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Comment by r00f | Hacker News Reader

I'm just wondering, what if a person doesnt have smartphone? There are many elderly people who still have Nokia 1100 or something like that, and do not care. Will they get beaten every day? Or if this is mandatory, will the government provide free devices to everyone?

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In Poland they make people install government issued App or declare[1] under threat of perjury that you don’t own a suitable device.

> will the government provide free devices to everyone?

Free and subdermal. /s

[1] https://www.gov.pl/attachment/f3014313-bed3-4012-98fa-ea35bf...

Nice, I hope these Nokia phones make a comeback. I miss the long battery life.

I've just checked that my old LG flip phone still works, perhaps I'll have to start using it.

First I’m seeing this, is it only for when you cross the border into Poland?

It’s for the imposed quarantine, so my understanding is if you cross the border or have a positive test.

More information:

https://www.gov.pl/attachment/dfc022ca-df40-4b81-94e4-44ef20... or:

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...

Because of who is at most risk from the virus, it seems plausible that elderly people will be told they are not to leave their homes at all.

That's one of the options being talked about in the UK at the moment. Everyone vulnerable (has asthma, etc.), or old, told to stay in lockdown while other people are allowed to work. It's not policy, it's just being thought about.

Which might be worse than getting beaten, who knows. Imagine being an elderly undocumented person with no government support, in an environment where you're not allowed out any more and stand out visibly in crowds, and political support for blanket emergency handouts has come to an end.

Yes, those elderly would have to taking the beatings, until they receive their free devices from Government. </sarcasm>

Contact tracing is useless at this point. Contact tracing is good when there are dozens of cases, maybe even hundreds, but not millions.

It'll be good for the next pandemic - but not this one.

Over the next 12 months, we should focus on how we change society to be more sanitary, in general.

Incorrect. After implementing a lockdown, and getting R<1, essentially brings you back to square one. That's when contact tracing is implemented and lockdown ends. The contact tracing will keep R<1 until a vaccine/better treatments/ICU's are implemented. A secondary lockdown might be needed in case people another outbreak occurs.

The feasibility of contact tracing has nothing to do with the R. It's practicality is purely based upon your ability to contact people who are infected.

Sure, tech tools that automate part of that process, increase that number - maybe even benefit more rural place - but if you launched it in NYC right now, it'll just notify literally everyone in the city, day one. That's not useful.

You don’t know that. Some people are more affective at social distancing than others.

Probably, but the news media in Western countries - particularly the US and UK - have been pushing the narrative that it's essential for, basically, partisan political reasons. In the US, it's being used as part of the attack on Trump over the CDC screwing up testing because the media doesn't like him, whereas in the UK it's part of a narrative that the reason we stopped contact tracing is part of a plot by our government to kill the elderly. In both cases, it's basically intended to create the perception that the ruling political party killed huge numbers of people. If it causes other countries to do stupid, counterproductive things that's just collateral damage.

Meanwhile, China has been pushing the claim that they contained Covid-19 via contact tracing and testing as part of the "model for the rest of the world" narrative they're using to fight domestic anger at their handling of the outbreak, with the WHO's help. (This does not seem to be an accurate description of what they actually did to contain it.)

2/3 of India's population does not have smartphones, which makes even the purported use of this app completely useless.

This is only for government employees.

It is now mandatory for both public and private sector employees.

And you are naively thinking that all workers are registered in the government database.

Enforcement is done by threatening the owners of the company with jail for non-compliance by their employees. It works to some extent.

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