Category: COVID-19

Rob’s politics notes, 5th January 2021.

We are now in the third national lockdown (which “may last for months” and whilst restrictions may be lifted for the warmer summer months of 2021, some may be re-imposed for winter). The same businesses that had support before are going to get support again, the same businesses that were #ExcludedUK before are excluded again.

It sucks, there are no two ways about it, but I don’t see what the options are either. My Dad is an extremely vulnerable person (85, triple heart bypass, Parkinson’s disease), and checking with the NHS, my wife has been told to contact the GP today. I suspect it is ‘flu as the symptoms are fairly typical and I’m probably fine because I had a shot last October. On the other hand, if it is COVID, that may now make me an asymptomatic carrier.

The BBC is, harking to my younger days, going to start broadcasting educational programmes. CBBC for primary school children and BBC Two for secondary school children, starting next Monday. Anyway, this is diverging from politics.

Yesterday, I said that border traffic was low and that the Brexit queues had yet to materialise at the ports. That’s not to say there haven’t been problems. Reuters reports that Paris M&S shops have little to no stock of fresh food.

Meanwhile, there have been multiple occurrences of problems travelling abroad, whether the destination is Sweden, Spain, Netherlands or Germany. Some of those are because of COVID regulations now that we are outside the EU.

Rob’s politics notes. 4th January 2021

Today is the day that we enter lockdown number three, or at least it is expected to be. Boris Johnson is to make an address to the nation at 8pm, but ITV’s Robert Peston apparently already knows what he is going to say.

I wonder why there is an eight hour delay between announcing the address and making the address, if the content is already known, other than theatre and giving the speechwriters time to come up with more bombastic wartime metaphors. Sturgeon simply announced Scotland’s lockdown during the day.

Back on Brexit, and there haven’t been any long tailbacks at the ports, but Bloomberg reports that it may be the calm before the storm due to pre-Brexit stockpiling leaving traffic levels even lower than they usually are in the New Year.

The NHS Test and Trace app (part the third)

A couple of days since the launch of the NHS test and trace app and it continues to be in the news.

The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones has written an article that the abandoned initial app ‘worked on more phones.’ True, perhaps, but there is a balance between accuracy and privacy. Plenty of people don’t want to download the new app that uses the Exposure Notification API. How many would want to download one that collected information centrally as the original one did?

The complaint today is that you can’t acknowledge a test from the NHS or Public Health England (pillar 1 tests), only from the private (‘Nightingale’) testing centres — the pillar 2 tests.

In contrast, on Wednesday people were expecting it to be very easy to enter a false positive test into the app and cause a barrage of unneeded messages to isolate.

To avoid the latter, you need some way to authenticate a test result.

Now, I don’t know what has gone on behind the scenes, but I can easily see why it might be easier to set up a regime at the private labs working under contract than it is for the “on demand” tests being performed in the NHS.

The pillar 2 tests that can be entered into the app account for two-thirds of the testing capacity, so whilst it is essential to get a way of entering the pillar 1 tests into the app (and even the pillar 4 statistical tests), this does not make the app useless.

I’d love to hear what the plans are for getting the pillar 1 and 4 tests into the app, but I can see how we got here, and I’d tend to think it is more likely to be because it hasn’t been possible to get the logistics co-ordinated in time rather than the commercial conspiracy theories that are doing the rounds.

Update (ironically from the correspondent mentioned above):

The NHS Test and Trace app (updated)

A couple of weeks ago, I described why I would probably feel safe installing the NHS Test and Trace app which went live today.

Reader, I installed it.

I’ve spent a bit of time today listening to people that have concerns with the app. All of these boil down to “we don’t trust the government.” Trust has been so eroded by the actions of Cummings et al, that people are justifiably distrustful of an NHS/government app.

That’s fine, I don’t trust the government either, but let me try to explain why in this case it doesn’t matter.

It uses the Apple/Google Exposure Notification API, which means that the app must abide by certain rules before it is allowed on the App Stores, and that includes not being able to track your location. If it doesn’t obey those rules, it doesn’t get put on the App Store.

One of the key points to stress is that all the hard work is done on your phone, and not uploaded to NHS servers. The QR codes you scan to ‘check in’ to a venue are only stored on your phone — and mean you don’t have to hand your personal details over to the venue instead.

There is a detailed privacy policy, including a summary and an ‘easy read’ version

The source code is available for all to see (and you can be sure lots of people are looking at it):

There is a method to disclose vulnerabilities:

Concerns have been raised about the requirement for a relatively new smartphone. This is true, it requires iOS 13.5 or newer, or Android 6 or newer. An iPhone 6 will not support it, even though they were being sold up until September 2018, but the iPhone 6s (which was launched one year later, but discontinued at the same time as the 6) will support it. My Samsung Galaxy S7 released in 2016 (running Android 8) does support it.

The reason for this is not the NHS, it’s the operating systems that support the Exposure Notification API, and the privacy strength of the app comes from using that instead of the original plan for an app developed entirely in-house.

It is perfect? I doubt it. For a start, you need to be in proximity to someone for 15 minutes who later tests positive for it to count as a ‘high risk encounter.’ Is it better than writing your contact details in a book? I think so.

The NHS ‘Test and Trace’ App

Today the government announced the ‘new’ test and trace (I must not call it track and trace) app will be available later this month.

They also announced that hospitality venues (or, I presume, anywhere where people gather) can download QR codes to ‘check in’ to locations when they arrive.

This latter bit rang alarm bells with me. The new app is using the Apple and Google ‘Exposure Notification’ API, which does not track location, it just tracks random IDs generated by other phones, and when one person gets a positive test, it sends notifications back to those you’ve crossed paths with.

‘Hmm,’ I thought, ‘is checking in with QR codes a way to get around the privacy protections of the Exposure Notification system?’

Apple’s Developer Documentation says:

3.3 A Contact Tracing App may not use location-based APIs, may not use Bluetooth functionality (excluding Bluetooth functionality included in the Exposure Notification APIs) and may not collect any device information to identify the precise location of users. In addition, Contact Tracing Apps are prohibited from using frameworks or APIs in the Apple Software that enable access to personally identifiable information (e.g., Photos, Contacts), unless otherwise agreed by Apple.

https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/download/Exposure_Notification_Addendum.pdf

Checking into places (and probably reporting that back to gov.uk’s servers) would surely breach that agreement.

It does, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the app doesn’t report those check-ins back. They are only stored on your phone, and can be recalled if you do test positive and call the Test and Trace hotline.

There is a detailed privacy notice for the app, which says:

The App has been designed to use as little personal data and information as possible. All the data that could directly identify you is held on your phone and not shared anywhere else.

Specifically on the venue check-in, it says:

When you set up the App, it will ask you for permission to use the camera on your device in order to check in to venues using QR codes. If you check in to a venue, the information will be stored on your phone for 21 days. It will not be shared with anyone else. The choice of 21 days takes into account the 14-day incubation period, and 7-day infectious period of the virus.

You will be able to see the list of venues where you have checked in on your phone. You can delete the whole list at any time. In future versions of the App you will be able to choose to delete single items from the list. No one else will know where you have checked in unless you choose to tell them, and the data will not be shared by the App.

At the same URL there is also an illustration of the various ‘user journeys’ through the app, which is very helpful. Even better, the app and the server back-end code is available on the NHS GitHub site.

This is so much better than I was expecting, and reassures me I can safely install the app when it is released. It’s also several orders of magnitude better than the original attempt at a home-grown app that had few, if any, of the protections of the Apple/Google Exposure Notification API.

Brexit in the news. 04/09/2020.

Bonus anti-anti-masker story

Center [sic] for Countering Digital Hate

I’ve only just come across this body, and reading a few mentions (usually not tagging the organisation itself) it seems to stir up some controversy, but I don’t really see what is that controversial in this report unless you want to spread misinformation…

Step away from the keyboard…

This post started out as a potential comment on a Facebook thread in the local community group, which in turn was a result of someone posting an image which read “Please wait here until you realise your government is brainwashing you” (imitating street signs that encourage social distancing). It quickly degenerated from there, and it didn’t take long before various trigger phrases were used (MSM, etc).

For reasons of my own sanity (as I type this that thread is now over 250 messages long), I didn’t post a response there, but I felt it would be cathartic to post something here.

“Well, this appears to have gone full conspiracy theory with New World Order, David Icke, Katie Hopkins, Kate Shemirani, anti-vaxxers and a number of theories that can easily be dismissed by some short research on Snopes or FullFact etc (though I’m sure they are also all controlled by the same shadowy forces).

There is no point debating the statistics of cases, deaths, excess deaths and so on, as small discrepancies in how the statistics are collected and reported are presented as examples of how all the statistics are unreliable.

The easy-to-post memes later in the thread comparing face coverings with hazmat suits are missing out on the main point of face coverings. The point of full protective suits or large masks is to prevent any contaminant in the outside being inhaled. Face coverings are just designed to dissipate the air we exhale to reduce the density of virus in the air right in front of us — which could be heading to the checkout operator or person we are talking to. It’s risk reduction, not risk elimination.

Face coverings are for the protection of others, not the protection of ourselves.

Yes, COVID-19 is no longer defined as an HCID (which things like Ebola are), but that’s because we have geared up more to detecting, containing and treating it.

I’ll be getting a flu jab this year, and a COVID vaccination when it is tested and ready. It will not only help me, but stop me potentially carrying the virus to my more vulnerable parents and in-laws.

It’s true, that many vaccines use something called MRC-5 (and WI-38) which has content derived from an aborted foetus. The foetus in question dates from 1966, and a bit more on that is contained in this article. Those cells were used to start the cell strains and the original cells are not part of the vaccine that is administered. What I don’t know is whether the ‘flu and potential COVID-19 vaccines use MRC-5 or WI-38, and I’m pretty sure the conspiracy theorists don’t know that either.

By all means describe yourselves as ‘free thinkers,’ but the rest of us rational thinkers have used our own powers of critical thinking to decide that this is the lesser of two evils, and may even resent the fact that your actions risk dragging this out longer.

One last question — do you think the government is competent enough to carry off a deception on this scale? Or is their incompetence elsewhere yet another deliberate attempt to throw us off the scent?

One last comment, from a blog someone else pointed me at, Let’s go back to work…

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