Are you Going to use the COVIDsafe App?

[serfty]

I did research this a fair bit and I decided I was happy to:

Privacy Policy

The COVIDSafe app speeds up contacting people exposed to coronavirus (COVID-19). This helps us support and protect you, your friends and family. Please read the content on this page before downloading.

www.health.gov.au

 

[nutwood]

I'm not intending to download the app. My essential reasoning is that it's virtually irrelevant to my life style.
1. It would be extremely rare for me to spend 15 minutes within 1.5 m of anyone without either knowing who they are or, alternatively being on a plane when my Bluetooth is off.
2. I'm dubious of the technology used. I've worked quite a bit with Bluetooth and that 1.5 m has to have a huge error factor.
3. I'm dubious of the logic used. Thirty seconds near someone sneezing would be enough for infection to happen.
4. Potential for false positives. I see the point in high density situations, where the general vague nature of the information may be of benefit but in an Australia, already practising social distancing? I do not want to be logged as a potential positive, based on a phone app. A phone is not a scientific instrument. One little quirk and perhaps that 15 minutes turns to 15 ms? Perhaps the 1.5 m doesn't work as described on the packet and logs anything within range, which can be 100m + on a good day (50m on an average day!).
5. Potential complications. I use the Bluetooth on my phone quite extensively. I don't want some unknown app messing about with it.
6. Battery life. Bluetooth is a wireless transceiver. To work, it needs to be on. In this context, to work effectively, it needs to be both transmitting to say it's there and also receiving from other phones saying that they are there. If it's really smart and sends out low power pulses every 7.5 minutes, the transmission side could be reduced but the receiver has to be constantly listening.
7. It's dependent on all parties having Bluetooth turned on (refer #6 above!). If half the population downloads it but only turn their Bluetooth on when they feel there's a risk, most of the relevance evaporates.

Basically, I can see no personal or social benefit to be derived from my installing this app but I can see plenty of negatives. Battery life alone is sufficient for me to lose interest.

 

[Princess Fiona]

My guess is that most AFFers are well informed and are following the rules in order to minimise the risk of catching coronavirus, including the distancing stuff.

Regardless of distancing if you spend a couple of hours in an enclosed space with a COVID patient (waiting room etc) you are a contact.
The App will free up some valuable time immediately identifying the 15 minute contacts. Public Health are then free to manually trace those in the latter category.
Self preservation however you look at it.

 

[Princess Fiona]

I'm not intending to download the app. My essential reasoning is that it's virtually irrelevant to my life style.
1. It would be extremely rare for me to spend 15 minutes within 1.5 m of anyone without either knowing who they are or, alternatively being on a plane when my Bluetooth is off.
2. I'm dubious of the technology used. I've worked quite a bit with Bluetooth and that 1.5 m has to have a huge error factor.
3. I'm dubious of the logic used. Thirty seconds near someone sneezing would be enough for infection to happen.
4. Potential for false positives. I see the point in high density situations, where the general vague nature of the information may be of benefit but in an Australia, already practising social distancing? I do not want to be logged as a potential positive, based on a phone app. A phone is not a scientific instrument. One little quirk and perhaps that 15 minutes turns to 15 ms? Perhaps the 1.5 m doesn't work as described on the packet and logs anything within range, which can be 100m + on a good day (50m on an average day!).
5. Potential complications. I use the Bluetooth on my phone quite extensively. I don't want some unknown app messing about with it.
6. Battery life. Bluetooth is a wireless transceiver. To work, it needs to be on. In this context, to work effectively, it needs to be both transmitting to say it's there and also receiving from other phones saying that they are there. If it's really smart and sends out low power pulses every 7.5 minutes, the transmission side could be reduced but the receiver has to be constantly listening.
7. It's dependent on all parties having Bluetooth turned on (refer #6 above!). If half the population downloads it but only turn their Bluetooth on when they feel there's a risk, most of the relevance evaporates.

Basically, I can see no personal or social benefit to be derived from my installing this app but I can see plenty of negatives. Battery life alone is sufficient for me to lose interest.

No issues with battery life for me so far.
But it’s ok, personal choice if you want to download it or not.
As long as enough other people do you will get the collective benefit anyway.
A bit like that other great public health initiative
Immunization

 

[tgh]

Basically, I can see no personal or social benefit...

Would you also walk past someone suffering a heart attack in the street Nut_wood.. you probaly wouldn't be able to help and you might get your hands…er dirty..???

 

[nutwood]

Regardless of distancing if you spend a couple of hours in an enclosed space with a COVID patient (waiting room etc) you are a contact.
The App will free up some valuable time immediately identifying the 15 minute contacts. Public Health are then free to manually trace those in the latter category.
Self preservation however you look at it.

Understand the logic but I don't attend waiting rooms where I'm within 1.5 m of other patients. I glower at them from remote corners or alternatively wait outside. I see little point in visiting your doctor in order to share everything that others are bringing in.
I do agree that two hours skulking in a corner is still likely to result in picking up an energetic virus, but the app is not tuned to register two hours the opposite side of the room, just as it won't detect thirty seconds in your face.

 

[DC3]

While I cannot speak for anyone else of course, I have no intention of placing myself within 1.5 metres of anyone outside of my household for anything getting close to 15 minutes. No sitting around waiting for appointments. Sitting in waiting rooms should be avoided. If I need to see a health specialist (while conscious) then I will be waiting outside.

I hope that that we are all doing similar.

 

[nutwood]

Basically, I can see no personal or social benefit...

Would you also walk past someone suffering a heart attack in the street Nut_wood.. you probaly wouldn't be able to help and you might get your hands…er dirty..???

I find this comment offensive. I've carefully explained my reasoning, based on lack of relevance to my personal situation. Would you care to justify your reasoning?

 

[moa999]

Potential for false positives. I see the point in high density situations, where the general vague nature of the information may be of benefit but in an Australia, already practising social distancing? I do not want to be logged as a potential positive,

It's not a false positive.
It just flagging that you are at substantially higher risk of being infected - just like those arriving back from overseas.

I suspect you'll be asked to self-isolate and youll probably get a State Health staff turn up at your door to test you.

All about preventing additional community transmission. There will be undiagnosed cases, particularly amongst the young.

But agree for those whose behaviour means they are unlikely to get any contacts, there is limited point to the app

 

[Princess Fiona]

Understand the logic but I don't attend waiting rooms where I'm within 1.5 m of other patients. I glower at them from remote corners or alternatively wait outside. I see little point in visiting your doctor in order to share everything that others are bringing in.
I do agree that two hours skulking in a corner is still likely to result in picking up an energetic virus, but the app is not tuned to register two hours the opposite side of the room, just as it won't detect thirty seconds in your face.

Yes which is why I stated in my post it picks up the low hanging fruit ie. the 15 minute close contacts allowing those doing the extensive further tracing to pick up the others in the waiting room.

 

[nutwood]

It's not a false positive.
It just flagging that you are at substantially higher risk of being infected - just like those arriving back from overseas.

I suspect you'll be asked to self-isolate and youll probably get a NSWHealth staff turn up at your door to test you.

All about preventing additional community transmission. There will be undiagnosed cases, particularly amongst the young.

Totally agree and I can see the relevance in situations where there is lots of social contact happening. Logging potentially higher risks makes total sense if you have the numbers happening.

 

[Daver6]

Two things on this.

There is a huge gap in the understanding of how various parts of technology work. I just cringe at some of the things I read. Secondly, people who think they wont come into contact with others, therefore there is no point to the app. Think of this app like purchasing insurance. You hope to never make use of it, but if you need to, its good to know you have it.

 

[tgh]

Would you care to justify your reasoning


Indeed… we all live in a society ( noun : the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community)

IMnsHO , (you may differ) , membership of a functioning society requires a level of commitment to it's welfare.
Egalitarian societies seek a voluntary commitment to social welfare and cohesion ( compared to other societies that enforce a structured social order.)
To make a constructive contribution to a resided society , personal beliefs and preferences need to be balanced against a common need.
In the case of Covid , we face a once in a century challenge ; personal likes and dislikes, political views and other "wants" should be abandoned for the common good

Walking past a suffering human can be constructively paralleled with refusing to use the Covid app… do you wish me to construct a more colourful allegory or have I made my point ?

Finally.. (to meet the rules of the site).. I did not and do not intend to suggest that you would walk past a suffering human .. the question was purely rhetorical and no personal slight or offence was intended. If offence has been acquired from my comments, I offer my apologies

 

[harvyk]

“...Professor Lesley Seebeck, the former Digital Transformation Agency chief investment and advisory officer who is now the head of the Australian National University Cyber Institute, said the government had a history of grabbing as much data as it could under technology and security laws .... “

What to make of this?

They very much so have a history, and it's because of that history that I was initially hesitant to download the app.

However after reading about the technology behind this I feel confident that the government have it right in this case.

As a friend of mine posted, the government can not afford to F this one up, they'll never get a second shot at this. The first verified or even suspected case of data misuse by law enforcement or a spy agency and that's it, game over, even if everyone doesn't uninstall the app immediately, enough will uninstall it that there won't be enough data points to make it useful.

 

[nutwood]

Would you care to justify your reasoning


Indeed… we all live in a society ( noun : the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community)

IMnsHO , (you may differ) , membership of a functioning society requires a level of commitment to it's welfare.
Egalitarian societies seek a voluntary commitment to social welfare and cohesion ( compared to other societies that enforce a structured social order.)
To make a constructive contribution to a resided society , personal beliefs and preferences need to be balanced against a common need.
In the case of Covid , we face a once in a century challenge ; personal likes and dislikes, political views and other "wants" should be abandoned for the common good

Walking past a suffering human can be constructively paralleled with refusing to use the Covid app… do you wish me to construct a more colourful allegory or have I made my point ?

Finally.. (to meet the rules of the site).. I did not and do not intend to suggest that you would walk past a suffering human .. the question was purely rhetorical and no personal slight or offence was intended. If offence has been acquired from my comments, I offer my apologies

Apology accepted.
I would however be interested in discussion along the lines of how one is failing to commit to the welfare of society by not downloading an app totally irrelevant to ones lifestyle? I have spoken (excluding phone calls) to two strangers in the last month, and that at a distance. If I was detected positive and was still able to speak, those strangers would be readily identified by their jobs. They were personal strangers to me only.
In pre-Covid times, the number would be higher, but not drastically so. The only 1.5 m/15 minute exposures I've been able to come up with would be the seat behind in airport lounges. 15 minutes in a constant close situation with strangers is quite a long time, unless you're in a movie, or on public transport.
Based on this, I can see little point in cluttering my phone with an unnecessary app. Of course, you could be of the belief that the correct thing to do is to download and delete, in order to make the figures look good? Fair point, but it hardly fits with the good Samaritan moral high ground?

 

[nutwood]

Yes which is why I stated in my post it picks up the low hanging fruit ie. the 15 minute close contacts allowing those doing the extensive further tracing to pick up the others in the waiting room.

Ah-ha, sorry, I missed your point. A tightly packed waiting room probably would be somewhere to turn on Bluetooth, however, I'll be one of those located when they bring up the appointment spread sheet!

 

[Quickstatus]

Only 17 AFFers indicating an unreserved YES to the poll, so far today.

We are a discerning bunch who research the facts and are informed about our choices.

Well hopefully the 80% YES on AFF is representative of the Aus population

What?. People who would connect rather than fly direct?

They want their jobs back.

Not the Jobkeepers whose usual wages are lower than JKeeper and are now working less for more more $$

forgot every time to take my phone out and leave the app open onscreen.

Background operations mean the app is open but not on the front screen

The app appears to do zero validity checks on the bare details added. So you can be "Donald Duck" show your "tinder" age and a suburb "postcode" you wish you could afford.

What pseudonyms are people using?

It's chewing through the battery on my x

Not mine.

Why is there a 15-minute proximity trigger for what is reportedly a highly infectious virus?

There has to be a cutoff at some point. But yes I wondered that. I reckon it should be 5 min. But then there will be people who would say 1 min.

And then what? Forced 14 days quarantine at Villawood detention centre?

No

I do not want to be logged as a potential positive, based on a phone

I would rather be a false positive.

.....

Ok I’m up to speed here

 

[prozac]

Misuse of COVIDSafe data is a gaol term.

 

[JohnM]

It's all academic - the app will pick up virtually nothing because the restrictions to date have been so draconian, the infection clusters so localised, and the chances of a 'second wave' from overseas, after the lesson of the debacles and all cruise ships incubators now shot of, are now remote. (None of that is meant as a pejorative comment.)

But if it helps relax some of the, what I believe are in some cases unsoundly-based overly-onerous restrictions, then that is a good thing.

If someone in 'the guvmt' has the time or inclination to spy on my boring life, they can go for it.

 

[DC3]

Misuse of COVIDSafe data is a gaol term.

Caught, and then convicted maybe. Unfortunately, many never get a custodial sentence, even when found guilty of serious crimes. A good legal defence always helps.

 

[SuePa]

My phone must be too old and 'does not meet the requirements'. Could be a good excuse to buy myself a new phone.