Does anybody else freak out every time their COVID Alert app goes off to give you that supposedly reassuring message that “COVID Alert continues to monitor for exposures on your behalf.”? I know what it’s trying to do, but every single time it goes off, I tend to review the last few days, go over where I’ve been, and prepare for the worst. Then I see that…oh, it’s just the friendly reminder that I have a COVID Alert app and it’s working. I don’t know how it does it, but it tends to go off right after I’ve been out somewhere, even if it’s standing outside because of a building fire alarm.
Now, I’ve noticed when it generally happens so when I wake up on the morning of the day when I think it’s going to, I tend to say something to myself about the app going off and that seems to help. But before I figured that out, it was heart attack-inducing. Or maybe it’s just me.
It’s definitely not just you. Before I had to start keeping my bluetooth turned off to solve that weird battery bug, that thing would make me jump every damn time. I know they just want to let you know it’s working since it’s always in the background and you never have to think about it, but there’s no good way for an app designed specifically to deliver bad news to do that.
I ended up booting that app off my phone a few months back. Had it installed for over a year, and the “we’re still monitoring” message was the only alert I ever received. Nope, done with that. I’ll get my Covid exposure notifications the old fashion way–someone can call me. That’s just as likely to let me know before I start hacking.
I haven’t seen any stats on it lately, but chances are your method will work better than the app anyway. Wasn’t very well used last I heard.
So about those stats. I just saw some. They’re bad. Like only 6 and a half million downloads bad. Like less than 1000 people used it to report cases in November bad.
Really, the only reason I’m keeping it is because work asked anyone who wants to come back to the office, whenever that is, to have it. They may change their stance, but that was a thing.
Oof. Much condolence. Also not sure where you’re working these days, but… how? Are they, like, expecting you to show them your phone on arrival?
I don’t think they were going to stare at our phones. I guess they hoped we would know faster if we ran into Covid, so we would be able to change course faster and work from home until we knew we were good. But who knows? They could have decided not enough people have the app, so they may go back on that.