5 ms·

This is just yet another case of the UK government insisting they know best, continuing down a stupid path despite watching everyone else successfully walking t

This is just yet another case of the UK government insisting they know best, continuing down a stupid path despite watching everyone else successfully walking the opposite direction. From locking down late, to stopping contact tracing early, to not mass-testing, to releasing infected people into care homes. Just pure arrogance / incompetence. (I'm British in case you wondered... sigh...)

arethuza 6y ago
Nitpick: Arrogance and incompetence - something we do so well!
- nix23 6y ago
  Forget it...France is still number one, you silly tee-drinker ;)
pmlnr 6y ago
I voluntarily live in the UK as an EU citizen. Most countries have faults, these are the British faults. Germany won't act without a manual to follow, in Hungary you need direct permission from the maffia (also known as the governing party); choose your poison.
- futurix 6y ago
  Well, the difference is that German manual tends to work in the end. Certainly worked for Coronavirus (so far).
  - microcolonel 6y ago
    There were a lot of bad editions of the manual throughout the 20th century.
    - unfunco 6y ago
      Godwin's law at work…
      - microcolonel 6y ago
        Not just talking about the '40s editions.
  - nix23 6y ago
    Ah yes? Please tell what in Germany works's, Rail-stations? Airports?
  - bb123 6y ago
    I think there are times when the go it alone and keep calm carry on attitude works well, but this is not one of them. Hopefully lessons will be learned.
  - johannes1234321 6y ago
    Mind that Germany went towards a centralized non-Apple- Google solution first (PEPP-PT) They just took the turn sooner than the British and others.
    - BillyTheKing 6y ago
      tbf, everyone went for their own custom solution initially since apple/google only really announced their plans for a joined effort some time early/mid April or so
      - votepaunchy 6y ago
        The decision to centralize the data collection was not due to a lack of a privacy-preserving API. Any country could have gone this route independent of Apple and Google.
    - makomk 6y ago
      You have to bear in mind that the UK press was pushing the narrative that non-decentralized tracing was boneheaded British exceptionalism that ignored what every other country was doing even back when Germany, France, and various other countries were still basing their apps on that exact same solution. Because they had a narrative they wanted to push, that narrative was that the UK was a stupid backwards country that needed to copy the enlightened Europeans but was refusing to because it was run by Brexit-supporting idiots, and they weren't going to let contradictory details get in the way of that.
    - jnxx 6y ago
      > They just took the turn sooner than the British and others. Because of protests and massive intervention of experts and digital citizens rights group like the CCC. Luckily, the government listened in this case. I am somewhat amazed how well different sectors of society can suddenly work together when the situation is serious.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  As another EU citizen living in the UK, I don't think anyone is saying everything the UK does ever is stupid or doesn't work. But there's a certain cultural thing about doing things "my way" despite good evidence it's not worth doing that way. I am not sure why everything has to be compared in terms of all or nothing. In this case specifically, they knew that they're playing a loosing game since Apple and Google are ultimately the gatekeepers of the gadgets doing the actual tracing. Thinking that somehow the UK has the individual power to go ahead and reasonably do it's own thing is nothing but arrogant.
  - matthewdgreen 6y ago
    They spent 108m GBP in the process of failing, too. The Swiss spent a couple million CHF. I wonder where that money went. ETA: sources in grandchild comment.
    - raxxorrax 6y ago
      108m pound for a tracking app? How can I develop software for the British government?
      - M2Ys4U 6y ago
        Be friends with Dominic Cummings
    - nicky0 6y ago
      Source?
      - matthewdgreen 6y ago
        UK app cost was reported here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/world/europe/uk-contact-tracing-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/world/europe/uk-contact-t... I am trusting Kenny Paterson at ETH Zurich on the cost of the Swiss app, since he was involved in developing it: https://twitter.com/kennyog/status/1273612397861842950?s=20 https://twitter.com/kennyog/status/1273612397861842950?s=20 ETA: NYT article also mentions a "secretive procurement process" for the UK app, which sounds a bit worrying.
- mcintyre1994 6y ago
  It looks like Germany pretty much wrote the manual for a Coronavirus tracking app - https://github.com/corona-warn-app https://github.com/corona-warn-app
- NicoJuicy 6y ago
  Some people should read Germany's manual and picking the worst problem in internal Europe ( Hungary) is no excuse for bad decisions ( UK ) It's the same strategy non-democratic regimes use ( Trump, China, Russia)
g_p 6y ago
I would give the centralised app approach some credit - there is some good science around why being able to react to reports of symptoms (without a test) could actually have significant positive benefit. Some of the feedback seems to be frustrating (for those building a system like this) in that it came down to more human factors like people not wanting to receive this kind of news via a message on their phone, and it scaring them. I think the constant delaying to the app is a real problem, but it does appear to have become a target of pot-shots from all sides of the political spectrum. Despite this, some of the innovation that went into the app seemed to be quite impressive, and I think it's a shame we won't get to see the outcomes of a "well-thought-out" centralised app compared to the decentralised ones. My concern with the decentralised apps is that they are reliant on testing, testing means latency, and given the incubation period of covid, it seems people will be at their most infectious, spreading it to the next generation of recipients, at the time they are notified they may have been exposed. At least in my view, getting notifications out ASAP is most important given the pre-symptomatic spreading, and the centralised approach seems to both aid that, and help get people able to stop isolating if it turns out they weren't exposed to Covid (i.e. they and others exposed to same person don't have symptoms in 5 days, thus suggesting a false alarm). There was more to the centralised app than purely "centralised vs decentralised", but there's clearly other issues in the approach to handling covid.
- archi42 6y ago
  The drawback of a centralized, government controlled /TRACKING/ app is the MASSIVE AMOUNT trust it requires not to be abused. Neither now nor in the future. Purely scientifically it's quite useful in the current situation, much more than the decentralized approach we're using here in Germany; I think that goes without saying. But creating such a precedence for mass surveillance in our democracies is extremely troublesome, and -m-i-g-h-t- will cause a lot of harm in the long run. Also, only speaking for myself here: The morning the German App was released, I installed it without hesitation or any trace of doubt. It's now running on my [only] phone, which I have 24/7 with me. So within its limits, the App is rather effective. If it was centralized,... I probably would have hesitated a lot, maybe even skipped it or installed it on my old phone (with the GPS disabled via root), and only turn on that phone on demand. What I want to say: Acceptance/wide-spread use is rather important. Of course the gov can [try to] mandate the app to be used (does the UK do that? idk), but then they're opening another can of worms because they're discriminating against poorer people/demographics who might have older phones with poor battery, limited memory/RAM/CPU, or no smartphones at all (e.g. cheap dumbphones). Full disclosure: I'm sometimes checking with BeaconScope if the people around me are generally using the app. It's not as many as one would like, but it's slowly ramping up.
laumars 6y ago
I completely agree. It’s been a clusterfuck from start to end. Have you seen the news about the government terminating student nurse paid contracts early? Right when we need them the most and when public support for health workers is at an all time the high, our government decide to screw them over. I just don’t get the sanity of such a move. https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/student-nurses-see-paid-placements-terminated-early/ https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/student-nurses-see-paid-pl...
raxxorrax 6y ago
Honestly, I just don't believe in the efficiency of contact tracing apps. I took a look at the German version and the code seems clean and I believe they really made an effort to make this work and set an example on openness. Not wanting to dismiss all the work as futile, it wasn't, but I just don't see it working in reality yet. The way people behaving already makes clear that the pandemic is over in everyone's heads. You might think that especially then an app would be helpful, but we might be talking about 10% of the population actively using it. They probably didn't get the memo the app is completed. Still, I think this sets an important example of how to develop an app as a public service. If the German government would have developed such an app without loud input from critics, it would probably look exactly like the one the British tried to create. But having a loud voice around issues of data protection doesn't seem to be bad for software at all. edit: btw: quite some problems wouldn't have been this large if OS for mobile devices would actually be good. And I don't mean extending Apple/Google "features" for protected memory.
ojhughes 6y ago
I think this is partially because the UK government was cleansed of any moderates and is now made up of ultra conservative Brexit supporters. Any cooperation with other EU nations on COVID-19 would be rejected as unpatriotic.
lambdadmitry 6y ago
I won't comment on your other points, but you are definitely unfair on contact tracing and mass testing. Contact tracing scales extremely poorly. Contact tracing a single case involves a long interview and to the tune of a hundred people to be found and tested; for a disease like COVID you need to catch 60–80% of all infected contacts. Rinse repeat for each newly discovered case. It just wasn't possible in the UK for more than a few hundred cases and in the absence of R-reducing measures, so it was abandoned. And before you make comparisons with other countries, just having a centralised database of addresses makes contact tracing much easier, but it's not a thing in the UK because privacy. Mass testing requires mass testing capacity, which just wasn't there. And it's not clear how mass testing would make anything better anyway, the policy was to self quarantine on any symptoms regardless of covid status.

arethuza 6y ago

Nitpick: Arrogance and incompetence - something we do so well!

nix23 6y ago
Forget it...France is still number one, you silly tee-drinker ;)

pmlnr 6y ago

I voluntarily live in the UK as an EU citizen. Most countries have faults, these are the British faults. Germany won't act without a manual to follow, in Hungary you need direct permission from the maffia (also known as the governing party); choose your poison.

futurix 6y ago
Well, the difference is that German manual tends to work in the end. Certainly worked for Coronavirus (so far).
- microcolonel 6y ago
  There were a lot of bad editions of the manual throughout the 20th century.
  - unfunco 6y ago
    Godwin's law at work…
    - microcolonel 6y ago
      Not just talking about the '40s editions.
- nix23 6y ago
  Ah yes? Please tell what in Germany works's, Rail-stations? Airports?
- bb123 6y ago
  I think there are times when the go it alone and keep calm carry on attitude works well, but this is not one of them. Hopefully lessons will be learned.
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  Mind that Germany went towards a centralized non-Apple- Google solution first (PEPP-PT) They just took the turn sooner than the British and others.
  - BillyTheKing 6y ago
    tbf, everyone went for their own custom solution initially since apple/google only really announced their plans for a joined effort some time early/mid April or so
    - votepaunchy 6y ago
      The decision to centralize the data collection was not due to a lack of a privacy-preserving API. Any country could have gone this route independent of Apple and Google.
  - makomk 6y ago
    You have to bear in mind that the UK press was pushing the narrative that non-decentralized tracing was boneheaded British exceptionalism that ignored what every other country was doing even back when Germany, France, and various other countries were still basing their apps on that exact same solution. Because they had a narrative they wanted to push, that narrative was that the UK was a stupid backwards country that needed to copy the enlightened Europeans but was refusing to because it was run by Brexit-supporting idiots, and they weren't going to let contradictory details get in the way of that.
  - jnxx 6y ago
    > They just took the turn sooner than the British and others. Because of protests and massive intervention of experts and digital citizens rights group like the CCC. Luckily, the government listened in this case. I am somewhat amazed how well different sectors of society can suddenly work together when the situation is serious.
AsyncAwait 6y ago
As another EU citizen living in the UK, I don't think anyone is saying everything the UK does ever is stupid or doesn't work. But there's a certain cultural thing about doing things "my way" despite good evidence it's not worth doing that way. I am not sure why everything has to be compared in terms of all or nothing. In this case specifically, they knew that they're playing a loosing game since Apple and Google are ultimately the gatekeepers of the gadgets doing the actual tracing. Thinking that somehow the UK has the individual power to go ahead and reasonably do it's own thing is nothing but arrogant.
- matthewdgreen 6y ago
  They spent 108m GBP in the process of failing, too. The Swiss spent a couple million CHF. I wonder where that money went. ETA: sources in grandchild comment.
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    108m pound for a tracking app? How can I develop software for the British government?
    - M2Ys4U 6y ago
      Be friends with Dominic Cummings
  - nicky0 6y ago
    Source?
    - matthewdgreen 6y ago
      UK app cost was reported here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/world/europe/uk-contact-tracing-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/world/europe/uk-contact-t... I am trusting Kenny Paterson at ETH Zurich on the cost of the Swiss app, since he was involved in developing it: https://twitter.com/kennyog/status/1273612397861842950?s=20 https://twitter.com/kennyog/status/1273612397861842950?s=20 ETA: NYT article also mentions a "secretive procurement process" for the UK app, which sounds a bit worrying.
mcintyre1994 6y ago
It looks like Germany pretty much wrote the manual for a Coronavirus tracking app - https://github.com/corona-warn-app https://github.com/corona-warn-app
NicoJuicy 6y ago
Some people should read Germany's manual and picking the worst problem in internal Europe ( Hungary) is no excuse for bad decisions ( UK ) It's the same strategy non-democratic regimes use ( Trump, China, Russia)

g_p 6y ago

I would give the centralised app approach some credit - there is some good science around why being able to react to reports of symptoms (without a test) could actually have significant positive benefit. Some of the feedback seems to be frustrating (for those building a system like this) in that it came down to more human factors like people not wanting to receive this kind of news via a message on their phone, and it scaring them. I think the constant delaying to the app is a real problem, but it does appear to have become a target of pot-shots from all sides of the political spectrum. Despite this, some of the innovation that went into the app seemed to be quite impressive, and I think it's a shame we won't get to see the outcomes of a "well-thought-out" centralised app compared to the decentralised ones. My concern with the decentralised apps is that they are reliant on testing, testing means latency, and given the incubation period of covid, it seems people will be at their most infectious, spreading it to the next generation of recipients, at the time they are notified they may have been exposed. At least in my view, getting notifications out ASAP is most important given the pre-symptomatic spreading, and the centralised approach seems to both aid that, and help get people able to stop isolating if it turns out they weren't exposed to Covid (i.e. they and others exposed to same person don't have symptoms in 5 days, thus suggesting a false alarm). There was more to the centralised app than purely "centralised vs decentralised", but there's clearly other issues in the approach to handling covid.

archi42 6y ago
The drawback of a centralized, government controlled /TRACKING/ app is the MASSIVE AMOUNT trust it requires not to be abused. Neither now nor in the future. Purely scientifically it's quite useful in the current situation, much more than the decentralized approach we're using here in Germany; I think that goes without saying. But creating such a precedence for mass surveillance in our democracies is extremely troublesome, and -m-i-g-h-t- will cause a lot of harm in the long run. Also, only speaking for myself here: The morning the German App was released, I installed it without hesitation or any trace of doubt. It's now running on my [only] phone, which I have 24/7 with me. So within its limits, the App is rather effective. If it was centralized,... I probably would have hesitated a lot, maybe even skipped it or installed it on my old phone (with the GPS disabled via root), and only turn on that phone on demand. What I want to say: Acceptance/wide-spread use is rather important. Of course the gov can [try to] mandate the app to be used (does the UK do that? idk), but then they're opening another can of worms because they're discriminating against poorer people/demographics who might have older phones with poor battery, limited memory/RAM/CPU, or no smartphones at all (e.g. cheap dumbphones). Full disclosure: I'm sometimes checking with BeaconScope if the people around me are generally using the app. It's not as many as one would like, but it's slowly ramping up.

laumars 6y ago

I completely agree. It’s been a clusterfuck from start to end. Have you seen the news about the government terminating student nurse paid contracts early? Right when we need them the most and when public support for health workers is at an all time the high, our government decide to screw them over. I just don’t get the sanity of such a move. https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/student-nurses-see-paid-placements-terminated-early/ https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/student-nurses-see-paid-pl...

raxxorrax 6y ago

Honestly, I just don't believe in the efficiency of contact tracing apps. I took a look at the German version and the code seems clean and I believe they really made an effort to make this work and set an example on openness. Not wanting to dismiss all the work as futile, it wasn't, but I just don't see it working in reality yet. The way people behaving already makes clear that the pandemic is over in everyone's heads. You might think that especially then an app would be helpful, but we might be talking about 10% of the population actively using it. They probably didn't get the memo the app is completed. Still, I think this sets an important example of how to develop an app as a public service. If the German government would have developed such an app without loud input from critics, it would probably look exactly like the one the British tried to create. But having a loud voice around issues of data protection doesn't seem to be bad for software at all. edit: btw: quite some problems wouldn't have been this large if OS for mobile devices would actually be good. And I don't mean extending Apple/Google "features" for protected memory.

ojhughes 6y ago

I think this is partially because the UK government was cleansed of any moderates and is now made up of ultra conservative Brexit supporters. Any cooperation with other EU nations on COVID-19 would be rejected as unpatriotic.

lambdadmitry 6y ago

I won't comment on your other points, but you are definitely unfair on contact tracing and mass testing. Contact tracing scales extremely poorly. Contact tracing a single case involves a long interview and to the tune of a hundred people to be found and tested; for a disease like COVID you need to catch 60–80% of all infected contacts. Rinse repeat for each newly discovered case. It just wasn't possible in the UK for more than a few hundred cases and in the absence of R-reducing measures, so it was abandoned. And before you make comparisons with other countries, just having a centralised database of addresses makes contact tracing much easier, but it's not a thing in the UK because privacy. Mass testing requires mass testing capacity, which just wasn't there. And it's not clear how mass testing would make anything better anyway, the policy was to self quarantine on any symptoms regardless of covid status.