“Pingdemic:” U.K. Phone App Decides Who To Lockdown, Destroying Businesses

The following report is from the New York Times, July 22nd, 2021:

Gas stations closed, garbage collection canceled and supermarket shelves stripped bare of food, water and other essential goods.

In a week when Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised England a return to normality after the end of months of lockdown rules, a coronavirus-weary nation has instead been battered by a new crisis.

This one is being called the “pingdemic.”

With virus case numbers surging again, hundreds of thousands of people have been notified — or pinged — by a government-sponsored phone app asking them to self-isolate for 10 days because they were in contact with someone who had tested positive.

So many workers have been affected that some businesses have closed their doors or started a desperate search for new staff, and a political battle has erupted with the opposition Labour Party warning of “a summer of chaos” after contradictory statements from the government about how to respond if pinged.

Those notified by the app are not required by law to isolate but the government’s official position is that it wants them to do so. On Thursday, it was planning to publish a list of critical workers to be exempted from self-isolation in order to keep things running.

That followed a warning from the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, of possible disruption to the capital’s transportation network, food supplies and refuse collection services. A police force in the West Midlands said it had been hit by staff shortages. Stores have appealed to customers not to indulge in panic buying, and there have even been calls for the government to consider using the military to help fill a shortfall of truck drivers.

There does seem to be utter chaos at the heart of government at the moment: You have ministers not speaking from the same script, and that suggests that there isn’t a script.

Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London

-adding that it was obvious that a rise in case numbers — which the government itself predicted — would mean more people being pinged.

This was not what the government was hoping for when it lifted most coronavirus legal restrictions in England on Monday, a moment hailed as “Freedom Day” by the tabloids.

Mr. Johnson argues that the country has good levels of protection because of its successful vaccine rollout and that summer is the best time to end the rules because schools are on vacation breaks and there tends to be less virus transmission with people spending more time outdoors.

But the relaxation coincided with a big spike in new cases, numbering around 40,000 a day, prompted by the highly infectious Delta variant. Inevitably that has been reflected in the numbers of people being pinged; in the week of July 8 to 15, more than 600,000 alerts were issued by the app, putting acute strain on many businesses and public services.

Supermarkets have warned of staff shortages, as have trucking firms, and the British Meat Processors Association said that 5 to 10% of the work force of some of its companies had been pinged. If the situation deteriorates further, some will be forced to start shutting down production lines, it said.

I am increasingly concerned about our ability to maintain current levels of absolutely crucial services like public transport, food supplies and bin collections.

Mr. Khan, the London mayor, told one newspaper, The Evening Standard

*Update*

So desperate are some companies that they are asking pinged employees not to self-isolate but to test themselves and come into work if they are negative.

To complicate matters, there are two parallel systems of coronavirus warnings in Britain.

In addition to the app, the government has a more traditional contact-tracing system, with a staff that calls people to warn that they may have been exposed. People instructed by phone to self-isolate are legally obliged to do so, whereas the app is purely advisory.

At times, the government has undermined its own calls for people who are pinged to follow that advice.

Mr. Johnson and his chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, were both pinged last weekend because they spent time with the health secretary, Sajid Javid, who had come down with Covid-19. But Downing Street announced that Mr. Johnson and Mr. Sunak would not self-isolate and would instead take part in a pilot project allowing them to continue to work while undergoing regular tests.

So swift was the backlash that the decision was reversed within a couple of hours, with both men promising to obey the app.

Faith in the system was knocked again when a business minister, Paul Scully, pointed out that a ping was simply advisory — a correct statement but one that did not align with continuing calls from Downing Street for people to self-isolate if asked.

And all week the “pingdemic” threw up more tricky questions. What should you do, for example, if you are pinged the day before your wedding? Call the whole thing off?

Oh gosh. The guidance is ‘please, you must stay at home.’ That is a terribly, terribly difficult scenario.

Victoria Atkins, a Home Office minister, told LBC Radio when asked that question. 

According to media reports, one idea floated within government was to reduce the number of people pinged by weakening the sensitivity of the app, which uses Bluetooth technology to notify those who have been within two meters of an infected person for 15 minutes or more.

That seems to have been rejected on the grounds that it would prevent the app from doing its job.

A more obvious solution would be to exempt those who have the protection of two vaccine doses — more than half the population — though some people can still be infected even after vaccination. The government plans to do this anyway, but not until mid-August, the delay being to allow time for more people to be vaccinated.

But on Thursday Jeremy Hunt, a former health secretary, asked whether it was not time

For the government to listen to public opinion and scrap the 10-day isolation requirement immediately for people who have been double-jabbed.

Otherwise, we risk losing social consent for this very, very important weapon against the virus.

That may already be happening.

The latest data seem to show the number of infections rising faster than the number of pings. That, and the findings of some public opinion surveys, suggests that the app is being quietly deleted from phones up and down the country.

Perhaps worse for the government, the “pingdemic” crisis has illustrated the scale of the gamble Mr. Johnson has taken by scrapping almost all coronavirus restrictions in England — even opening nightclubs — at a time when infections are so high.

The focus on the ‘pingdemic’ is something of a distraction. The concern really is that the virus is running wild again.

Professor Bale, who noted that it was the logical consequence of high case numbers. 

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AUTHOR COMMENTARY

O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth […]Galatians 3:1(c)

How badly do you gotta be so propagandized that the people are listening to a PHONE APP that tells them that they can’t go to work?! A phone app. Let that one sink in. And these people are all worried scared that their businesses might get shutdown because a non-mandatory phone app (that the report admits that people don’t even have to regard) told them that they need to isolate for 10 days for a non-isolated virus. Why not 9? Why not 11? 14? Just making crap up, but it succeeds because a decent-sized amount of people submitted themselves to this.

[8] Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever: [9] That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD: [10] Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: [11] Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. [12] Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel, Because ye despise this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness, and stay thereon: [13] Therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant. [14] And he shall break it as the breaking of the potters’ vessel that is broken in pieces; he shall not spare: so that there shall not be found in the bursting of it a sherd to take fire from the hearth, or to take water withal out of the pit.

Isaiah 30:8-14

And just the amount of invasion at play here: that because somebody was in close quarters with something who is believed to be, or has been, Covid positive, a phone then pings the user that he/she needs to isolate. And yet this ‘draconianism’ is completely overlooked and ignored. So I am thankful for the brother that sent me this, because this is just crazy.

Here’s a concept for you British businesses and people: IGNORE WHAT YOUR GOVERNMENT SELLOUTS TELL YOU AND GO TO WORK! BE FREE!

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[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).

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