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Added a disclaimer on page 662. Many need to post better. |
On June 28 2020 15:44 Slydie wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2020 06:35 schaf wrote:
I had a wonderful weekend with my girlfriend up till now. We went to the zoo, stayed safe and had a blast. Then her tracking app told her she had one short contact to a confirmed case ... However small the chance is, she went home. The feeling of not being able to even hug her for goodbyes is sickening. I think we are safe but my heart now really goes out to all those people not being able to stay with their sick loved ones. And not attending their funerals if they don't make it. Terrifying feeling. I would just delete that app. In your case, it seems like pure evil. Passing by someone on the street is extremaly unlikely to give you the virus, but apps like that will make you paranoid AF.
Hmm, those apps don't ask you to isolate just because you passed someone in the street, but only when they evaluate that there is a real chance you might have the virus.
It's about saving lives. Schaf's gf is really responsible, and I don't think there is anything evil about any of it. It's hard, but I am sure everyone is going to be fine, and if that prevents people to get infected and potentially get really, really ill down the line, it's really worth it 
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On June 28 2020 18:06 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2020 13:52 xM(Z wrote:she had one short contact to a confirmed case ... what does that mean?, practically. - was the person confirmed some time ago?; (could he been healed/cured in the meantime?) - was the person confirmed and walking about, defying isolation/quarantine?; i think clarifications are very important; i don't know how the app flags people(does it updates?, does it lag with updates/refreshes?). The way the german app works is (roughly, as far as i know) the following: It regularly sends out (changing) codes via bluetooth low energy. Other phones with the same app log which codes they get. If you get tested positively, you get a qr code you can input into your app, which then sends a list of the codes it has sent to a server. The apps on other peoples phones get this list of identifier numbers from the server once a day or so. Since it knows that it has received one of these numbers, it now knows that a person, who later tested positive, it can now calculate from the bluetooth low energy data how long that person was how close to you, and if you are thus in danger of having been infected and should react appropriately. In the story mentioned above, this probably means that the contact was not necessarily in the zoo, but maybe a day or two earlier, and that a person she had contact with (which at that point didn't know they were infected) has now been tested positive. This means that schaf's girlfriend should now isolate and get tested to possible stop that line of infections. No one did anything wrong, but she still might be infected. (Of course, all of this is not a magical solution to the virus, but if reasonable amounts of the population use it, it might help reduce R a bit, and thus be a part of the solution to fighting the pandemic)
That seems like a way to get a boatload of false posetives. Doctors have to be very careful about how they communicate test results and why follow-up tests need to be done, as long as the same is true for that app and it acually does a decent job at detecting chains, I guess it is ok.
A very curious thing about this virus which tends to come up is the "super spreaders." Afaik, it is still somewhat of a mystery how quite few people cause a very dispropotionate amount of new infections.
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On June 28 2020 18:26 Slydie wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2020 18:06 Simberto wrote:On June 28 2020 13:52 xM(Z wrote:she had one short contact to a confirmed case ... what does that mean?, practically. - was the person confirmed some time ago?; (could he been healed/cured in the meantime?) - was the person confirmed and walking about, defying isolation/quarantine?; i think clarifications are very important; i don't know how the app flags people(does it updates?, does it lag with updates/refreshes?). The way the german app works is (roughly, as far as i know) the following: It regularly sends out (changing) codes via bluetooth low energy. Other phones with the same app log which codes they get. If you get tested positively, you get a qr code you can input into your app, which then sends a list of the codes it has sent to a server. The apps on other peoples phones get this list of identifier numbers from the server once a day or so. Since it knows that it has received one of these numbers, it now knows that a person, who later tested positive, it can now calculate from the bluetooth low energy data how long that person was how close to you, and if you are thus in danger of having been infected and should react appropriately. In the story mentioned above, this probably means that the contact was not necessarily in the zoo, but maybe a day or two earlier, and that a person she had contact with (which at that point didn't know they were infected) has now been tested positive. This means that schaf's girlfriend should now isolate and get tested to possible stop that line of infections. No one did anything wrong, but she still might be infected. (Of course, all of this is not a magical solution to the virus, but if reasonable amounts of the population use it, it might help reduce R a bit, and thus be a part of the solution to fighting the pandemic) That seems like a way to get a boatload of false posetives. Doctors have to be very careful about how they communicate test results and why follow-up tests need to be done, as long as the same is true for that app and it acually does a decent job at detecting chains, I guess it is ok. A very curious thing about this virus which tends to come up is the "super spreaders." Afaik, it is still somewhat of a mystery how quite few people cause a very dispropotionate amount of new infections. The point of these apps isn't to accurately tell if you've been infected by going outside.
Countries now have large amounts of testing capacity but with a seemingly large % of cases being asymptomatic its hard to actually see who needs to be tested because most infectious people won't know they are infected.
So the app exists as a way to tell "hey, you should get yourself tested just in case". The whole point is to be a little broad to try and catch as much as possible. Most people who get such an alert will not be infected, but your casting the net so wide because you want to find the few who are before they go spread it further.
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On June 28 2020 18:26 Slydie wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2020 18:06 Simberto wrote:On June 28 2020 13:52 xM(Z wrote:she had one short contact to a confirmed case ... what does that mean?, practically. - was the person confirmed some time ago?; (could he been healed/cured in the meantime?) - was the person confirmed and walking about, defying isolation/quarantine?; i think clarifications are very important; i don't know how the app flags people(does it updates?, does it lag with updates/refreshes?). The way the german app works is (roughly, as far as i know) the following: It regularly sends out (changing) codes via bluetooth low energy. Other phones with the same app log which codes they get. If you get tested positively, you get a qr code you can input into your app, which then sends a list of the codes it has sent to a server. The apps on other peoples phones get this list of identifier numbers from the server once a day or so. Since it knows that it has received one of these numbers, it now knows that a person, who later tested positive, it can now calculate from the bluetooth low energy data how long that person was how close to you, and if you are thus in danger of having been infected and should react appropriately. In the story mentioned above, this probably means that the contact was not necessarily in the zoo, but maybe a day or two earlier, and that a person she had contact with (which at that point didn't know they were infected) has now been tested positive. This means that schaf's girlfriend should now isolate and get tested to possible stop that line of infections. No one did anything wrong, but she still might be infected. (Of course, all of this is not a magical solution to the virus, but if reasonable amounts of the population use it, it might help reduce R a bit, and thus be a part of the solution to fighting the pandemic) That seems like a way to get a boatload of false posetives. Doctors have to be very careful about how they communicate test results and why follow-up tests need to be done, as long as the same is true for that app and it acually does a decent job at detecting chains, I guess it is ok. A very curious thing about this virus which tends to come up is the "super spreaders." Afaik, it is still somewhat of a mystery how quite few people cause a very dispropotionate amount of new infections.
Firstly, we currently don't have a lot of cases in Germany, so there are not that many positives in total. (For example, in the area i live in, there are currently 6 active cases out of 200000 people living here)
And of course it is important to interpret a positive on the app reasonably. It doesn't mean that you are infected, it means "isolate a bit and get tested, or at least call a doctor".
I personally am really happy with the German corona app. It is both really good with regards to privacy concerns, and the whole source code is open. I think that that should be the standard for public IT projects from here on out.
With regards to super spreaders, isn't it mostly about situations? Being inside with a large amount of people, and speaking loudly and thus spraying further? I think a choir practice was one of the major super spreader events here in Germany. And of course the meat packing plants. Indoor, cold, exposure over long periods of time, shouting to be heard over machinery.
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Zurich15329 Posts
I've been traveling around Germany on train the past two days and regularly scanned for Bluetooth LE signals from the Corona app. On long distance trains I would say 50% of people have it running from my 2 day survey. In local trains less people run it, maybe 30%? A little difficult to tell since you get BLE Signals from everywhere when a train goes through the city.
Still very good coverage of the tracing app or there!
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In France the app the government designed, StopCovid got drowned into sterile debates over private life and so on, became a politicized topic immediately and nobody installed it. I mean, like 2% of the people.
It could save people's lives but hey, the French will be French 
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On June 28 2020 19:24 Biff The Understudy wrote:In France the app the government designed, StopCovid got drowned into sterile debates over private life and so on, became a politicized topic immediately and nobody installed it. I mean, like 2% of the people. It could save people's lives but hey, the French will be French
I think the German app managed that debate incredibly well.
Whether it doesn't just result in a stupid amount of false positives remains to be seen, but the privacy part is handled incredibly well.
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I think Germans have generally much more trust in their government than the French. Complaining, assuming bad faith systematically and going full paranoid at each of the gvt move is like a national sport in France.
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On June 28 2020 19:55 Biff The Understudy wrote:
I think Germans have generally much more trust in their government than the French. Complaining, assuming bad faith systematically and going full paranoid at each of the gvt move is like a national sport in France.
I am not certain about this. Privacy is a pretty big concern here, too. If the App were not open source, and didn't have approval of people like the CCC, i don't think it would have went over well either.
And generally, historically, the german government has at best a really murky history with public IT projects. Before this app, germans expected any government-produced IT thing to be an expensive reinvention of the wheel which inexplicably takes a solved problem and finds a worse solution for it which barely works, has major privacy flaws and costs at least triple the originally projected budget. There was kind of recently a case where they managed to fuck up secure email absurdly hard. (German source)
So it is kind of miraculous that we got a working, open source, and generally privacy friendly app produced quickly and without any major hickups. Granted, those were all absolutely necessary aspects for widespread adoptation. If there was any reasonable doubt about privacy, we would never get the app to be widespread enough to be useful.
I am still a bit flabbergasted that this worked out well. I hope that the government can keep this process for further public IT projects.
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Norway28674 Posts
![[image loading]](https://www.oecd.org/media/2016-1/2016-2/GOV@GLANCE-confidence-in-government.png)
Definitely seems like Germans have far more trust in government than the French do, even if this is 6 years old.
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Previously i mentioned a friend of mine who survived COVID but still has a lot troubles walking up the stairs. Few days ago i learned that another friend of mine who also had COVID (although with softer symptoms) has similiar problems, it has been three weeks since she is officially covid free but she still fatigues super easy. She says that after long walk it feels like running a marathon. They both got sick at the same event. She is in her late twenties.
EDIT: Also i am going to vote in presidential election today, wonder how elections will impact the disease spread.
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On June 28 2020 20:41 Liquid`Drone wrote:Definitely seems like Germans have far more trust in government than the French do, even if this is 6 years old.
Ye. I think a majority of French people think, independently of what it is doing or who is in power, that the government is trying to screw them up, and that it doesn't care about the public good. We have a very strong populist tradition both on the left and on the right, to consider the government as an enemy and to always assume the worst from it. If you tell people you think Macron is all right, or even doing an ok job on a single issue, they look at you as if you were from another (hostile) planet. My facebook feed has been a torrent of hatred and anger at our leaders during the pandemic, yet I don't think they have done any worse than our neighbours.
It's very sad in my opinion.
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On June 28 2020 20:53 Silvanel wrote:
Previously i mentioned a friend of mine who survived COVID but still has a lot troubles walking up the stairs. Few days ago i learned that another friend of mine who also had COVID (although with softer symptoms) has similiar problems, it has been three weeks since she is officially covid free but she still fatigues super easy. She says that after long walk it feels like running a marathon. They both got sick at the same event. She is in her late twenties.
That's crazy. I hope they get better.
The long term consequences of the illness seem to be one of the missing pieces if the puzzle. I have read that for severe cases, the damages were probably permanent and potentially crippling.
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It’s like SARS and other types of respiratory illnesses, young healthy people who get it do have a decent risk of ending up with fatigue complications that last an exceedingly long time even if the initial symptoms are mild. These findings are not new, it’s why the idea that people like Novak Djokovic would treat it as “just a flu” is amazing when there’s a decent chance of ending his career peak right instantly.
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That's a very good point. I think by now, no one should be able to say in good faith that it's just a flu. That was maybe a reasonable assumption in December, but it's clear that whoever you are, this virus is potentially absolutely nasty.
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I haven't heard that "it's just a flu" thing for a long while. Are there still people claiming that? (outside of the US and Trumps cult i mean)
And yeah, longterm effects are only going to get worse as more time passes and more people can actually develop those longterm issues.
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On June 28 2020 20:41 Liquid`Drone wrote:Definitely seems like Germans have far more trust in government than the French do, even if this is 6 years old.
Its a bit difficult to compare as the question "do you have confidence in the government" is such a broad question that many people will understand slightly different. In the end there is 2 variables in this question:the population and the government.
Some populations have more confidence in government in general then other populations though that confidence is also impacted by the governments themselves,both in the present and past.
Germans i think do have a high level of confidence in general,but they also have a better government then many other nations.
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There seems to be a lot of holes in the knowledge so far. I believe that the main problem with the herd immunities are that the virus makes too many too sick with possible long-term problems, so it would be considered too socially irresponsible as a strategy.
I just found this document in English (pdf in link) about why Norwegian authorothies do not recommend face masks to the general public:
https://www.fhi.no/publ/2020/bor-personer-i-samfunnet-bruke-ansiktsmasker-for-a-redusere-spredningen-av-/
Health authorities have given conflicting recommendations regarding the use of facemasks
by asymptomatic individuals in the community to reduce the spread of COVID-19. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) states that “at present, there is no direct evidence (from studies on COVID-19 and in healthy people in the community) on the effectiveness of universal masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19”. Yet, “WHO has updated its guidance to advise that to
prevent COVID-19 transmission effectively in areas of community transmission, governments should encourage the general public to wear masks in specific situations and settings
as part of a comprehensive approach to suppress SARS-CoV-2 transmission”. This includes
settings where individuals are unable to keep a physical distance of at least 1 meter. WHO
is also strongly encouraging countries to conduct research on this critical topic.
An Evidence to Decision (EtD) framework was used to guide the process from reviewing the
evidence to a recommendation. An evidence base was made by a structured literature review using the L·OVE COVID-19 database and a living COVID-19 evidence map. Relevant ongoing reviews and studies were searched for in PROSPERO, the list of COVID-19 trials in the
International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) (updated 12 May 2020) and ClinicalTrials.gov COVID-19 list. Additional articles were identified by checking the references in retrieved articles and personal contacts.
There is evidence of a protective effect of medical facemasks against respiratory infections
in community settings. However, study results vary greatly. Randomised trials from community settings indicate a small protective effect. Laboratory studies indicate a larger effect
when facemasks are used by asymptomatic but contagious individuals to prevent the
spread of virus to others, compared to use by uninfected individuals to prevent themselves
from becoming infected. Because incorrect use of medical facemasks limits their effectiveness, countrywide training programmes adapted to a variety of audiences would be needed
to ensure the effectiveness of medical facemasks for reducing the spread of COVID-19. It is
not known whether the use of medical facemasks would be widely accepted by the healthy
population in Norway, or the extent to which correct use could be achieved.
Non-medical facemasks include a variety of products. There is no reliable evidence of the
effectiveness of non-medical facemasks in community settings. There is likely to be substantial variation in effectiveness between products. However, there is only limited evidence from laboratory studies of potential differences in effectiveness when different products are used in the community.
Given the low prevalence of COVID-19 currently, even if facemasks are assumed to be effective, the difference in infection rates between using facemasks and not using facemasks
would be small. Assuming that 20% of people infectious with SARS-CoV-2 do not have
symptoms, and assuming a risk reduction of 40% for wearing facemask, 200 000 people
would need to wear facemasks to prevent one new infection per week in the current epidemiological situation.
3
The undesirable effects of facemasks include the risks of incorrect use, a false sense of security (leading to relaxation of other interventions), and contamination of masks. In addition, some people experience problems breathing, discomfort, and problems with communication. The proportion of people who experience these undesirable effects is uncertain.
However, with a low prevalence of COVID-19, the number of people who experience undesirable effects is likely to be much larger than the number of infections prevented.
An expert panel discussed and assessed the evidence using an explicit set of criteria. The
panel did not take into consideration the shortage of medical facemasks. The assessments
for each criterion were judged both individually and in a consensus process, and the overall
recommendation and report were reviewed by the panel.
Conclusion
In the current epidemiological situation in Norway, wearing facemasks to reduce the spread
of COVID-19 is not recommended for individuals in the community without respiratory
symptoms who are not in near contact with people who are known to be infected. If the
epidemiological situation worsens substantially in a geographical area, the use of facemasks
as a precautionary measure should be reconsidered. Measures to reduce risks during necessary public transport and during mass events, including wearing facemasks, should be explored further.
If use of facemasks by individuals without respiratory symptoms in the community is recommended in specific circumstances, such as public transport or mass events, medical
masks or quality controlled non-medical masks with a documented filtration effect should
be used. National priorities for the use of personal protective equipment may apply, given
existing shortages. If any such recommendation is made, the community should be given
training to ensure correct use and the risks should be explained, especially the risks of a
false sense of security and contamination of masks. The training should be tailored to the
needs of different groups, including people with different levels of fluency in Norwegian
and different socio-economic circumstances.
Fortunately, the Norwegians did not have to deal with a massive amount of deaths (only 249 of 5,4 million people) so face masks were never necessary, and never became a political symbol locally. The healthcare system also did their job and made sure there were no shortage of protective gear in hospitals when the first cases appeared.
What puzzles me is that in Spain, the current situation Covid-19 is actually very similar to the one in Norway, but the policies are very different. In my opinion this is mainly for emotional and political reasons.
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On June 07 2020 20:22 Slydie wrote:
One thing I absolutely hate about the "failed" Sweden strategy is that letting people work, not imprisoning the whole population and letting kids go to schools seems to have no value at all. It is all about that virus, and Sweden's death toll is still comparable to a flu season.
Last equation to the flu I remember
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EPT
