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Comment by unholythree | Hacker News Reader

There has to be a clever way of doing this that isn’t super invasive. Having businesses record their customers and retain the only copy seems like a good compromise except something like personal phone numbers would be abused.

Maybe best would be something identifiable only to the authorities but recorded and held only by businesses. Something like driver’s license date of issuance and first name. In theory that would be meaningless to my local coffee shop or grocer; but if I tested positive contact tracers could go there and get that info (maybe just the day of my visit, or afternoon, etc.) and then correlate and contact others who visited during that time.

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South Korea already solved this problem: https://www.zdnet.com/article/south-korea-to-use-qr-codes-to...

There is QR code provider and QR code scanner. QR code provider includes Naver (Google in South Korea) and Kakao (WhatsApp in South Korea). QR code scanner is mandatory at venues. QR code is a random UUID. Venues keep UUID (but do not know real world identity), providers keep UUID-to-identity mapping (but do not know real world activity), KCDC gets feed from both venues and providers, join them, and do the contact tracing. In particular, it is legally mandated that only KCDC can do the join.

Asia has solved a lot of the issues surrounding the pandemic months ago. While American and European economies will be crushed by Corona (it's I bet it's not even half time) due to conspiracy theories, ignorance and egoists and adult babies crying about wearing a mask, Asia is getting back to ramp up their economies.

They are far more capable of shutting new clusters down AND CONTROL IT. When we send people into quarantine in the West, we plea for them to stay home and everything is trust based because we want to keep our free society. Effectively, only very large local outbreak cases enjoy oversight by authorities.

Taiwan's pandemic game was on point before WHO finally let the rest of the world know about what has been suppressed in China for weeks if not months. Due to China's pressure they aren't part of WHO or UN and had no "official" global way to tell the rest of the world. They did, but were dismissed due to the massive hubris in the West and the geopolitical game China is playing.

SARS 1 is still on everyone's mind in Asia while many Americans outright deny Corona's existence even in July 2020. It's nuts.

> …had no "official" global way to tell the rest of the world. They did, but were dismissed due to the massive hubris in the West and the geopolitical game China is playing.

What did they tell? It is frequently said that Taiwan sent an early email warning WHO about human-to-human transmission of what became known as SARS-CoV-2, and that the warning was ignored. This has been debunked and denied by Taiwan themselves[0]. On December 31, Taiwan and Wuhan Municipal Health Commission[1] both notified WHO about cases of pneumonia of unknown etymology[2], neither claiming human-to-human transmission.

That aside, I agree that a number of countries in East Asia, Taiwan included, fared much better than elsewhere in the world in terms of containing the spread of the virus.

[0] https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2020/04/12/2...

[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline...

[2] Since WHO was contacted by both on the same day, it’s imaginable that Taiwan privately reached out to China first with “what’s that coming from Wuhan? we’re going international on this tomorrow”, putting the latter under pressure to report in order to save face. That would place Taiwan in good light even if human-to-human was not mentioned; unlikely to be substantiated though.

Yes such a shame we can't focus on our economy, just because of outdated things like liberty and human rights.

The Economist’s Democracy Index as of 2019 rates favorably enough most East Asian democracies that have been handling COVID-19 well so far; some of them score higher than the US or half of European countries.

It doesn’t seem like “capable of containing a highly infectious disease” and “oppressive” go hand in hand.

Privacy issues aside (it’ll only take so long for any pile of PII to leak), this looks like an effective and quick to implement make-shift solution (smartphones are widespread enough and venue employees can enforce the scan), though I’m not sure of how much benefit these QR codes are in Korea.

In Seoul—among highest in the country in terms of new infection cases—coffeeshops, study cafes and restaurants are routinely really crowded. I have been working or eating out in one of such places here every day past two months, and I have never have been asked to scan a QR code or noticed one. I’ve only learned about it thanks to your comment.

(That said, I haven’t gone to karaoke, clubs or jjimjilbangs, and I can’t speak Korean well.)

I think restaurants and cafes are a highly underestimated vector of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Korea especially, since many of the customers aren’t wearing masks (because they’re eating) and often speak quite loudly (perhaps to drown out the inescapable loud music or from being drunk on a semi-mandatory after-work party). Usually bothersome just to me, now it’s objectively problematic—as some doctor pointed out in an interview about a choir group infection, literally the louder you are the more of your potentially-infected saliva is flying around.

PII is to be deleted after four weeks. KCDC has no need to contact trace after four weeks.

I agree with everything you said about Seoul, but that needs to be put in context (which we know, but HN mostly don't). Confirmed case numbers of Seoul in last 7 days (7/19 to 7/25) are 10, 2, 18, 16, 11, 19, 11 (total 77). Since total over South Korea in the same period is 168, it does make Seoul hotspot. But it is also far better compared to other countries.

Thanks, this was worth pointing out.

I should rephrase: it is not that the issue is “not solved”, but rather that it is difficult to measure whether these QR codes make much of a difference considering apparently lax enforcement and the already-low infection rates.

It’d be interesting to see if, implemented in a stricter manner, they could make a difference in a country like the US; the concept does seem sound.

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