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Bluetooth Low Energy is unsuitable for COVID-19 contact tracing, say inventors
SparkyFX:
--- Quote from: David Hess on May 16, 2020, 05:50:24 pm ---China *says* that but given how duplicitous they have been and the independent reports which contradict them, why should they be believed?
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They don't want their people to die and having to bear the associated political implications?
Syntax Error:
--- Quote from: SparkyFX on May 17, 2020, 12:02:02 am ---
--- Quote from: David Hess on May 16, 2020, 05:50:24 pm ---China *says* that but given how duplicitous they have been and the independent reports which contradict them, why should they be believed?
--- End quote ---
They don't want their people to die and having to bear the associated political implications?
--- End quote ---
Tiananmen Square 1989
David Hess:
--- Quote from: Zero999 on May 16, 2020, 07:56:18 pm ---True, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence they're lying either. They aren't any signs that it's getting out of control such as hospitals packed full of COVID-19 patients, or bodies piling up, like they were before.
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Evidence from doctors and journalists who China has been persecuting for revealing what has been happening? Who is left to report?
--- Quote from: SparkyFX on May 17, 2020, 12:02:02 am ---They don't want their people to die and having to bear the associated political implications?
--- End quote ---
That is a laugh. Their only political considerations are maintaining order (suppressing unrest) and maintaining their reputation with other nations. The next best thing to controlling an epidemic is advertising that you are.
SparkyFX:
--- Quote from: Syntax Error on May 17, 2020, 12:27:20 am ---Tiananmen Square 1989
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students protesting for changes in the government != all sorts of people (including party members) die from an illness
I reckon there is no secret second source of information and they can not afford to misinform themselves about this one. A virus simply makes no distinction what the infected person believes. Especially as China can benefit from international support, therefore involvement of the WHO and them keeping track of developments. Politicizing science is usually a bad idea - as well as media hyping it (to some extent),
--- Quote from: David Hess on May 17, 2020, 12:57:03 am ---That is a laugh. Their only political considerations are maintaining order (suppressing unrest) and maintaining their reputation with other nations. The next best thing to controlling an epidemic is advertising that you are.
--- End quote ---
One mans suppression of unrest is another mans way to work in the sense of a greater good. Not every unrest is a good thing/has a positive outcome, or would make sense in case of a pandemic... you can't protest a virus. I think we agree that the methods they used make a difference to western countries, but well, this is how China operates and they won't change that overnight. Sure this is all up to interpretation, i think that initially some authorities were trying to address the spread of unconfirmed information to avoid a panic while this unfolded. This is one of those cases in which a bureaucracy was faced with something for which no way of confirming it existed, which leads to wrong decisions.
Which brings us back to the topic, if Bluetooth devices are suitable to do contact tracing or if it is just a hastily propagated pseudo-solution. There are other ways to leverage the benefits of the information age, that might have bigger impact, like digital transfer of documents, test status and so on to help people get along, but also have a potential for abuse or privacy issues.
julianhigginson:
--- Quote from: NANDBlog on May 15, 2020, 09:01:49 pm ---Yeah, but this is a virus. It doesnt work like radioactivity or as a aura around people. That 1.5m rule they say everywhere is better than nothing but it is not even close to modeling all the transmission methods. You can spend probably hours within 1.5m from someone, and turn up fine, if you are facing the opposite way. On the other hand if someone sneezes at you from 10m, you might get what they have. Or you touch a door knob, that someone infected touched a day ago.
Or they grab a bottle of milk, that you buy, put in the fridge, the virus goes to sleep mode, and reactivate itself two weeks later.
So I guess bluetooth should track these as well.
There is a way for mobile phones to help in this situation. Build in an infrared temperature meter, to quickly measure forehead temperature.
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My point is that something DOES NOT have to be perfect or work in 100% of cases to still be valuable.
At the end of the day it's not specific performance of the tool in specific individual cases, but if rolled out over a population it allows R0 to be brought down lower than it would be otherwise.
If all it turns out to do is create a bunch of bad possible transmission links that prove to be a waste of time to the tracing effort, then sure, stop using it.. but that would want to be borne out of real data.... My expectation is that because it's capturing links to people you have been near for extended periods of time, it could be very useful.
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