3 ms·

There isn't a dichotomy. We can use all these techniques. Testing is great of course, but given that you can't test everybody every day, testing is more effect

There isn't a dichotomy. We can use all these techniques. Testing is great of course, but given that you can't test everybody every day, testing is more effective when you can test the right people. If we can trace contacts, we can prioritize testing of people who've had a possible contact recently, and thereby find and quarantine infectious people faster.

mellow2020 7y ago
> There isn't a dichotomy. I simply meant that this "without ubiquitous, cheap, fast, and accurate testing, you can't confirm the app's diagnosis. So the alert is useless." was turned into medical professionals asking someone about contacts, a la "Someone you report you had coffee with, but who doesn't get the disease, is a false positive" to show that getting asked about contacts by medical professionals isn't better than a contact tracing app, which is a straw man, i.e. Schneier didn't ask for medical professionals to ask those questions, he said those questions are useless without tests.
- nshepperd 7y ago
  He did ask for that, at the end of his post: > It has nothing to do with privacy concerns. The idea that contact tracing can be done with an app, and not human health professionals, is just plain dumb. Human health professionals doing contact tracing means exactly that.
  - mellow2020 7y ago
    In context, given all he wrote before, it's obvious that he means testing, not asking questions about who someone had coffee with.
    - sanderjd 7y ago
      No not at all, in that sentence he is talking about human health professionals doing contact tracing rather than apps. Which is why the thread-starter is right that his argument here is silly. It would be better for him to be clear-eyed that he is biased against technological contact-tracing solutions in favor of human ones, because of his privacy concerns. That is a totally reasonable position! What is not reasonable is arguing against using technology for contact tracing because it has false-positive and false-negative problems; it's true that it does, but all contact tracing solutions are probabilistic in this way.

mellow2020 7y ago

> There isn't a dichotomy. I simply meant that this "without ubiquitous, cheap, fast, and accurate testing, you can't confirm the app's diagnosis. So the alert is useless." was turned into medical professionals asking someone about contacts, a la "Someone you report you had coffee with, but who doesn't get the disease, is a false positive" to show that getting asked about contacts by medical professionals isn't better than a contact tracing app, which is a straw man, i.e. Schneier didn't ask for medical professionals to ask those questions, he said those questions are useless without tests.

nshepperd 7y ago
He did ask for that, at the end of his post: > It has nothing to do with privacy concerns. The idea that contact tracing can be done with an app, and not human health professionals, is just plain dumb. Human health professionals doing contact tracing means exactly that.
- mellow2020 7y ago
  In context, given all he wrote before, it's obvious that he means testing, not asking questions about who someone had coffee with.
  - sanderjd 7y ago
    No not at all, in that sentence he is talking about human health professionals doing contact tracing rather than apps. Which is why the thread-starter is right that his argument here is silly. It would be better for him to be clear-eyed that he is biased against technological contact-tracing solutions in favor of human ones, because of his privacy concerns. That is a totally reasonable position! What is not reasonable is arguing against using technology for contact tracing because it has false-positive and false-negative problems; it's true that it does, but all contact tracing solutions are probabilistic in this way.