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Comment by mumblemumble | Hacker News Reader

There's also participation on the contact side. In Western countries, surveys indicate we can't convince even half of people to install a contact tracing smartphone app. According to my state's department of health, practical experience indicates we can't convince even half of people to pick up the phone and respond to a contact tracing interview.

> Covid19 would also be over if people with symptoms would just stay home.

No it wouldn't. One of the things that makes SARS-CoV-2 such a problem is that people get contagious long before they show symptoms. Similarly to for influenza and the common cold, many people get contagious without ever developing symptoms.

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> According to my state's department of health, practical experience indicates we can't convince even half of people to pick up the phone and respond to a contact tracing interview.

More than anything I suspect this is a result of allowing so much unfiltered spam calls. If you only get one unexpected, unknown call a month you will almost always answer it. If you get three a day you will almost never answer it.

We are allowing private businesses and scammers to steal the “commons” of our societal attention. We are doing a very poor job of keeping useful communications channels open: almost every communication medium people rely on for important information gets cluttered with must-ignore spam, making it decreasingly likely an important message is actually received.

I imagine contact tracers would at least leave a voicemail? I always let numbers I don't recognize and aren't local (my cell phone number is out-of-state and spam calls usually originiate from that area code, not my current local) go to voicemail since I assume if they're important, they'll leave a voicemail.

I've got enough IRS and social security calls on my voice mail as to ignore them all too. If I don't know the voice and I'm not expected the call it is ignored.

That only works if you have and check your voicemail. Many people either don't have a voicemail or don't bother ever setting it up. When the carriers start charging you a lot of money to have a voicemail, plenty of people will forgo it, and instead say things like "if it's important enough they'll call back" or "they'll send me a text message".

> Many people either don't have a voicemail or don't bother ever setting it up.

I actively turned my voicemail off completely.

There is simply no-one who I want to talk to who would choose to leave me a voicemail if I don't answer.

FWIW I get lots of spam voicemails, to the point where the 'new voicemail' notification doesn't glass any confidence that a human called me.

I can, of course, listen to every voicemail, but that's not much better than just picking up the phone when I get a spam call.

I would say 95% of the voicemail is spam. The other 5% also sends me an email if they couldn't reach me.

So basically the only reason I check my voicemail is to get rid of the notification on my phone

It's funny how you remain completely unaware of the merits of your country's set of laws unless you hear from how things are elsewhere. We do have spam calls, but they are rare enough that people bonding over spam call infuriation might reference one that happened a year earlier.

yeah it's a total shitshow in the United States; I get 20-25 spam calls a week unless I shell out for a service to block them (TrapCall, Robocaller, etc.)

I'm sure there are bills in the works, but those same bills are likely bundled along with completely unrelated nonsense.

Use something like Google Voice that gives you a transcript. In fact, I bet Google could probably automatically flag spam voicemails if they tried.

Of course, you may not be comfortable with giving Google access to this data...

I have transcripts, but I still have to read them. You're right though, it's better than listening to the audio.

We already have contract tracing scams. I got a call claiming to be a contract tracing call asking for my SS# to tell me if I was at risk.

No clue how widespread this is, but I can't exactly blame people for assuming any call or voicemail they get is a scam, there are so many out there.

That's...both unsurprising and super disappointing.

I have a similar problem with voicemail: the spammers leave voicemail too so I don't want to check that either.

Yeah, I use Google Voice and just read the transcript since that takes a lot less time.

I have seen some companies that call have pre-loaded Caller ID. Why don’t Apple or Google provide a service that guarantees that the Contact tracing service always calls with a Caller ID, and Apple/Google could even mark it as verified. I think many businesses would pay for this service as it saves money on having to contact existing customers and reduces fraud.

I believe they already do this.

Then why aren’t pollsters and contact tracers doing this so none of miss those calls?

I don't want pollsters calling me. Nor contact tracers. They can send an email if it's essential.

One thing that comes to mind, if a call comes in accompanied by screen message of a kind that I have never seen before I'd be twice as alarmed as with just some random unknown number calling. I might end up googling recently updated apps for news of a malware takeover instead of answering the call.

But it would be a good idea nonetheless, it only requires to be accompanied by a serious information campaign preparing first time receivers for the surprise.

Semi related, but some services (trapcall, for one) offer a very cheap service that punches through called ID spoofing via AMI, and offer blocking on public and private lists, really help.

I got an automated message from my local states's department of health services. It simply said they're "trying to contact me and the interview will only take 5 minutes." However, having not scheduled any interviews with the government I had no idea what they were talking about, so I chalked it up to spam or polling attempts and ignored several similar calls.

I'm now wondering if it was an attempt at contact tracing. Had they simply stated what they wanted in the message I would have been pretty likely to call them back myself or answer a later call.

I have no idea where they got my cell phone number from, but the whole thing seems poorly handled at best. Anyone with legitimate business will state the nature of that business and allow for a return call. There's just so many solutions to this problem but nearly zero aligned with incentives.

Privacy regulations (HIPAA) may forbid them from saying "Hey we think you might have COVID" on your voicemail, unless you've already filled out paperwork saying "It's okay to leave a message on my voicemail with detailed health information."

Your doctor's office can do it because you probably have an existing patient relationship, and you already filled out that paperwork on your first visit.

But in the situation of a cold-calling contact tracer, you haven't signed anything at all, so all they can say is "This is the health department and we want to talk to you."

It simply said they're "trying to contact me and the interview will only take 5 minutes."

Yep. That was probably about COVID. Health privacy laws prohibit even the vague mention of a condition. The caller has no way of knowing if they have the right phone number, and the last thing you want is "Attention, Rando McUltrarunner at 42 Crustacean Crest Drive, Cleveland, Ohio! You have been infected with COVID! Run, don't walk to your nearest testing facility!" on some stranger's voicemail. Or worse, "We are following up to see if you're doing well after your abortion" ending up on the voicemail or texting app of a 15-year-old girl whose parents might have access to her phone.

Source: Recently completed my company's mandatory annual HIPAA training.

how would authentication work when you/someone does pick up the phone?

Sadly, it breaks down. You ask someone if they are who they are, and that's about all you can do. Someone can lie. Has it ever happened? Probably, but I've never heard of it, and my legal department is pretty good about keeping up on these things. But the way the law is written, asking the question absolves the caller of legal liability.

It's not IT-grade authentication, but for wetware it works.

> More than anything I suspect this is a result of allowing so much unfiltered spam calls.

Yep. I never answer unrecognized numbers anymore, and nobody I've talked to about it does, either.

Welcome to what society looks like when social trust declines. It will keep getting worse unless and until people discover that the commons actually matters and is more than something to scam and find some way to parasitically monetize.

Or, like me, your health department doesn't even bother to contact you. I had to do my own contact tracing when I tested positive.

How is that possible? Did you call all of the places you were and got contact information from anyone in that area that day?

It isn't a western thing. Less than half of Singaporeans installed their TraceTogether app[0].

[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/less-than-half-in-singapore-wi...

People are contagious a few days before they show symptoms, but most infections are by unambiguously symptomatic people, because they carry the highest viral load. If symptomatic people stay home you cut down infections by 2/3rd if not more. R0 goes from 1.5 to 0.5 and that's sufficient.

https://www.news-medical.net/amp/news/20201005/Viral-loads-p...

Viral Load Peaks before symptom offset.

The work you cite is speculative.

> Available evidence from contact tracing reported by countries suggests that asymptomatically infected individuals are much less likely to transmit the virus than those who develop symptoms. A subset of studies and data shared by some countries on detailed cluster investigations and contact tracing activities have reported that asymptomatically-infected individuals are much less likely to transmit the virus than those who develop symptoms.

http://www.emro.who.int/health-topics/corona-virus/transmiss...

> No it wouldn't. One of the things that makes SARS-CoV-2 such a problem is that people get contagious long before they show symptoms. Similarly to for influenza and the common cold, many people get contagious without ever developing symptoms.

Agree with the main thrust of the point but if everyone did stay home for 14 days you may well eradicate the virus. Problem of course that its economically/socially/medically impossible to facilitate a complete 14 day lockdown.

>if everyone did stay home for 14 days you may well eradicate the virus

This would not be possible. There are at least several species of animals (mikes, civets, and bats) than can transmit this virus. We would need to quarantine and test, or kill, each and every one of these animals to be sure we eliminate this virus, or else it will eventually make its way back to humans.

My opinion, based on what I read, is that this will be a bit of a scourge until such time as enough people have immunity from either catching it or getting vaccinated.

Over time, as this new coronavirus makes its way through the human population, the experts it to become less virulent in general and/or appear less often. [0]

[0] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-cor...

Also, cats and dogs can catch Covid-19. We think it's rare, but it is documented.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/...

Latest headline I saw, didn’t read because I didn’t want to be depressed, was that asymptomatic carriers were shedding the virus for months.

Another reason why that synchronous 14 day lockdown would fail to eradicate the virus: unless you are going for total solitary confinement, intra-family transmission chains would be able to sustain the virus much, much longer than those 14 days. Even a household as small as a two child nuclear family could sustain the virus quite long if each infection happens to have a fan-out of one and happens rather late in the contagiousness window.

China did isolate infected people away from home for precisely this reason. Seems to have worked.

But that surely was only known positive isolation, not the blanket "everybody stay home" thing grandparent was suggesting. That's a huge difference particularly wrt (child)care: someone will take over until you are healthy again vs nobody can take over because everybody else is going through the same solitary confinement thing.

The big question is do they really work. Not according to country which measure traveller from china. We know in the long term. But trusting on their stat., not my default.

> One of the things that makes SARS-CoV-2 such a problem is that people get contagious long before they show symptoms.

I also wonder how effective the vaccine is at preventing its receivers from even reaching that asymptomatic but already contagious stage. If "90%" is just "90% less reach symptomatic stage" then the percentage of receivers that are prevented from reaching contagiousness could be much lower.

This would basically mean that the virus is almost guaranteed to become endemic despite vaccination (unless another vaccine also removes the contagious stage quite well) and that everyone who doesn't get a vaccine will eventually test their immune system against the virus.

Natural immunity often follows a similar pattern. After a while you become susceptible to a light reinfection but the immune system will be in a very good position for a quick - but not instantaneous - victory on its second encounter with the virus. Under those circumstances, herd immunity effects fail to realize unless the first wave is so lightning fast that it fizzles out before the immune systems of early survivors (or the similarly vaccinated) fall back into standby mode.

don't know about other countries but in Switzerland somehow people do not get the codes for Covid app with positive test results. even if they had the app installed and running the crucial step of entering the official code is failing

I'll line up to get a vaccine because I trust in the scientific/medical community. I haven't installed my local contact-tracing app because ...

1) When I did try to install it said I need to update to a new OS, meaning my five year old phone likely wasn't good enough. 2) My local app doesn't provide alerts to me rather it alerts government contact tracers who today stated that they are only responding to alerts regarding medical/care home workers. I am neither. 3) My phone is not with me at work, the place where I interact with the most people by far, rendering the entire scheme basically useless.

But yes, I would get a vaccine in a heartbeat.

that people get contagious long before they show symptoms

I don't think that's correct. Pre-symptomatic phase is supposed to be about 2-3 days. I wouldn't describe that as 'long' before they show symptoms.

if it's before though, then how would isolation after symptoms prevent the spread? I think the original post stand if perhaps overstated.

Not symptoms, but positive test results...

In the US, people are going to work (or other events) WITH positive test results. Some because they won't get paid otherwise, others because they want to make a political statement, and some because they're ... well, I dunno why...

So, yes, even having people stay home after a positive test would be helpful, because currently, they aren't even doing that.

Why on earth would allow some government agency to track me.

Some health departments have taken it upon themselves to arrest people that won’t sign documents.

It’s like HOA battles, except now you can be put in jail on a whim.

Even being an common case, and will likely be overturned in courts, it’s just too risky.

> Some health departments have taken it upon themselves to arrest people that won’t sign documents.

Which health departments, what documents, and how many people?

And how did they get arrest powers?

Health departments can order you to quarantine. In practical termss that's like house arrest.

Not like house arrest. But actual house arrest. Ankle monitors.

http://www.wvih.com/wp1/index.php/2020/07/19/couple-on-house...

That web site looks sketchy

ok, here is NBC's coverage: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ky-couple-house-arrest-...

Thanks

Oh, that's what they meant? That's not about signing documents at all, really. It's about whether they will agree to supervise their own quarantine, or whether the state has to do it. Then there was some stubbornness and/or misunderstanding in regards to making that decision and agreement.

"Some health departments have taken it upon themselves to enforce quarantine on people that just tested positive." doesn't really inspire the same kind of outrage.

It should.

>Some health departments have taken it upon themselves to arrest people that won’t sign documents.

[citation needed]

http://www.wvih.com/wp1/index.php/2020/07/19/couple-on-house...

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