A bracelet and complementary tracking app for inbound travelers requiring compulsory home-quarantine, shown during a news conference at Hong Kong International Airport, China, on March 18. — Bloomberg
Apple and Google have generated much hope and controversy with their plan to create a Covid-19 tracking app. Too bad it won’t work.
Public debate has focused on how to balance the right to privacy with the potential to save lives. There’s ample reason for scepticism – for example,"anonymous” Bluetooth tracking can be deanonymised. But that’s not what I care about. What concerns me is that the whole concept of a tradeoff is false from the start, because no app can fix the thoroughly inequitable US health care system.
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