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Bluetooth Low Energy is unsuitable for COVID-19 contact tracing, say inventors
cdev:
There is a whole body of new technology that is attempting to make it easy for autonomous vehicles and robots to navigate inside of buildings. Its not something that a cell phone can do reliably yet. (although they are working on it quite a bit) The CPUs and GPUs on small computers arent powerful enough. If they used a combination of inddor beacons and visual cues and GPS and inertial sensors and maybe autio becons in phones - they might be able to do it but that would (if it worked) eat up battery like crazy.
Actually, its my understanding that the risk of catching coronavirus outdoors is very very much reduced from indoors. Most buildings are not well ventilated this is the real cause of their being dangerous when people in them have infectious respiratory diseases.
I think universal healthcare and sick leave (so people dont go to work when they get sick, and then seek treatment) and other comon sense things, are what they should be concentrating on.
Adequate ventilation, especially if they intend to switch people to electric heating (from natural gas) will mean much higher energy costs in the winter, although they could reduce a lot of that cost with heat exchangers, a good retrofit. They might recoup costs on savings on air conditioning.
They should also install UVC fixtures in places like classrooms where people congregate during the day, and then turn them on at night to disinfect surfaces. Also some surfaces can retain viable virus for extended periods of time. (more than a week is conservative estimate, they tested a suite of rooms on one of those cruise ships17 days after all the crew and passengers had left and there was still lots of detectable COVID-19 on surfaces) The best surface for antiviral activity is copper, plastic is very bad and viruses can last for many days, perhaps even as long as two weeks on plastics. So, it might be smart to analyze what objects people touched the most and transmitted viruses (dorknobs would be up there) and replaced them with copper sheathed versions.
Unfortunately, plastic is all around us.
SilverSolder:
The best solution has to be some kind of biotech - a vaccine or a treatment that works reliably without unacceptable side effects.
cdev:
Thats what we're all hoping for.
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on May 12, 2020, 10:44:00 pm ---
The best solution has to be some kind of biotech - a vaccine or a treatment that works reliably without unacceptable side effects.
--- End quote ---
cdev:
--- Quote from: jogri on May 12, 2020, 10:03:43 pm ---Fabric dampens the volume quite a bit,
--- End quote ---
If they coated particularly problematic elements in indoor environments with RF damping foam, they might be able to get significantly better accuracy with the RF location. At least it might mitigate the false positives somewhat, maybe.
There are some cool visualizations out there of 2400 MHz RF bouncing around showing how its possible, sort of, to use wifi signals in a sort of passive radar to "look through walls" That seems to me to be a big potential source of problems. Suppose you are separated from somebody with COVID-19 by a wall. They may be just a meter away from you but there is little risk of contagion because there is a wall presumably with no vents through it.
A dumb BTLE and GPS system even if perfectly accurate is never going to realize that you're safe and is going to flag you as a potential sickie for the "contact" that never occurred. The only way around that will be to draw a line slightly less than two meters away from every exterior wall in your space and never go into that "border zone".
Note that this kind of data is also going to be used to price health insurance. Thats probably one of the real reasons they want it.
No doubt this research is paid for with DOD/MOD funding.
Well at least they arent implanting hidden microphones into cats any more.
Someone:
--- Quote from: jogri on May 12, 2020, 10:03:43 pm ---Btw, good luck telling the general pulic that an app that is developed by the government and will most likely be verified by researcher that are working for the government (universities etc) can be trusted... You just need one guy telling everyone that said app is used to spy on people via the microphones. And you have to confirm that "yes, the app is constantly listening via the microphone BUT...". I don't think it would matter what comes after the "but", as soon as you say it the damage is done.
--- End quote ---
You might have missed the circus going on at the moment with the apps already rolled out.. the messaging has been very carefully curated/controlled to say happy things but carefully framed to avoid denying the privacy issues. Political doublespeak is working on most of the population and they just don't notice.
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