A Smart Plan to End the U.S. Lockdown Arrives Just in Time | Hacker News Reader

A Smart Plan to End the U.S. Lockdown Arrives Just in Time

bloomberg.com

58 pointsundefined181 comments

So AEI's solution is mass surveillance of citizens, their movements, and who they came into contact with? And they directly call for that to be a national database:

> The AEI authors also call for a national surveillance system to tie local systems together and enable contact tracing throughout the country

This is like the 9/11 and the Patriot Act all over again. Why is it that so called conservative organizations who proclaim to love "small government" always push the most privacy invading and draconian solutions? I'd call it turn-key authoritarian but I'm pretty sure the key will start out in the "on" position.

Keep in mind this is NOT a solution to keep people safe, this is a solution to allow US businesses to re-open sooner. It actually makes people less safe, and seeks to compensate by robbing people of privacy all so that business can resume.

I agree. It sounds like an awful solution. Imagine if they did this for herpes.

If this ever comes online, I imagine they'll use it for all and any social "ills." Including herpes. It will be like McCarthyism on steroids; guilty by literal proxy.

I don't know about herpes, but I vaguely recall that people have been prosecuted for spreading HIV. Maybe even convicted, but I don't recall.

Why not just an anti-body test & if you feel sick, do a regular test.

People with anti-bodies go back to work, people who feel sick get treatment, everyone else is in lockdown.

In 12-18 months we have a vaccine and / or are all sick anyway and have anti-bodies.

Reality is any complex solution will take longer to implement than the easier solution(s) (just getting antibodies).

> Why is it that so called conservative organizations who proclaim to love "small government" always push the most privacy invading and draconian solutions?

I'll give you a hint and it rhymes with honey.

they're scummy?

on edit: slant rhymes count right?

Not entirely money, because they drop the small-government act for victimless moral issues too. Seemingly unaware that eventually it backfires.

> This is like the 9/11 and the Patriot Act all over again.

I would say it is worse; it is the Patriot Act on steroids. Because this will be "to keep your children safe from epidemics" there will be even less public scrutiny and pushback on questionable data collections. Ouch!

That's what I've noticed as well. When places started doing mandatory lockdowns under the threat of fines or prison, questioning it would usually result in people coming out of the woodwork to say that public health is at risk, so everyone needs to just shut up and do what their told, personal freedoms be damned. The biggest change to me with the lockdowns is that "innocent until proven guilty" is thrown out the window. If you leave your house, it's on you to prove that you weren't breaking the lockdown laws, not on the police to prove that you were going somewhere unauthorized.

That's my default reaction too. And I am glad that I don't have a smartphone, or use my cellphone much.

But still, I get the argument that quarantines and contact tracing are essential now. I may not be readily traceable, but I accept that I may be challenged when I go out. Just as I'd be stopped for speeding, reckless driving, broken lights, etc. And so I don't go out without a valid reason.

I think you are perhaps conflating the public health definition of surveillance with what HN usually thinks of as "surveillance." (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_surveillance)

In the US, if you get certain reportable illnesses (COVID-19, E.coli infection, meningitis, etc), it's reported to the county/state health department, and via various channels, ends up anonymized with the CDC. Likewise, there are syndromic and lab-based public health surveillance networks that will monitor flu-like symptoms (ILINet) and will sequence samples (PulseNet) to help track cases in the US. Moreover, there's even more public health surveillance when it comes to drug safety -- if you tell your physician that you got any of a number of side effects from a drug you're taking, that is reportable to the FDA (FAERS). What Gottlieb et al are asking for is merely extending the best practices we have from flu, foodborne, and other diseases to COVID-19, in a way that has proven extremely effective, and also preserving privacy and liberty.

I think many of us here are rightfully concerned about an increasing surveillance state, but the term "surveillance" here is an unfortunate term collision, and we should resist the knee-jerk reaction in this case.

I think in this specific case both terms are being used in merged meanings. They are talking about using a national surveillance (as in surveillance state) data collection to help perform public heath surveillance.

What is being proposed from a public health surveillance perspective is reliant on a multifold and invasive surveillance state data collection and mining perspective.

Back in the day, before electronic communications, public health surveillance was just the best surveillance possible. So I believe that it's a largely artificial distinction.

Even so, I agree that there are ways to do public health surveillance where the raw data is buried well enough that users only see actionable information, and only aggregate data is released.

>Keep in mind this is NOT a solution to keep people safe, this is a solution to allow US businesses to re-open sooner. It actually makes people less safe, and seeks to compensate by robbing people of privacy all so that business can resume.

Privacy concerns aside: This is a decision of saving lives and trying to get the economy going; this seems like one of the better solutions out there. We cannot shut down the economy for a long period of time. Doing so would tear apart the fabric of society, both financially and the quality of life. The shut down would last many months, all depending on the rate of spread before herd immunity is reached/staying under the capacity of our hospitals. Prevention of loss/death should not completely eclipse our purpose of being alive.

As an example, if we maintained a 4% daily growth with our current level of shut down (using NYC numbers), herd immunity would not be reached until the beginning of July. Middle of September at 2%^. As Cuomo said, we can print as much money as we want, but if there aren't any revenues, the economy is not being taken care of.

Also, this type of tracking probably already exists. Android/Google has an opt out GPS history. I woudln't be surprised if this data wasn't already being crunched and used.

^ This assumes the true amount of people who have contracted coronavirus is 5 times higher (based on 80% asymptomatic cases)

> Prevention of loss/death should not completely eclipse our purpose of being alive.

The economy is not our purpose for being alive!

The "economy" directs our best and brightest to work on adtech and HFT for the benefit of people who are already rich. The economy underpays teachers, nurses, cooks, and other "essential" workers. The economy is the reason we cut taxes and defund the CDC. The economy has people continue to work while they're sick during a global pandemic because otherwise they won't be able to pay their rent.

The economy has figured out how to do some interesting things, which are not for the benefit of most people nor society as a whole. The economy is not our purpose for being alive!

Do you think the ideals you argue for exist without an economy?

"An economy" is not the same as "the" economy. It seems like it should be possible for an economy to be able to contribute to the welfare of society as a whole, and most individuals within that society. However, "the" economy that we have, does not do so. It is a severe indictment of our economy, that pausing all nonessential activity for a few months can be catastrophic to so many people, and for no good reason. As the old joke goes, "we have enough food, it's too bad there isn't enough money to buy it all".

I think it actually does, otherwise those people wouldn't be employed at all.

And I'm curious, you say it should contribute only to "most individuals" -- which ones, specifically, in your framework, should be excluded?

You're making it sound as if the economy in the abstract sense is the thing that is employing people. Those people would still definitely be employed in a "different" economy, since an economy is simply a space in which people trade goods and services.

And I don't think his framework actively excludes people, it's just that economies almost never contribute to all individuals equally.

Well, "the economy in the abstract sense" is the thing that is employing people.

Claiming that those people would still definitely be employed in a different economy is simply saying it would be the same economy. And the claim was that this utopian new economy would contribute to the "welfare of society as a whole, and most individuals within that society", so I'm curious who isn't covered under that "most".

For a privacy-preserving alternative, see Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (https://www.pepp-pt.org/) which was announced today.

And... that right there would also be a very sufficient surveillance system. As much as I want this to be over, it's really scary hearing about a system where everyone's physical interactions with everyone else is intentionally logged and alerted upon. Even if this app was only really used for a couple months to get us past this hurdle, it'll both condition people to detailed contact tracing and will inevitably remain installed on many devices.

k-anonymity is more or less impossible, to boot.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10933-3

Wouldn't a "find my phone" feature like Apple developed be possible to use in this case?

See: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2019/06/05/how-does...

I think that with two tweaks, we could cast a pretty wide net and remain privacy preserving:

1. Phones record a 14 day history of every pseudonym and public key they generate, as well as every pseudonym and public key they observe. Observers (potentially exposed contacts) could encrypt these observations with their own public keys and upload them using the same method Apple uses, I believe.

2. People who test positive can opt in to publishing those pairs publicly, which would allow any device to scan its history for those pairs and determine if its owner has been exposed. Or alternatively, Apple or another company could perform this on a user's behalf using the central database.

I think the privacy preserving aspect is dependent on users opting in to sharing information for the past 14 days following a covid-19 test. That would allow the contacts to perform the same "have I seen this device" search locally.

Edit: This actually seems a lot like "haveibeenpwned" more-so than anything else. As long as a case's device generated unique IDs continuously, logged them privately and broacasted them to nearby devices, then a potentially exposed contact's device could regularly query a central database for hashed prefixes of IDs they've seen in the past 2 weeks. Any person (case) who tests positive could opt-in to publishing all of the IDs their phone has generated in the past 2 weeks.

The contacts could then opt in to publishing the location said contact occurred, and a hash of a geofence could also be logged - allowing contacts who have been exposed to opt in to publishing that someone in a particular vicinity had tested positive and was present at a particular date and time.

You don't need surveilance. All recorded contacts can be stored locally and only informed once a positive test is returned.

More information here:

https://www.pepp-pt.org/

The word "surveillance" in healthcare is a little different than in regular politics - it basically means gathering information from the field. See [1].

However, we're going to be seeing a lot of discussion about infectious disease surveillance and the more nefarious types. As Maciej Cegłowski has pointed out, we are already doing the nefarious kind on a massive scale in order to target ads more effectively.

I do believe there's a middle ground, that this stuff can be done in a way that preserves human rights. But it will require attention and holding those who have the power to abuse the system accountable.

[1]: https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/surveillance-in...

My understanding of what you just said - status and contacts are stored locally, and the user will manually mark themselves as "infected" after a test. Presumably the receiver of that notification will have a local status saying "get tested".

But when you mark yourself to infected, how does that resolve to notifications for all your contacts? At some point that must hit the cloud and fan out to everyone, meaning the contact list is shared at that point, and with a large enough network becomes identifiable info. Esp if you combine that with skimming contacts.

Is the GDPR compliance and on the wire encryption what keeps it private?

You exchange a one time id with each close proximity.

If you test positive, you publish your recorded close proximities ids on a public server. Authorities can supply you with a one time tocken with the test result to append said server.

There are certanly more efficient and elegant ways to solve this problem, but it is solvable.

I don't disagree, but I cannot think about any alternative => a compromise is needed... .

> ...and will inevitably remain installed on many devices

But I really hope that on one hand when this is over the central tracking servers will then be disabled and on the other hand users will be motivated to uninstall the app and/or switch off bluetooth/gps/whatever to save battery (even if tracking by cell tower would still be active, if used by the app).

Compromise makes sense when both sides are willing to compromise. Speaking broadly, the U.S. government and its institutions (NSA) have proven reluctant to compromise even when the American public is.

I’d be willing to compromise here if along with the compromise we replaced “hope” with laws around destroying this technology/platform at a certain defined point in time, along with sufficient criminal penalties for continued usage of the technology/platform after said point in time.

If the Patriot Act proved anything, it’s that we as citizens must demand laws with teeth around the deployment and usage of these dangerous technologies.

Yeah, agree on that.

> And... that right there would also be a very sufficient surveillance system.

If you're using "Find My Phone" on your device, you're already relying on this sort of surveillance. I'm not sure what's "scary" about using the exact same feature that many people are in fact relying on for their convenience, to mitigate an ongoing disease outbreak.

The reason it's being used is the difference, the fact that it's the exact same feature is irrelevant. That's like saying you don't understand why someone would have a problem with murder because we already use guns for other things.

And the reason it's being used is to try and contain the spread of disease. I don't think many people would object to that, either.

Wtf this sounds like nero burning of Rome level grabbing of power. Why not just roll out anti-bodies test. I for one will not be participating in this.

Just give us a mass produced anti-body test we can take already.

This is ridiculous. If people can just take an anti-body test to show they are immune to covid-19, they can safely return to work.

While we absolutely need an antibody test, any such test would currently come up negative for the vast majority of the country.

It would basically be a more expensive way of doing what we're doing now.

It's unlikely that even 1% of the United States has been infected at this point. What does the other 99+% do? Infect themselves?

> What does the other 99+% do? Infect themselves?

Yes, sooner or later.

You need to get to something like 60%-75% of the population infected and with developed antibodies before you can obtain herd immunity in a given population. Unlike the majority of our politicians, Angela Merkel was praised several weeks ago when she told the German public, no BS, that 3/4 of the population would end up getting the virus, eventually.

It's not certain we will even develop a vaccination anytime soon. Corona viruses have been around in live stock for a long time, and no vaccination has been created, even though it'd be very profitable. They've been promising the elusive HIV vaccine for almost 40 years, and we've still got squat.

The virus is out. It cannot be locked away again, at least till the vast majority of us are immune or dead. Waiting 'till next season is neither feasible for the economy, nor society, and it's likely you'll just end up getting infected with a stronger mutated version instead of this one a la Spanish Flu Season #2.

We cannot keep our population inside cowering in fear forever. If we had unlimited doctors, nurses, ventilators, etc. we wouldn't even bother having this lock down, social distancing, or waiting. We'd carry on as normal, and let the virus take its best shot. There is literally no other way to get out of this.

The problem is the hospitalization rate is too high even for a younger population. If you could target even 2% hospitalized at 60% of population, you would still need >4+ years at current capacity to get through this. You'd also still lose 1/1000 lives (of younger people) which still is unacceptable.

Why is it guaranteed you need to get herd immunity? Can you not take the Singapore/SK route indefinitely - heavy contact tracing + mask wearing + limit mass groups to keep basic reproduction number under 1 indefinitely?

I'm in Singapore, and I can assure you that although we're not locked down, no one wants this to last longer than it has to.

Agreed. But to the point above, is it better to have 5000 people under age 50 die or just keep the current regime (which will probably start emerging mostly as a ban on leaving the city) up for 18 months?

> You'd also still lose 1/1000 lives (of younger people) which still is unacceptable.

I think if this goes on for months on end - kids stuck at homes, large events cancelled perpetually, the stock market headed further down, shortages in not just hand sanitizer but eventually even basics like fresh produce and grains, clothes, electronics, then that 1/1000 death rate won't be so unacceptable at all.

Our society cannot just change like it would need to in order to keep the death rate as low as we'd wish.

Does that exist? Does it work for strains?

This assumes everyone has a cell phone that can run these apps. I personally know a few people who chose not to have one, and a few more who use old or weird phones. And there are plenty more for whom no phone isn't a choice.

If this works you don't need everyone to join, you just need a big enough majority.

It's an odd tradeoff for me. My phone can make phone calls and that's all. I rarely take it out when I leave the house. When I need to I may turn it off and check it just occasionally, but that's really rare, it normally lives at home. I choose that exactly for privacy reasons. You can tell I'm pretty hot on that kind of thing!

For this epidemic situation privacy just might have to take 2nd place for the protection of other people. If I became an unknowing carrier then such an app, though repugnant to me, might save other lives. It might be morally right to have a phone just for that. I think it probably is right, though it makes my skin crawl. I don't think the UK government would be stupid enough to try to force people to keep it, but then again...

Personally I wouldn't trade my privacy for an emergency.

But it seems that this app proposed for the EU is built with privacy in mind and if that's the case then I won't mind using it.

N.b. in UK and other countries the location of your phone is already tracked via the mobile towers it connects to. It's not a concern only if you leave it at home.

So I'm actually hoping for an app that respects privacy because mobile operators have already started sharing this data.

It's not essential to have 100% coverage, just like it's not essential (or feasible) to have 100% compliance with lockdowns.

The one thing this is missing (IMO) is targeted quarantine, which we've seen in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. There will always be clusters that escape surveillance, so you target specific quarantine and "lockdown" tactics, dynamically, to the smallest effective region. In the case of South Korea, they've gone as far as isolating particular buildings for lockdown.

In Moscow, they just announced a plan and said for those who don’t have a cell phone, they’ll offer a device.

Here’s the source: “But starting Thursday, Muscovites will have their movements tracked through a mandatory app required on their smartphones. Don't have one? The city says it will lend out devices.” [0]

[0]: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...

They've been doing this in both Israel and Norway for weeks. Norwegian police will actually pull over busses and physically separate passengers if they're not observing adequate social distancing.

.. and if you don't want to carry one, they staple it to your ear, like cattle.

A smarter plan is to do what has worked in Czech Republic, and just have everyone start wearing masks.

Masks are even privacy enhancing!

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/should-all-americans-be-we...

Yep, and since then masks have became mandatory also in Slovakia, in Austria (so far only for shopping) & Israel is starting to require them as well.

Why on earth was this downvoted? This crazy avoidance of masks in so many western countries is disastrous. We've killed thousands of people, and for the life of me I can not figure out why. Just cutting up old shirts and tying them to our faces would prevent thousands of deaths, why are we still being told "don't wear masks"?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/28/masks-all-...

Sounds like the beginning of the surveillance state.

You know it's been coming for a long time. I assumed the state already had this information - if they do, clearly they've decided retaining that and not letting people know they have it is more important than whatever Corona-busting results it could have.

Because it is. The tidbits all these articles conveniently leaves out about these successful responses from (more) democratic countries is that they are closer to Chinese techno-authoritarianism than not: Korea (health officials cross reference credit card bill, location data), Taiwan (tracking bracelet), Singapore (bluetooth app), Hong Kong (out-of-home quarantine). China is basically all of the above piped straight into police big data on top of various human and environmental layers. That's what is required because enforcing compliance doesn't scale with labour and quarantine dodgers are a statistical inevitability. Many of these countries started off with human monitoring. One of the key findings in Wuhan where there is magnitude more spread than these countries is that you have to isolate positive cases from whoever they cohabitate with (family, roommates etc). It requires forced out-of-home quarantine or infected persons WILL infect everyone they live with. These are known lessons that western MSM have deliberately overlooked until it becomes too costly to ignore because it involves interrogation of whether it's politically or culturally possible.

E: It's starting to feel like this entire process may reveal itself to be liberal democracies equivalent of "Why Arabs Lose Wars", too many contemporary cultural and political factors that makes effective quarantine impossible.

The surveillance state has been here for a very long time.

They're just making it legitimate.

Just ask Facebook, they already have this data, don't they?

Sure, just legally privilege the PII data and its derivatives so that using it for any other purpose than pandemic control sends the CEO of the responsible company to prison.

If they aren't willing to include an explicit legal protection for the data, it's bullshit.

Not the worst idea(and i mean this in the context of the current situation) and been done in other countries but i have a feeling someone's going to abuse this in the end for other "needs" as it always happens.

For those who might be skeptical when they see AEI, don't be. The article is not a partisan think-piece. It's clear, straightforward, and based on science and reason. Highly recommended. I've been sharing it with people in my city who are concerned about "what happens next?"

https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/national-corona...

Agreed. I've been following Scott Gottlieb for a while, he's one of the favorite experts on my Twitter list[1] (carefully curated to avoid political bias). We should be evaluating these kinds of proposals on the basis of competence, and they deliver.

There seems to be a convergence of expert opinion around these kinds of proposals, see [2] for a quick survey. ("These two roadmaps are the same as all the others. Variations on a theme.")

[1]: https://twitter.com/i/lists/1239639611694911489

[2]: https://twitter.com/j_g_allen/status/1244371548410175501

I would prefer it to be based on science, reason, and human rights. Any plan that relies on a "national surveillance system" needs revision.

I have a right to know if I've come into contact with someone with COVID-19.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22753425

It's not 'surveillance' as in eavesdropping on all my calls and emails, it's contact tracing.

And it should definitely all come with a 'self destruct' mechanism for when this is over.

Your assertions about the manner of surveillance are not supported by the given documentation (and are implied to be incorrect in other parts of the document). If they are diligent about that 'self destruct' aspect, I would have a different opinion -- hence "needs revision" instead of a knee-jerk "needs rejection" attitude.

GPS data is pretty accurate outdoors, but the second you step inside a store the trace goes completely haywire and bounces round hundreds of meters in all directions. So any warnings will end up so broad as to be useless. Even if just 0.1% of a population are infected, you’ll end up with everyone getting multiple alerts everyday. How does that improve our situation?

It says bluetooth

Permanently disabled on my phone.

It doesn't work.

I live in a high rise. Every time I am in my garage, find my iPhone thinks I am in the building next door. If I am in my kids bedroom, it thinks I am across the street.

What if the person above me is in their kitchen at the same time I am in my kitchen?

That man is a genius: let's do wide scale testing & contact tracing!

Exactly what everyone has been saying for a while now.

What percentage of the population is it worth losing in order to preserve privacy and resist surveillance? 0.1%? 1%? I'd probably pick a much higher number than you would. Does that make me a bad person?

How much higher are you willing to go? Where does herd immunity start, maybe at 70% immune? With a 3% death rate (optimistic with those numbers) that gives you about 7 million dead. Absent a vaccine or effective, cheap and widely available antivirals then we could all stay at home for 1.5 years. That might cost more than we can collectively afford. That's probably a no, which leaves aggressive quarantining and contact tracing as likely the only other way to prevent that exponential explosion with its dreadful potential for death.

Take ques from other countries that has it under control and it expand on it. The entire country need to be as one when enforcing not by local laws etc, it will be too slow to propagate new orders

Welp, guess I'm not going anywhere for a long time.

"Smart" should be in quotes.

https://archive.is/iMVKi

NO THANKS!

Despite being from the american enterprise institute, I think this is the basis of the only sane thing to do. In broad strokes it's what I've seen as the only thing to do for the last several weeks: this is what "flattening the curve" gives us time to line up.

I'd like to also see:

- wide and free distribution of NPI in the civilian population. At this point i think masking everyone up is sensible.

- efficacy data for blood serum transfusions. If that can help provide some immunity in critical populations like delivery people, grocery and pharmacy staff, emergency responders and hospital staff: friggin' great. Keep people we actually need alive and working and remove them from the vector pool temporarily. We're underway with frontline trials with this as of last weekend in NYC.

- maybe theraputics to reduce the duration of the disease, if we get lucky. This is the choloroquine/favapadir/... fight that we seem to enjoy having.

Do that, and optimistically we can wind up to about 80% normal by fall. We'll get the 20% rest back over the next several years it takes to crank out a vaccine.

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