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Contact tracing is an sort of interesting solution It works great when you have just a few cases and are highly motivated to stop them from spreading (Asia/Oce

Contact tracing is an sort of interesting solution It works great when you have just a few cases and are highly motivated to stop them from spreading (Asia/Oceania) and it doesn't work at all, when you have a lot of cases and have no interest in doing what's necessary to contain them (Americas/Europe) Mass-market contact tracing, in hindsight, was completely pointless. I'm not personally aware of anyone who has been informed accurately of potential infection via a Bluetooth app.

jfoster 5y ago
Are you sure? My take on why mass market contact tracing didn't pan out was that it was insufficiently implemented/used. If it were on every phone and on by default, perhaps even mandated, would it still not have worked? I know that many people take significant issue with that approach, but it would have made more of a difference, right?
- teachingassist 5y ago
  There are a number of prerequisites, for this to work, that were not mandated in the US and Europe. If someone is informed of a potential or likely infection, but then typically [chooses to/is able to] go about their day the same as usual, then what's the point of tracing them? Initial modelling that showed contact tracing to potentially work assumed: 80% uptake, over 70s to be isolated in any case, and people to strictly follow isolation rules, none of which was considered politically possible in the West: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52294896 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52294896
  - jfoster 5y ago
    Yeah, a lot of it might not be politically or culturally possible. As far as I can tell, it was always technically possible to have very good automated contact tracing, though.
  - robrenaud 5y ago
    Adoption was by far the biggest problem. If Apple/Google just shipped it in the OS and made it opt out, I bet it would have had a significant impact. Not like turning the US into Australia, but even a 10% reduction in covid cases worldwide could have saved 300k lives.
- lofi_lory 5y ago
  I think in Germany it fails, because reporting positive tests fails. Nobody doubts, if the app was promoted and reporting working flawlessly, it would hugely contribute to managing the spread.

jfoster 5y ago

Are you sure? My take on why mass market contact tracing didn't pan out was that it was insufficiently implemented/used. If it were on every phone and on by default, perhaps even mandated, would it still not have worked? I know that many people take significant issue with that approach, but it would have made more of a difference, right?

teachingassist 5y ago
There are a number of prerequisites, for this to work, that were not mandated in the US and Europe. If someone is informed of a potential or likely infection, but then typically [chooses to/is able to] go about their day the same as usual, then what's the point of tracing them? Initial modelling that showed contact tracing to potentially work assumed: 80% uptake, over 70s to be isolated in any case, and people to strictly follow isolation rules, none of which was considered politically possible in the West: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52294896 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52294896
- jfoster 5y ago
  Yeah, a lot of it might not be politically or culturally possible. As far as I can tell, it was always technically possible to have very good automated contact tracing, though.
- robrenaud 5y ago
  Adoption was by far the biggest problem. If Apple/Google just shipped it in the OS and made it opt out, I bet it would have had a significant impact. Not like turning the US into Australia, but even a 10% reduction in covid cases worldwide could have saved 300k lives.
lofi_lory 5y ago
I think in Germany it fails, because reporting positive tests fails. Nobody doubts, if the app was promoted and reporting working flawlessly, it would hugely contribute to managing the spread.