Get alerted to COVID-19 exposure | Hacker News Reader

Get alerted to COVID-19 exposure

google.com

18 pointsAustin_Conlon14 comments

This is vital if we are to move past coronavirus. It took longer than it should have to make this available, but everyone has a responsibility to install the app for their specific country. (The privacy solution is very clever. The most common criticism is health departments complaining that they want more information so they can trace outbreaks.)

Another thing that’s vital is what a user is going to do when the app alerts them.

In the Netherlands you can’t get tested if the app alerts you but you show no signs of the disease. So the app is pretty much useless.

No, it's not vital. At all.

Contact tracing IS great and very effective in early stages of a pandemic, but THIS isn't an effective way to scale it.

You're not going to walk it back at this point with this particular technology.

These sort of things are a good supplement if you have effective contact tracing, but yeah, it's definitely not a substitute.

Nope. I refuse to participate.

Why?

It's a fairly good design, but I don't think it has proven very effective so far, at least in Switzerland, as the installed base is not large enough to make much of an impact.

Contact tracing is perfect for something like venereal disease.

For a highly contagious airborne respiratory virus, not so much. It's also far too pandemic anyway.

Seems like it's only available in select states though, I dont see an app for WA for example where I'm located.

Not in Australia either.

I've been using https://www.novid.org/ for a while now. Too bad adoption seems extremely low. I lack skills to convince even my friends to use a tracing app.

Hope it's opt-in. Otherwise I'm moving to graphine OS.

>Once you opt in to the notification system

For now, at least...

Day late and a dollar short.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com