The media coverage re the NHS T&T App

[TeamRick]

Arrgghhh honestly this is so frustrating!
All day on the bloody news, businesses are struggling because the NHS test & trace App is pinging people left right & centre!
The App works by 'pinging' people who have been less than 2 meters from someone who has RECORDED A POSITIVE TEST for more than 15 mins!
The Govt has abandoned social distancing
The Govt have let new cases rise to 50,000 per day!

There isn't a problem with the fucking APP! The App is doing what it's supposed to be doing!
Why is everyone angry with the App and not the fucking Govt!

The media's obsession with blaming the app for this is driving me insane!

There's also a problem with the media confusing the Test & Trace service with the Covid-19 App too - they are different!
Test and Trace is a laborious, but thorough, process of tracing contacts who have genuinely been in contact and are highly likely to be at risk of contracting the virus from someone. If you're contacted by Test & Trace and asked to isolate it is a legal requirement (currently). Being pinged isn't.

DS tested positive last week. In the preceding days he'd slept over at his girlfriend's house and also been in a car with friends and slept overnight in the same room with them. He gave their details to Test & Trace when asked, but now his friends are 'furious' with him because they have to isolate and can't go to work/ socialise. I think some are ignoring it .
DS feels really conflicted as he thinks he did the right thing, but doesn't want to lose his friends.

@DoormatBob

Bluetooth doesn't work well through hard surfaces such as walls so the fact it is shows that it's not a reliable system.

Without getting too techy bluetooth is a radio frequency so the range is massively dependent on the antenna as much as any power setting. With the rise of Bluetooth connected devices modern smartphones have excellent antennas, nobody wants there headphones or speaker to go off because your phone is just out of reach.

Phone antennas are much bigger than headphone antennas so 2 phones will be working over some distance. Regular Bluetooth range in free space is 10m.

Restricting bluetooth to 2m on a wide range of devices is impossible.

This is interesting.

My ndn who tested positive and sparked the pingfest in my block sleeps in the room next to my bedroom. Judging from his snores and coughs his bed is roughly aligned with ours, so I assume that his phone will be no more than a couple of feet away from mine overnight. And the fact I can hear his coughs and snores shows how thin the wall is!

It's a bit unsettling to realise how close you are to a stranger when you're fasto!

Do you need BT on for it to work then?

Yep

Mine got pinged due to my neighbour. Her bedroom is adjacent to mine. Neighbour on the other side is in a back to back and when she tested positive her phone then pinged the person in the adjoining house.

The issues with Bluetooth have been known about since the apps were in design stage

theintercept.com/2020/05/05/coronavirus-bluetooth-contact-tracing/

The App uses Bluetooth.

There is no way to accurately measure distance with a Bluetooth network, could be in your pocket or in a bag which will affect the signal.

It is not a legal requirement to install it or to isolate if told to do so.

Never used it and never will.

Who are all these people who are within 2m of another person for 15 minutes? That's a long time to be basically within touching distance of a stranger outside of maybe public transport.

I think it's difficult to judge the distance, and it's further than you think it is. It's certainly not touching distance! If you measure it out, it's quite a big gap and feels unnatural far away to be talking to somebody. Especially if your hearing isn't perfect! If you're walking with somebody, it's practically impossible to be 2m apart from each other unless you got to extremes (and that could even be a stranger, if the streets are busy!). With the layout of furniture in an average living room, you will often be sitting within 2m of guests.

Restaurants, cafes, pubs,. have mostly hardly bothered with distancing different households even when that was a thing, so people are right next to each other, less than a metre apart, never mind two. Queues, browing shops, cinema, workplaces, bus and train stations, waiting, anywhere where you're static for a period of time, it's very easy to inadvertently get closer than 2m for 15m.

Honestly, people (including me, I'm not judging!) misjudge it and stand too close about 99% of the time!

There is a lot of problem with the app. And a huge problem to society for lots of otherwise healthy people to be isolating - few pinged people go on to develop illness. And the check in function is extremely odd and unlikely to be helpful in isolating contacts.

I thought the app pinged you if you had been in the same location for 15 minutes as someone who tested positive but not necessarily at the same time? Eg I stood at a bus stop for 20 minutes at 9am. Someone else comes along at 2pm and stands in the same location and they record a positive test and I get pinged?

Do any other countries have such an app? I've not heard of any others, only manual contact tracing.

For the App FAQs

Risk threshold and notifications
When someone develops symptoms related to Coronavirus, they are asked when these symptoms first appeared and asked to request a test through the app. If they test positive, they are asked whether the app can notify other app users they may have passed the virus on to.
The algorithm uses the date of symptom onset to calculate who they are most likely to have infected. The algorithm looks at the daily risk for every app user who they came into contact with from 2 days before symptoms first appeared, up to a maximum of 10 days after symptoms first appeared.
If an app user’s risk score on any of these days crosses the risk threshold it is identified as high-risk and they will be notified and directed to further guidance.
For the purposes of contact tracing, a high-risk encounter is classed as one where an individual has been within 2 metres of someone who has tested positive for Coronavirus for at least 15 minutes. The risk threshold for the app has been set to identify high-risk encounters based on this principle along with infectiousness (of the individual testing positive) on the day of the encounter; balancing the need to slow the rate of infection by identifying high-risk encounters whilst mitigating the risk that those at lower risk may be notified to self-isolate.
This threshold can be changed as the app is updated, more data is available about the transmission rate of the virus, or due to behavioural factors.

covid19.nhs.uk/risk-scoring-algorithm.html

@PinkSparklyPussyCat

Sorry *@Mandatorymongoose* that sounded harsh and it wasn't meant to!

@PinkSparklyPussyCat no problem! It's a fair question. It took me a couple of days to work out where the notification had come from. I had been out that day but DH got a notification too and other than a 2 minutes school run hadn't left the house. DD had been at home and hadn't got pinged.

I work with very vulnerable people so I'm not going to take chances. It was a pain for me to rearrange visits but I fortunately have plenty of work I can do from home, so other than frustration it didn't cause me any issues.

If I was in a position where it would cause me difficulties I guess I might have been less willing to comply.