biggest problem was that Google and Apple didn't build a
contract tracing app - they built a _framework_ for local governments to build
apps on top of. This leaves the work of marketing the app and driving adoption
to each government (as well as building and operating the service, which is
also significant).

When I first heard about this, I thought they were going to build a pair of
apps for Android and iOS. It would come as part of an OTA update, and everyone
around the world would be presented with a yes/no dialog asking whether they
wanted to participate. Local governments would then be provided access to a
SaaS that would let their contact tracers enter the tokens of known positive
cases.

I'm fairly sure that this would've resulted in significantly higher adoption
rates.

I have no idea what the point was, to require every government
build/market/operate their own version of the exact same app. Maybe so that
the backends could be independent? If so, I imagine there would be other ways
to work around that, like offering a cloud service and/or an open source
backend implementation for governments to self-host.

~~~
xorcist
Apple and Google are probably stuck between a rock and a hard place with this
contact tracing.

Between them, they have exact positions of a vast majority of individuals, at
least in western societies. They could have done useful contact tracing at the
press of a button, even historically, for every major event such as large
concerts, churches, night clubs which we know were the most important
situations to contact trace. They could have done this with the data they
already have.

This would however set a bad precedent on how this data is shared. Law
enforcement is one thing, medial tracing is another. So instead they set out
to build this BLE tracing toolkit, which is something that at best is intended
for future use, when everyone has the requisite hardware and software
installed. It wouldn't reach more than a minority of users today which
severely limits its usefulness, all for the possibility of reaching into
situations such as bus rides, where nobody really knows how contagious these
situations are because we simply do not have enough knowledge of the virus
yet. Real world measurements are also likely to be noisy (where someone
carries their phone in their hand and another in their backpack with a water
bottle) even if we could set a hard limit on a safe distance, which we can't.

So maybe we will get something useful in the future, for the price of not
exposing the data already available today.

It is amusing that the BLE tracing toolkits were sold as a way of not having
to expose your location data to Google and Apple, the exact entities who
already have fine grained location data on most people.

~~~
Despegar
>They could have done useful contact tracing at the press of a button, even
historically, for every major event such as large concerts, churches, night
clubs which we know were the most important situations to contact trace. They
could have done this with the data they already have.

Apple definitely could not have done this because they don't have this data.

~~~
nindalf
Even assuming for a second that Google stores the location of every user (they
didn’t store mine), how would they do contact tracing when they don’t have
access to data on iOS devices? Even assuming they did, what key would they
join on?

But no, a confident blanket assertion is made without providing any evidence.

~~~
osdiab
They definitely store location for the majority of users who use Google Maps,
their location history is both very accurate and opt-out buried in settings
menus. I don’t have numbers on percentages given that Google likely doesn’t
share this data, but I feel safe in assuming that less than 5% of Google Maps
users have turned off the location history feature.

~~~
usr1106
Many potentially dangereous contacts happen inside where positioning doesn't
work. Maybe in a restaurant the location could be inferred because you enter
and leave through the same door. But in the subway/metro/underground? Also
every high-raise building would create lots of false possitives by people that
did not get close.

~~~
jazzyjackson
Google location is still very good in buildings and subways because they
wardrive open wifi routers to help triangulate you. So when I'm near a wifi
router with a particular MAC address that google has seen before, they've got
me.

Agree with you on high rises and false positives, but then again, if air is
circulated in the building or everyone uses the same elevators, might be worth
notifying them.

[https://support.google.com/maps/answer/1725632?hl=en](https://support.google.com/maps/answer/1725632?hl=en)

~~~
uep
Phone barometers can be used to get a pretty good idea which floor of a
building you're on.

[https://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2011-10/so-um-why-
doe...](https://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2011-10/so-um-why-does-new-
google-phone-have-barometer-it/)

[https://www.engadget.com/2012-09-06-stmicroelectronics-
detai...](https://www.engadget.com/2012-09-06-stmicroelectronics-details-
pressure-sensor-in-your-galaxy-s-iii.html)

------
jt2190
Ignoring the headline, it seems like the article equates quick, widespread
adoption of these apps as “success”, and anything else as “failure”. Although
it does note:

> Conventional contact tracing methods also haven’t been faring well.

Despite this, it doesn’t even bother to identify the _many_ reasons tracing
apps might not be widely adopted yet, in particular privacy concerns (although
it does mention that “draconian” approaches are the only ones _proven_ to work
so far, as if that proves that privacy respecting approaches can’t be useful
at all.)

Even more fundamental than privacy, though, is _do people even know that these
apps exist_? Personally I’ve only heard some rumblings about the Google/Apple
api, and not much more, and I’m guessing I’m far more aware of the existence
of these apps than many people.

Ultimately, it’s far too early to declare “failure” on this front.

Edit: According to 9to5 Mac, there are still no apps in the U.S. using the
Apple/Google API as of June 18. [https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/19/how-to-turn-
on-off-covid-19-c...](https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/19/how-to-turn-on-off-
covid-19-contact-tracing-iphone-ios/)

~~~
Robotbeat
Agreed. And I hate headlines like this that mislead their audience. Headlines
must be stand-alone true as >90% of the people who happen to see the headline
aren’t going to read the article. A headline like this will leave many with
the impression that contact tracing apps don’t work, not that they just
haven’t gotten much buy-in.

(Which of course becomes self-reinforcing... If the vast majority of people
who see the headline are led to think the apps _don’t work_ , then they won’t
want to adopt them... and low adoption is, of course, the very “failure”
discussed in the first place...)

This may seem like a small thing, but the apparent license-to-lie-or-at-least-
use-half-truths-in-headlines that many media editors (because editors, NOT
journalists, control the headlines) believe they have is maybe the biggest
problem in media accuracy we have. We are bombarded with 10-100 times as many
headlines as we can possibly hope to read, which is a constant background
noise of half-truths.

And yeah, of course a headline won’t be able to tell the full story. But it
should be accurate enough and not misleading. The excuse of “but you have to
read the full article or you’re just lazy” is a ridiculous cop-out for a
license to lie.

~~~
JamisonM
" A headline like this will leave many with the impression that contact
tracing apps don’t work, not that they just haven’t gotten much buy-in."

That would be an entirely accurate impression, contact tracing apps have a
proven track record of not working so far. That one contributing factor is the
lack of buy-in in the population does not detract from that point.

------
stevedotcarter
I live in Ireland and our contact tracing app (using Google+Apple tech) seems
to be doing well. There was about 1 million install 1-2 days after it
launched, currently standing at 1.4 million installs (population is 4.9
million), along with some positive contacts reported:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53525712](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53525712)

It was also donated to open source.

[https://www.nearform.com/blog/ireland-donates-contact-
tracin...](https://www.nearform.com/blog/ireland-donates-contact-tracing-app-
to-linux-foundation/)

While that is useful I think each country will face its own challenges with
adoption.

~~~
markdown
Does your Irish app require the app to be open on iOS?

~~~
stevedotcarter
Not that I’m aware of. The app just reads the data your phone is already
collecting.

It’s making use of the api that Apple and Google added to iOS and Android.
Which I believe once enabled is using Bluetooth beacons to keep a list of
other phones you have been nearby. That’s all done by phone, not the app.

If you test positive, then you are expected to use the app to upload the list
of phones you were in contact with. Notifications will then be sent to all
those phones through the app.

------
tehabe
If the German app would have been less privacy aware, it wouldn't even had 16
million downloads in Germany. The decentralised approach was and is the only
one which at least worked a little bit.

------
cwhiz
Contact tracing apps were NEVER going to work. There are numerous fundamental
technical problems but those aren’t even worth getting into, because people
won’t use this shit.

Smartphone contact tracing is an absurd silver bullet pipe dream from a bunch
of hammers who see the world as full of nails. It won’t work, can’t work, and
will not ever work.

How much more effort are people going to waste on this?? Every time this comes
up on HN the horde mass downvotes anyone who dares to dissent. It’s been
almost five months now.

~~~
toyg
I agree that it won’t work in Europe or the US and it was absurdly over-hyped,
but mobile-based helpers have been effective in Asia. The critical difference
is that Asian countries can _mandate_ this sort of thing, since their
populations seem to be culturally more willing to accept a higher degree of
illiberal state control over their lives (for the good of society at large).
If the app had to be installed and configured in every smartphone sold, and
you were forced to show it to police spot-checks on the streets, adoption
rates wouldn’t be a problem.

This is obviously unfeasible and undesirable in most Western countries (at the
moment...) so we’re left with a voluntary scheme that is only as effective as
typical voluntary schemes (i.e. not much).

~~~
fomine3
Grouping as "Asisan countries" is wrong.

------
starbugs
Did I miss something or are low adoption rates and bluetooth issues the only
indicators that decentralized tracking has failed, as pointed out in the
article?

The lack of statistics about success/failure otherwise seems to imply more of
a "we don't know for sure"?

~~~
DangitBobby
Specifically, it seems that adoption rates are so low as to render the
application nearly useless.

~~~
makomk
Yeah, the overall conclusion is that smartphone contact tracing probably isn't
working, but we can't know for sure because the megacorps who designed it did
so in such a way that makes it almost impossible to measure if it's actually
working. The only app we know has definitely been ineffective is Australia's
centralized solution, in large part because they do actually have the ability
to collect statistics on its effectiveness.

We do also know that Germany's app was just outright failing to send alerts to
users of many common, popular devices due to limitations on background tasks:
[https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-coronavirus-tracing-app-
criti...](https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-coronavirus-tracing-app-criticized-
over-warning-failures/a-54305099) Obviously there's no way to know exactly how
many people should've been sent a warning and weren't either, by design.

~~~
zepto
It’s trivial to tell whether it’s working with some ordinary surveys and
research.

No “megacorps” have done anything to make it impossible.

------
sanxiyn
Very wrong. Smartphone contact tracing is successful. (e.g. in South Korea.)
It's only decentralised smartphone contact tracing that failed.

~~~
njarboe
"Only draconian access to personal data, as used in South Korea, seems to have
brought any positive results."

The article quickly glosses over this fact (and leaves out Taiwan) and labels
this successful system for stopping COVID-19 spread as draconian. I imagine
that the NSA/CIA/FBI already has such a system in place that maybe it would
just needs to get scaled up to cover everyone in the US. It's too bad the
people in the US can't trust their government to ramp up and use such a tool
to stop COVID-19 and then shut down the system afterwords. The Patriot Act
proved that once given special powers any limited time provisions just keep
getting extended forever. Some people born after 9/11 are adults at this
point.

------
euix
If you have google maps installed on your phone and location turned on, every
time you visit a restaurant you already get the message of "how did you like
xyz, please rate and help other visitors"

You are already living in a surveillance state. The difference is unlike in
other places in the world you can complain and shout about it.

~~~
sanxiyn
Another difference is that you aren't using this data (which are collected
anyway) to contain the epidemic. I can't figure out why.

~~~
nomel
My hopeful guess is that their APIs and policies make the data impossible to
access in anything but an aggregated format.

~~~
IX-103
It has to be policy. If they only had aggregate data, they couldn't do the
whole timeline thing.

They did release some results on peoples' movement patterns during the
pandemic "lockdown"
([https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/](https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/)).

------
Lammy
Good. Why are people suddenly okay with building likely-permanent surveillance
systems for temporary outbreaks? How would Apple ever reasonably remove this
feature?

~~~
jmull
Well, the Apple/Google mechanism is not useful for surveillance.

~~~
dharmab
It is if you build Bluetooth scanners everywhere in a city and correlate the
scan data with other surveillance data, as simple as pointing a camera at
whoever passes by a scanner.

~~~
jmull
Indeed, if you start with the contact tracing platform, add a mass
surveillance system to it, you end up with a mass surveillance system. Note
that a surveillance system like the one you propose doesn’t need the contact
tracing platform to work.

~~~
dharmab
But it does make it a heck of a lot cheaper to build and scale. You need far
fewer cameras and can spread cheap bluetooth beacons densely across the area.
And you can put beacons in places you can't use cameras.

~~~
IX-103
Wait, so how are you matching the beacons (cryptographic random values) back
to individual users?The back end only gets that information if a user tests
positive and agrees to submit the data.

Even then there is no reason to store that linkage so server compromises won't
leak this information.

------
m3kw9
Korea did this successfully but you have to give up a lot more privacy. This
protect my privacy, and expecting it to work great is some fallacy.

~~~
bad_user
Maybe, but privacy is worth protecting, more than ever.

~~~
andybak
Over lives?

~~~
bad_user
It's a false choice.

But even if it were true, yes, over lives. People already died fighting for my
liberal rights, I'm not willing to trade any of that for some temporary
safety.

I'm from a Warsaw pact country. Seeing westerners so willing to give up their
rights these days is so deeply disappointing.

~~~
Barrin92
The false choice here is actually that you can sacrifice lives and still
expect to have freedom.

The alternative to not giving up privacy for contact tracing or similar
measures is to be locked into your home medieval style while the plague runs
wild in the streets, which is a significantly stronger limitation of freedoms.

The choice isn't between liberty or safety, just as it isn't between economic
health and lockdown, it's between intelligent and proactive measures or
carnage. Without public health there's no liberty. If our systems fail to
protect the health of our populations those rights will go out the door sooner
or later because it proves that those values are useless.

It's completely paradoxical to argue that I'm free although I can't go to
work, I can't safely go to the restaurant, I can't meet my friends without
being afraid of contracting a deadly disease, but I'm free because I have
privacy.

~~~
anoncake
Locking yourself up for fear of a <1% chance of dying is very much a choice.

~~~
azinman2
That 1% depends on a wide variety of contexts. It isn’t 1% for everyone, 1/3%
of those who didn’t die seem to have debilitating persistent problems, and
even if everything is fine with you, you can pass it to someone who passes it
to someone who dies from your unwillingness to act for the greater good. To do
anything but protect yourself is fundamentally selfish.

~~~
orangecat
_It isn’t 1% for everyone_

True. If you're younger (really, under 60) and healthy it's much less than 1%.

 _1 /3% of those who didn’t die seem to have debilitating persistent problems_

Unclear if you mean 1/3 of all infections, which is far too high, or 1 to 3
percent, which is possibly reasonable, although again it's going to be skewed
towards older and unhealthy people.

 _even if everything is fine with you, you can pass it to someone who passes
it to someone who dies from your unwillingness to act for the greater good_

At some point people have to be responsible for themselves. If you're severely
allergic to peanuts, then that's something that you have to watch out for; we
don't ban peanuts for the general public. If you're at high risk for COVID
then you should take appropriate precautions, but it's unreasonable to demand
that everyone else be forbidden from seeing their friends and family for
months or years.

~~~
azinman2
Any levels of fatality is relative to how overwhelmed the health care system
is, and the access to care that people have. We’ve seen it as high as 15%
already in some places. This is a GLOBAL pandemic; any spread within your
community can eventually make it to the Amazon in Brazil where it’s ravishing
local communities that don’t have access to modern hospitals.

Your statement seems to emphasize that the focus should be on the youth, who
are also dying of this disease. But the careless nature of dismissing the
fatality rate of those over 60 or with co-morbidities is really unbelievable.
So my parents, who are otherwise healthy and I expect to live for DECADES more
should die now so you can go out and see your friends? Or those who are young
with diabetes that might otherwise have an entire full life? The level of
selfishness of such a statement is just off the charts.

If you were to kill just ONE person and be caught you’d be in jail for many
years, purposefully (murder) or by accident (manslaughter). Yet passing a
disease that has brought the world to its knees around is somehow ok? When did
those who get affected by your actions get to weight in and vote on this? Or
do you feel you can just unilaterally decide that it’s fine for others to die
_unnecessarily_? And for businesses to suffer because the disease keeps going
and others DO care about their own safety and those around them?

Furthermore, the CDC just acknowledged it may be as high as 1/3 of those
recovered with persistent issues [1]. Even if it were 1-3%, why is that ok for
that 1-3%? 1% of the global population is approximately 80 million people. How
many of these would have solved climate change, found a cure for covid, or
otherwise positively impacted the planet? That’s worth not just saying indoors
collectively for a short period to prevent? It keeps going because people
DON’T do what’s in the best interest for all of society, or even their future
self.

You’re basing your assumptions on an extremely short time span of data, but we
know that many viruses can strike far later in life with devastating
consequences, or a lifetime of flare ups. We simply don’t know, but Dr. Fauci
has repeatedly warned people about such a possibility. How can you calculate
such risks when they’re unknown?

Peanuts are something that can be easily regulated and limited to those who
are allergic. They pose no global threat, and don’t hop between people. Those
allergic can also carry epipens. There is no epipen for covid (yet?). Until
then we have an unusually highly contagious virus that spreads from a very
high percentage of asymptotic carriers.

Already in the US over 1/3 of Americans who died in WWII have died since March
that largely wouldn’t have otherwise [2]. It’s July. Please reconsider your
actions.

[1]
[https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6930e1.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6930e1.htm)
[2]
[https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm)

~~~
orangecat
_But the careless nature of dismissing the fatality rate of those over 60 or
with co-morbidities is really unbelievable._

Exactly the opposite. By pushing the narrative of everybody being roughly
equally vulnerable, we've failed to protect those who are most at risk. In a
reasonable world, we would have locked down nursing homes immediately, with
workers quarantined on site. (And paying them a ton of money in compensation).
We also would have said that nobody over 60 or with health complications
should be working outside of the home, even in essential businesses. Instead
we panicked over young people going to beaches.

 _So my parents, who are otherwise healthy and I expect to live for DECADES
more should die now so you can go out and see your friends?_

Your parents, like mine, should take appropriate precautions. I'm not going to
visit them or anyone else at elevated risk without a recent negative test, nor
should they allow me to. But it's not reasonable to transitively extend the
moral blame for infections back to patient zero.

 _The level of selfishness of such a statement is just off the charts._

Lockdowns cause massive harm to mental health, children's education, and
people's livelihoods. And even physical health, as "elective" procedures like
cancer screenings are cancelled. I could say that you're selfish for ignoring
them, but instead I believe that we're all trying to do the best we can, and
we have different conceptions of the costs and benefits of various actions.

 _Or do you feel you can just unilaterally decide that it’s fine for others to
die _unnecessarily_?_

Every day everyone does things that indirectly raise risks for other people.
Do you quarantine yourself during every flu season? Do you ever take
unnecessary car trips, thereby increasing the risk of other drivers and
pedestrians suffering a fatal accident? If you want to argue that the current
situation requires placing the entire country under house arrest indefinitely,
you're going to have to show your work.

 _Furthermore, the CDC just acknowledged it may be as high as 1 /3 of those
recovered with persistent issues_

"Persistent" as defined in that study is 2-3 weeks, which is not an unusual
amount of time to recover from the flu.

 _That’s worth not just saying indoors collectively for a short period to
prevent?_

If I believed that a strict one month lockdown would eliminate the virus, I'd
be all for it. I don't.

------
johannes1234321
Example of the success of the German app: [https://www.lra-bgl.de/t/das-
landratsamt/aktuelles/details/n...](https://www.lra-bgl.de/t/das-
landratsamt/aktuelles/details/news///zwei-neue-corona-faelle-im-
berchtesgadener-land/) (sorry German)

In the region of Berchtesgaden a asymptomatic person for a warning from their
app and was confirmed positive. Due to the app that person didn't spread
further.

Now we can argue how many of such cases we need for calling it a true success
and then we can discuss if a single case makes the news if that's a bad sign
... on the later it's important to mind that certainly not every case makes
that news and it's from a region with low virus load to begin with.

------
eecc
Italy’s Immuni wasn’t downloaded enough to be a significant sample; people are
too worried about their bloody battery performance and “what if I’m flagged
and gub’mint makes me isolate home”. The National Health Service’s effort to
run a population wide serological sample was also declined because “what if
I’m positive and I need to stay home”. The fucking chemical reagents expired
in the meantime.

It’s these times when I have to make an effort not to praise regimes for their
efficiency in enforcement... or it’s just theater and marketing and human
nature is rotting their process to the core as well..

~~~
kevinpet
Comments like "what if I’m flagged and gub’mint makes me isolate home" makes
me think of people who object that the problem is idiot users who don't
recognize a clearly superior product. If people don't trust the government,
that's a failure of that government.

~~~
toyg
We’ve seen the same phenomenon across countries as different as Norway and
Italy. Some fears are primal.

------
salimmadjd
> the reliability of distance estimates using Bluetooth signal attenuation

Take a look NOVID [0] the app CMU professor and graduate students built.

It uses ultrasound to be accurate within 1m.

It also approaches the utility of contact tracing in a completely different
way.

[0] [https://www.novid.org/](https://www.novid.org/)

~~~
neuronic
Must be just lovely for pets at home or is it outside of the frequencies that
cats can hear (up to 79 kHz)?

Also this thread is filled with people complaining about bluetooth spying
capabilities and now you post an app with bluetooth always on AND microphone
always listening?

~~~
poshenloh
Thanks for asking. I'm the founder of NOVID. Our app has a pet mode if your
pet does not like it. This doesn't seem to have been a problem. The microphone
is also not always listening. It turns on for 2 seconds when needed. The
complete app source code has been given to a university security research team
for review, and they will see that the microphone is used only for its
intended purpose: to process ultrasonic frequencies.

~~~
michelledepeil
Out of curiosity, why not make the app source-available?

------
cgearhart
> One of the potential advantages of a centralised model is that it would
> allow the use of machine learning to adapt thresholds to minimise error...

This is a cop out. Machine learning isn’t magic. If the proximity measurement
doesn’t really work without ML then it’s probably not going to start working
with ML. Besides, if you really wanted to do it in a decentralized app you
could use federated learning, no?

~~~
Closi
ML could be an overstretch, but centralised approaches definitely do allow for
more analysis and a deeper rules-based approach.

------
denysvitali
The thing that still blows my mind about the whole contact tracing solutions
in Europe is that the servers do not federate with themselves, and that you
can only keep a single country specific app active at the time.

This leads to the situation where people that usually cross the country's
borders will only use a single app which may not track all of the contacts. So
far, the current solution is IMHO useless - but I keep on using it.

In my case I just keep one app active at all time (the one from my home
country), but it would be more effective if with a single app I was able to
track the contacts with people from other countries too.

Stupid simple example: I live in Switzerland (SwissCovid), and ideally when I
cross the italian border I'll need to activate the italian contact tracing app
(Immuni), but contacts with people that use a different app won't be counted
even if they are infected - which totally misses the point of having a contact
tracing in the first place :(

------
unholythree
There has to be a clever way of doing this that isn’t super invasive. Having
businesses record their customers and retain the only copy seems like a good
compromise except something like personal phone numbers would be abused.

Maybe best would be something identifiable only to the authorities but
recorded and held only by businesses. Something like driver’s license date of
issuance and first name. In theory that would be meaningless to my local
coffee shop or grocer; but if I tested positive contact tracers could go there
and get that info (maybe just the day of my visit, or afternoon, etc.) and
then correlate and contact others who visited during that time.

~~~
sanxiyn
South Korea already solved this problem: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/south-
korea-to-use-qr-codes-to...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/south-korea-to-use-
qr-codes-to-contain-covid-19/)

There is QR code provider and QR code scanner. QR code provider includes Naver
(Google in South Korea) and Kakao (WhatsApp in South Korea). QR code scanner
is mandatory at venues. QR code is a random UUID. Venues keep UUID (but do not
know real world identity), providers keep UUID-to-identity mapping (but do not
know real world activity), KCDC gets feed from both venues and providers, join
them, and do the contact tracing. In particular, it is legally mandated that
only KCDC can do the join.

~~~
neuronic
Asia has solved a lot of the issues surrounding the pandemic months ago. While
American and European economies will be crushed by Corona (it's I bet it's not
even half time) due to conspiracy theories, ignorance and egoists and adult
babies crying about wearing a mask, Asia is getting back to ramp up their
economies.

They are far more capable of shutting new clusters down AND CONTROL IT. When
we send people into quarantine in the West, we plea for them to stay home and
everything is trust based because we want to keep our free society.
Effectively, only very large local outbreak cases enjoy oversight by
authorities.

Taiwan's pandemic game was on point before WHO finally let the rest of the
world know about what has been suppressed in China for weeks if not months.
Due to China's pressure they aren't part of WHO or UN and had no "official"
global way to tell the rest of the world. They did, but were dismissed due to
the massive hubris in the West and the geopolitical game China is playing.

SARS 1 is still on everyone's mind in Asia while many Americans outright deny
Corona's existence even in July 2020. It's nuts.

~~~
sassypotato
Yes such a shame we can't focus on our economy, just because of outdated
things like liberty and human rights.

~~~
goblin89
The Economist’s Democracy Index as of 2019 rates favorably enough most East
Asian democracies that have been handling COVID-19 well so far; some of them
score higher than the US or half of European countries.

It doesn’t seem like “capable of containing a highly infectious disease” and
“oppressive” go hand in hand.

------
avivo
This is completely missing what is likely the primary obstacle to adoption, at
least in the US. Apple and Google require an entire state to commit
_exclusively_ to using a single app. Even though they use a protocol that
would easily interoperate across jurisdictions and apps effectively.

City governments which could move much faster are unable to do anything.
States are on fire dealing with others things. They also all want some smaller
scale trial to happen first, but no one can do that according to Apple/Google
policies. So they are all stuck in a chicken and egg problem...

(This is all according my sources working directly on such apps which were
ready to deploy 3 months ago — but were completely stopped by the policy; I'm
interested to hear if anyone is aware of reasons why this might not be
accurate).

~~~
whyever
I think this is intentional to prevent confusion/abuse. The national app also
gets singled out on the Play Store.

------
usrusr
I disagree with the failure claims except for lack of adoption.

How can unreliable distance measurements be an issue? Actual viral spread over
distance is a much, much bigger uncertainty. Even improving distance
measurements to the nanometer wouldn't make much of a difference considering
transmission prediction. Sometimes the virus bridges tens of meters, other
times it fails to make landfall in a prolonged skin on skin situation.

Measuring impact is a simple polling research problem: if you want to know
this kind of thing (and I think you should) you need to accompany your PCR
tests with a tiny little questionnaire collecting data about why the test was
done. Failure to collect that data is entirely unrelated to the app.

------
tannhaeuser
Contact tracing has unfortunately also failed as in "is buggy":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23947323](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23947323)

To be clear, I've installed the tracing app, having the idea that it can only
help to isolate hotspots, which however is mainly the health authorities'
task. And 16+ million downloads (of how many eligible smartphone owners?) in
Germany still makes Corona Warn-App a chart breaker I guess.

------
smabie
Just pay each person a $100 if they download the app, or whatever. People
react to incentives, and downloading the app brings no personal benefit.
Change that.

~~~
rossdavidh
Really, I bet $10 would be enough to get a high adoption rate.

------
KKKKkkkk1
There's no mention of China in this article. China had a pretty large-scale
tracing system using smartphones. Has that also failed?

------
xfitm3
I'm pleased to see this. I'm privacy forward and there is no doubt this
information will be abused by private and public entities. We simply need to
deal with this another way without giving up yet another bit of privacy.

------
aboringusername
This is looking at it from a technological angle. However, what about the
social/financial aspects?

If I am told to self isolate for any duration of time, will the government
provide 100% of my lost wages? Will they support businesses who could be put
in real trouble from someone having time off? What about potential repeated
cases of isolation?

Most people (including myself) will do anything to avoid being on their radar,
and will not cooperate under any circumstance due to the reality that losing
money is simply not an option for me, or my employers (where I could be
replaced within a day, and that's my job gone).

Sadly, most governments haven't got well thought out policies, thus reducing
the potential pool of users who'd engage with contact tracing (whether done
via smartphone or manual like the UK).

We desperately need a UBI, for everyone, every month, forever, regardless of
status (though, if you earn over a certain amount I'd agree with limiting the
UBI, like for million/billionaires).

Otherwise, as we saw recently, someone infected over 70 people because she
didn't isolate, because she needs food and a roof, it was a case of infect
people (and risk them dying) or...dying because she can't afford rent/basics?

Yeah...This pandemic has exposed that capitalism is fucked, and during the
worst virus outbreak this century there's no support for those that need it.

Even if I _wanted_ to isolate, I couldn't _afford_ to. Therefore I cannot
comply with any contact tracing efforts.

~~~
azinman2
All of this is true if you test positive with or without an app. The app helps
you know you might be asymptomatic and spreading it to people that you know or
don’t know, who can then die from it or otherwise be seriously injured.

------
CivBase
"Contact tracing" was the new "blockchain" for a while. It is a technology
with great potential, but I don't expect a truely effective, well-designed
solution to be deployed at a large enough scale to be useful for years to
come. I think it will eventually mature enough to be useful for future
outbreaks - even for more benign disease. For now, though, I want to see the
technology spend a little more time in the oven.

~~~
azinman2
Do you actually have specific criticisms or is this just a vague feeling? To
say it’s not well thought out is a baseless accusation.

~~~
CivBase
I don't think it's poorly thought out. I just think the tech is immature and
the current incarnations will have to quickly improve or be superceded by
something significantly better in the next few years.

------
nxpnsv
I find it odd how many people get paranoid with tracing but still use Facebook
or google products...

------
diebeforei485
It's because the privacy-at-any-cost camp, like the EFF, raised hell and
prevented Apple from making an app themselves. So only cash-starved state
governments can make apps, which is unlikely to happen.

They have blood on their hands.

------
mensetmanusman
Not possible until UWB is ubiquitous.

------
wtmt
I was suspicious of the effectiveness of contact tracing apps, which have to
rely on something as unreliable as Bluetooth to estimate distance across
different kinds of hardware, different kinds of software drivers and in
different situations. That got worse with some governments wanting to collect
location information through the contact tracing apps 24/7 and centralize it.

 _> It would appear that no government has thought this out properly yet._

This seems to be true at least in India, where the app is a centralized one
that doesn’t use the Apple/Google framework The app tracks the location of
users at all times (it asks for that permission) and hence cannot use the APIs
since Apple and Google prohibit such apps from collecting location
information. Since it requires background location access and Internet
connectivity, it’s a good addition to drain batteries quicker.

The government also famously declared that the app would be open sourced so
that it could be improved and issues fixed. That turned out to be a farce with
the source released only for the Android version, and that too for an older
version of the app with some code removed (the code on the Play Store was
newer). They stopped releasing updates of the source. They didn’t release the
source of the iOS app, which was supposed to be “shortly” (that was around two
months ago). They didn’t fix the issues that people raised on GitHub. Yet the
government claimed that the app was effective and put out some numbers on it
being useful (without any backing data or any way to verify those claims).

It gets even worse. The app being a platform for contact tracing is only one
facet. The goal that wasn’t widely disclosed was to have private companies
build on top of the app and its server side data to create platforms on health
data collected from hundreds of millions of people. Note that India doesn’t
have a data privacy or data protection law, leave alone anything to control
health related data in the hands of crony capitalists and opportunists.

Now all talk about contact tracing and its effectiveness is muted or nowhere
to be seen, though the app is being pushed as a requirement to give people
permission to travel and for other purposes.

The platform has become, and is continuing to become, what some people
feared...and that’s getting farther from handling COVID-19 or a public health
crisis.

------
raverbashing
You don't want to install a tracing app for "privacy reasons" fine.

Just make sure you don't have any of: Google's location history turned on, any
FB app (FB/Instagram/Whatsapp), TikTok, 4sq/swarm, Tinder, Happn, or any app
that has fine-grained location permissions.

~~~
Avamander
Ah yes, the waterproof "some bad things are happening, it must mean that this
other bad thing happening is also fine"-argument.

"Most people infect their devices with malware from the internet, let's all
preinstall malware to every device because it has the same end result."

~~~
raverbashing
> Ah yes, the waterproof "some bad things are happening, it must mean that
> this other bad thing happening is also fine"-argument.

Ah yes the good strawman fallacy argument

Funny how the contact tracing app requires _no_ special permissions. None.
Every extra data is completely optional.

Sure it is your choice to not install the C.T. app and install other data-
hoarding apps but know what you're doing.

~~~
Avamander
> Ah yes the good strawman fallacy argument

It isn't, that's literally what you said. That we should be okay with contact
tracing if we have anything else that uses the fine-grained location
permission.

------
ArkVark
Contact Tracing is not recommended (and basically pointless) for mild
respiratory illnesses like Coronaviruses because for the vast majority of
people, they are asymptomatic or lowly symptomatic, and the spread can be
extensive.

Its only recommended for more serious viruses like Ebola.

