back to article Singapore to test compulsory COVID-tracker usage as condition of entry to some venues

Singapore test compulsory use of COVID-tracking tech as a condition of entry to some venues. The city-state was among the first to introduce a contact-tracing smartphone app and later introduced a dumb device for those who don’t fancy, or don’t own, a smartphone. Both are branded “TraceTogether”. The dumb device made it to …

  1. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge

    This will enable us to open up safely in the coming weeks and months

    Nope, not realy. It won't prevent an infected-but-unknown-to-the-system person entering the high-risk venue and spreading the virus inside. It justs enables tracing everyone after the fact.

    False sense of security, and potentially the thin end of a perpetual tracked-by-the-state wedge. But hey, it's Singapore. Something like that'd never be considered here. Wait... No. Of course it would.

    1. Dr Scrum Master

      Re: This will enable us to open up safely in the coming weeks and months

      Just like CCTV being placed "for your safety"

    2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: This will enable us to open up safely in the coming weeks and months

      It is not meant to prevent, it is meant to allow for quickly putting the infected people under quarantine and stop them from spreading it further.

    3. James Anderson

      Re: This will enable us to open up safely in the coming weeks and months

      The point is you are not allowed in without one. So there should be no unknown persons.

      1. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: This will enable us to open up safely in the coming weeks and months

        "The point is you are not allowed in without one. So there should be no unknown persons."

        The "unknown" referred to persons who are not known to have the disease, but they do. They are asymptomatic, go in, infect others who will not develop symptoms for a week, and those others will infect still more. The point is that this tracking system is not sufficient to allow completely normal operation while rates of transmission are still high. It can allow some increase in safe levels of social interaction, but if something like this is sold as a panacea which will allow perfect containment of infected people, people may have a false sense of security about what it's going to do. If this leads to normal levels (in a densely-packed city, very high levels) of close contact, it will not take long to prove this point. Sadly, that proof will come in the form of new cases, including deaths and long-lasting health effects. If only we could consider it before overselling something.

    4. sanmigueelbeer Silver badge

      Re: This will enable us to open up safely in the coming weeks and months

      The scheme is all about "contact tracing" in an accurate and timely manner.

    5. Tempest
      Linux

      Re: This will enable us to open up safely in the coming weeks and months

      Obviously, this doesn't apply to local fisher-persons from either Singapore or Jahore Baru who happily sail across the Johore Strait (aka Selat Johor) blithely ignoring the niceties of tracking.

      P.S. The seafood restaurants in JB are the greatest!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    USA fixed their Coronavirus

    Here look, they stopped testing for it in red states, and stopped declaring deaths from Coronavirus (no test, means no Covid19 as cause).

    Problem solved, nobody dies of Coronavirus if you don't test anyone!

    https://i.imgur.com/LncJBYp.png

    The drop in testing coincides with the July 16th switch from cases being reported to the CDC to instead sending the data to HHS.

    That data is out of date, but its continued, they keep reducing the testing so as to reduce the outcomes and let the disease spread:

    https://covidtracking.com/data

    The Woodward book reveals Trump was boasting about lying about how deadly and infectious it is.

    Trump will have told the same truths to Fox News pundits in his many private discussions with them. He won't have just confessed to Woodward, he will have confessed to his Fox & Friends buddies off camera. Yet they chose to repeat the lie to their viewers anyway. Fox News viewers are older viewers more likely to die from Corona virus.

    The liars on Fox New want their viewers to die, rather than Trump to be embarrassed. Fox News viewers lives don't matter to Fox News.

    But Fox News viewers lives *do* matter.

    But hey, look at the distractathon, "Antifa started the wild fires to steal your TVs", "Black Lives Matters is really code for Blue Lives Don't matter, shoot them on site!", "cannibal pedo Marxists Democrats like peeing on pizzas says Putin", "God says vote Trump, according to all televangelists and dead popes".....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Perhaps they determined that widespread testing wasn't wothwhile in some areas where the number of infected people was very low at that time?

      Also a falling (calculated) mortality rate means less stringent measures can be justified to contain the virus.

  3. Potemkine! Silver badge

    Nice experiment

    A good point with this, we'll know if having such an app widely distributed is helpful to slow or stop contaminations.

  4. DS999 Silver badge

    You'd also need massive testing for this to work

    Otherwise people who don't know they have coronavirus will spread it, and there's no contact tracing done until a positive test is reported. You'd probably need to test everyone on a weekly basis to be sure, though if you test if they'd HAD it you could maybe get away with monthly testing (at the cost that you'd have to contact trace everyone that person came in contact with in the month since they're last negative test)

    So that's the US out then, we can't even test enough to catch all the actual cases, let alone have resources to test people who have no reason to believe they have the virus.

  5. Tempest
    Alert

    Singapore, the Police State

    Singapore is a police state with InterNet & telephone monitoring, credit card usage info available on line to police, facial recognition. ANPR for vehicles, etc.For privacy uploud you data to a Cloud, and pull the SIM - before landing!

    There is one way to avoid this latest idea - use a satellite handset, it beats even their extensive cell monitoring, and essentially the only communications they can't get their clammy hands on.

    The Government Communications Headquarters, aka GCHQ, still has an office in Singapore, located in an Army camp, and easily located by drunken louts with English accents at a nearby pub.

    1. julian.smith
      Big Brother

      Re: Singapore, the One Party Police State

      A friend described Singapore as "North Korea with electricity" for most of the reasons you cited.

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