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Contact tracing (contact investigation, etc.) is a standard practice in public health. In tuberculosis control where I got my start, it's what we do for any act

Contact tracing (contact investigation, etc.) is a standard practice in public health. In tuberculosis control where I got my start, it's what we do for any active case of TB we identify - we find the people who may have been exposed and widen the circle as necessary. It's also critical for STDs. The only difference with COVID was the scale, not the methodology. There is an argument that if the disease is everywhere, people can be infected anywhere, and you would need an accordingly exponential increase in monitoring scale to pull any kind of signal from the noise floor. But the principles work for any disease. source: TB control physician for 17 years

mardifoufs 3y ago
I agree but do we use mass tracking for stuff like tuberculosis and STDs? And agreed also that my point is probably more true for COVID than anything else. The scale of COVID is such that it automatically requires mass tracking to even consider contact tracing, but I guess my argument was that even then we should have evidence that such massive tracking improves contact tracing for very infectious viruses like COVID. I'm genuinely asking, not in a "just asking questions" manner here. So thanks for replying! I didn't know contact tracing was useful for TB too.
- danielharan 3y ago
  I live in Québec. We never had mass tracking - this was FUD about the app, which did NOT share data... and that level of privacy protection is also why it was difficult to prove its positive impact. What we did have was public health which sometimes managed to call people after a positive result - to warn their contacts, so they don't infect others in turn. This is absolutely standard for public health for many illnesses, and helps reduce contagion. Neither of those is mass tracking. Public health doesn't report you if you went to see prostitutes or used illegal drugs; their job is to stop chains of transmission, and contact the people you were around. That's true for TB as mentioned, as well as smallpox, Ebola, etc Anyways, since you're in Québec you might be interested in this figure, selecting the 0-49 demographic. Public health isn't telling us about this, or simple methods to reduce risk. Hell, HEPA filters are still near impossible to install in schools. https://statistique.quebec.ca/fr/document/surmortalite-hebdomadaire/publication/surmortalite-hebdomadaire-selon-groupe-dage-quebec https://statistique.quebec.ca/fr/document/surmortalite-hebdo...
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    I purposefully mentioned the tracking separately from the app. I was implying that the app being used for massive tracking (just that it was another example of ineffective contact tracing), and if it came off that way I just wasn't clear about what I meant. This is the story I was referring to: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadians-trips-to-liquor-stores-pharmacies-tracked-via-phones-during-pandemic-1.5890563 https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadians-trips-to-liquor-stor... And I totally agree about your last point. I'll add a more controversial opinion that our Public health authorities have been completely politicised here. Legault does not want to talk about COVID anymore so we don't. And when it was scoring points politically, they blatantly played with facts and timelines to make political decisions sound "based on science". Very very disappointed about how our public institutions acted during the crisis. For example, that the crazy, criminal, stuff that happened in CHSLDs early on was completely swept under the rug with no government official suffering from any meaningful consequences was... Eye opening.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > but do we use mass tracking for stuff like tuberculosis and STDs? My understanding (my mother is a doctor) is that we do try to do contact tracing for STDs, but this relies on patients' self-report of who they've been in contact with recently.
levinb 3y ago
Hi; I built all of the contact tracing analytics for one of the Harvard hospitals during the pandemic. Also had a parent that was clin epi for 25 years. The entire effort, using essentially every technology applied, was useless. It was for many reasons, but primarily because the asymptomatic rate was very, very high, that there was no way to actually trace anything. Where or who you got Covid from was pure speculation for a majority of positive cases. Scales and rates matter. With TB you have a very high fidelity, testable, slow spreading causal chain. Which is why TB tracing programs are effective, and good public health policy. Our national Covid policies were ineffective, to say the least.
avar 3y ago
> The only difference with > COVID was the scale, not > the methodology. There was a lot of novel contact tracing methodology during COVID-19, e.g. contact tracing though Bluetooth "contacts": https://covid19.apple.com/contacttracing https://covid19.apple.com/contacttracing

mardifoufs 3y ago

I agree but do we use mass tracking for stuff like tuberculosis and STDs? And agreed also that my point is probably more true for COVID than anything else. The scale of COVID is such that it automatically requires mass tracking to even consider contact tracing, but I guess my argument was that even then we should have evidence that such massive tracking improves contact tracing for very infectious viruses like COVID. I'm genuinely asking, not in a "just asking questions" manner here. So thanks for replying! I didn't know contact tracing was useful for TB too.

danielharan 3y ago
I live in Québec. We never had mass tracking - this was FUD about the app, which did NOT share data... and that level of privacy protection is also why it was difficult to prove its positive impact. What we did have was public health which sometimes managed to call people after a positive result - to warn their contacts, so they don't infect others in turn. This is absolutely standard for public health for many illnesses, and helps reduce contagion. Neither of those is mass tracking. Public health doesn't report you if you went to see prostitutes or used illegal drugs; their job is to stop chains of transmission, and contact the people you were around. That's true for TB as mentioned, as well as smallpox, Ebola, etc Anyways, since you're in Québec you might be interested in this figure, selecting the 0-49 demographic. Public health isn't telling us about this, or simple methods to reduce risk. Hell, HEPA filters are still near impossible to install in schools. https://statistique.quebec.ca/fr/document/surmortalite-hebdomadaire/publication/surmortalite-hebdomadaire-selon-groupe-dage-quebec https://statistique.quebec.ca/fr/document/surmortalite-hebdo...
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  I purposefully mentioned the tracking separately from the app. I was implying that the app being used for massive tracking (just that it was another example of ineffective contact tracing), and if it came off that way I just wasn't clear about what I meant. This is the story I was referring to: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadians-trips-to-liquor-stores-pharmacies-tracked-via-phones-during-pandemic-1.5890563 https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadians-trips-to-liquor-stor... And I totally agree about your last point. I'll add a more controversial opinion that our Public health authorities have been completely politicised here. Legault does not want to talk about COVID anymore so we don't. And when it was scoring points politically, they blatantly played with facts and timelines to make political decisions sound "based on science". Very very disappointed about how our public institutions acted during the crisis. For example, that the crazy, criminal, stuff that happened in CHSLDs early on was completely swept under the rug with no government official suffering from any meaningful consequences was... Eye opening.
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> but do we use mass tracking for stuff like tuberculosis and STDs? My understanding (my mother is a doctor) is that we do try to do contact tracing for STDs, but this relies on patients' self-report of who they've been in contact with recently.

levinb 3y ago

Hi; I built all of the contact tracing analytics for one of the Harvard hospitals during the pandemic. Also had a parent that was clin epi for 25 years. The entire effort, using essentially every technology applied, was useless. It was for many reasons, but primarily because the asymptomatic rate was very, very high, that there was no way to actually trace anything. Where or who you got Covid from was pure speculation for a majority of positive cases. Scales and rates matter. With TB you have a very high fidelity, testable, slow spreading causal chain. Which is why TB tracing programs are effective, and good public health policy. Our national Covid policies were ineffective, to say the least.

avar 3y ago

> The only difference with > COVID was the scale, not > the methodology. There was a lot of novel contact tracing methodology during COVID-19, e.g. contact tracing though Bluetooth "contacts": https://covid19.apple.com/contacttracing https://covid19.apple.com/contacttracing