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Some of the problems: If you get an alert, are you personally responsible if you aren't going to self-quarantine immediately and perhaps infect others after bei
by mstolpm 6y ago
Some of the problems: If you get an alert, are you personally responsible if you aren't going to self-quarantine immediately and perhaps infect others after being notified? What use would a tracing app have if anyone could ignore alerts at will, because s/he has no symptoms and is afraid of job loss if quarantining?
On the other hand: What about people not using the app or just disabling bluetooth because they are afraid of being helt responsible? What if your employer, your supermarket or your health insurance demands that only users of the app are served/welcome? Are they allowed to check that you conform, even if the use itself is volontary?
I'm not against a tracing app, but lots of unsolved questions aren't even discussed openly.
- tastroder 6y ago> I'm not against a tracing app, but lots of unsolved questions aren't even discussed openly. Weird, I see the points you made brought up in many discussions that are tad more professional than a Twitter argument. Your first point is addressed by the fact that these apps are developed in tandem with health authorities. You don't just get locked away for two weeks because your phone popped up a notification. Just like there's stages for isolation there's ways to make this more compatible with regular life and still maintaining an impact on hindering the spread of this pandemic, e.g. getting you tested quickly instead of automatic isolation. Of course from an epidemiological standpoint one might argue that immediate isolation would be advisable but I doubt that would go over well in most democracies. The job loss argument seems like the economic impact argument brought up a lot over the last few weeks. On a population scale, an asymptomatic superspreader is likely far more expensive than somebody not going to work for a few days until they got tested so it could/should be addressed by policy makers. If your politicians can't figure out how to make mandatory sick leave happen during an active pandemic I'm not convinced a contact tracing app is the problem. The debate on voluntary or mandatory usage will surely be interesting, though I don't see how making it mandatory would not lead to people actively avoiding it's use and thus lessening the efficacy.
- AlanSE 6y ago> On a population scale, an asymptomatic superspreader is likely far more expensive than somebody not going to work for a few days until they got tested so it could/should be addressed by policy makers. If your politicians can't figure out how to make mandatory sick leave happen during an active pandemic I'm not convinced a contact tracing app is the problem. That's pretty much the endpoint of the discussion. We've already established there is no magic bullet for this. Even the most promising therapeutics, in the best case, will not return us to normal by the fall. Source - https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Pandemic-Innovation https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Pandemic-Innovation We are counting on vaccines, but the timelines already have a huge amount of optimism backed into them. We can hardly stand 18 months more of this, but yet rollout may drag on longer than that if the trials encounter setbacks. If we don't ramp up and improve testing then we're screwed. No matter what else happens, that banishes us to isolation with no end in sight. Thankfully, testing is one area where we can and probably will come up to snuff in the summer months. That doesn't get us back to normal or normal-ish. The app would be a tremendously powerful tool. If you take this seriously, then you will value even meager tools that help move the needle in the right direction. People still holding out hope for that magic bullet are delusional, and they need to wake up to reality.
- quicklime 6y agoI would probably err on the side of making it opt-out and not mandatory. You’ve got a valid and interesting question, but my comment was in response to Schneier’s claim that contract tracking apps are “useless”. > What use would a tracing app have if anyone could ignore alerts at will, because s/he has no symptoms and is afraid of job loss if quarantining? I think this is another example where things are a bit too binary. If anyone could ignore the alert, then some probably will and the rest won’t. The fact that the rest are taking this seriously still helps to avoid some number of transmissions.
- sroussey 6y agoIndeed, if you don’t quarantine after notification, then what is your liability? If someone gets sick and dies and tracing leads back to you?
- spuz 6y agoPresumably, if you decide to install the app, it's because you are willing to consider altering your behaviour based on the alerts it gives you. You might find forcing people to install it has little benefit because of the point you mentioned but I don't think anyone is talking about making it mandatory.
- oliver2213 6y agoFrom what I've read, apple and google appear to be working on rolling out APIs for contact tracing on their platforms, and apps you explicitly install are supposedly just the first stage, with later in-platform functionality presumably to come with regular OS updates. So It might not always be a deliberate choice made by users in the future, for good or ill.