News: 1600932431

As it is launched, how about a test report?

Testing. Hahahaha, you're funny.

released on apple and Google stores on the same day. How did they do that? Delay release until both have passed the app-nazis/bottom inspectors checks?

in which case they have had at least a week to test the Android version.

Can't wait for the follow up article once someone has found out just how much data it is sending to the servers/government. Maybe I'm just being cynical.

*If* - and that's a big if - they're sticking to the described privacy policy documents then the application is about as close as you can feasibly get to truly anonymous. The two key problematic datasets - exposure notifications and venue checkins - both stay on your device. The only potentially identifiable bits of persistent information are your part-postcode and your device and application version information. That would be enough for a really determined attacker to identify you, but they wouldn't gain much - there's no logs of activity maintained or anything like that. Just active/stale flags and rolling counts. So they'd be able to tell (after an inordinate amount of work) that you had used the app in the last day and checked into two venues, but not where or when or anything actually useful. That is a Good Thing.

I'm one of those people you'll have seen posting, at length, in the original article threads (as AC, natch) railing against the enormous volumes of data NHSX were planning to hoover up and the insane privacy agreements they were asking the testers to commit to - handing the data over to Palantir and co for 7+ years. All of that is gone. The NHS have clearly put a huge amount of effort into writing the new privacy policy, the new data journey document and the human-readable versions of the same. They're now frankly exemplary pieces of work. Assuming those policies are being properly adhered to, the teams responsible for this turnaround do appear to deserve at least a handshake. Well, a sanitised handshake anyway. There is a pandemic on.

People make mistakes.

The important thing is how you correct mistakes

Australia are you paying attention.

As someone who has been posting the same thing not as AC I tend to agree having skimmed the data use policy. This looks okay on first inspection, the main differences to the anonymous bluetooth-only apps like StopCovid NI being the recording on your phone of venues via QR codes (not uploaded, unlike the bluetooth tokens not even uploaded if you have a positive test, has to have been reported by a manual contact tracer) and the area/start-of postcode risk status (it is not entirely clear to me that this is not shared on reporting a positive test, but you'd think they have it from the test records). Haven't gone through it with a fine-toothed comb, but it does look much better.

While the duration of data retention link is broken (first thing I noticed), it is set out in https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nhs-covid-19-app-privacy-information/nhs-test-and-trace-app-early-adopter-trial-august-2020-privacy-notice which, despite the link title, is the privacy notice accessible from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nhs-covid-19-app-privacy-information

I wouldn't say the functionality is that much more extensive than, say, the StopCovid NI app, only setting up the QR code infrastructure (letting venues get unique codes) is significant. Months wasted here.

Based on every I read and hear from the UK, there is no second wave, it is still in the ups and downs of the first wave.

Two friends have just returned bto blighty and tell me that nobody makes an effort to wear a mask or distance themselves from others and are against be told what to do.

They mostly seem to think a vaccine will fix everything, which it won't.

Where I live everyone wears a mask in public, sanitise their hands going into and out of shops and we all live a fairly normal life. Locally the only new surge was when a family had a visitor from Switzerland, the whole family group of 9 caught it and the village locked down for a fotnight, nothing since and that was a month back.

This is probably the start of a second wave. It didn't completely die away after the first peak, but deaths had almost stopped and incident rates in most areas were close to zero.

Many areas now have higher incidents rates than during the first wave (part of that can be attributed to increased testing, but the %positive rates are also higher) and the number of deaths is on the increase. Hospital admissions and ventilator bed occupancy levels are also going up. It looks likely that the daily positive test rates will soon be far in excess of the previous peak (though hopefully the deaths will not follow this trend).

Most people (at least where I Iive) do also wear masks and attempt to distance. However, there are a significant number (typically in the 20 to 40 age range) who don't, along with a significant number of older people "who don't like being told what to do".

a significant number of older people "who don't like being told what to do".

That could become a self-limiting problem.

I should point out to the downvoters that I'm very definitely an older person (as is my wife who has the additional risk factor of type 2 diabetes). I also have an aversion to being told what to do which goes back at least to compulsory Latin in school.

OTOH I recognise serious warnings and advice for what they are. I also spent half my working life as a biologist well able to look at things from the point of view of the species rather than the individual.

So when, the other day, I heard some nuppit probably the best part of a decade younger and possibly with drink taken, effing and blinding to the door attendant at Morrisons about restrictions I had no problem placing him as part of the problem, not the solution.

The downside of this, of course, is that a Darwin award for such individuals is that it's too late to have a real effect on the gene pool.

While I agree with a lot of what you say, I also live in a country (Vietnam) that has had I think technically 4 waves, and as much as you can argue its an anecdotal observation by me, masks and handwashing do work.

But from what I understand from talking to my friends and family in the UK, there are plenty of older people ignoring taking precautions just as much.

I haven't voted you either way, but that is a huge generalisation to say its a generation is the fault, it would be better described as a subset of idiots in each generation.

That was so in the first wave, but if Barcelona is anything to go by the second wave of covid cases does not go hand in hand with SARS and death rates.

Time to end this nonsense IMHO. We flattened the curve. We have better treatment. People (outside the UK) all wear masks. Covid no longer has a scary 10% death rate, (we now know it never did)

I was a full supporter of lockdown and all the initial measures, but now we know more.

Like this app, govt response is too little too late. Dealing with the situation now requires a different approach.

Not lockdown after the horse has bolted.

Hospital admissions are probably the best thing to look at if you want consistent measurement over the past 6 months. They do however tend to lag cases, and are less sensitive to increases in infection rates in younger people.

For England, they peaked at 2910 on 1st April, and from that point declined at around 3% per day to 25 on 22 August. They are now increasing at around 8% per day, and the most recent number we have is 275 on 21st September.

In the UK the vast majority people wear masks in shops and indoor public places, hand sanitizer is available on entry and exit of most shops, all the big chains. Most are distancing, but wearing masks outdoors when moving is less popular and probably less useful. So I don’t know which part of Blighty your friends went back to but “nobody” is a big lie,

Never mind all the studies showing that neither masks, nor lock-downs, nor (a)social distancing had any influence. Other respiratory viruses spread normally within the various control groups. Just as every year. But hey - fuck facts, go fascism go!

So it's just a coincidence that figures show that when lockdown started earlier in the year R fell abruptly and started to climb gradually as it was eased in steps? What was that about "fuck facts"?

Please provide links to any studies that aren't the work of lunatics, charlatans, or both. And continue to advocate for the concept that freedom not to wear a scrap of cloth on your face is more important then the freedom to be protected from your lethal germs. Have you considered a bumper sticker along the lines of "I'll wear a mask when they force it onto my cold, dead face"?

But hey - fuck facts, go fascism go!

You know, when I see how many hard-nosed skeptical Reg readers show such skepticism of fuck-witted skeptics by downvoting them, it does my heart good - even in these benighted times.

FWIW A biologist friend spent some time lecturing me on the facts (TM) of how Covid's behaviour is different from common respiratory viruses and why measures targeted at Covid were far less effective against the rest. But hey fuckwit, fuck the facts, eh?

*lol*

Covid-19 is magical. It behaves differently from all the other Corona viruses. Need to fetch my wand...

Remember that humans are a novel environment for this virus. It hasn't had the evolutionary time to adapt that older respiratory viruses have. What's more, the availability of medical treatment will have greatly reduced the deaths of individual hosts so the selection pressure is much reduced. The likelihood is that it will evolve.

The virus (SARS-CoV-2) that causes coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an "enveloped" virus, it has a fatty membrane around it. That makes it vulnerable to soap, which is why we've been asked to wash our hands, because soap literally rips it apart and renders it harmless. It doesn't just wash the virus off, it destroys it.

Some other viruses that cause human respiratory disease do not have this envelope and are not susceptible to destruction via hand-washing. Those viruses are still spreading, because they are more robust outside the body and persist for longer, which is why I had a proper sneezy cold last week despite all my efforts at hand-washing, distancing and mask-wearing. But, hey, I haven't had a symptomatic case of Covid-19 yet, which was my goal.

https://virologydownunder.com/rhinovirus-rampant-or-testing-triumphant

So, OK, social distancing makes no difference, right? If I, for instance stay a mile away from any other human being at all times, I'll still get a cold or 'flu, right? Because, I suppose, the 'theory' that these diseases are spread by tiny little viruses is just, you know, a theory, spread by those horrid science people.

So if I understand you correctly, this virus can transmit magically - can I catch it over the internet?

Never mind all the studies showing that neither masks, nor lock-downs, nor (a)social distancing had any influence.

Those studies you're reading about on Facebook don't count.

What studies please, and how do they hold up to the counter studies?

I'm just asking because were i am (Vietnam) we have no lockdown now, no community transmission, no restrictions, of course everyone wore masks and washed hands when they needed to.

Fast government response helps, but people actually being rational is a big factor as well. I mean its a cloth covering you have to wear it for a few weeks, or do you go out and protest that you have to wear pants as well?

Where I live and the shops I have been in it's probably about a 60/40 split, 60% wearing, 40% not. Observing social distancing about the same. Absolutely no staff wearing masks. Whether that changes from today only time will tell. This is Manchester btw which as we know is a hotspot.

As waves are defined by ups and downs it's safe to say that the first wave is defined by the first up and down. Which are clearly over as we are unfortunately at the start of the next up.

Defining the start of the second wave.

We are nowhere near the numbers of the first wave, but if we don't do anything it will go exponential and we will have a second wave as bad as the first.

Thankfully measures are in place - people do wear masks, people do social distance, and people are largely obeying the rules.

The issue is that the rules are constantly changing... and some people don't believe they apply to them (thanks to Cummings).

Reminds me - I need to get my eyes tested.

Failing to sack Cummings on the spot once it emerged what he'd been up to was a gross error. HMG has lost a good deal of credibility.

Disagree.

HMG can't lose what it never had to begin with ...

Point taken. Nevertheless I think the Cummings incident and failure to deal with it was a turning point. Call it authority, respect, credibility or whatever; up to that point public opinion was supportive. Now Covidiots have a certain degree of licence. It will take a massive increase in death toll to get that support back.

Make sure you drive to the test - and take the family along too...

My local eye test castle has a long waiting list, I might have to take my family and a few friends on a long-distance drive to one in another country. And you don't need to wear masks, because it gives you carbon monoxide poisoning.

I think attitudes to the virus in the UK are a combination of geography, age and practicality. Living in a semi-rural shire people self distance, mask wearing compliance is high enough in shops that someone not wearing a mask is quite shocking. But we are spaced out (spatially!) already. Went up to inner city London a few weeks ago and it felt scarily crowded and complacent. But social distancing is a LOT easier working from home in a detached house backing onto fields in a village than it is commuting by bus to a minimum wage job from your bed-sit in the city

"Based on every I read and hear from the UK, there is no second wave, it is still in the ups and downs of the first wave."

I think this is a reasonable interpretation. Apply various mitigation measures, R goes down, disapply them R goes up. In this context "waves" seem to be more PR than anything else. AFAICS what's happening is that the govt. is trying to apply such measures and work out which have least adverse economic and political effects. The feedback from any change is sufficiently delayed that the level of infections will go up and down.

They mostly seem to think a vaccine will fix everything, which it won't.

So what will? Lockdown is only a temporary measure which does economic and social damage, and (as we're seeing everywhere) has no long-term effect. There was a hope that the virus mght fizzle naturally, as SARS and MERS did, but that hasn't happened. A second lockdown won't change that.

Right now immunity is the only way to go, either from a vaccine or naturally, and natural immunity means letting it escape slowly enough to control it and protect the vulnerable while 60% or so catch it & recover.

Where I live everyone wears a mask in public, sanitise their hands going into and out of shops and we all live a fairly normal life.

And where is that? I'm in France, and we're seeing new cases rising at 2x the UK rate, young people refusing to wear masks when they're socialising, and regions threatening legal action to block further lockdowns. Much like the UK, in fact.

>Right now immunity is the only way to go, either from a vaccine or naturally, and natural immunity means letting it escape slowly enough to control it and protect the vulnerable while 60% or so catch it & recover.

I believe that humanity has never previously developed immunity to a coronavirus previously - through vaccination or infection - and reports are already emerging of patients with a second infection (different viral strain) in some cases worse than the first.

If R0 is 5.7 (from CDC estimates), then it needs 87% of the UK population to have been infected/vaccinated and have immunity to reach herd immunity levels. Unfortunately, 14 million people (~20%) in UK are pensioners or have underlying health issues, which leaves us with a slight dilemma...

"If R0 is 5.7 (from CDC estimates), then it needs 87% of the UK population to have been infected/vaccinated and have immunity to reach herd immunity levels. Unfortunately, 14 million people (~20%) in UK are pensioners or have underlying health issues, which leaves us with a slight dilemma..."

72% of UK pensioners turn up every year to have their flu-jab. I think most are rather more frightened of Covid-19 than the flu so it could go much higher. Annual jabs may be the norm. The fade-away being detected with re-infection suggests that annual jabs may be the only way to get and maintain herd immunity rather than depending on letting it grow through letting the infection spread.

I'm not sure where you get the different viral strain issue. The G & D major variants have AFAIK shown no difference in mortality but are mainly markers in how Covid-19 spread geographically.

"I believe that humanity has never previously developed immunity to a coronavirus previously"

That's not a testable hypothesis. If it has the virus will now be extinct and we'd be none the wiser.

We do, however, have several coronaviruses that cause mild diseases*. What's the nature of this interaction? Did they start off as equally lethal and evolve to respond to some sort of control from the host so as not to kill off the latter?

* And the current coronavirus, like others, is not lethal in its original host.

Natural selection, those mutations of the virus which survived were ones which didn't kill off their hosts. There are reports that the case mortality rate of Covid in Europe is lower now than it was in March.

I live in France as well. As a general rule, since the beginning of all the hoopla I have found my compatriots to generally be of the obedient persuasion. When walking outside there are people who wear masks in the local cities. In my village, that is not the case, but social distancing is observed. People walking their dogs cross each other on the opposite side of the road. If they are acquainted, they stop and chat, but the road is between them.

In shops, everyone wears the mask.

This is a far cry from the reputation of the average Frenchman, who scorns authority and rebukes government directives. It is the Esprit Gaulois and we persuade ourselves that we are all little Asterix and the government and police are the Romans. We are convinced that any invader would leave after a while because "we are ungovernable".

Well I don't see any of that spirit in the streets these days. That said, I live in Moselle, a stone's throw from the German border. Maybe there's a bit of German discipline overflowing the border bit by bit, like an invisible fog.

... and you are in a great wine producing region.

Nearest I can get ———->>

Don't know why the downvotes. I've been stuck in the UK these past 3 weeks and have also observed the lack of distancing and mask wearing. Most people appear to just not give a monkey's.

The article should be tweaked a little here - Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own apps and have for a few weeks now, hence it's just England and Wales that this app is for.

I'm interested to see just what data this app sends and how it compares with the other apps in use elsewhere in the UK. The Scotland one for example apparently just generates anonymous codes for people and cross-references those for matches. Hence it supposedly doesn't send any identifiable information, nor location data. Would be interesting to know first of all if this is really true, and secondly how the England/Wales app fares in comparison.

That's how the Apple / Google framework operates (and it only uses each code for a limited time) - there is no need to collect anything else...

Since when is actual need ever a criteria in data harvesting though, when the possibility presents itself?

Would be interesting to hear how useful the app has proven to be in Scotland. Launched with a fanfare, it's all gone quiet.

Same in France. No indication at all if it's working, whch would suggest that it isn't since government would be making a big fuss about how wonderful it is if it were doing anything useful. I rather suspect it's just "medical theatre", to show that "someone is doing something".

They had a piece on the news about it this morning. They said they had > million downloads and were fairly happy with how it was going. Usage was high enough to make a difference to track and trace, albeit Scotland's T&T is way better than England's already.

I'm frustrated that it's taken 6 months, frustrated that they didn't launch a dumbed down version for older phones (could still do QR codes, symptom tracker advice etc) but mostly frustrated about people carping it's not perfect. It doesn't cost anything apart from, maybe, having to charge your phone half an hour earlier. It provides a small incremental gain in our ability as a society to control the virus, and enough small incremental gains can add up to some success. It provides some personal protection, to you as an individual in assessing the probability that your cough and fever is a potentially deadly virus, and to family and friends if you self isolate, or even if you do it half-assedly and decide, at least, to put off visiting granny for a fortnight.