[HN Gopher] Nearly 40% of Icelanders are using a Covid app, but ...
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Nearly 40% of Icelanders are using a Covid app, but it hasn't
helped much
Author : jtbayly
Score : 81 points
Date : 2020-05-16 15:52 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.technologyreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.technologyreview.com)
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Iceland is quite unique, only one real large population center,
| limited public transport, tiny venues, multi-generational homes
| and overall a tiny population so it doesn't seem to be the prime
| candidate for contact tracing apps since it's effectively the
| best case scenario for traditional contact tracing.
| __s wrote:
| For reference, https://icelandmag.is/article/capita-champion-
| world
|
| Also most chess GMs per capita, 2nd most cars per capita, it
| goes on..
| Someone wrote:
| That's just the law of small countries (just made up that
| term). It's easier for smaller entities to be an outlier.
| You'll find about the same positive as negative ones, though.
|
| If you were to split a large country such as the USA or China
| into parts with a third of a million people, chances are
| that, for any of these, there would be a parts that beats
| Iceland.
|
| There may be exceptions such as the highest usage of hydro-
| power usage, as they have a rather unique geology. Vatican
| City won't be beat on popes per km2, either (it has just over
| two)
| triyambakam wrote:
| Contact tracing is not needed - identify the people at high
| risk and protect them from the virus. People at low risk should
| be expected to circulate the virus and develop immunity.
| Contract tracing among low risk defeats the purpose.
|
| If we're ever going to get our lives back, and not be on
| indefinite timeline of "maybe there will be a highly effective
| vaccine" we actually need the virus to circulate among people
| who can safely get it, get over it, make antibodies which
| historically - before the advent of highly effective vaccines -
| is how pandemics ended.
|
| Total isolation policies prevent broad population immunity. We
| know from decades of medical science that the population
| develops immunity while acquiring antibodies.
| andybak wrote:
| The more I learn about this disease, the less happy I am
| about the idea of getting it.
|
| There's a lot we don't know and some worrying signs that it
| might not just be an brief, acute, occasionally severe,
| illness.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That depends on the disease. Is there any proof that people
| develop immunity to covid 19 after getting it?
| bad_user wrote:
| We don't have evidence due to disease being so new, but
| there's enough reason to suspect we'll develop at least
| short term neutralizing immunity.
|
| But yes, caution is necessary. We don't have enough
| evidence to push forward a national strategy that's based
| on people developing immunity without a vaccine.
|
| Here's WHO's statement on this matter:
|
| https://www.who.int/news-
| room/commentaries/detail/immunity-p...
|
| "Herd immunity" without a vaccine, as a strategy, is
| equivalent with doing nothing and let the virus wreak havoc
| on the population.
| tomp wrote:
| Risk vs reward. If there _is_ immunity, then developing
| herd immunity sooner rather than later is important (even
| more so if there 's immunity but it's only short-term).
| If there's _no_ immunity, we 're, excuse the expression,
| fucked anyhow.
|
| Can vaccines even be developed if there's no natural
| immunity?
| orwin wrote:
| If there is short term immunity yes (diphteria, tetanos
| is an example, polio too).
|
| Being exposed to the same antigen while you have an
| immunity should reactivate this immunity, that's a reason
| why a "herd immunity" tactic could work, at least for a
| time
|
| However if the natural immunity w/o reactivation only
| last a year or less, you will end up with a new outbreak
| at the end of the period. And if the immunity period is
| shorter than the recuperation one, you will have a virus
| that will be a lot more lethal.
| CathedralBorrow wrote:
| Iceland has done quite fine through this with contact tracing
| as one of the main tools in the toolbox. I think a blanket
| statement of "not needed" needs something more behind it.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| As someone working with large health non profits on COVID
| tools, whose head is deep into the reporting and news around
| it, and who has 3 school age kids in NYC, I am of the opinion
| that there is no low risk population, no "safe to get it"
| group.
|
| There are groups where symptomatic incidence is lower. Sure.
| But JFC some of those symptomatic cases are awful, with
| lifelong impact.
|
| Someone used the Russian Roulette metaphor early on and it
| continues to resonate with me. We see over and over again
| surprising case histories all across the demographic, age,
| and health history map. Too many that are completely
| unexpected and for which there are presently no predictive
| metrics.
|
| We are slowly learning more about what this virus can do, and
| we have a sense of what it will do when presented with a
| known vulnerable population. It is remorseless.
|
| But even for "low risk" populations it is exactly like
| Russian Roulette. You and 9 others might be at the peak of
| known clinical health measurements and it may leave those
| others unscathed- that we know of- while it will destroy your
| lungs or your liver or cause you to have a stroke.
|
| With all respect to the goal of broad population immunity,
| for my family- we stay carefully isolated and adopt all
| defensive protocols, we wait for a vaccine, and we advocate
| for govt entities to provide the liquidity to keep safely
| running the various life sustaining machines that our
| interdependent world depends on.
| nradov wrote:
| This is a ridiculous comment, totally disconnected from
| reality. The risk of a seriously bad outcome from SARS-
| CoV-2 infection are far less than 1/6 (Russian Roulette)
| for most people. Hiding in our homes until a vaccine
| appears at some unknown point in the future is obviously
| not a viable strategy.
|
| If we drive the economy into another Great Depression that
| will kill many people as well. Federal government liquidity
| injections are not a solution. At some point if people
| aren't out working to create value then society will
| disintegrate.
| triyambakam wrote:
| > Hiding in our homes until a vaccine appears at some
| unknown point in the future is obviously not a viable
| strategy.
|
| Yes, this is the point I am trying to make. But most of
| the demographic here (who already work from home or
| easily transitioned to doing so) likely don't find it
| difficult and are mostly unaffected.
| JackFr wrote:
| > we advocate for govt entities to provide the liquidity to
| keep safely running the various life sustaining machines
| that our interdependent world depends on.
|
| Think about that. You and your family stay holed up because
| you can. You can because the guys stocking the supermarket
| shelves and delivering your food need to work. You want a
| government to "provide liquidity" to keep the system going
| for your benefit.
|
| You couldn't be more clueless if your name was Prospero and
| you held a masque in your abbey.
| andybak wrote:
| I think you overstepped the bounds of civility at the end
| there.
| Reelin wrote:
| Food is essential. Water and electricity are essential.
| Going to the movies or eating out is nice but certainly
| not essential. There's nothing clueless about wanting to
| keep the essentials running while limiting the non-
| essentials.
|
| I don't pretend to know where the correct balance lies
| between injecting liquidity and reopening things but
| there's certainly nothing clueless about doing so in a
| calculated manner.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| It is beyond ironic for this comment to get downvoted.
| abraae wrote:
| > Total isolation policies prevent broad population immunity.
| We know from decades of medical science that the population
| develops immunity while acquiring antibodies.
|
| Look at the bigger picture. In today's immensely innovative
| world there will almost certainly be a vaccine or anti-viral
| or some effective treatment within a year or two.
|
| The goal for those of us who are lucky enough (in normal
| times it can be a curse) to live on an island is not to hide
| out forever - it's to hide out until that treatment is
| available.
| triyambakam wrote:
| You're sincerely willing to wait an entire year for a
| vaccine that may not work when we already have effective
| treatments? That's insane
| Reelin wrote:
| > when we already have effective treatments
|
| Please don't spread misinformation.
| dredds wrote:
| NZ is also postponing app tracing as our cases hit zero, and
| our PM recommends old school ppl power. (200 tracers on standby
| with more being trained just in case)
| lostlogin wrote:
| The logs that businesses are keeping in NZ are quite funny.
| The whole 'write something on this bit of paper' process is
| basically opt in as far as I can tell.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Last night I was forced to use a ballpoint pen that a bunch
| of people had used before me without sanitising. I really
| didn't get it.
| richdougherty wrote:
| Every place I've been has a pen and paper and hand
| sanitiser next to it so you can sanitise before/after.
|
| If the place you went to doesn't have the sanitiser part
| then they're probably breaching their public health
| obligations. You can ask them to put out sanitiser or
| report a breach.
|
| https://forms.police.govt.nz/forms/covid-19-breach
|
| As an aside, I'm impressed in NZ that there's a central
| place to report issues but then issues are dispatched to
| the right agency to follow up. That makes it super easy
| to report issues.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| NZ and Iceland may be unique, but I am extremely skeptical
| about tracking apps being useful at all elsewhere, in
| comparison to large teams of trained contact tracers.
| eloff wrote:
| I'm skeptical of the idea with regard to civil liberties,
| but I don't see why one would doubt it's efficacy. It's a
| tool to make the contract tracers more productive, and I
| expect it will be fit for purpose.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| The biggest problem with contact tracing apps is that
| contact tracing in general is not very effective when the
| case rate is high. Its ideal use is to deal with the
| first case arriving in an isolated area. The sixth wave
| in the heart of NYC, not so useful.
|
| This means that the scalability advantages of tech don't
| synergize well with the uses of contact tracing. If you
| don't have very many cases to worry about, a dedicated
| team of humans will do just as well. And not have nearly
| the same long-term privacy issues.
| Reelin wrote:
| > a dedicated team of humans will do just as well
|
| That seems unlikely to me given that no jurisdiction has
| unlimited resources, not everything is captured on
| camera, patient's memories aren't perfect, and there may
| be incentives to lie or otherwise under-report certain
| contacts when things aren't completely anonymous. (For
| example, in many countries patients are likely to avoid
| revealing contact with a drug dealer.)
|
| In comparison, DP-3T (and also the joint Apple-Google
| framework based on an earlier revision of it) will
| capture any significant contact provided that both
| parties are carrying appropriate devices. It also
| maintains anonymity, so it removes nearly all incentives
| to mis- or under- report. It's not a replacement for
| teams of people, but it should provide significant
| improvements in areas where the majority of people are
| carrying such devices.
|
| > And not have nearly the same long-term privacy issues.
|
| Neither DP-3T, the Apple-Google framework, or the TCN
| protocol have any significant privacy implications
| (beyond whatever is already associated with carrying the
| physical device doing the tracing, and to the best of my
| knowledge of course).
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Right but the hard part isn't making the app anonymous
| it's getting people to carry it. Which is significantly
| harder when no one cares. Iceland has less than 40%
| uptake in a reasonably educated population that is taking
| the pandemic seriously. Extrapolate from there and things
| don't look great.
| Reelin wrote:
| The post I responded to specifically objected to efficacy
| as well as privacy concerns so I limited my response to
| those points.
|
| As to Iceland's 40% uptake, their app isn't anonymous -
| in the event you test positive you share your full
| location data with the people doing the contact tracing.
| It's also not built into the operating system so there's
| more friction for user uptake.
| bad_user wrote:
| Theoretically we could have privacy preserving contact
| tracing apps. Whether that happens or not, depends on
| your government.
|
| https://ncase.me/contact-tracing/
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Iceland has also has a large team of contact tracers. Which
| has been pretty key along with our large scale testing of
| the population. The fact we're still below 40% is a good
| indicator that this idea is pretty bad.
|
| One thing the app might be used for is to allow visitors in
| without quarantine. Prove you have tested negative recently
| and use the app so if you do get sick we at least have a
| vague idea of where you were.
| dehrmann wrote:
| All the interesting places people have been pointing to are
| islands. Except South Korea, but it's effectively an island.
| adventured wrote:
| Also one of the primary reasons Hawaii only has 17 deaths and
| 637 positives.
| manquer wrote:
| South Korea is this context similar to an island . While it
| is peninsula the only land border is with North Korea and
| highly guarded , effectively you can only enter by flying in
| just like an island.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Not just flying. South Korea is also connected to Russia,
| China and Japan by ferry.
| CathedralBorrow wrote:
| > multi-generational homes
|
| Can you clarify what you mean by this?
| llarsson wrote:
| That typically means grandma lives with your family in her
| old age, rather then by herself or in some old folks home.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| This isn't typical at least in my decade of living in
| Iceland.
| CathedralBorrow wrote:
| Ah, thanks.
|
| Iceland is whatever you call the opposite of that. Grandma
| very rarely lives with her family, she lives by herself --
| hopefully with her partner -- until she is unable to and
| then moves into a system that ranges from living-alone-
| with-help to typical old folks homes, and will gradually
| move towards more care as her health allows.
|
| So that's wrong in the original comment, but the rest
| seemed pretty spot on to me, and doesn't change the
| argument much I think.
| user_50123890 wrote:
| This reassures the hypothesis that you probably won't catch the
| virus from a brief contact in a grocery store or similar if you
| keep your distance.
|
| Infections happen within families, and spread from one family to
| another by friends/coworkers. The infected people should be
| easily able to list all exposed out by name.
|
| An exception is of course mass indoors public events that are
| forbidden now. This is where a contact tracing app would probably
| prove to be the most useful.
| cma wrote:
| How about that restaurant study where lots of people at tables
| behind the guy next to the air conditioner flow got it:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/health/airflow-coronaviru...
| [deleted]
| Retric wrote:
| Incidental contact is unlikely to matter in most cases.
| However, multiple people at different tables where infected at
| a restaurant from a single customer. So, it doesn't take that
| much.
| eloff wrote:
| Or on public transport. New York's subway system was probably
| it's Achilles heel during this outbreak.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Except Staten Island had the second most cases per capita.
| Lots of the obvious NYC theories have holes where you look
| at places affected.
| jmull wrote:
| People who live or work on Staten Island used mta
| services, including subways, heavily.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Maybe ferries cause the same kinds of problems as subways
| do.
| barbegal wrote:
| This app tracks users'locations using GPS data and according to
| the article "allows investigators--with permission--to look at
| whether those with a positive diagnosis are potentially spreading
| the disease"
|
| Without also being able to know the location of people without a
| positive diagnosis, the app probably doesn't help that much.
|
| But I don't think this necessarily applies to apps being
| developed for other countries where Bluetooth is being used to
| measure person to person contact directly.
|
| This article lacks any real insight into what isn't working or
| why.
| Kephael wrote:
| Couldn't you DDoS this infrastructure by having beacons
| masquerade as users and then have people quarantined because
| they were marked as near an infected individual when in reality
| they were near a rogue beacon that spams generated identifiers?
| This certainly can't be constitutional in any Western system of
| government.
|
| Even if the identifiers were encrypted with a public key that
| only the tracer service had the private key to, couldn't a bad
| actor register as a bunch of actual people and then have them
| show as coming in contact with infected people?
| dehrmann wrote:
| Or DDoS _society_.
| jmull wrote:
| No. All this app does is record a user's location for the
| last two weeks. Then, after a positive diagnosis, that
| location data is examined as an aid to help determine who
| that person may have come into contact with.
|
| Beacons, identifiers, constitutions, and public keys don't
| come into it.
| jonastryggvi wrote:
| I've heard that the app was useful to refresh people's memory
| when doing contact tracing, but as the cases went down quickly
| after the app was released then it might not have been a
| gamechanger.
|
| the app is open source of people are interested;
| https://github.com/aranja/rakning-c19-app
| cwhiz wrote:
| Only 33% of Americans would consider using a contract tracing
| app.
|
| https://www.axios.com/axios-ipsos-coronavirus-week-9-contact...
| raggi wrote:
| Sure, but equivalent tracing teams in some of the bad us cities
| would have two to three _orders of magnitude_ higher case load
| per team member. The "traditional methods" like making phone
| calls as described in the article _do not work_ at that scale.
| Yes testing and many other things are more effective, and
| tracing is less useful if you 've effectively got rates down to
| manageable levels, but at unmanaged levels, automation _could_
| really help. New York has more _new cases per day_ than Iceland
| has handled in total.
| phyzome wrote:
| It would definitely depend on the app, for me! There are better
| and worse ways of doing this, along both privacy and security
| axes.
|
| (...if I even used a smartphone)
| jonastryggvi wrote:
| here is the covid19 info website in iceland, if anyone is
| interested in how many tests have been done and other statistics;
| https://www.covid.is/data
| krzyk wrote:
| Wow, it looks like Iceland recovered from it pretty fast. Only
| 6 active cases
| duxup wrote:
| I wonder how much it would.
|
| There's a chance that a chance encounter would result in an
| infection. But then how many data points of low probability
| events are useful?
| [deleted]
| pizza wrote:
| Something I've been thinking about during lockdown is that, while
| we are for the most part staying at home when possible, if you
| get sick, you only have, maybe, 4 or 5 contacts to trace, on
| average. If we release lockdown, the number of average contacts
| to trace goes way way up.
| [deleted]
| w3mmpp wrote:
| If you lock people up in solitary confinement they won't catch
| it at all. See the problem with your logic here?
| adrianmonk wrote:
| There is no problem with their logic. The number of contacts
| does indeed go up, which is all that they said.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| If we did just that for three weeks all of this would be
| over.
| w3mmpp wrote:
| Today for the coronavirus, tomorrow for what else?
| z3rgl1ng wrote:
| The coronavirus. Weren't you paying attention? They said
| three weeks.
| MiroF wrote:
| I suspect that many of the people getting infected are not
| observing as strict of social distancing as you imagine.
|
| e: Why am I getting downvoted? Just conditioned on | getting
| infected by covid, means more likely to have had more contacts.
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