Is the Government's contact tracing system effective and worthwhile?

[AdamWW]

The UK was originally well ahead of the curve on the test-trace-track system of control. People who tested positive in this country were told to isolate, their contacts were traced, and others who came in were held in isolation in hospitals such as Arrowe Park in rural Birkenhead. I know the system worked because my ex's sister caught Covid on a skiing trip in Italy early February and I know how the whole family were contacted and isolated, including my daughter who also went on that skiing trip.

But the UK let go of it all, they switched to "herd immunity" without any idea of how to reach that goal. And look what the result was.

I think there are two factors here.

One is that the testing capacity wasn't there, and it was politically expedient to say that tracing and tracking was no longer the right approach rather than that they'd like to do it but couldn't.

The other is the assumption that once you've let an epidemic get a foot hold, all you can hope to do is slow it down. It does seem that the plan from the start was to try to contain (without much hope that it would work) and once that was deemed to fail, you just try to control the rate - you may remember at one point the idea was to delay the peak a bit to help the NHS cope, but not so much that it fell into the Winter flu season.

The idea that a European country could have a lockdown seemed preposterous.

Edited to replace something I realise was wrong with:

There was also the principle that a lock-down didn't get you anywhere in the long run, because as soon as you release it the cases start growing again. This assumes that you don't gain any advantages by pushing the peak back (better understanding/new treatments/vaccine) and that a lower level of social distancing/track and trace can't keep it under control.

(Of course if you can keep it under control with measures short of a lockdown and you put them in place early enough, then you don't need a lockdown at all).

 

[317 forever]

I don't see it as worthwhile but more damaging than effective.

So, once someone tests positive, everyone they say they were recently close to is contacted and instructed to self-isolate for 14 days. Unlike when they were in a lockdown, these (alleged) close contacts will not even be allowed to go out to buy fresh food.

Why not give all these (alleged) close contacts a test, then only those who test positive be instructed to self-isolate? Those who test negative would then be free to go back to work etc

 

[Bletchleyite]

Why not give all these (alleged) close contacts a test, then only those who test positive be instructed to self-isolate? Those who test negative would then be free to go back to work etc

Because, allegedly, the test is relatively ineffective on asymptomatic people.

 

[edwin_m]

Because, allegedly, the test is relatively ineffective on asymptomatic people.

It may be the case that if someone doesn't have enough virus in the nose and throat to give a positive test, then they don't have enough to be infectious either. Unfortunately that's one of many questions we still don't know the answer to.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

I see in today's news three pubs have had to close after customers at the weekend tested positive for the virus.

Coronavirus: Three England pubs close after positive tests

At least three pubs in England announce they have closed just days after opening their doors again.

www.bbc.co.uk

The Lighthouse Kitchen and Carvery in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, said it was "slowly" working through a list of customers who had left details at the weekend and staff were awaiting their own test results.

In Batley, West Yorkshire, the Fox and Hounds said a customer had phoned to say they had tested positive for coronavirus.

Meanwhile the Village Home Pub in Alverstoke, Hampshire, said some staff were isolating due to "a case of coronavirus in the pub".

What concerns me is how strictly they will apply this "trace and trace" system. Will everyone who used these pubs at the weekend be asked to self-isolate? Or just those who were in the pub at the same time as the infected person? Or just those who were sat near the infected person? And if it's one of the latter two, how will they know?

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

I see in today's news three pubs have had to close after customers at the weekend tested positive for the virus.

Coronavirus: Three England pubs close after positive tests

At least three pubs in England announce they have closed just days after opening their doors again.

www.bbc.co.uk

What concerns me is how strictly they will apply this "trace and trace" system. Will everyone who used these pubs at the weekend be asked to self-isolate? Or just those who were in the pub at the same time as the infected person? Or just those who were sat near the infected person? And if it's one of the latter two, how will they know?

Table numbers and arrival and departure times are a part of any half decent pub contact tracing system.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Table numbers and arrival and departure times are a part of any half decent pub contact tracing system.

Though a look at infection patterns from restaurant cases in China early on would suggest that actually yes, the whole indoor space should self isolate if they were there at the same time. The cases seemed to have more to do with airflow (e.g. from aircon units) than to do with 1m, 2m, 5m or anything like that.

Better to sit outside!

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Table numbers and arrival and departure times are a part of any half decent pub contact tracing system.

Not in any of the pubs I've been in so far; just a name and number on a handwritten sheet was all they asked for.

 

[trebor79]

Table numbers and arrival and departure times are a part of any half decent pub contact tracing system.

Mmm. But it's been left to individual pubs to sort out and, it would appear from the article, do the actual contact tracing and call people. Since will be half decent, some will not. Will anyone actual self isolate on the day so of a pub landlord in any case?

 

[trebor79]

Though a look at infection patterns from restaurant cases in China early on would suggest that actually yes, the whole indoor space should self isolate if they were there at the same time. The cases seemed to have more to do with airflow (e.g. from aircon units) than to do with 1m, 2m, 5m or anything like that.

Better to sit outside!

And the well reported case from South Korea where someone became infected after sitting in the same church seat as an asymptomatic carrier had sat in earlier in the day.

 

[AdamWW]

Though a look at infection patterns from restaurant cases in China early on would suggest that actually yes, the whole indoor space should self isolate if they were there at the same time. The cases seemed to have more to do with airflow (e.g. from aircon units) than to do with 1m, 2m, 5m or anything like that.

Better to sit outside!

I've seen an interesting article showing people infected in a restaurant who were 'down-wind' of the contagious person, even though many were more than 2 m away (while those closer, but on the other side of the restaurant, were unaffected). I presum it's the same article.

What I haven't seen is any other article showing something simliar. Now I'm sure it's not easy to go and find out who was sitting where and work such things out, but I would still have expected more things like this to have come out by now if it was such a significant danger.

Sitting in the same seat could be because they both touched the same surfaces, could it not? Or indeed, since it's a single example, a complete coincidence.

 

[yorkie]

I've seen an interesting article showing people infected in a restaurant who were 'down-wind' of the contagious person, even though many were more than 2 m away (while those closer, but on the other side of the restaurant, were unaffected). I presum it's the same article.

What I haven't seen is any other article showing something simliar. Now I'm sure it's not easy to go and find out who was sitting where and work such things out, but I would still have expected more things like this to have come out by now if it was such a significant danger.

Sitting in the same seat could be because they both touched the same surfaces, could it not? Or indeed, since it's a single example, a complete coincidence.

Yes and I am not sure if they have ruled out the possibility that someone else was present in either venue who also had the virus, or that the individuals who caught the virus did not get so from elsewhere? It would be difficult to rule those possibilities out entirely I'd have thought.

 

[AdamWW]

Yes and I am not sure if they have ruled out the possibility that someone else was present in either venue who also had the virus, or that the individuals who caught the virus did not get so from elsewhere? It would be difficult to rule those possibilities out entirely I'd have thought.

The one I saw had a nice diagram that looked very convincing - it would be a big coincidence if infections followed the nice pattern following the airflow for any other reason.

But coincidences do happen as does flawed research and it would be nice to see some other work.

There must be information, for example, on spread within aircraft - and indeed I think I have seen some and it was limited to people in nearby rows.

I'm a bit surprised I haven't come across more studies like this.

 

[Huntergreed]

I see in today's news three pubs have had to close after customers at the weekend tested positive for the virus.

Coronavirus: Three England pubs close after positive tests

At least three pubs in England announce they have closed just days after opening their doors again.

www.bbc.co.uk

What concerns me is how strictly they will apply this "trace and trace" system. Will everyone who used these pubs at the weekend be asked to self-isolate? Or just those who were in the pub at the same time as the infected person? Or just those who were sat near the infected person? And if it's one of the latter two, how will they know?

I was under the impression that the “precautions” were in place so that if anyone who was positive visited, they wouldn’t spread the coronavirus.

If this is the case, then surely shutting for “weeks” is a bit overkill, and it’s no economically viable way forward, as many places may never open for long under a policy like that.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The one I saw had a nice diagram that looked very convincing - it would be a big coincidence if infections followed the nice pattern following the airflow for any other reason.

But coincidences do happen as does flawed research and it would be nice to see some other work.

There must be information, for example, on spread within aircraft - and indeed I think I have seen some and it was limited to people in nearby rows.

I'm a bit surprised I haven't come across more studies like this.

There was one about a bus, and if I recall correctly it wasn't purely about people in nearby rows but again about which way the air would have been circulating.

I was under the impression that the “precautions” were in place so that if anyone who was positive visited, they wouldn’t spread the coronavirus.

If this is the case, then surely shutting for “weeks” is a bit overkill, and it’s no economically viable way forward, as many places may never open for long under a policy like that.

Given that the virus can't live on surfaces for more than about 3-4 days at worst (if I recall correctly) it seems silly to close for more than that, and it needn't necessarily be that long if you deep-clean, just the time taken to perform said clean.

I suspect there may be a bit of virtue signalling/reassurance going on.

 

[AdamWW]

There was one about a bus, and if I recall correctly it wasn't purely about people in nearby rows but again about which way the air would have been circulating.



Given that the virus can't live on surfaces for more than about 3-4 days at worst (if I recall correctly) it seems silly to close for more than that, and it needn't necessarily be that long if you deep-clean, just the time taken to perform said clean.

I suspect there may be a bit of virtue signalling/reassurance going on.

Where did it say they would be closed for weeks? I couldn't find it in the article.
One said closed until Friday.
Two said closed for deep cleaning, and one of those said they were asking the council for advice on what to do next.

 

[Bantamzen]

Where did it say they would be closed for weeks? I couldn't find it in the article.
One said closed until Friday.
Two said closed for deep cleaning, and one of those said they were asking the council for advice on what to do next.

I got the impression that it would be closed until the deep clean had been done & and staff tested, which would make sense. At worst it might be a few days it seems.

 

[HSTEd]

The problem is with an R0 of around 3, you will need to prevent two thirds of infections to stop a runaway, which requires restrictions anyway and thus eliminates the rationale for the damn thing.

Even assuming marking from track and trace is 100% effective in ensuring that person does not infect anyway if they are infected, that implies, that something like 82% of people must have the app installed and operating on their person at allt imes.

Which seems somewhat unachievable.

The whole thing is a waste of time to sell the public the idea that the lockdown is a temporary short term measure.

 

[takno]

The one I saw had a nice diagram that looked very convincing - it would be a big coincidence if infections followed the nice pattern following the airflow for any other reason.

But coincidences do happen as does flawed research and it would be nice to see some other work.

There must be information, for example, on spread within aircraft - and indeed I think I have seen some and it was limited to people in nearby rows.

I'm a bit surprised I haven't come across more studies like this.

There were three studies - the restaurant, the call centre and the church. As far as I can tell none of them where much more than anecdotal stories with nice diagrams knocked together by contact-tracers and then shared breathlessly around people desperate for something scienceish. They were then compiled into a well-written blog post by an American academic who studies something somewhat related, but in animal biology, and made their way around the popular science internet from there. No bad intentions involved at any point at all, but also no real science or peer review of any kind.

The fact that there haven't been hundreds of such case studies doing the rounds does rather suggest that they were perhaps cherry-picked outliers, and on their own they don't really support some of the conclusions being drawn from them. The restaurant example looked quite nice, but then a couple of the cases didn't fit the air-con pattern, and some kind of back-scatter was introduced as a kind of deus-ex-machina mechanism to explain them - a second infected person seemed just as probable as an explanation. The church one was leapt on as being explained by the virus being present on the chair, which is possible, but could also have been explained by an unrecorded interaction, or a chain of infection which just wasn't traced.

The call-centre one was probably the weakest, in that there were lots of untraced and unrecorded interactions between the team apart from the time spent sitting at their desks. If it's taken at face value though, it strongly suggests that time spent in lifts or commuting with people is completely irrelevant, and it's really only prolonged close contact over a period of hours which is important. That doesn't support a lot of the actions we have been taking at all.

 

[Bantamzen]

There were three studies - the restaurant, the call centre and the church. As far as I can tell none of them where much more than anecdotal stories with nice diagrams knocked together by contact-tracers and then shared breathlessly around people desperate for something scienceish. They were then compiled into a well-written blog post by an American academic who studies something somewhat related, but in animal biology, and made their way around the popular science internet from there. No bad intentions involved at any point at all, but also no real science or peer review of any kind.

The fact that there haven't been hundreds of such case studies doing the rounds does rather suggest that they were perhaps cherry-picked outliers, and on their own they don't really support some of the conclusions being drawn from them. The restaurant example looked quite nice, but then a couple of the cases didn't fit the air-con pattern, and some kind of back-scatter was introduced as a kind of deus-ex-machina mechanism to explain them - a second infected person seemed just as probable as an explanation. The church one was leapt on as being explained by the virus being present on the chair, which is possible, but could also have been explained by an unrecorded interaction, or a chain of infection which just wasn't traced.

The call-centre one was probably the weakest, in that there were lots of untraced and unrecorded interactions between the team apart from the time spent sitting at their desks. If it's taken at face value though, it strongly suggests that time spent in lifts or commuting with people is completely irrelevant, and it's really only prolonged close contact over a period of hours which is important. That doesn't support a lot of the actions we have been taking at all.

Studies like these stand in splendid isolation to the more recent track & trace work around the globe that is finding places like high density housing & factories are the areas that are actually at the centre of many recent spikes detected. I guess clinging onto the concepts that places like restaurants, call centres and it seems even places of worship are a lot easier to close or relocate than housing projects & factories.

 

[MikeWM]

There were three studies - the restaurant, the call centre and the church. As far as I can tell none of them where much more than anecdotal stories with nice diagrams knocked together by contact-tracers and then shared breathlessly around people desperate for something scienceish.

I think I've probably said this before - but one thing I've realised during all this is how incredibly poor some medical studies really are (though of course that doesn't stop them being parroted endlessly to suit a political or media agenda). There's nothing wrong with forming hypotheses based on one or two anecdotal cases, but forming conclusions is ridiculous.

In any other field such studies would be ridiculed, but in medicine it does seem we often take one single example and assume that the single example is telling us clear, important information that we should extrapolate to 8 billion people around the globe - and based on that, we trash society and the economy!

 

[AdamWW]

I think I've probably said this before - but one thing I've realised during all this is how incredibly poor some medical studies really are (though of course that doesn't stop them being parroted endlessly to suit a political or media agenda). There's nothing wrong with forming hypotheses based on one or two anecdotal cases, but forming conclusions is ridiculous.

In any other field such studies would be ridiculed, but in medicine it does seem we often take one single example and assume that the single example is telling us clear, important information that we should extrapolate to 8 billion people around the globe - and based on that, we trash society and the economy!

I think there are some other fields that are just as bad. Similar levels of jumping to massive conclusions from very small amounts of data seem to be quite popular in astronomy too. But without quite the same consequences.

There are of course plenty of very well done medical studies too - unfortunately the mainstream media tend not to disinguish between the two types particularly well.

Studies like these stand in splendid isolation to the more recent track & trace work around the globe that is finding places like high density housing & factories are the areas that are actually at the centre of many recent spikes detected. I guess clinging onto the concepts that places like restaurants, call centres and it seems even places of worship are a lot easier to close or relocate than housing projects & factories.

I'm sure we're learning and that if we are going to be having to take precautions for a while yet we should have a better idea of what does and doesn't need doing.

I wonder how much would be capable of being transferred to the next pandemic? Or will we start out doing the things that people realised in the end worked for this one, and get it all wrong?

 

[Spamcan81]

I frequent a very small number of pubs, but fairly frequently. If any of them are shut down due an outbreak, I will deal with it - I don’t need track and trace for that. And if I were to test positive, I would inform those pubs I had been in - again, on that basis track and trace is unnecessary. Bluntly though, if I have been in a venue that has an outbreak and yet I still feel fine, I am not going to lockdown myself unless I start to have symptoms. Again, sorry to anyone I offend but I have no qualms in taking this view, I have and will only provide false contact details, and I am 100% sure I am not alone in my views.

That could be too late if you are asymptomatic. I must say your attitude is highly irresponsible IMO.

 

[43066]

That could be too late if you are asymptomatic. I must say your attitude is highly irresponsible IMO.

How do you know @Skymonster isn’t a carer for a gravely ill family member, or perhaps does a job which he would lose if he didn’t turn up for work?

I share his concern about giving out my contact details, quite frankly. How do we know those won’t be used for nefarious purposes/sold to marketing companies?

 

[Bletchleyite]

How do you know @Skymonster isn’t a carer for a gravely ill family member, or perhaps does a job which he would lose if he didn’t turn up for work?

If he/she is, then the attitude presented stands a good chance of killing that family member if infected.

 

[birchesgreen]

I share his concern about giving out my contact details, quite frankly. How do we know those won’t be used for nefarious purposes/sold to marketing companies?

Don't be silly that would never happen... oh wait

 

[43066]

If he/she is, then the attitude presented stands a good chance of killing that family member if infected.

Not necessarily, it would depend on what was wrong with them. Plenty of people are carers for people who are “low risk” from a Covid perspective.

They may be unable to work from home, or their mental health needs may make it impossible for them to spend long periods of time alone.

The point I’m making is that not everybody has the option of locking themselves away for months on end.

EDIT: I should have perhaps said “profoundly disabled” rather than “gravely ill”.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The point I’m making is that not everybody has the option of locking themselves away for months on end.

Who said months on end?

It's 14 days if Track and Trace contact you, and if asked to isolate you really must for the good of everyone.

If you're particularly concerned about this, e.g. it would cost you in lost earnings, the best way to avoid it is to avoid being between 1-2m from anyone outside your household for more than 15 minutes, and avoid being under 1m from anyone outside your household for any period of time bar walking past them without stopping. This will ensure you can't be "contact traced" as those are the criteria being used.

It isn't appropriate just to ignore it, nor to try to avoid it by not providing details as asked.

 

[43066]

Who said months on end?

It's 14 days if Track and Trace contact you, and if asked to isolate you really must for the good of everyone.

If you're particularly concerned about this, e.g. it would cost you in lost earnings, the best way to avoid it is to avoid being between 1-2m from anyone outside your household for more than 15 minutes, and avoid being under 1m from anyone outside your household for any period of time bar walking past them without stopping. This will ensure you can't be "contact traced" as those are the criteria being used.

It isn't appropriate just to ignore it, nor to try to avoid it by not providing details as asked.

Not everyone could even do 14 days off work without being fired. You’re lucky to do a job where they wouldn’t be an issue, and so am I for that matter, but not everyone has that luxury. Those of us who do shouldn’t be judging those who don’t.

If the choice is between self isolating, or keeping a roof over their heads, you can’t blame people for disregarding the advice.

More on topic: I don’t agree with being required to give my contact details to anybody, whether that’s a pub (to be sold to a marketing company) or the government’s ridiculous “contact tracing” app, which I certainly won’t be downloading. Whenever I‘m required to give details, I simply give false ones.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Not everyone could even do 14 days off work without being fired.

Then they need to be extra-careful about where they go and what they do.