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Dog, monkey, filet-of-fish sandwich

(I assume we are just playing a game where we list three things and one of them has nothing to do with the others?)
I think it’s more like a haiku.

Federal law, federal law, pandemic containment technique, emoji

Let me try:

Alien and Sedition Act, TARP, social distancing, 🧸
 
I love how people are willing to give up privacy on social media, by having a gmail account, or to avoid traffic, but not so much to avoid death, go figure...
This "super-deadly" virus has a 98%+ SURVIVAL rate. Now that they are getting more test kits out, they are discovering it might be less deadly than the flu.

And that's not counting the incorrectly reported deaths.

TLDR: You have a higher chance of dying in a car accident but we haven't banned driving world wide nor do we "track" peoples vehicles in the USA to save lives. We have privacy from government embedded in the US constitution, so yes, I do not consent to Apple or Google tracking my day to day movement no matter what the cause is for. Especially when this data will be provided to government.
 
This "super-deadly" virus has a 98%+ SURVIVAL rate. Now that they are getting more test kits out, they are discovering it might be less deadly than the flu.

And that's not counting the incorrectly reported deaths.

TLDR: You have a higher chance of dying in a car accident but we haven't banned driving world wide nor do we "track" peoples vehicles in the USA to save lives. We have privacy from government embedded in the US constitution, so yes, I do not consent to Apple or Google tracking my day to day movement no matter what the cause is for. Especially when this data will be provided to government.
“TLDR“ stands for “too long; didn’t read”. It’s meant to be a summary of points, not longer than the original.

You’re going to need to source the flu comparison, because what I’m seeing is approaching more fatalities in a month than a bad seasonal flu causes in a year even after extreme social distancing efforts.

In 2016, there were 37,461 deaths all year due to automobile accidents in the US (that number seems to be declining since then). In 2020, there have been 49,465 deaths due to Covid-19 in the first 4 months of the year in the US. There are about 100 automobile deaths a day in the US, without stay at home orders. There are currently more than 1000 deaths a day in the US due to Covid-19 even with stay at home orders.

States in the US register both vehicles and drivers and put personally identifiable non-random IDs on both.

Neither Apple nor Google are government agencies.

I’m not sure what you think the US constitution says about privacy, but sadly it doesn’t protect it explicitly. It does protect against ”unreasonable search”, which probably means the government can’t just pin you down and shove a swab up your nose without a court order or your permission. This isn’t that, this is a voluntary system run by private entities.

TLDR: just about everything you said is wrong
 
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They say this will not be mandatory. But that will prove to be false. Employers in various essential industries will start to make it a requirement of employment. From there others that employ people that deal with the public. You WILL be using it or some derivative of it in the future or you will be an outcast. No need for the government to mandate it, they can claim you are free to not use it or whatever it morphs to in the future.


Hm.... how would an employer know if you've enabled this or not? Can your employer demand to inspect your personal device?
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You're not entitled to any privacy at work, you're there to do your job at the employer's place, their resources and their expenses. You're not to use work hours to do personal stuff in any situations.

What!? So when was the last time your employer seized your personal device, wallet, purse, handbag and riffled through it?
 
I think we’re both in the same boat of trying to convince each other that we‘re not one of ”those people”. I haven’t taken you as someone who is naive about security or privacy. I hope you haven’t taken me as someone who thinks the government is using 5G to control me through my fillings.

Indeed not. I rarely post on MR and am only responding to you because I think you're a reasonable person. Just to make sure there isn't a misunderstanding: I am not dismissing your concern, I am addressing it. Your concern is legitimate and we are engaging in a robust debate about it.

similar to how full genomes can be reconstructed by assembling lots of redundant bits though shotgun sequencing

And this is a good embodiment of my point. The assembly of these fragments is called the "Shortest common superstring" problem. It is NP-hard.

So, sure, with infinite resources, we could defeat the security of this system. But security isn't about theoretical attacks, it is about the practicality of attacks. Consider the encryption behind PKI, which is used for everything. It has a flaw. To defeat it, all you have to do is figure out the two large primes that make up the key. Easy, right? But, unless P=NP, or you have a quantum computer, it will take so long to do this that we will all be long dead by the time you finish.

That's the question here. Is it good enough to be secure for the lifetime of relevance? That's decision we make if we opt-in.
 
And this is a good embodiment of my point. The assembly of these fragments is called the "Shortest common superstring" problem. It is NP-hard.

So, sure, with infinite resources, we could defeat the security of this system. But security isn't about theoretical attacks, it is about the practicality of attacks. Consider the encryption behind PKI, which is used for everything. It has a flaw. To defeat it, all you have to do is figure out the two large primes that make up the key. Easy, right? But, unless P=NP, or you have a quantum computer, it will take so long to do this that we will all be long dead by the time you finish.

That's the question here. Is it good enough to be secure for the lifetime of relevance? That's decision we make if we opt-in.
You focused right in on the computationally intensive part of the problem and ignored how much information is available relatively cheaply. I think you’re focused on getting 100% of the information with 100% confidence. That’s not what a surveillance operation would be trying to do. My point was this:
You may not get 100% of the information about 100% of the people, but I think it’s possible to pull together a pretty good picture of a significant percentage of the traffic and to tie that back to personal identities through other sources.

If you don’t care that the decision time is non-deterministic, and you’re satisfied with the incomplete information you have when you terminate early, and are looking for data that doesn’t go stale quickly, then this becomes more interesting. In short, if you’re interested in creating a dragnet, then this might do nicely.


It hinges on the long correlation time of the broadcast identifier. Ideally every transmission would be unique. Why aren’t they.

The only reason I can think of is to reduce the total amount of data that needs to be retained. The total data in the system is a function of the number of users, the roll rate of the IDs and the desired false positive rate (a lower false positive rate means more bits necessary in the ID to avoid collisions).

If the system rolls the ID every 15 minutes, and broadcasts at 5 Hz, that means the ID is broadcast 75 times. Anyway you look at it though, you could increase the payload by a byte and make each transmission unique while maintaining the same false positive rate and the same number of subscribers.

Likewise, since the transmit power is encoded in the message, it can be varied randomly so your distance from the receiver and direction of travel can’t be determined.
 
This "super-deadly" virus has a 98%+ SURVIVAL rate. Now that they are getting more test kits out, they are discovering it might be less deadly than the flu.

People who survive appear to have lasting organ damage: reduced lung capacity, and apparently damage to other organs as well.

And in absolute numbers, it's already much more deadly in just four months than the flu is in an entire year. And that's despite the social distancing efforts! It'd be far worse otherwise.

And that's not counting the incorrectly reported deaths.

Uh-huh.


You're not using TL;DR correctly here.

You have a higher chance of dying in a car accident but we haven't banned driving world wide nor do we "track" peoples vehicles in the USA to save lives.

First of all, no you don't: dying of COVID-19 is now literally the leading cause of death in the US. ~38,000 people die in car crashes; COVID-19 deaths have exceeded 50,000. So, no?

And second: no, we haven't banned driving. But we have done a ton to make it safer. Speed limits, seatbelts, airbags, … so, uh, strange example?

(And yes, we do track people's vehicles. What do you think the plate on the back is?)

We have privacy from government embedded in the US constitution,

That's actually not as clear-cut, from my understanding. You folks certainly should, though.

so yes, I do not consent to Apple or Google tracking my day to day movement no matter what the cause is for. Especially when this data will be provided to government.

But this proposal doesn't track movement…
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Maybe even twice, if you might get searched on entry and when leaving 😉

Not to mention lunch breaks.
 
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I hadn’t seen that. Good to know.

Your source doesn’t say what you think it does. First, it has nothing to do with what health care professionals are advocating for, it is about how to reduce the risk of transmission from healthcare workers to patients, other workers, and visitors.

The section you are quoting simply says that because the virus is widespread in the community, treating health care settings differently and implementing special tracing methods only for healthcare workers doesn’t make sense any more, so they recommend direct testing of everyone at the start of each shift.

The general guidelines for community exposure still refer to actions to take if exposed to someone with symptoms of if you’ve been in contact with someone up to 48 hours before symptoms— ie. If you can trace your contact to someone who’s sick.

The CDC has extensive resources related to contact tracing that state “is a key strategy for preventing further spread of COVID-19”, dated April 22.

However the number say its like the flu. I get it it is a novel coronavirus, were you aware that the cold virus is a type of coronavirus as well. Where is the economic shutdown, the panic, the fear when a lot of people die of the season cold/flu. How many get those annual vaccines? How effective is it?

People are always afraid of something new, had the word COVID-19 be replaced with flu, no one would have cared, and people expose others when their have the flu unintentional due to incubation period and symptoms. There is no guarantee that a CV19 vaccine will be any more or less effective compared to the seasonal cold/flu vaccine.

The projections were waaaay off, there was misreporting of death cases, all levels of authority and leadership blew this out of portion, contact tracing is just another form of control that is disguised as for the public and your safety, if that was the true reason then why not introduce this years ago for the seasonal cold/flu, other "pandemics" etc.

Is SARS-CoV-2 contagious: absolutely Yes, is it lethal; No. I am unable to disclose the reasons for the other death numbers, all I can say is look for a commonality. ;)

Stop living in fear and get back to work.


This is the biggest farce of the 21st Century.
 
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However the number say its like the flu. I get it it is a novel coronavirus, were you aware that the cold virus is a type of coronavirus as well. Where is the economic shutdown, the panic, the fear when a lot of people die of the season cold/flu. How many get those annual vaccines? How effective is it?

People are always afraid of something new, had the word COVID-19 be replaced with flu, no one would have cared, and people expose others when their have the flu unintentional due to incubation period and symptoms. There is no guarantee that a CV19 vaccine will be any more or less effective compared to the seasonal cold/flu vaccine.

The projections were waaaay off, there was misreporting of death cases, all levels of authority and leadership blew this out of portion, contact tracing is just another form of control that is disguised as for the public and your safety, if that was the true reason then why not introduce this years ago for the seasonal cold/flu, other "pandemics" etc.

Is SARS-CoV-2 contagious: absolutely Yes, is it lethal; No. I am unable to disclose the reasons for the other death numbers, all I can say is look for a commonality. ;)

Stop living in fear and get back to work.


This is the biggest farce of the 21st Century.

If you can’t disclose reasons, then there’s no reason to take anything you say seriously.

I don’t see much point arguing with you as you’ve been impervious to information so far...
 
I get it it is a novel coronavirus, were you aware that the cold virus is a type of coronavirus as well.

"The cold virus"? Which one? There are over 200, and most of them are rhinoviruses, which are not coronaviruses.

So no, I wasn't aware. Which cold virus is a coronavirus? And, oh, why is that relevant at all? Does that automatically make SARS-CoV-2 easier to treat?

Where is the economic shutdown, the panic, the fear when a lot of people die of the season cold/flu.

Those are illnesses that have been explored for millennia. Treatments and vaccines exist. The deadliness is lower. Basically, not a whole lot in common.

The projections were waaaay off, there was misreporting of death cases, all levels of authority and leadership blew this out of portion, contact tracing is just another form of control that is disguised as for the public and your safety, if that was the true reason then why not introduce this years ago for the seasonal cold/flu, other "pandemics" etc.

Is SARS-CoV-2 contagious: absolutely Yes, is it lethal; No. I am unable to disclose the reasons for the other death numbers, all I can say is look for a commonality. ;)

Yes yes. The families who have lost someone are just crisis actors.
 
However the number say its like the flu. I get it it is a novel coronavirus, were you aware that the cold virus is a type of coronavirus as well. Where is the economic shutdown, the panic, the fear when a lot of people die of the season cold/flu. How many get those annual vaccines? How effective is it?

People are always afraid of something new, had the word COVID-19 be replaced with flu, no one would have cared, and people expose others when their have the flu unintentional due to incubation period and symptoms. There is no guarantee that a CV19 vaccine will be any more or less effective compared to the seasonal cold/flu vaccine.

The projections were waaaay off, there was misreporting of death cases, all levels of authority and leadership blew this out of portion, contact tracing is just another form of control that is disguised as for the public and your safety, if that was the true reason then why not introduce this years ago for the seasonal cold/flu, other "pandemics" etc.

Is SARS-CoV-2 contagious: absolutely Yes, is it lethal; No. I am unable to disclose the reasons for the other death numbers, all I can say is look for a commonality. ;)

Stop living in fear and get back to work.


This is the biggest farce of the 21st Century.
Your post illustrates a certain disconnect from reality. And your inability to disclose the reasons for other death numbers renders your post hyperbole.

Even if the death numbers can be up for debate, the real issue is the amount of medical services needed to keep those who have a severe case alive. Splitting ventilator tubes, when has that ever been done? Have refrigerated trucks to hold the dead? When has that ever been done in response to a virus. Bring in a floating hospital? When has that been done for the flu?

I don't want to (potentially) die, because some uninformed MR poster, believes this is the "biggest farce of the 21st century".
 
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I think Bruce Schneier puts it well (It's too inaccurate of a test tool to be actionable):

To me, the real problems aren't around privacy and security. The efficacy of any app-based contact tracing is still unproven. A "contact" from the point of view of an app isn't the same as an epidemiological contact. And the ratio of infections to contacts is high. We would have to deal with the false positives (being close to someone else, but separated by a partition or other barrier) and the false negatives (not being close to someone else, but contracting the disease through a mutually touched object). And without cheap, fast, and accurate testing, the information from any of these apps isn't very useful. So I agree with Ross that this is primarily an exercise in that false syllogism: Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, we must do it. It's techies proposing tech solutions to what is primarily a social problem.
 
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