2020-06-16: Tracing apps galore!
So I see normally sane people boasting that they have installed their country’s tracing app; ours came out today. Why is that, I wonder?
Be sure not to misunderstand; I am not a tin-foil hat wearer that tells you that tracing apps are the devil, and that you should not use them no matter what. You can install and use one if you want; you just need to know that they are, by design, almost completely pointless.
You need to know a few things. First, the likelihood that any random encounter between two people will be even registered is the square of the rate of people (not smartphone users) who have the app installed. So if we do hit the target of 60% of people (which is almost 100% of smartphone users, the maximum possible), the likelihood of any random encounter being registered is a bit above a third (36%). The highest numbers of actual adoption of a tracing app is from Iceland, where it is about 38% of the population. That means that the encounter of two random people will be recorded with a probability of a whopping 14.4%, or about one in seven. (Do the math.)
But that’s only one side of the coin; the easy one. So we now know that almost all dangerous encounters will go undetected.
What about the ones that do get detected? Are they dangerous?
And that’s where things get dicy. The closeness of contact is estimated (at least for the German app) using the strength of the Bluetooth signal. Unfortunately, the relative strength of the Bluetooth signal is governed by very different factors from what governs the chances of infection. Imagine talking to someone separated from you by a plexiglass barrier. The chance of infection is small. Yet, your app will count it as a dangerous contact. Or maybe you are on a café’s terrace, seperated from someone on the inside by a full-height window. Chance of infection: zero. Closeness of contact according to the app: very close. And since (again, with the German app) you are not told exactly where and when you were in close proximity: maybe you left your phone in your car while going for a jog, or a swim, and someone parked their car with their phone next to you? Maybe it was on a charger at the time, and someone else’s came close? Maybe your phones got intimate with each other but you didn’t?
And that’s before we start talking about masks.
Oh, you are wearing your phone in your butt pocket? I see many young women do that. Your body (which is mostly water) shields your phone from detecting people breathing directly into your face from counting as close encounters while anyone rubbing their butt (and phone) against yours will be counted as very close, high-risk contacts. (Same goes for people carrying phones in backpacks.) And of course there is no calibration for the measurement of Bluetooth signals; measured values can be all over the place.
So what does it tell you if your app does not have any reasons for alerting you? It means “You may or may not be infected; remain cautious and considerate to those around you.” What if the app tells you you had a potentially dangerous encounter? It still means “You may or may not be infected; remain cautious and considerate to those around you.”
I don’t need an app for that.
Install it if you want; no harm done. (That is a simplification, I know. Not much harm done, anyway.) But not much gained either.
2020-06-12: How I view people
Maybe there are people that are sill unclear on how I view my fellow human beings. So let me get a few things straight.
To say that I don’t care about attributes of yourself that you have no control over would be an overstatement. If I personally take an interest in you, and you let me on to this kind of information, I will know if you are gay or straight (or any other flavour of Q), Caucasian, Mexican, Vietnamese, or whatever it may be, what your native language, your favourite imaginary friend or other background is and quite a few other things. To say that I don’t care about these things would be rude.
I do care. Because I do care about you.
The one thing I don’t do is judge you by these things. I judge you by what you say and what you do. Not by who you are.
That will be all for now. Judge your fellow humans by their personal words and actions, not by whatever properties they may have.
2020-04-30: Why the lockdown was a good idea
Imagine someone sitting in a warm and cozy house while there is a bad blizzard outside.
Imagine that person commenting that heating was totally unnecessary because it was warm and cozy.
You would tell that person that they are completely crazy, right?
Anyone who tells you that the lockdown was unnecessary: it’s exactly the same thing.
2020-04-17: Stay safe, safe healthy and stay sane!
Inside your home, you can act as if you were not infected. Unless you know or suspect you are, anyway. Because the people living with you have probably cought any SARS-CoV-2 you might have before you ever knew you had it.
But outside your home, please act as if you were infected, even if you think (like I do) that in all probabilty you are not.
Wear some form of mask when you go out. Okay, if you are going for a walk and you are not expecting to meet any other people, fine, don’t. Have one around your neck and draw it up if you are encountering other people. But if you are going out for provisions, definitely wear something to cover your nose and mouth. An improvised mask, a balaclava, a scarf, anything. Anything is better than nothing.
You are not doing it for yourself. You are doing it to protect everyone else. So stay 1.5 to 2 metres or more (5 to 7 feet for your metrically impaired people) away if you can. Yes, I know you can’t at all times; you might want to hold your breath while you can’t, like when you are passing people on a crowded track.
If you are outside, it will certainly not hurt getting more space between you and other people, especially people that are exercising. (Please don’t exercise in popular spaces. Try to limit your intensive exercising to non-scenic routes if you can. Even better, talk a leisurely walk outside and then exercise on your stationary bike inside your home if you can.)
Please stay safe, stay healthy and stay sane.
See you on the other side.
2020-04-08: Coronavirus tells us: health care and sick-leave pay need to be accessible to all, or at least most, people
What do you think happens if you have a pandemic going on, and people with symptoms shy away from seeking medical help? Yes, they go on with their daily lives and infect boatloads of other people.
This is dangerous. Societies need to be organised so that people who are sick can stay at home without losing pay, and seek medical attention and treatment without risking financial ruin for themselves and their families. Which is important. Not only for those at risk directly, but for societies at large.
2020-03-20: flatten the curve, and stay the fuck home
What is there more to say?
2019-07-30: A child dies, and the Nazis are having a field day.
The Nazis are having a field day, after a man apparently shoved a 8-year-old boy and his mother under of a high-speed train at Frankfurt Main station. The boy died.
A suspect was apprehended by passers-by, was taken into custody and is now officially under arrest.
The suspect is a married father of three from the Swiss canton of Zurich. And he is a Christian.
Why are Nazis having a field day then? Because they see a slightly darker-skinned guy and immediately think he must be a Syrian refugee from the 2015 refugee crisis. And a Muslim. Neither of which he is.
All these calls for “Mummy Merkel looking the family in the eye and explaining why we imported scores of murderes” are pure racism. We didn’t. We clearly imported some questionable characters (as would be normal in a crowd of about a million) but not all that many, and the Frankfurt suspect clearly, absolutely, positively wasn’t one of them. A Christian from Eritrea who somehow found his way into Switzerland (admittedly, apparently illegally) and was granted asylum there more than ten years ago (permanently fixing the problem of having come into the country illegally), and only started acting strangely literally a few days ago.
Nazis go home.
2019-07-23: Christian? Hopefully not.
And that’s another thing I want to address. Is Germany (or the United States, oder any other country that is a democracy, or at least weakly aspiring to be something even remotely similar) a Christian country?
Hopefully not. I give you this. “If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die.” This is a verbatim quote from the bible. (Deuteronomy 22:22, if you must know.) And there’s more. What about this? You have to give about 2.5 per cent of your income to charity. That’s one of the five pillars of Islam. Surprised? You shouldn’t be.
Our society is based on the principles of humanism, which transcend religion. And that is A Good Thing.
2019-07-23: Pro-life versus pro-birth
Don’t tell me that you are pro-life because you oppose the right of a woman to determine what happens inside her own body. If you call an embryo or a fetus a “baby”, all that you are demonstrating to me is that your command of the English language is severely lacking. A “baby” is a human that has already been born.
And that’s where the interesting part begins. If you are pro-life, you will want this new-born human to have a good start into their new life. Universal health care for everyone, so that neither kids nor their parents die of curable illnesses because they can’t afford treatment. Good social services, paid for by the government. Paid paternity and maternity leave for the parents. Financial assistance for the needy. All these things are pro-life positions.
Being against abortions is pro-birth, not pro-life.
2018-11-07: 6-P in English are 5-V in German
I just realised that the 6-P rule in English (many variations, also with a different number of P’s, exist; I’ll go with “proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance”) actually translates pretty well into German as the 5-V rule: „Vernünftige Vorbereitung verhindert völliges Versagen“ (which translates literally as “reasonable preparation prevents total failure” but that’s close enough for me).
