[Ed P]

My previous post seems to have been eaten, so I’ll repost a similar version. My wife and I have just returned from a short break in Oxford (walking the gardens, and river banks), and awoke two days later to the dreaded Ping and a notice to not leave the house. We are not too concerned as we still have a Brexit contingency store cupboard to eat, and a reasonable sized garden. I feel sorry for those confined to a flat with no balcony and store cupboard.

The app gives a vague idea of when the Covid contact occurred, and we were out of doors, masked and socially distanced for all that period. We both have BlueTooth 5.0+ phones so I am pretty sure that we were pinged because someone in the outside restaurant at lunchtime was a Covid contact. The tables were well over three metres apart.

My theory for our ping is that due to Dildo Harding’s incompetence the app makes no allowance for the fact that new BT5 phones have a least four times the range of earlier versions and calculated that we were down the throats of all our lunchtime neighbours!

If my theory is correct, it is no surprise that the country is grinding to a halt as a result of false alerts raised by Dildo’s Pingdemic

 

[Drezha]

I must admit we were one of the ones who deleted the app. In fact, I’ve used it twice when it came out and I deleted it soon after, as I found it would use a huge amount of battery life. And then we both decided to delete it, as we are now currently in Ireland visiting my in laws and we weren’t risking anything stopping us getting here!

We effectively self isolated as much as we could for the two weeks before hand, and we had our tests to get here, so we haven’t felt bad.

I may put it back on the phone when I’m back in the UK at the end of the week, but I’ll see.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Ed P]

Just to follow-up. I ordered the lateral flow test pack and that was negative (we continue to have no symptoms). As we have been pinged  the rules allow us to have PCR tests I’ve ordered the Home Pack of those as well (I’m damned if I’m doing a 40mile round trip to a test centre). If that is negative as well it indicates that we are yet another one of the 60% false positives that the app gives.

[Ed P]

The PCR test pack came next day so that was pretty prompt. Of course the order system had the usual Government racial overhead but was fairly simple. The PCR test itself is very similar in process to the Lateral Flow test, and as these are freely available I’d recommend getting a test pack and use it to hone your technique — it is not hard, but some may find poking things in the back of your throat or a long way up your nose to be difficult/nauseous. (Whether you report the LFT finding to HMG I leave up to you) The PCR test has been done by both SWMBO and I, and sent back via the Priority PostBox (a new one on me). You are allowed to break isolation to visit the nearest Priority PostBox. The only hard thing about the whole exercise was using the provided ‘leakproof’ bag as that seemed to have a life of its own.

The result of the test Positive/Negative or Void is sent back by EMail, so the clock is now ticking.

[Ed P]

SWMBO reminded me that the real value of using the Lateral Flow Test as practice is that in addition to giving a result, it indicates if you have screwed up by either contaminating the sample or have not picked up enough cells from either the tonsils or nostril. You get NO indication of a successful technique with the PCR test.

[Ed P]

The PCR test result (negative as anticipated) came back within 24 hours which is pretty good. The bad part is that we still have to continue isolating for a few more days despite the ‘ping’ probably being completely spurious. (Statement made based on both wife and I being exposed to the same ping events. Taken together with  four negative tests and both of us double-jabbed this statistically indicates a false ping with a high degree of certainty ) At no time were either of us within less than four metres of anyone for 15 minutes. and even when we were 4+ metres away that was at an open air pub/restaurant.

It is starting to become a bore.

[keith with the teef]

I think the pingdemic is the nemesis of the original purpose of the app.

Lets face it all of the vulnerables have now had the vaccine.

I deleted the app being 3x vaccinated. As in I had the virus.

Yeah the government now need to drop that app. Its biting very one in the ass for no good reasons.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

I’m beginning to feel left out, I have had the app since it was launched and it hasn’t pinged me once ☹

[Ed P]

@WOF Lucky you!

I think my ‘ping’  was in a riverside Beer Garden that probably had 60 to 120 people sitting on bench tables that were spaced well over 3 metres from each table edge (huge garden, smallish well behaved crowd). We did not share our table with anyone, but were there for 45 minutes or so.

Many of those at the garden were younger people who had just been rowing or swimming in the Thames. (it was a nice toasty evening).  As the epidemic seems to be hitting the 20-30s it is quite likely that one of those had the virus. If he/she also had a BT5+ phone they could have been >10 metres away from us, but the app would think <2 metres.

 

[Ed P]

Out of interest I just made a SWAG estimate of the chances of being pinged. The case rate for Hinksey was about 500 per 100000, so assuming 100 people in the beer garden, we had a 50:50 chance of a ping event.

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