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Probably, we need both.
Avoidance is the best policy, but once we have been exposed we need to know as soon as possible to prevent infecting others (and to trace our contacts and find out who gave it to us in case they don't know they are infectious).
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Remember: The incubation period may be up to 14 days. When you get this warning through the app, maybe is is 14 days late; it is just about ready to break out for you.
Even if you were infected five days ago, it still is much to late. The app can't tell you how long ago since you were possibly infected - anything between a few hours and two weeks. It doesn't really help you much to know that you for an indeterminate time, up to two weeks, may have been walking around infecting others. That is in the past.
What reduces infections is staying at a good distance from "everybody else".
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The tools will use Bluetooth radio technology to support apps that will be developed by public health authorities.
Hmm, bluetooth to California? Not likely.
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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Reading the strength of the BT signal to determine the distance is not quite as bad as using a random number generator.
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littleGreenDude wrote: This is a reactive solution not proactive. We need something to let us avoid exposure, not just let us know when we've been exposed.
How do you propose this sort of thing work without the unintentional side-effects?
If someone's phone tells them so-and-so who's nearby is infected, you just know this will turn into a confrontation for some people. And you know that, depending on both parties, this has the potential to escalate. Tensions are already high, and some can take it out on the wrong people.
Be careful for what you wish for.
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If you get sick from covid-19 yourself, you should pick up your phone and call everyone that you have been at an unsafe distance from the last week or two, and suggest that they are being tested. That is all the app does. You can do it manually.
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Member 7989122 wrote: You can do it manually
... If you have the contact details of everyone you have come within ten feet of in every street, building, train, bus, etc.
You could also paint a black spot on your door, or wear a physical flag/icon/indicator on your clothes -- a Star of David, for example.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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True, but at least here in Norway, the plan is to raise the flag only if you have been within two meters of an infected person for fifteen minutes or more. Those you pass on the street or at the grocery store or wherever, for a brief moment, will not be included. That of course makes the app completely useless for its stated purpose.
Of course it makes it possible to realize the system: It probably reduces the amount of data, and processing, by two to three orders of magnitude, maybe even more. I know who I have been within 2 meters of for 15 minutes or more, without needing an app for it; they are very few.
I got the impression that the great majority of alternative apps (maybe all) will require that you are within 2 m / 6 ft for some period of time before filing it as possible infection encounter. Walking past 200 people on the street, being within 1 m for a small fraction of a second, is ignored. If it was not, you would have a line of a thousand people waiting in line for testing. If they keep the 2 m distance, the line would be two kilometers long 
Maybe the Norwegian limit of 15 min is extremely high, though. If anyone can tell the limit in other countries / apps, I'd be curious.
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Member 7989122 wrote: Walking past 200 people on the street, being within 1 m for a small fraction of a second, is ignored.
Not necessarily ignored by the virus. You might get infected at such conditions too.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Yes but this is about probability, not exceptions
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For those who understand Swedish: Tage Danielsson - Om sannolikhet - YouTube[^]
("About probabilities" - the entire monologue is based on the Swedish word for probability, "truth-like", so a direct translation of the lines is bound to fail)
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Didn't know he was known outside Sweden.
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In Norway, most definitely so. All of Hasse & Tage. Maybe not so much among teenagers, but "everyone" above 40 has great memories of movies like Äppelkriget and Picassos äventyr, and know many of the songs from the scene shows. "Änglamark", from the song in the Äppelkriget movie, has given name to a series of ecologial products marketed by the Norwegian Coop (maybe the brand is used by Coop Sweden as well).
However, lots of their material is difficult or impossible to translate to English without significant loss. It was never translated to Norwegian, we listened to it in Swedish. Even "sannolikhet" cannot be translated to Norwegian without loosing the main point; we say "sannsynlighet".
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Being less probable, doesn't make it an exception.
And even if it would be, it brings no additional value to such app
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I don't like improbable either, can we settle on unlikely?
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Deal  
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Exactly. So I consider the app next to worthless. In any case: None of these apps do anything to stop the virus. They just report later (up to two weeks) that you may have been close to someone (not identified) who was infected.
Staying at 2 m distance even in the street has far greater effect than installing this app on your smartphone!
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Member 7989122 wrote: Staying at 2 m distance even in the street has far greater effect than installing this app on your smartphone!
Member 7989122 wrote: They just report later (up to two weeks) that you may have been close to someone (not identified) who was infected.
I would already know... because I would be already ill. Heck, depending on how hard it hits me, I could be already in the healing process after two weeks.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I wonder how they intend to measure 2 m reliably?
Assuming they intend to use bluetooth, different phones have quite varying signal strengths, and the antennas isn't isotropic at all.
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Exactly - it is a joke.
Yes, antennas vary a lot, even if the phones use the same BT chip.
Lots of (most? all?) BT chips allow software control of transmission power, so even for a given phone model you can't be sure of the transmission power.
When you walk past a person, if you both keep your phones in the pocket towards the other person, the signal essentially goes in free air. If you both switch the phone to the opposite pocket, the distance between the phones increase by at least four feet and the signals must pass through two bodies on their way.
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There is at least a dozen (maybe two or three dozen) similar initiatives all over the world. As far as I have been able to find out, the main operation and goal is the same for all of them - the essential difference is how they handle the data.
An app cannot protect you against covid-19. All it gives you is a message a few days after you have been around some other person, that it might be too late: You may be infected yourself.
The real protection comes from here and now not being around people who are infected. The app cannot help you with that; you'll have to take responsibility for that yourself.
The app is like if you receive a phone call from a friend: "Hi, buddy! Bad news - I am sick with covid-19. Since I visited your home a week ago, I thought you should know about it. I can't tell if I was already infected then, but if I was, I may have brought it to you as well. So maybe you should have the entire family tested..."
Sure, you may use an app to send the message, rather than making a phone call. But the end result is the same: The app gives you no protection, only a warning that the protection may have failed.
If the guy getting sick has been in close contact with hundreds of people the last two weeks, he probably won't remember them all, and won't be making hundreds of phone calls. The app could help with that. But if you go to the grocery store six days a week, you probably get within six feet of at least fifty people inside the store, on the walkways and in the parking lot. Six hundred people lining up for being tested, the day you get sick. No, that is not possible to manage. So most apps require the closeness to last for some time, like 15 minutes (the suggested value here in Norway).
None of those six hundred people (50 per day) when I go to the store are closer to me than six feet for as much as two minutes - most of them only for a few seconds. Or we are not close at all, but I empty my cart into the car, and ten minutes later it is picked up by another customer who has never been closer to me than half a mile. Yet I might have left virus on the cart.
Those I spend 15 minutes at a time with at a distance less than six feet, those I know of without any app: Those are family, or if I still went to the office, coworkers in the same 4-cubicle. There might have been others, like hairdressers and dentists, if they were open. They are not, and I would have known about them even without the app.
Then comes this "6 feet distance". GPS is not by far precise enough, especially indoors. Smartphone GPS is very poor at altitudes, and cannot distinguish between floors of a building. Almost all of these initiatives therefore assume that Bluetooth (in addition to GPS) is constantly turned on, and the distance from another smartphone can be determined from the signal strength.
If everybody used exactly the same smartphone, with exactly the same antenna solution. with the BT transmitter set to exactly the same output level, and everybody had fastened their smartphones to their cap, out in open air, at the same altitude above the floor... Then: Maybe. But BT transmit power may vary quite a lot. Antennas differ in how efficient they are. If two guys pass each other in opposite directions, both with their phones in their left pocket, and then repeat, this time with the phone in their right pocket, at the same distance between them, the two signal strength readings is likely to e quite different: The real distance between the phones would be at least 4 ft more or less, and the signal would have to pass through two bodies or none.
It seems like lots of people have come to believe that Bluetooth has some radar-like function. It does not. Signal strength from the other phone is all there is to measure the distance. So it doesn't help much.
In other words: I see this as a result of app-mania. If I get sick, I will make an ordinary phone call to warn those I have spent at least fifteen minutes with the last week or two, urging them to be tested. The will provide nothing beyond that.
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Hell no.
Personally, I'll probably never know if I have (or had) corona.
There's too few tests and given my health and age it's likely I'll only have mild flu symptoms, which aren't at all rare during this season.
So I'll never warn others if I have corona because I simply don't know I have it.
If someone else has it that I've been close to I still don't know if I have it and there's little I can do about it.
It's been about two weeks since I've been close to this person so I've probably infected one or two people already since I'm not in full lock down.
The best I can do then is go in complete isolation.
I'm not sure if it's possible for people to abuse the system or enter false positives, but if it is I'll be in isolation for nothing.
The elderly, who are most at risk, probably won't benefit as much because this group is relatively unknown with smart phone technology.
Meanwhile companies are tracking me and everyone I've been in contact with.
They say they don't, but they will.
Google knows pretty much everything about me already, but this will only make it worse.
When people find out they've been tracked personally, contrary to current claims, Google and Apple will get a fine that's small in comparison to the money they've made with the data they gathered.
They'll say "it's a bug" or "it's critical information" or some such.
This sounds like a good excuse to go China government on our asses and follow us 24/7.
These apps aren't for us, they're for Apple, Google and governments.
Meanwhile, we have something that let's us avoid exposure: staying the hell at home and keeping distance if that's not an option.
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Sander Rossel wrote: This sounds like a good excuse to go China government on our asses and follow us 24/7.
My mobile lives in my car, is often in ✈ mode, and has all forms of data turned off.
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...and (assuming your car is new enough) your phone then integrates with your car, and you can't prevent your car from relaying all that data. 
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The car is too old, but it doesn't matter because the phone is in airplane mode.
Newer cars might act as a tracking device all on their own, through stuff like OnStar and Sync.
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