Police told not to download NHS Covid-19 app
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
https://twitter.com/hadleybeeman/status/1309008721838772225?...
See especially this: https://twitter.com/hadleybeeman/status/1309013275745685511?...
And this: https://twitter.com/hadleybeeman/status/1309013508152078336?...
Please don't forget that there isn't a single UK-wide or England-wide police force. There are many small regional forces across England. Quite often they issue advice that's dumb. You'll see a police force's social media team retweeting a "scam alert" that's an obvious hoax.
So, we don't know why they've issued this advice and we don't know if they've based that on sensible factual information of some bit of misinformation.
> The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) has confirmed officers are being told not to install the NHS Covid-19 app on their work smartphones.
If the subtitle was changed to: "The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) has confirmed it has recommended officers be told not to install the NHS Covid-19 app on their work smartphones" it would be clearer, if that is indeed the correct takeaway from this confusing article.
My wife who works in the medical field and performs thirty minute to an hour long exams within a foot or two of a patient has been told that because she and the patient are both wearing surgical masks she doesn't have to self isolated if it's revealed the patient had COVID. I don't feel that's an actual representation of the reality, but instead a desire to minimize her downtime.
Surgical masks in a closed room... I'm skeptical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_degree#DDS_vs_DMD_degre...
That's what my dentist was wearing. :-) I'm still alive.
I think flatten the curve is for numer of confirmed cases, not daily confirmed. That means if the curve has flattened then it's 0 new case.
See the graph at https://flattenthecurve.co.uk/ for an example.
You could pursue an elimination strategy after flattening the curve, but generally the approach has been slow things down and keep them manageable until a vaccine is available.
Flattening the curve means keeping R low, whilst raising the overall mortality, because the time of the wave is artificially enlarged. You keep the virus alife, esp. by closing the schools. The area under the wave is much larger with the flattening the curve strategy, even after several months it's not over yet. A normal wave is over after max 2 months. Politicians rely on people who cannot do the simplest math.
But that's just a rather isolated niche. As far as the rest of society goes, I'm pretty ok with masks and basic distancing.
The clinic has not issued any further restrictions on the personal lives of staff.
Surgical mask makes far more sense.
However, if it bothers you that much, you can wear a surgical mask over the N95. That's the best of both worlds, and strictly better than either option alone.
(All of this assumes valved N95s. Unvalved ones are more effective in both directions than surgical masks)
Does anyone have any suggestions as to why this advice was issued?
I'm not sure how frequently the codes are refreshed, but you could just hide a bluetooth receiver near the police station to get the daily codes for most officers, transmit that to your phone and have an app that tells you if a police officer is nearby.
Except for undercover or plain clothes police officers this doesn't seem like a big deal.
https://twitter.com/hadleybeeman/status/1309013275745685511?...
[1] A mostly theoretical flaw (as you need a large network of BLE scanners) on some devices: https://hackaday.com/2020/09/03/covid-tracing-framework-priv...
However, it's just as likely that the app is spyware given that it doesn't, and can't link with any COVID tests you have via the NHS, only those done by Serco.
They've changed it now so it should now be possible to let most tests performed by a public health authority or an nhs lab be reported on the app.
This seems like the equivalent of saying that we can't have carbon monoxide alarms in this building because they keep going off.
The comparison works if you add that the building is always filled with CO and that this is a known fact and that people in it are pros and take the appropriate measures. In such case, CO alarms are just noise.
Police evolve in a high risk environment and have procedure against that. Because of that and the security requirements of the Police, it has simply been concluded that the downsides of installing a third party tracker on a police phone outweighed the upsides.
In other words: if I was infected and attended a rave, a policeman interacted with me, and you interacted with that policeman two days later, you'd probably want to know about that fact and consider self-quarantining.
If you don't look at the problem, there is no problem!
Assuming people will follow proper protocols, whether they are police officers or not, is not a good plan.
It's much more important, because much more significant both in term of raw numbers and in term of risk of non compliance, to ensure that the general public follows the same: I was at the supermarket yesterday and the app told me that no less than 5 positive people were inside... with no consequences.
This is not supported by evidence. In other words, the world doesn't function the way we wish it would.
What's your evidence? Because police do have procedures that are internally enforced whereas the general public does not and is not exactly keen on rules (as we've seen)
Sounds like some people are criticising for the sake of it because this is the Police...
(Not saying uk police are perfect but something like the this in the linked article would be less likely here)
I didn't take that as meaning a specific police force, but rather, police in general. I was specifically responding to mytaylorrsrich's comment that people are reacting negatively to the police just because they are police, whereas my point was that they were believing that the police always held themselves to a higher standard just because they were police. I'm not convinced that is the case, and this link is a point of evidence to that effect.
As also repeated the police has extra security constraints, which must be balanced with any benefits the tracking app bring. Clearly they think that allowing a third party app which goal is real-time tracking, on police phones has more downsides than upsides.
I don't know anything about American police and I don't care. This is not the topic of the discussion, which is about an UK tracking app and UK police forces.
I do think that shooting this advice against installing the app (on police phones) and my comments down is largely being obtuse because it's the police or because they don't want to acknowledge the specificities of police work.
Western countries notably have not.
Now we just have hard choices.
In reality the UK probably wouldn't even be able to manage that - for example, we have a constant stream of lorry drivers coming in from locations throughout Europe to destinations throughout the UK, many of them with absolutely vital goods, and that's a great way to spread Covid from country to country. Somewhere like the US would stand even less chance.
Haven’t heard of it as a source of transmission. Truck drivers generally don’t get off their shift and then go sing karaoke.
And I live now in Quebec, which got local transmission down to almost nothing. But then they opened bars for three months. I think if they had kept them closed a month longer and told the pop “get to zero and we can have a normal winter” we could have done it. Now we’re surging again.
Flatten the curve started as a Twitter meme and only then spread to governments. I don’t think govts wanted to eliminate, but my point is I wish those who were in the forefront had sent a different message. I was looking at this from mid feb, before western governments were generally sending any message at all.
Containing the virus is the same, preventing ongoing community infections, etc.. Different words for the same overarching activity.
Maybe "containing" would have been a better description, arguably it wouldn't have allowed laxities to be introduced for economic reasons without it being more apparent; which goes against UK governments playbook it seems.
Did any countries public service messaging refer to "containing"?
Just look at any article when the idea of “flattening the curve” entered the news, e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/article/flatten-curve-coronavirus.ht...
Drew Harris, a population health analyst at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia that is cited in this NYTimes article, has said:
>Important to remember that #Covid-19 epidemic control measures may only delay cases, not prevent.
and
>Without a vaccine, eventually everyone is likely to be exposed to the virus. Some won't get sick, some will have mild illness, some severe, and a few will die. The goal is to put this off for as long as possible so we have time to prepare and spread out the surge of cases.
Saturday I saw a hospital worker (role unknown) with his mask in his hand. Not only that, but he was heading into the bathroom--a place you should be extra cautious about.
Other than that I have seen very good compliance by all medically trained people in healthcare facilities, sloppy compliance by those without medical training (receptionists etc.) I rather suspect he was not actually a medical worker despite being in the treatment area.
What do you base that on? I don’t think the police are wearing masks at any greater rate than any other profession, for example. What makes them less at risk?
I’d assume that police are being neither more nor less cautious than anyone else, on average, and are at relatively high risk just due to the nature of their jobs. If so it would be beneficial to the police and to everyone else for the police to use COVID contact tracing apps.
The police ‘has better protection’, ‘knows better’ or whatever excuse they come up with. In the end it’s just that, rules are for plebs, not for the police.
Given what we know of the uk governments competence, I would want a strong study indicating its effectiveness before I go anywhere near this.
Now, in terms of protection, testing and self-isolation, the police are on the front line, like NHS staff are, and I think that they already have strict procedures that are strictly followed.
Therefore, all in all it sounds like that app on a police work phone is lots of risk, little benefits. They can install it on their personal phone if they wish.
If the reason is that due to coming into contact with lots of people would skew the results, then this would be manipulation of the data.
There is no good answer for this current position.
If you're telling me to install it, but telling the cops not to install it, you're effectively telling me not to install it. The public is being told these apps are safe and privacy-preserving - if the precautions are not good enough for public officials of any kind, then they're not good enough for me.