I'm not sure what's going on in other parts of the world but here in Australia the government has released a covid smartphone app which we are being encouraged to download and use. It anonymously tracks where we go and which other app users we have come into contact with, the aim being to make contact tracing easier when anybody tests positive. f somebody tests positive, their contact data will be available to health care professionals who will then be more easily able to trace the people who may have been infected.
Curious about how my facebook friends are approaching the app, I asked the simple question "Who has the covid app?"
The answers were divided along two very clear lines: Church people,Yes. Doulas, No.
The doulas don't surprise me. Every doula has seen the system/ the authorities misrepresent risk and benefit information. At some point every doula has seen the personal agency of their client stolen from them, either by force or stealth. Every doula has seen a client fall victim to the "bait & switch".
I don't want to call my community mistrustful of authority because that tends to be associated with the whole tin-foil hat idea but healthy scepticism exists in bucketloads in these women.
The church people? There are many reasons they might be so compliant: they are conditioned to compliance? they are happy to drink the kool aid? they like to hand over their decision making to others? their relentless desire to see the best in people suspends their judgement? they are generally less educated and less critical thinking?
There's a lot of discussion in the UK about the contact-tracing app, much of it critical and suspicious, worried about invasion of privacy etc. No idea as yet whether the government will officially encourage it. I won't be taking part as I don't have a smartphone.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you did?
DeleteI don't think I'd be worried about privacy. After all, look at all the information Facebook already has about me.
DeleteI am wary, but my aged phone I believe would not allow me to download it even if I wanted to.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly I suspect that older and more vulnerable Australians are going to be less likely to be able to download it, whether they want to or not. I gather it can't be set to background if it is to work properly which will chew through the battery very quickly.
As always, the vulnerable have less available options. Sigh...
DeleteNo, not sigh, hiss and spit
Hiss and spit indeed (and just where did you get that phrase? LOL).
DeleteI would separate the two groups into those who love/trust/hand-over-their-power/responsibility to the patriarchy, and those who don't.
ReplyDeleteI am with the doulas. I won't be downloading it. It's going to have variable results anyway. The phone has to be unlocked, in use on Bluetooth, to be effective. Most people I know don't have their phones on 24/7 and I don't have my phone with me most of the time I am out. I am not allowed to take my phone into work at the prison and that's probably the most likely place I'll encounter the virus, officers and other staff, not inmates.
I think you're right, Michelle. The most patriarchal of them all actually went as far as to strongly recommend it.
DeleteI might buy a very cheap smartphone especially for the app. It'd have to be very cheap though, and the rest of my life I'd keep on my usual phone - which, to be fair, has already been infiltrated by Whatsapp and Google, so maybe I would just plonk the new app on my usual phone. IT'S SO COMPLICATED!!!!
ReplyDeleteSxx
It's true that Google knows an awful lot about me, but they just want to sell stuff.
DeleteMaybe you could do the Scarlet version and snap a photo of everyone you see? Would that work?
There are a lot of evils that come with good intentions. These apps don't go away or tend to be used for other reasons. It is okay when you are not doing anything wrong but when society decides something you are doing is wrong and uses the app against you. I look toward China and how they control their people. I would not install the app.
ReplyDeleteWhen my son who owns the best phone on the market and who is also super well informed, said he would stop using a phone rather than get the app, that's when I started to really think.
DeleteThere's too much scope for changing its use after the pandemic
I find you reasons for church people quite interesting. Bearing in mind I am an atheist but given that my professional training was to be able to see both sides of a case, I would offer a further reason for church people (and other people too) and that is that they wish to see this pandemic brought to as near an end as might be possible with as few more deaths as possible. The evidence would seem to suggest that this is a way of achieving that goal and the trade off may be considered worth it.
ReplyDeleteGraham, of course we all want to see it over and most of us want to help where we can. I suppose I didn't acknowledge that because I was just so surprised at how distinct the difference was.
DeleteMillions of American church people deny that there's even a problem. Millions of American healthcare workers support having the knowledge that the app represents.
ReplyDeleteAmerican church people boggle my mind and I understand that health care workers are both exhausted and traumatised so they would be supportive. I'm just fascinated with the reasons why people do or don't want it
DeleteRant on.
DeleteI think our friend Snowbrush has finally gone off the deep end. How he knows what millions of American church people deny or what millions of American healthcare workers support, and to put them in direct opposition to one another, is beyond me.
He can confidently say that millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump for president or that millions of Americans voted for Hillary Clinton for president, but beyond that he is obviously speculating and drawing unsubstantiated conclusions.
I am not millions, I am just one, but Snowbrush has no idea what I deny or support. He makes what he thinks are educated guesses and then applies his opinions en masses to his target du jour. I say this in Christian love, of course.
I am surprised as well, kylie, at your statement that American church people boggle your mind. It is akin to my saying (which I would never do) that Australian doulas who have a present or past connection to the Salvation Army boggle my mind. It just isn't in me.
Graham Edwards, atheist though he is, has the right idea in trying to see both sides of a case. I encourage him to emigrate to the U.S. and apply for American citizenship so that he can be considered as a successor to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who isn't getting any younger.
Rant off.
en masse
DeleteThank you for the compliment, RWP, but given that I spent my whole working life without even my wife knowing what my politics are, I'm not sure that I'd be trusted by either side of the American political establishment. I may be wrong but it seems to me that partisanship is a requirement in American public life. My first degree was in Public Administration and it was an absolute requirement in crtain branches of the public service that both sides could trust you so one never voiced one's politics.
DeleteWith Kylie's presumed indulgence, I will begin my response to the words of Rhymes that he addressed to her about me...
Delete"He [that would be moi] can confidently say that millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump for president or that millions of Americans voted for Hillary Clinton for president, but beyond that he is obviously speculating and drawing unsubstantiated conclusions."
Polymath though you are, you expect Kylie to believe that demographics is, what, so much pinko liberal hooey promulgated by a Left Coast atheist? I'm reminded of you telling me that I couldn't intelligently claim that evolution happened unless I was on hand to witness it, my point being that NO amount of evidence can EVER sway you in a direction that you don't want to go. Yet it simply won't do, dear Bob, to base your response (to Kylie) upon a denial of the obvious. 71% of Americans are Christians, and 64% of those Christians are white (https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/). Without the white Christian vote, Donald Trump could not have been elected. Numerically and politically, evangelicals and conservative Catholics--you of course, being among the former--dominate the face of American Christianity, and I don't recall their approval rating of Trump ever dropping below 94%. Even so, you maintain that I am "obviously speculating" and drawing "unsubstantiated conclusions"? You forgot to add that, unless I talked to all those evangelicals personally, I can have no clue as to what they said, and even if I did talk to them personally, you would have no reason to think that I wasn't too drunk to know what they said. But I digress..., an approval rating in the mid and high 90s surely suggests that, in the main, evangelicals like yourself agree with Trump's policies.
I have written too much for it to be accepted all at once...
Now, again speaking demographically (rather than about you personally), evangelicals tend to be poorly educated bigots who believe in creationism, deny global warming, and regard Covid-19 as a problem that mostly affects blacks and Hispanics, which are groups that they view as a liability to such God-fearing patriotic Americans as themselves. They also view any attempt to limit their imposition of "Christian values" and ceremonies on the rest of society as "discrimination." Even so, nowhere in America do Christians hold anything close to the power that they do in the "Bible Belt" where you live, and so it is mainly upon that part of the devil's anus that I will focus. With the exception of tornadoes and hurricanes, whatever happens where you live, happens with white Christian approval, and it is largely from this--combined with polls--that I have formed my beliefs about them. Since you live in Georgia, I will talk about the character of the masses of white Georgian Christians. (1) Eight weeks ago, two white men in a truck ran down an unarmed black jogger and shot him to death. The crime being committed in white, Christian controlled, Georgia, nothing was done until this very day when the murderers were finally charged following the release of a video of their crime. (2) As you surely know, your governor, Brian Kemp, is only in power because he suppressed the vote of your state's black citizens who were heavily supportive of a black woman candidate named Stacey Abrams. Georgia's white Christians stood solidly behind Kemp because, after all, they didn't want a black governor. (3) This same governor, Brian Kemp, was the last governor to close a state to stop the virus spread, and the first to open a state for business as usual. (4) One state south of you, the Christian legislature was called into special session to "save the life" of a brain dead woman named Terri Schiavo because, as they said at the time, "all lives are precious in the eyes of the Lord," and to hell with the opinion of Schiavo's doctors or her own previously expressed wishes that she not be maintained in a vegetative state. (5) Now that they're being hit in the pocketbook, the South's Christians in general and Georgia's Christians in particular have determined that it's unbecoming to Christians to cling too closely to staying alive. "We can't stay locked-down forever," they, AND their president, AND their governor say, despite the fact that no one is proposing that they "stay locked-down forever."
DeleteMy god, even the second "half" is too long to be accepted in one fell swoop...
Such is Christian logic, at least as practiced in much of America. All that is backward, tacky, stupid and too dishonest to pass the world's most relaxed straight-face-test, America's Christians, as a demographic, embrace, and in no place is this more true than in the so-called "Bible Belt" where a dog can't sneeze without the permission of the white Christian electorate who are fond of describing themselves as "good Christians," although Christ applied the word good to God alone. Yet, you would deny that, beyond the fact that they voted for Trump, I have knowledge of the character and values of America's Christians in general and its Southern evangelicals in particular.
DeleteYou also deny that I don't know what your values are, but to a large extent, I think I do based upon what you don't say. Your mother taught you to keep your head down because to admit to being a Jew was dangerous. You're now a Christian, and, I believe, a man of integrity when it comes to treating people well--you have certainly been extremely important in my own life. Yet, you stay strangely silent about the wrongs that are done in your midst--even in your immediate midst. Like the white people who stayed silent when, just over the Alabama border, the young and innocent Scottsboro boys were made miserable by evangelical Christians their whole lives long, you stay silent about the wrongs that are done daily all around you. Not that I can make a strong case for my own courage, having fled 2,500 miles to escape the stupidity and the wickedness of a region that destroys the moral landscape of its residents just as the green cancer Kudzu destroys its physical landscape. Everything from the smallest woodland violets to the tallest most beautiful water oaks begin their lives in hope only to be killed by Kudzu, and so it is with the children of the South thanks to the pernicious version of Christianity by which their spirits are denied air and sunshine.
Robert,
DeleteYou are right, I painted a very broad brush stroke. Everything I know about you goes against the generalisation I made.
There is a vocal minority who boggle me, for example the ones who want to attend church through quarantine at the possible expense of many.
I apologise.
I should also say that despite the way I have presented it here, I do see both sides of this one. I have considered that maybe I have a duty to get the app, I understand that people like retail workers and health care workers (3 of my 4 children don't have an option to work from home) would probably feel safer if they feel this information is tracked for them.
DeleteI am still fascinated with the way my friends fell across the spectrum. Church people were all "yes", even the people who wouldn't normally respond to my facebook posts. Doulas were a resounding "no"
My other friends, atheist or agnostic, tended not to comment which I can only surmise means they are less invested one way or the other
Graham,
DeleteI really find it hard to imagine how a person goes about their lives without revealing their politics. I don't often make a direct statement about the way I vote but anyone can guess by my attitudes about other things. I suppose you have to become almost opinionless?
Snow,
DeleteYou are welcome to discuss here and I think it's hard to disagree with the statistical trends you refer to. I also hear Bob's protest, he has never given me any reason to believe he lives any way but lovingly.
If I had a cellphone, using the app would be a no-brainer. I would guess that, in this country, liberals would use it, and conservatives would not use it.
Delete"My other friends, atheist or agnostic, tended not to comment which I can only surmise means they are less invested one way or the other."
Nonbelievers--in America anyway--tend toward liberalism, and liberals here take the illness very seriously and are dedicated to using governmental help to fight it. Sadly, government leadership is absent on the national level and largely absent on the local level in conservative parts of the country.
How interesting that the responses have been so different. As someone who has never owned any kind of mobile phone, I wonder how they are going to track my movements. And I know that I am not unique. A significant percentage of British people aged 60+ do not own mobile phones - let alone those incredibly expensive "smartphones".
ReplyDeleteThey won't track you while you are phone free. I could say something cynical about governments not needing to track OAPs because their tax paying days are over.....
DeleteNo covid apps here but I've heard of them.
ReplyDeleteThere has been so much said about how this is an Australian Government initiative that I wondered if other places are doing it. Now I stop to think, every jurisdiction would need it's own
DeleteHi Kylie. A quick one. I have lost your email address. Anne in the kitchen could do with your support.
ReplyDeleteI've don't have a smart phone and it's not my intention to get one.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of debate raging about this app.
I must start asking around among smart phone/iPhone users and see who is doing what.
Alphie
If I didnt have a smart phone I sure wouldnt buy one just so I could get the app.
DeleteWe have it in India too and it shows the nearest cases of Covid too so that one can avoid those places.
ReplyDeleteYes, when I actually think I realise it must be widespread.
DeleteI haven't given it much thought to be honest, but given that the battery on my phone dies on me quite often I doubt that I would use it. I don't have a moral objection to it at all as I really couldn't care less - just the battery problem.
ReplyDeleteyes, we mucst save battery for the things we really want! uber eats and instagram :)
DeleteI won't be downloading the app.
ReplyDeleteto the point!
Deleteyou boomers are shutting down the entire economy because you're afraid of a flu. Seriously, can you boomers kill yourselves? You are the most selfish generation to ever exist. You don't give a shit about climate change, why should we young people give a shit if you get sick and die of some virus? I HOPE the virus gets much stronger and kills you all.
ReplyDeleteDo you boomers realize how universally hated you are? There is not one single demographic that does not hate you- white people, black people, asians, mexicans, indians, chinese, millennials, GenX, GenZ. Something tells me that you boomers are not going to have a very comfortable or easy retirement, especially once you end up in the retirement homes.
Can you baby boomers hurry up and fucking drop dead? Enjoy your retirement homes cause we younger people will not take care of you even if we wanted to, due to the shitty economy you boomers created. Do you boomers realize that the younger generation is simply waiting for you to fucking drop dead?
You are all going to end up in retirement homes and we all know that the elderly gets treated pretty badly in retirement homes. Well, that's what you get for ruining your own children's lives. Even if your children WANTED to take care of you, they couldn't, due to you boomers destroying the economy. So I hope you enjoy the retirement homes, boomer scum!
"Seriously, can you boomers kill yourselves?"
DeleteKylie, you might know that, for years now, this sicko has been copying and pasting the same comment on many blogs.
I do know, I have had it here before. I usually delete it but sometimes takes mea while to get here and do it
DeleteHe's just a 35 year old virgin living in his mommy's basement so don't pay him any mind!
DeleteI angered Peggy (my wife) but trying to engage him (or maybe it's a her), but his comments are like drive-by shootings. The reason I tried to engage him is that although he's mentally ill, his point of view came from somewhere and exists for some reason, and I wanted to understand that.
DeleteLol....An interesting comparison between the two Kylie. Excuse my Brit ignorance, but who are the Doulas?
ReplyDelete