Contact tracing is regarded as a vital tool to limit the spread of COVID-19…
And thus far none of the proposed technical solutions have been particularly good at this. Germany currently has reported new infection rates of 300 - 400, concentrated in a few places in a country of 80 million. Given this background, it is really, really difficult to see how this app, which will need a penetration rate of > 60 % to be statistically useful will really help. And it seems like the people in Singapore have reached a similar conclusion.
More draconian, but perhaps potentially more useful, are the registration lists that restaurants, hairdressers, et al. are keeping. This could be automated and I think we'll probably see more "location restricted" services: you register automatically when you enter and leave somewhere. In which case the German parliament had better get on with a law that means companies cannot require such services. But I think we're also likely to see more attempts at early diagnosis of people with no or mild symptons such as the thermometer "guns" that the Chineese are using. We're also going to get data of the spread in nurseries and schools as they return to normal for a couple of weeks before the summer holidays. This will help improve the modelling, which will in turn, make it easier to make suggestions for targetted restrictions and recommended behaviour and the current blanket bans seem, not just to me, to be undermining society by placing everyone under suspicion.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
