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What do you think about ‘pings’ because of the Track and Trace App?

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Cdd89

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I would agree we need to get rid of mandatory anything; the only way we’ll get anywhere is with voluntary compliance and it’s already easy to avoid Test & Trace if someone doesn’t wish to participate.

We are obsessed with letting the perfect be the enemy of the good; with endemic Covid we don’t need to try to catch and prevent 100% of cases.

The flow should be something like this, all as “strong advice” rather than law:
  • If pinged, by app / contact tracer / known close contact, isolate until a negative LFT is received.
  • Repeat LFTs daily for 10 days.
  • If an LFT is positive, isolate until a negative PCR is received.
  • If symptomatic with a main symptom, isolate and jump straight to PCR.
We are obsessed with letting the perfect be the enemy of the good; with endemic Covid we don’t need to try to catch and prevent 100% of cases.
 
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ainsworth74

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Someone using their mobile with Bluetooth headphones and forgetting to turn the app off?
Fair point! When I was using it I was very hot in turning it off as soon as it wasn't required. Though not everyone will be as on the ball as me :lol:
 

35B

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The only time I've checked in was at breakfast at a Premier Inn. Later I looked at the app and it listed the check in with the times 0730-2300. Was I supposed to check out again? If someone else checked in at 1800 for dinner and then had Covid, would I get an alert even though I left 10 hours earlier? Anyway, the next day I left my phone in my room.
You can't check out - the only way it records you leaving a location is when you check into another. I sort of get the logic of that as a design decision, but...
 

Crossover

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The only time I've checked in was at breakfast at a Premier Inn. Later I looked at the app and it listed the check in with the times 0730-2300. Was I supposed to check out again? If someone else checked in at 1800 for dinner and then had Covid, would I get an alert even though I left 10 hours earlier? Anyway, the next day I left my phone in my room.
It is by design. It leaves you checked in until 23:59 or until 15 minutes after you have checked in somewhere else (for example, I checked onto a Mersey Ferry the other week and it left me checked in there until 20:15 (I think) - I had checked into a restaurant at 20:00 (so of course, it was impossible for me to be in both places at once!))

The check in bit will simply advise there had been a positive case at one of the checked in venues. It won't cause you to get an isolation notice
 

Bantamzen

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Fair point! When I was using it I was very hot in turning it off as soon as it wasn't required. Though not everyone will be as on the ball as me :lol:
There is of course a possible sinister side to this. If someone were to say, develop a grudge, be mischievous or indeed engage in some espionage, using the dreaded 'ping' could wreak havoc. All you would have to do is download the app, travel around on the tube, busy trains, pubs, cinemas or anywhere else with lots of people & just move around every 20 mins. Then a day later record a positive test, and you've potentially pinged hundreds of people all at once.

It might sound like a plot for the next James Bond movie, until you consider the amount of cyberattacks taking place around the globe. If a country wanted to <ahem> deflect world attention away from it, well you know.... ;)
 

bengley

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You do have to actually test positive for it to register.
 

Bantamzen

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OK so you do have to enter the ID, and I presume that it checked so it is not used more than once. However how many codes are out there that haven't been used by the app? Probably enough to still make it a viable hack.
 

bengley

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OK so you do have to enter the ID, and I presume that it checked so it is not used more than once. However how many codes are out there that haven't been used by the app? Probably enough to still make it a viable hack.
I believe you can only ping people if you have tested positive with a PCR test at an official test centre. I may be wrong
 

TPO

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Why is the country tying itself in knots over something that is not a legal requirement ? Even the legally binding rules after a contact from NHS Track & Trace are due to be relaxed in less than a month. Would it really make much difference if people started applying those relaxed rules to 'pings' now ?

To be fair I don't think we can blame rail operators for the pinging shambles, and they're not the only industry being hammered by it.

One can't help but be cynical about it though - how many people when their phone goes ping jump for joy at the prospect of 10 days off work, but without actually having to bother isolating?

The cynic in me suspects that if folks only got SSP or no pay if choosing to self-isolate when "pinged" and/or if the weather was not so nice and the schools on holiday, we'd be getting a much less subservient response to being pinged... and more people deleting the app. ;)

Lateral flow tests are also easy to make give a false positive- a bit of orange juice- and PCRs run at a high number of cycles can also generate a high proportion of false positives, I suspect the real rate of COVID is a fraction of what the "official" stats apply, and the rate of symptomatic cases lower still.

The whole thing is barking mad.

TPO
 

infobleep

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The Government say you only need a test if you develop symptoms


And even if you have a test and it's negative, you are still supposed to isolate. So if they are doing what you say, they are 100% following the 'rules'.

I think if they all tried to get PCR tests we'd be back where we were last year, where there wasn't enough testing capacity.
My theory on school children having to isolate, even if they had a negative test was that the government didn't want to pay if hundreds of PCR test so by making the rules as they did, it discouraged those from getting a test.

I would apply this to adults and other situations too.

My theory could be wrong. It's only a theory
 

dk1

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Just been advised by my TOC that that government hasn’t named any particular positions that are exempt if they are told to self isolate via T&T. Therefore everything stays the same for now.
 

farleigh

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Not being an IT expert I am unsure how this could have cost £27 000 000 000.

I wonder how they priced it up??
 

Nicholas Lewis

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Just been advised by my TOC that that government hasn’t named any particular positions that are exempt if they are told to self isolate via T&T. Therefore everything stays the same for now.
Seems bizarre to me especially for train drivers who are in the cab on there own largely. Instead we are seeing many operators having to reduce service levels due to driver shortages which in turn is increasing passenger density on remaining services with the potential for more pinging to take place if your on a journey for longer than 15mins.
 

CrispyUK

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Thank you for replying.

Do you know what the largest part of the money was spent on?
I don’t know how the figures break down (or even if they’ve been published) but NHS Test & Trace includes the network of testing sites across the country, all the test kits, the labs processing these tests, the call centre and contact tracing agents, etc. This is all contracted out to various private companies.

It is a huge operation, but I suspect a lot of the subcontractors are making a tidy sum out of it!

There has been criticism of the service having a "persistent reliance on consultants", 2,500 were being used at an average cost of £1,100 per day each.
 

farleigh

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I don’t know how the figures break down (or even if they’ve been published) but NHS Test & Trace includes the network of testing sites across the country, all the test kits, the labs processing these tests, the call centre and contact tracing agents, etc. This is all contracted out to various private companies.

It is a huge operation, but I suspect a lot of the subcontractors are making a tidy sum out of it!

There has been criticism of the service having a "persistent reliance on consultants", 2,500 were being used at an average cost of £1,100 per day each.
Thank you Crispy

Eye watering IMO
 

Peter Mugridge

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Do you know what the largest part of the money was spent on?
The actual testing will be costing a huge chunk of that - laboratories and laboratory time don't come cheap at the best of times, let alone when demand for staff, facilities, time and equipment is all through the roof.
 

Cdd89

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We’ve done 111m PCR tests so far (so on average everyone in the country has had two of them!). That is the lion’s share of the cost and I’m not sure we have much to show for it if we compare our performance (excess deaths) against countries with far less testing.
 

317 forever

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I'd start getting the toilet rolls in now. Surely if this carries on much longer, supermarket supply chains are going to be affected and panic buying will resume.
Panic buying will indeed resume if people do start getting toilet rolls for example in now.

This time last year the press were criticising T&T saying it was useless, it didn’t work and £37b had been wasted. Fast forward 12 months, it appears to be working and pinging more people as infections soar. The press are now criticising it because it seems to be working, funny times we are living through.
Yes this paradox is an example of the funny times now. Mind you, there is much less reason to consider isolating essential now that such a large majority of people have been vaccinated.
 

317 forever

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Well its now decimating train services. As predicted the risk was never people catching it it was the amount of people being pinged or instructed to self isolate. This will cause more disruption than any lockdown if not suspended.
Pinging and self-isolation amounts to unofficial lockdown by stealth. o_O

Seems bizarre to me especially for train drivers who are in the cab on there own largely. Instead we are seeing many operators having to reduce service levels due to driver shortages which in turn is increasing passenger density on remaining services with the potential for more pinging to take place if your on a journey for longer than 15mins.
Similarly, when the government move the goalposts in terms of moving countries from the green list to the amber list for example. Then a whole flood of people rush home to avoid the need for quarantine. So they are crammed into a crowded airplane and airport terminal needlessly. This undoes the "good" of leaving an allegedly highly-infected country, thus rendering the change of policy counter-productive.
 
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Nicholas Lewis

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Pinging and self-isolation amounts to unofficial lockdown by stealth. o_O
Its not a lockdown its a shutdown.

As i predicted weeks ago there was no point in freedom day if they didn't have a plan to deal with the impact of the app and contact tracing.

Anyhow if cases continue to fall back as they have for nearly a week now the pingdemic will naturally subside.
 

WelshBluebird

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As i predicted weeks ago there was no point in freedom day if they didn't have a plan to deal with the impact of the app and contact tracing.
Its almost as if this government is incompetent and didn't have a plan for that!
Anyhow if cases continue to fall back as they have for nearly a week now the pingdemic will naturally subside.
Worth saying we wouldn't have seen the impact of the reopening last week on numbers yet. Should start see in the next few days a picture of the impact that has had.
 

Nicholas Lewis

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Worth saying we wouldn't have seen the impact of the reopening last week on numbers yet. Should start see in the next few days a picture of the impact that has had.
Yes mustn't count my chickens just yet but what we have seen over last month is the impact of step 3 causing a short term spike up then naturally decay away again which keeps on happening in every wave. Also im not convinced that Step 4 massively increases risk profile compared to step 3. Im sure though the media will seek out a nightclub that has caused an outbreak and we will see representation from indie sage et al that they should be closed down immediately as happened in Holland.
 

brad465

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The number of sites and professions that it's possible to get daily tests instead of isolation has been expanded:


More critical workers will be able to take daily tests rather than isolate when they are identified as a close contact of someone who has Covid.
The government said 1,200 extra sites would be established, with prisons, waste management and the armed forces among the sectors prioritised.
Some 800 sites are already being set up for police, firefighters, supermarket depot staff and some other industries.
Several sectors have warned of staffing shortages caused by 10-day isolations.

A total of 618,903 contact tracing alerts - popularly known as pings - advising people to self-isolate for up to 10 days were sent from the NHS Covid-19 app in England and Wales in the week to 15 July.
Daily testing for certain critical sectors in England was launched on Monday as an alternative to self-isolation for some workers. The government has not said how many sites are currently up-and-running but that it expected 500 would be set up this week.
Tesco is understood to be working through the details of the new scheme, while Morrisons said it was contacting staff who had been pinged to sign up for testing on a voluntary basis, but did say that it was ready to start.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said daily contact testing would play a "vital role" in helping to "minimise the potential for disruption caused by rising cases, while keeping staff protected".
 
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