Taiwan collars coronavirus quarantine scofflaws with smartphone geo-fences. So, which nation will be next?

Re: Which is more important, Privacy or Death?

Please take the time to read "Coronavirus Can Be Stopped, but Only With Harsh Steps".

PRoC, RoC (Taiwan), South Korea and Singapore are now "writing the books" about how to contain the spread of the epidemic. The government and their citizens have accepted that "privacy" has no place when the pandemic is not just "knocking on your door" but has made themselves comfortable in your living room.

The once mighty US of A is now being seen as "catching it's breathe, wheezing and panting" and unable to keep up with the rest of the world.

We have two choices: The Blue pill or the Red pill. The Red pill tastes really bad, give anyone headaches and hallucinations, however, this epidemic go away in a month (or two).

The Blue pill, does nothing. Wake up like any other day, do all the necessary activities like any other day and, maybe, this long, hard winter storm will be over in about 12 months.

Re: Which is more important, Privacy or Death?

No, the argument is that nothing is important as long as we do something that might help against the virus. Some of these drastic measures will produce a great deal of benefit and we should get them started as soon as possible. Some will be a little effective and we should probably do them. Some will be pointless and if we spend effort on them, we'll be wasting time and resources we could be using on something useful. Some will cause more harm than good, and it might not only be directly virus-related. So far, there has been relatively little attention paid to this--as long as the experts in epidemiology suggested one thing such as social distancing requirements, the governments will agree to any policy that seems at least somewhat supportive of that thing. They do this without consideration of public health, public confidence, feasibility, privacy, or anything else. The only two questions they seem to ask are "Does this seem like it obviously won't work" and "Can I make this sound good when I get interviewed". As long as the answers are no and yes respectively, they'll go ahead.

This is an emergency situation with a severity that's not well established yet. In such situations, there are two things that are very effective. The first is prior planning, and for that it's too late--we have all we're going to get. The second thing, and what we're relying upon, is an attitude (at all levels, but most importantly on the levels of those making policy decisions) of calmness, consideration, and willingness to make sacrifices. We must not let that attitude succumb to quick and dirty attempts at patching without consideration. This means we'll have to resign ourselves to doing uncomfortable things. It will also mean that we have to consider the long-term, and that means we have to consider things like our future privacy rights. It will afford us nothing if we survive this and die in a crisis of our own making later on.

Re: Which is more important, Privacy or Death?

This has me wondering about mandatory genocide. Can you _PROVE_ it wouldn't help?

Seriously, you roll up to buy your $20 coffee in a car priced more than entire families make and BOOOOM... game over. Totally random and PC friendly (let A.I. control it, that way nobody gets expected results).

Re: Which is more important, society or individual?

For a couple of centuries, this question has been answered somewhat differently in the progressive West than in the Asian East. The US has taken individualism to an extreme; China and some other Asian countries go the other way, and expect individuals to always yield for the good of society. This is in general, of course, and there are plenty of examples in both spheres in which people have swum against the cultural tendency.

From what I read, until a vaccine is developed, there is no way to "defeat" the Co-SARS-2 virus. Until somewhere between 30% and 60% of people have been infected and either recovered or died -- ie, until the population as a whole has enough immune individuals to defeat the virus' ability to find individuals to infect -- then the virus will continue to spread.

A given area can reach "herd immunity" quick, or it can do it slowly.

Doing it quick means a massive death toll. Mmmm, maybe 600,000 to 1.5 million Americans dead of the virus in a few months, and a smaller number of deaths due to lack of medical support for other cases (for instance, if your grandma needs a ventilator when her emphysema worsens suddenly in the middle of April, just plan her funeral).

Doing it slow means locking down society to a considerably greater extent than the US or any western nation has done. Theoretically, by slowing the spread of the virus and keeping the medical system from overload, I think we could hold the direct death toll to maybe 240,000 in the US. Medical support for non-virus purposes would be mostly unimpacted.

But in the real world, responses like Bob's make it clear that Americans won't slow the spread of the virus. US politicians have already failed in taking much easier measures, and it's politically infeasible to go the Singapore or Taiwan route. Even if the government tried to impose Singapore-style measures, too many Americans would find ways around them, and the measures would fail on the ground.

So it's pretty much a done deal: The US, the UK, France, Italy, and Spain are going to take the faster, deadlier ride.

But that may not prevent the FBI and other three-letter agencies from pushing enhanced surveillance laws through Congress. They want tracking and face-recog, and this provides an excuse. The ratchet only works in one direction, as we know: emergency surveillance is never rescinded, emergency powers are never revoked.

(In a similar vein, the economic recession or depression-to-be will allow the 10% to 14% of American corporations which never made enough profit to cover their expenses -- "zombie" corporations which are sustained only by repeated low-interest loans -- to take out yet more cheap money under the cover of a necessary bailout. Ditto for the low-profit high-margin fracking corporations which were formed when oil was $80 per barrel -- now that it's down to $30 a barrel, those corporations are dead in the water. But they'll receive bailout money anyway.)

It's possible that the virus will mutate to a less-virulent form. That's favored by evolution; a disease which kills its host is not as likely to persist as one which just makes them cough and sniffle for a week. It would be GREAT if CoV-SARS-2 mutated in that way. But the probability in the short term is quite low. Not a winning lottery ticket.

It's also possible that a seasonal component will become apparent, and the pandemic will slow as the northern hemisphere enters the summer months. I don't see much evidence of that happening. Some watchers have claimed that it's spreading more slowly in southern areas of the US than northern, but Florida seems to be notching up infections as fast as Washington, and Florida is about as warm as the US gets in March.

My personal takeaway: Yes, the three-letter agencies will push for enhanced surveillance-and-tracking powers, and they will use the pandemic to justify it.

No, it won't make any difference in the spread of CoV-SARS-2 in the US. We're already on the fast-and-deadly route for our epidemic.

Re: Which is more important, Privacy or Death?

But once this is on, it won't be turned off. We've already seen this in the US with the big citizen database that was created for terrorism tracking yet the FBI started abusing it to look up any old joe/jane.

Re: Signal?

Pretty much the same here.

Implementing these measures is pretty easy in countries that are heavily urbanised, and where good mobile signal coverage is pretty much taken for granted. Achieving the same result in countries with significant rural communities who have poor and/or erratic signal strength is going to be more of a challenge, and attempting to improve the rural coverage (by putting up more base stations) is not going to be a viable option since it will simply take too long to do.

Re: Signal?

Or at work. My provider's speedtest app tells me that their network has no connectivity here - from the vaunted "500mbps" in my contract, I get 0.033mbps on a good day, on a bad day nothing.

Re: What if you leave your phone at home?

You have the authorities sending SMSs at regular intervals, and you're supposed to respond in a limited amount of time.

So leaving your phone at home ensures that you will not be able to answer the SMS, thus triggering police action, apparently.