Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#321

Post by arcticbull » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #318

arcticbull wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It's old people AND people with comorbidities, which is a ton of people. Yep, and they should shelter in place. Nobody else should. 2. Lots of old people, which for Covid is about 65, still work full time jobs. Some of them fly every week. These aren't 95+ year olds. Yep, and they should shelter in place, because they're in a risk category. 3. I'm sure people of all ages think their life is very valuable, and very…

The ratio of asymptomatic to symptomatic people has been measured, and it's not nearly as high as you're saying. China has been quarantining and testing every single person entering the country, and they find that 2/3rds of cases are asymptomatic. Moreover, Germany has conducted a randomized serological survey of the population of one town where there was a large outbreak, and determined that the true mortality rate…

> Moreover, Germany has conducted a randomized serological survey of the population of one town where there was a large outbreak...

1. Results showed 0.37% mortality rate, which is an order of magnitude lower than the fatality rates being published, which is what I claimed -- so I re-iterate: "The numbers we're seeing are an upper-bound, by an order of magnitude." [1]

2. 14% of their town has had it already. [1]

3. That 0.37% rate includes all the old and at-risk folks which I was already suggesting we isolate. Since we know the fatality rate for them is 9% in hospital vs 0.1%, I'd suggest that the actual mortality rate of my plan would be incredibly low. [1] We don't know the demographic distribution of the town, and we do know that the disease is incredibly age-dependent so it's hard to project that onto the population.

Either way the flu is 0.1% so this isn't 10X worse, it's 3.7X worse. At most.

4. The study shows 15% of them are already immune to COVID.

[edit] I found the data [2]. Out of a population of 12,000, 6500 of them are in a risk group (over 45). So 55% of town. This needs to be projected onto the world population factoring into account non-linear risk response.

> Because a large fraction of the population is immune to the seasonal flu (both through vaccination and previous infection), far fewer people contract it than would contract CoVID-19 in an uncontrolled epidemic.

I don't think they are. The flu mutates regularly, and there's a ton of strains. Vaccinations are only 19-60% effective depending on the year. This is evidenced by the 650,000 worldwide deaths (60,000 US) and the 45,000,000 US cases of the flu each year.

[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/09/999015/blood-tes...

[2] https://www.citypopulation.de/en/germany/nordrheinwestfalen/...

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#322

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #310

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4. And there's no preexisting immunity, unlike with the seasonal flu. Left unchecked, CoVID-19 will infect a much larger share of the population than flu.

That's not actually true. The seasonal flu affects 45,000,000 americans every year, and in part because it (a) mutates and (b) there's a huge number of strains, and different ones are dominant in different years. The flu shot is not particularly effective for those reasons (19-60% depending on the year). COVID however, does not mutate, or has not yet. This means herd immunity is on the table, and so is a ~100% reliab…

It is true. A substantial fraction of the population is immune to the circulating seasonal flu, both through vaccination and previous infection with closely related strains.

Only 5-20% of the population gets the flu each year. 60-70% of the population would have to get CoVID-19 before herd immunity brought the reproductive number below 1.

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#323

Post by xenospn » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

jschwartzi wrote: post #207

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They can compel cell phone companies to give this data to the government already Bluetooth has a quite small range, which may give higher tracking precision (to anyone receiving the signal) than the data cell phone companies have.

Bluetooth 5.1 devices can do both distance and direction, so if you have a bunch of beacons you can determine your location to sub-meter accuracy.

iPhones don't have Bluetooth 5.1 yet, and I'm assuming no Android phones either.

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#324

Post by xenospn » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

petedoyle wrote: post #79

This is huge. A limiting factor has been iOS not being able to (on purpose, for privacy, and battery life) do BLE scanning (edit: or advertising, thanks Slartie) in the background. I imagine this will enable that for specific apps, and I have high confidence privacy will be well-implemented by Apple's involvement (edit: see tastroder's comment for technical docs). Having a single, well-designed spec for Bluetooth adv…

Of course you can do BLE scanning in the background on iOS. It works much better than Android and is very reliable.

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#325

Post by lultimouomo » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

The_Double wrote: post #240

There is surprisingly little discussion about the actual spec here. It looks really good to me! - Advertisements change every 15 minutes, are not trackable unless keys are shared. - The only central bit is a repository of "infected" daily keys. - No knowledge about contacts is shared with a central authority. Nothing is shared unless you are infected and decide to share your keys, which are only valid for one day. I…

One issue I see is that when I query the central repository of infected IDs I expose to the central server the IDs I've been in contact with (unless I always download all of them, but that doesn't seem feasible).

It seems like this could be solved by providing a K-anonymous query interface like the one exposed by Have I Been Pwned. I wrote to the contact email address of Pepp-Py, which is a European initiative do develop a system that seems pretty much the same as this, suggesting this, but I got no answer (not that I was really expecting one).

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#326

Post by serf » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

Simon_says wrote: post #320

zby wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also another idea floating - let the phones emit an ultrasound - then the other phone can estimate proximity, by the volume or delays.

Thanks. I wasn’t using my battery anyways.

none of the proposed tracking methods are without additional battery consumption, as far as I can tell..

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#327

Post by 2019-nCoV » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #292

Eridrus wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you assume the goal of contact tracing is to literally find every infection, yes, this isn't going to work. If you assume the point of this is to reduce R0, then this will work just fine at any stage of the pandemic. There's obviously a question of what you should do when you find out you have been in contact, and that will differ depending on the stage. We probably want to be in a position where everyone who has…

How much more can you reduce the R0 below "nobody's allowed within 6 feet of each other"?

It's about maintaining an R0 < 1 after social distancing is relaxed. Without contact tracing we're destined for a cycling of lockdowns until we have a vaccine.

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#328

Post by serf » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

snarf21 wrote: post #228

crishoj wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proposed technology is quite different from a service that located located devices. Rather, it would track what devices have been in proximity of each other, and not necessarily where.

I was speaking to the question of whether governments would then demand access to the data. They could force Apple and the Telcos to turn over the data they are already collecting pre-corona. I was just saying that that risk isn't new.

>I was just saying that that risk isn't new.

every new method of geo-tracking is a new risk because it provides yet another hole for politicians to legally exploit into a privacy concern.

Speaking about the US -- GPS and tower-tracking pose many of the same risks, but since the legal mandates were discussed at different parts in history, their legal allowed uses are different from one another.

If yet another geo-tracking capability comes online that just allows legislators to put forward legislation that will allow them to abuse that specific technology rather than the previous ones that allow them the same access, but were mandated more responsibly.

In other words : each new law has to be inspected from so many angles that eventually the angles will exceed the inspection ability, and our privacy will dwindle without much argument as we'll be unable to modify legislation quickly enough to keep up with tracking technologies; this seems to be on purpose and being abused actively in the United States.

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#329

Post by dmarchand90 » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #317

SkyBelow wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the number of deaths caused by STDs, it is perhaps justifiable for such data to be shared in the same fashion as one's Covid-19 status, assuming the sharing of the latter is justified.

COVID is unlikely dramatically more deadly than the flu, so the question is, if you're okay sharing your health data over COVID, why not the flu? It kills 650,000 people (60,000 Americans) every single year. The reality is widespread panic moments are when we lose our civil rights. Remember 9/11? That year more people died slipping and falling in the shower than died in the twin towers. More people died because they…

I'm not sure where you get the source the covid19 is no deadlier than the flu as that seems to be thoroughly debunked at this point

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#330

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #321

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ratio of asymptomatic to symptomatic people has been measured, and it's not nearly as high as you're saying. China has been quarantining and testing every single person entering the country, and they find that 2/3rds of cases are asymptomatic. Moreover, Germany has conducted a randomized serological survey of the population of one town where there was a large outbreak, and determined that the true mortality rate…

> Moreover, Germany has conducted a randomized serological survey of the population of one town where there was a large outbreak... 1. Results showed 0.37% mortality rate, which is an order of magnitude lower than the fatality rates being published, which is what I claimed -- so I re-iterate: "The numbers we're seeing are an upper-bound, by an order of magnitude." [1] 2. 14% of their town has had it already. [1] 3. T…

> The flu mutates regularly, and there's a ton of strains.

... which a substantial fraction of the population is immune to. Only 5-20% of the population gets the flu each year. CoVID-19 will infect 60-70% of the population, at a minimum, unless measures are taken to contain its spread.

> Results showed 0.37% mortality rate, which is an order of magnitude lower than the fatality rates being published

I've seen most people assuming a mortality around 1%, which is not that far off from these results. In Italy, 1% may well be correct, given how the healthcare system was overwhelmed there.

> I'd suggest that the actual mortality rate of my plan would be incredibly low.

If you can successfully shield the entire at-risk population, which easily approaches half the population of many countries. Once you add up old people, obese people, people with diabetes, smokers, people with heart conditions, and all the other at-risk groups, you come to a sizeable fraction of the total population. Trying to shield those people while the virus infects most of the rest of the population sounds incredibly risky to me. It's not even obvious that you can achieve natural herd immunity without at-risk people getting sick, because you need 60-70% of the population to get sick.

Overall, I don't understand the motivation behind such a risky plan. Why not just go through a 6-week period of lockdown, and then control the epidemic afterwards with extensive testing, good contact tracing and social distancing measures? Countries other than the US appear to be successfully implementing this strategy. Some, such as South Korea, were acted competently enough that they didn't even require the lockdown phase.