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I'm really over hearing how brilliant Asian countries have been at containing Covid and "oh, we should follow their lead, we are really shit". Taiwan has imposed a really repressive, intrusive data tracking regime. We had a massive row over a much lower-key centralised approach https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1321721288063393793
Here's what Taiwan has done. This would not fly, and rightly so, in the UK. (Source: BMJ)
And this is what South Korea has done. Dunno about you, but I'm not up for this
I'm still of the view that we should have pursued tech that would have given health authorities more insight into the spread of the virus. Our test & trace infrastructure isn't working, and the tech we ended up with does indeed protect privacy very effectively, but ...
it's not much use for tracking people & getting them tested & if necessary isolated. We have an app that's built to keep privacy nerds happy, which is great, but it's failing as part of a bigger system that's also failing. We need to understand that the app is part of the failure
Finally, hardly anyone except @tomskitomski has dealt with the issue of how two huge unaccountable US tech firms have basically set public health policy in the west. By setting the boundaries for Covid apps, GApple defined the tech part of public health. https://www.businessinsider.com/opinion-google-apple-contact-tracing-app-troubling-governments-2020-6?r=US&IR=T
I'm very glad I'm not having to make these huge decisions of privacy/economy/public health/mental health/civic live etc. I don't know what the answers are. But this is a grown-up conversation that we're not having, and we need to confront these hard questions. Over and out.
