The major question I have about smartphone based contact tracing is if it is effective, and if so how much more effective is it then existing techniques.
Bluetooth based contact tracing could be a valuable tool in public health, but as many have opined it is also a significant sacrifice of privacy.
Is there any data on the effectiveness of this sort of technology yet?
3brown1blue had a youtube video a few weeks ago, running simulations. The effect of contact tracing and testing is significant. Granted, it's just a simulation, but the efficacy of contact tracing + testing is quite powerful.
Absolutely, the efficacy of contact tracing has been known for a long time.
That being said, we’ve also been doing interview based contact tracing for a long time. The current IT systems for doing contact tracing leave a lot to be desired (I did a trade study a couple months ago), but public health agencies have procedures for doing contact tracing without invading privacy nearly as much as the proposed platform.
Preemptively using smartphone interactions to capture information world definitely be cheaper than the current manual processes but I want to know how much it improves efficacy before nationwide/global deployment of such an invasive technology.
Until then, hire contact tracer’s. There are a lot of unemployed people.
Pardon my ignorance, but how does a human do contact tracing? Start calling people to find out if they shopped somewhere recently with a known exposure?
You interview the identified case to determine who they’ve been in close contact with for the last several days, get their contact info, and then test them. Repeat for any new positive contacts.
If they were in any public areas you can pull purchase records for any one who also was in the area at the same time.
I've been wondering this -- what is my likelihood of infection based on vector? If I go shopping and there are 5% people actively infected, how does that compare to living with someone?
I've been operating under the assumption that proximity without PPE but within a few hours of existing in the same space is a significant vector. If true, it seems like it'll be very difficult to find people who shopped at the same store within the same day.
Bluetooth based contact tracing could be a valuable tool in public health, but as many have opined it is also a significant sacrifice of privacy.
Is there any data on the effectiveness of this sort of technology yet?