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I think this ended up pretty much useless. If you use the app in public transport, you would get a warning every day. What were you supposed to do with that in

I think this ended up pretty much useless. If you use the app in public transport, you would get a warning every day. What were you supposed to do with that information then? Most people just ignored it.

KronisLV 3y ago
> If you use the app in public transport, you would get a warning every day. Wasn't really the case for me going to work, but maybe that's because of keeping a bit of distance, which might just be possible due to the lower population density over and eventually a gradual shift to remote work. > What were you supposed to do with that information then? Most people just ignored it. There definitely were people who got the notifications and self-isolated for a while, to not end up spreading the virus and probably take a test ASAP. If enough people used it, it could help quite a bit with limiting the spread. It did have some effect from what I've heard, which is still good, when doing nothing would result in more deaths. Thankfully eventually the virus variants got less dangerous, but it's sad when a good initiative ends up being less useful due to people just not caring.
amluto 3y ago
In an alternate universe in which Covid was very rare in a population (say 5 cases in an entire city), then contact tracing might be able to push R<1 if everyone who got an exposure notification quarantined for a few days. Sure, maybe 50 people would be quarantining at a given time due to false positives (potential exposures with no infection), but that would be a fine tradeoff to protect the whole city, especially if those people were appropriately compensated for the service they would be effectively performing and the infringement on their civil rights. The number of people inconvenienced per person protected from Covid would be very small (much, much less than one). Of course, nothing of the sort happened in the US, and in a situation in which most of the population gets Covid anyway in relatively short order, the number of people getting false positive notifications per person protected from Covid was be very large, and the total benefit was very low.

KronisLV 3y ago

> If you use the app in public transport, you would get a warning every day. Wasn't really the case for me going to work, but maybe that's because of keeping a bit of distance, which might just be possible due to the lower population density over and eventually a gradual shift to remote work. > What were you supposed to do with that information then? Most people just ignored it. There definitely were people who got the notifications and self-isolated for a while, to not end up spreading the virus and probably take a test ASAP. If enough people used it, it could help quite a bit with limiting the spread. It did have some effect from what I've heard, which is still good, when doing nothing would result in more deaths. Thankfully eventually the virus variants got less dangerous, but it's sad when a good initiative ends up being less useful due to people just not caring.

amluto 3y ago

In an alternate universe in which Covid was very rare in a population (say 5 cases in an entire city), then contact tracing might be able to push R<1 if everyone who got an exposure notification quarantined for a few days. Sure, maybe 50 people would be quarantining at a given time due to false positives (potential exposures with no infection), but that would be a fine tradeoff to protect the whole city, especially if those people were appropriately compensated for the service they would be effectively performing and the infringement on their civil rights. The number of people inconvenienced per person protected from Covid would be very small (much, much less than one). Of course, nothing of the sort happened in the US, and in a situation in which most of the population gets Covid anyway in relatively short order, the number of people getting false positive notifications per person protected from Covid was be very large, and the total benefit was very low.