Apple and Google's COVID-19 Tracking System Will Make Its Full US Debut in New Virginia App (theverge.com) 47
This week, Virginia plans to release a COVID-19 exposure notification app based on the specifications published by Apple and Google in April. From a report: The app, called COVIDWISE, is the first fully deployed implementation of Apple and Google's system in the US and was beta tested by the state department of health. The specification is designed to preserve patient privacy, particularly around their location and whether they have tested positive for COVID-19. "No location data or personal information is ever collected, stored or transmitted to VDH as part of the app," a health department official told Virginia Public Media, which first reported the news. "You can delete the app or turn off exposure notifications at any time."
If someone tests positive for the coronavirus, the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) will give them a PIN number that they can choose to use to report that result within the app. Then, other users of the app should get a notification if their phones were near the sick person at some point in the past 14 days. However, those notifications will only go out to phones when the exposure met a threshold for a strength and duration of the Bluetooth signal that can be estimated as a user being within six feet of the other user for 15 minutes (based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's definition of "close contact").
If someone tests positive for the coronavirus, the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) will give them a PIN number that they can choose to use to report that result within the app. Then, other users of the app should get a notification if their phones were near the sick person at some point in the past 14 days. However, those notifications will only go out to phones when the exposure met a threshold for a strength and duration of the Bluetooth signal that can be estimated as a user being within six feet of the other user for 15 minutes (based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's definition of "close contact").
Zero Percent Chance (Score:1)
that enough people use this for it to be useful in any real way.
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Covid-19 is something we will be dealing with for the rest of this year and a good part of next year, if we are unbelievably lucky. More realistically 2 to 3 years. If we can make an effective vaccine, which is somewhat in doubt.
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Please read this:
Calling Bullshit
The Art of Scepticism in a Data-Driven World
Jevin D. West (author), Carl T. Bergstrom (author)
https://guardianbookshop.com/calling-bullshit-9780241327234.html
And do look at that graph I linked. It is a nice animation.
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You know what else is a nice animation? This one right here. [gfycat.com]
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Man, that is dumb.
You think it's dumb to let a bunch of people die? Especially grandparents?
With 3million dead a year, you think it's better to let 9million+ not see their loved ones or the world before THEY die?
That is fucking atrocious.
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Nope... It is dumb to put words into my mouth, just because you don't have a way to refute me.
I only reference the CDC graphs. You know, the US government agency that does the disease statistics amongst other things? So to refute me, you have to refute them.
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I only reference the CDC graphs. You know, the US government agency that does the disease statistics amongst other things? So to refute me, you have to refute them.
Actually they don't do the stats anymore, because an orange idiot didn't like their numbers.
Re:Zero Percent Chance (Score:5, Informative)
Saying that because deaths are down "The disease is mostly over", continues the narrative that if you don't DIE, then you're FINE. There are potential life long issues with being infected with COVID-19 even if it's not fatal.
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Man, this data is of June 4. This happened since then: https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
We need a nationwide app! (Score:1)
The state by state problem in healthcare is not helping the US figure anything out.
I don't understand why Apple and Google didn't release apps in their respective app stores when they came up with the API. At this point I trust each of them more than the politicians across our country.
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And yes, it's absolutely insane to suggest that pandemic control is a state problem. It's not.
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It's equally insane to think that pandemic control is a country problem. It's not.
Apple and Google should release a full app for their platforms, something that works world-wide because lockdown or not, you know some infected assholes are going to find a way around quarantines.
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Oh, so then viruses don't cross state lines, then?
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Apple and Google should release a full app for their platforms, something that works world-wide because lockdown or not, you know some infected assholes are going to find a way around quarantines.
Such an app would have to connect to some server to download lists of daily keys from the devices of people who tested positive. What server should such a world-wide app get the data from?
If your answer is a Google/Apple server, then that raises the question of where the Google/Apple server would get the data from. Clearly the daily keys of those who test positive will need to come from the app, but how does the Google/Apple server verify that it only accepts keys from people who have really tested posit
DHT and blockchain (Score:2)
DHT and blockchain. Really. Not Kidding.
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DHT and blockchain. Really. Not Kidding.
Doesn't solve any of the hard problems.
Re:We need a nationwide app! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why Apple and Google didn't release apps in their respective app stores when they came up with the API.
While I wish they had too, I see all sorts of reasons why they couldn't or wouldn't.
Perhaps most practically, they have no way of compelling hospitals, clinics, or labs to provide results in a way they can scan and verify. They'd need to rely on cooperation to get the job done, which is pretty much guaranteed to fail. Meanwhile, states do have that ability, but they will inevitably differ in how they want to go about using it, hence why it needs to be left up to the states to make their own apps.
Second, if they made the apps, they'd be the ones deciding which tests are considered valid, which results are considered conclusive, and whether presumptive cases are included. They'd effectively be determining health policy at that point, which is a lose-lose situation, because no matter what they choose, they will alienate a significant number of their customers, what with the highly politicized, highly polarized nature of this pandemic in America.
Third, they're working hard to establish themselves publicly as privacy-minded companies. The last thing they want to do right now is appear like they want to suck up all of our data. By merely providing the APIs, they get the benefits without most of the PR blowback. There are a lot of similar apps out there right now, and not all of them are scrupulous, so they don't want to be associated with them. Meanwhile, these APIs are really, really good when it comes to privacy, despite what those spreading FUD would suggest (seriously, the technical designs are publicly available and easily read by anyone competent in the field).
I'd add HIPAA as a fourth, but both companies have previously navigated HIPAA with their various devices and services, so I don't think it scares them.
Re: We need a nationwide app! (Score:1)
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The state by state problem in healthcare
Do you really want to lose Obama-care? Do you really want to be pushed onto a national healthcare system? Have you ever heard of the Veterans Administration?
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Medicare
That's just an insurance program. Not nationalized healthcare. And even if you spread Medicare coverage across the entire population (it only covers 20% now) it's purchasing power would effectively force a national standard on to all healthcare providers. And now you have VA-style healthcare. Unless you are wealthy enough to go out of the system and pay out of pocket. And then when people cry "Unfair!" we will get Hillary-care. Where you can't even leave the country with a pre-existing condition to get it t
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The current private insurance system is expensive garbage.
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The current private insurance system is expensive garbage.
The current private insurance system is what makes healthcare profitable enough to allow Medicare patients to hang on to it's coattails. Medicare insurance might look sweet for you until there is nothing out there for it to buy for everyone.
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>"The government can always increase Medicare/Medicaid payments."
Right, because, you know, it is only money taken from other people.
>"It works for literally every other modern country."
That entirely depends on your definition of "works."
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I'm no public health expert. I just listen to the experts that tell us that the US has worse health outcomes than other countries, even though we spend much, much more: https://news.harvard.edu/gazet... [harvard.edu]
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That article is pretty good. And gutsy, coming from the home of Harvard medical School (my grandfather's alma mater). Physicians are paid too much and drugs are too expensive. Aside from that, the US medical system is very good for the 90% of the population that has insurance coverage. We could hand out subsidized coverage for the remaining 10%. But our biggest problem appears to be getting our medical costs under control. Once we do that, we don't really need more tax revenue to subsidize universal covera
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That entirely depends on your definition of "works."
You really need to cherry pick your data to come to any conclusion other than US healthcare is below average when compared to other wealthy and developed nations. Here [healthsystemtracker.org] is a link to a number of comparable statistics if you would like to look yourself.
I would guess that the US has the best health outcomes for the upper middle class and wealthier than other countries, but that is a pretty horrible thing to be proud of when you look at how bad things are for everyone else.
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Do you really want to lose Obama-care?
There are plenty of parts of the Affordable Care Act which even proponents would love to remove if it was in the effort of improving healthcare instead of just trying to dismantle legislation of an opposing party. If removing barriers between states to improve health care costs and outcomes meant modifying the Affordable Care Act, you wouldn't have many Obamacare supporters standing in the way. If it was done to just reduce costs at the expense of health outcomes then you would expect opposition.
Do you really want to be pushed onto a national healthcare system?
About two t
Because they want the data too (Score:2)
Such weasely language. So, the data is sent to A N Other as part of the app (but not VDH, oh no no no), who does what they want with it.
Canada has one (Score:2)
The state by state problem in healthcare is not helping the US figure anything out.
I don't understand why Apple and Google didn't release apps in their respective app stores when they came up with the API. At this point I trust each of them more than the politicians across our country.
Canada just released an app (created by Shopify) for the federal government using the Google/Apple framework.
https://www.canada.ca/en/publi... [canada.ca]
Right now it only works in the province of Ontario though. Looks like Quebec and the eastern provinces will be next. The problem is that while it is a Canada wide app, the federally run servers still have to interact with provincial healthcare infrastructure. I would expect that to be an even bigger problem in the US with so many more jurisdictions involved.
That sa
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Re:No animals were harmed in death of animals... (Score:4, Informative)
So for Canada's app, which uses the same technology, the source code for both the apps (Android, and iOS) has been released on github, as has the server back end. It has been scrutinized by our leading privacy and digital rights people (Michael Geist, among others), all of whom have given the app their stamp of approval.
For once, it's an app that does privacy by design.
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"No location data or personal information ... "
You are carrying a smart phone around. So that horse has already left the barn. We can correlate your entry/exit into various WiFi hotspots and proximity to base stations with 'anonimized' exposure notifications and figure out your infection status with relative certainty.
"You can delete the app or turn off exposure notifications at any time."
What if business owners decide to enforce a "no notification/no admittance to my business" policy? Some places did that with masks prior to our state's mandate. Now they can say, "An app is available. Install it."
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What if business owners decide to enforce a "no notification/no admittance to my business" policy? Some places did that with masks prior to our state's mandate. Now they can say, "An app is available. Install it."
That was the one item the Canadian Privacy Commissioner was concerned about, there being no legislative framework to explicitly prevent that.
https://priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-... [priv.gc.ca]
I can't think of any business I could not quit doing business with if they tried that though, and I already have the app. Any business even mentions it, I'm out there.
Useless for me (Score:2)
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Emergency commuting might be a use case for a lot of people. Since late March, I can count exactly two occasions where I spent 15 minutes within six feet of someone not from my household: these were Uber trips from/to the car repair shop, and I wore a P100 mask with the exhale valve covered by a home-made 3D printed filter of much lower than P100 effectiveness. If I had gotten sick, I don't know if I would have been able to contact the Uber drivers without such an app (does Uber have a service for contactin
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