A promised initiative to restore confidence in opinion polling has came to fruition with the establishment of the Australian Polling Council, a joint endeavour of YouGov, Essential Research and uComms. Following the example of the British Polling Council and the National Council for Published Polls in the United States, the body promises to “ensure standards of disclosure”, “encourage the highest professional standards in public opinion polling” and “inform media and the public about best practice in the conduct and reporting of polls”.
The most important of these points relates to disclosure, particularly of how demographic weightings were used to turn raw figures into a published result. The British Polling Council requires that its members publish “computer tables showing the exact questions asked in the order they were asked, all response codes and the weighted and unweighted bases for all demographics and other data that has been published”. We’ll see if its Australian counterpart to sees things the same way when it releases its requirements for disclosures, which is promised “before July 2020”.
Elsewhere:
• The West Australian has had two further local polls on coronavirus from Painted Dog Research, one from last week and one from this week ($). The McGowan government announced its decision to reopen schools next week in between the two polls, which had the support of 22.7% in the earlier poll and 49% this week, with opposition down from 43.3% to 27%, and the undecided down from 34% to 24%. The earlier poll found remarkably strong results for the McGowan government’s handling of the crisis, with 90.0% agreeing it had been doing a good job (including 54.2% strongly agreeing) and only 2.9% disagreeing (1.2% strongly), with 7.1% neither agreeing or disagreeing. No field work dates provided, but the latest poll has a sample of 831.
• The University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Institute conducted a 1200-sample survey on coronavirus from April 6 to 11, and while the published release isn’t giving too much away, we told that “about 60% of Australians report being moderately to very satisfied with government economic policies to support jobs and keep people at work”, and that “more than 80% expect the impact of the coronavirus pandemic to last for more than 6 months“.
• The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage political science blog examines local government elections held in France on March 15, two days before the country went into lockdown: turnout fell from 63% to 45%, but the result was not radically different from the last such elections in 2016. Traditional conservative and socialist parties holding up well and the greens making gains, Emmanuel Macron’s presidential vehicle La République En Marche failing to achieve much cross-over success, and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National losing ground compared with a strong result in 2014.
Jackol:
As I understand Mr Morrison has ruled out adopting the Apple/Google framework becuase the framework maintains privacy. This was Mr Morrison “standing up to international tech companies”. This may change of course and the EU is pushing for Apple/Google to provide an exception.
The net benefit is negative, because:
– precious time is wasted before starting to develop a working App based Apple/Google framework
– adoption of a working App will be depressed because the current approach is unlikely to work and will thus tarnish the brand
BW it just won’t get that rate of takeup.
For a start, not everyone has a smartphone or carries it everywhere. For another apple users have to keep the app open. Most will forget to do so. As much as I’d love to see it universal it just won’t be.
“Cud Chewersays:
Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 7:29 pm
Blobbit I actually talk to these modellers”
Well, pass my good wishes on. I don’t think what they’ve done is bad, I just think that their “decay” function doesn’t now match what’s being suggested.
How long has the thing been live for now, an hour? How would you know the benefits outweigh concerns on the basis of that?
“Cud Chewersays:
Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 7:32 pm
What the NZ cluster shows is that kids get the virus and kids pass on the virus.”
No, it doesn’t as far as what I’ve read. Happy to be pointed at a student to student case.
EGT the apple/google framework is good but its rather irrelevant in the current time frame.
If Scomo were fair dinkum about easing restrictions sooner he’d be talking about procuring millions of masks and millions of test kits.
Boerwar
A ‘very brave’ or even an ‘extremely courageous’ assumption that the app actually works properly 😆
“The net benefit is negative, because:
– precious time is wasted before starting to work on a working App based Apple/Google framework
– adoption of a working App will be depressed becuase the current approach is unlikely to work and will thus tarnish the brand”
1. Afaik, the API framework isn’t available yet, b so can it be worked on? Anyway, wasn’t this a pretty simple mod to the Singapore app?
2. That’s a stretch.
The App won’t work if people don’t want it to work and work actively to sabotage it.
Cud Chewer says:
Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 7:30 pm
frednk
Did you notice my comment up page about the guy on SBS news pointing out that the study of school kids is pretty useless if its been done during a period where hardly any kids attended school.?
Yes
One useless study does not make science.
Brendan Murphy Professor of Nephrology (kidneys) has pretty much made a fool of himself from day one, why should he not continue?
On the other hand Victoria CMO, Professor Sutton
Extensive experience and clinical expertise in public health and communicable diseases, gained through emergency medicine and field-based international work, including in Afghanistan and Timor-Leste. He represents Victoria on a number of key national bodies including the AHPPC (Australian Health Protection Principal Committee). He is also Chief Human Biosecurity Officer for Victoria. Professor Sutton has a keen interest in tropical medicine and the incorporation of palliative care practice into humanitarian responses.
Professor Sutton is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health, a Fellow of the Australasian College of Tropical Medicine and a Fellow of the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine (AFPHM). He is also a member of the Faculty of Travel Medicine.
I know where I am placing my bet.
Blobbit
Or do they ?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/121008296/coronavirus-marist-college-cluster-rises-to-93-cases-with-overnight-spike
Blobbit
Kids are human. The do catch the virus. They do shed the virus. That’s enough to know that they do pass it on. As I pointed out earlier, there’s no correlation between severity of symptom and level of shedding. The fact that kids actually get milder symptoms is a big red flag. Why? Because its harder to spot the infectious ones.
Once again, I’ll repeat. This isn’t about whether or not kids can get covid19. They do. This isn’t about whether or not kids are less susceptible. They probably are less susceptible. What this is really about is the how R(eff) of the entire community is altered by having a central point of contact. It doesn’t matter if that’s a school, or a shopping mall or a train carriage. Central points of contact when modelled are demonstrated time and again to completely tip the balance in favour of the virus. Kids do NOT have to be efficient spreaders either for this effect to kick in. Just a few.
Kids also make it a lot harder to do tracking and tracing when they are a link in the transmission chain.
And, I won’t repeat this at length because you’ve already acknowledged this, but, secondary effects. Opening schools en masse means shifting behaviour of adults. More adults in town, more adults shopping, more adults in trains. More virus spread. The single best reason for closing schools is that it keeps adults out of contact with each other.
You’re gonna get asked “what is the problem you’re trying to solve” If its HSC level kids then yes there is a problem. If its year 9, then no, a few weeks is going to make no real difference.
The thing that gives me some confidence the app will work is that it is based on an existing app designed in Singapore. Providing the safeguards are effective then I don’t see much downside in giving it a try.
Anything that may help in tracing is worth a try.
Blobbit:
The framework spec is available and one can start working on it now (or in fact when it was released about three weeks ago)
It’s not a simple modification. The Apple/Google framework supports client side operation and only involves server side when authorised. TraceTogether is almost entirely server side (in particular key generation is server side so that the server can decrypt the keys using its secret key, which it must key on the server). The architecture is completely different.
davidwh
The Singaporeans have commented that their app doesn’t make a lot of difference.
frednk well said 🙂
You forgot to mention Brendan Murphy’s other interests, like being involved in the association of company directors.
Cud Chewer
Come now. Give him credit for such great calls as 🙂
.
Australia’s top doctor advises against injecting disinfectant
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-24/brendan-murphy-on-donald-trump-coronavirus-inject-disinfectant/12182578
lol
Davidwh says:
Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 7:53 pm
The thing that gives me some confidence the app will work is that it is based on an existing app designed in Singapore. Providing the safeguards are effective then I don’t see much downside in giving it a try.
Anything that may help in tracing is worth a try.
——————
This is going to be the problem , those health and other professionals encouraging people to download this app, are not informing the public
They are giving people false security
This app will not inform you about those who have been infected in areas where there has been no testing , who has come into amore populated area
because the app doesn’t have that data for the obvious reason Lack of testing
.
Cud Chewer @ #1727 Sunday, April 26th, 2020 – 7:54 pm
How could they know? Seems way too soon and way too few installs to come to any conclusion.
Scott
The danger is that Scotty from Marketing will use the app as an excuse to ease restrictions without actually doing any of the things that actually need to be done – like purchasing massive quantities of tests.
Cud Chewer says:
Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 8:09 pm
Scott
The danger is that Scotty from Marketing will use the app as an excuse to ease restrictions without actually doing any of the things that actually need to be done – like purchasing massive quantities of tests.
———————————
Exactly
Why i cannot believe some health ,professionals are so blindly encouraging people , that this app will stop the virus, with so small percentage of the population have been tested
I’ll never download the app unless it becomes a condition of employment.
The problem isn’t this time, it’s the evidence it provides, in terms of successful mass surveillance of citizens by the state, or not as the case may be. It’s not a privacy matter to me it’s a liberty issue. We are not actually at ‘war’ and disease prevention is simply not sufficient a reason to risk fundamental liberties.
What will Morrison excuse be , if in those areas where there has been no testing and the so-called COVID app has not alert anyone in those areas , and there are corona virus cases in those non tested areas start to infect people .
Morrison and the chief CMO , stated this app will save lives,
Or even in areas where there has been tested.
Surely Morrison and Chief CMO would have to resign
PeeBee @ #1660 Sunday, April 26th, 2020 – 5:55 pm
Presumably if it can’t use/isn’t using GPS for proximity detection then it would do something like infer a distance based upon the Bluetooth signal strength. A solid object like a wall should attenuate that somewhat.
No idea if that’s sufficient to avoid triggering a detection, though. Maybe someone can experiment and find out?
I think the app would be useful in places like trains, buses and shops. Unfortunately the people who work in these areas are not allowed to have their phones on whilst working.
The other interesting issue in my opinion is that prior to the app to track contacts, the government has made no suggestions that people should journal their activities when out and about to help with contract tracing in the event of an infection. Having to rely on your memory from 14 days prior even with bank statements as prompts is not very efficient.
DavidWH:
Recently the product owner for the Singapore App said was too early to tell whether it worked:
– one can’t assume the Australian App will work through being based on a Singapore App that is not proven to work
– a product owner is unlikely to make such a statement if they were confident it worked (wel enough to be useful)
– Australia has a higher iPhone to Android ratio than Singapore and the ease of use is definitely worse with the iOS version becuase it must run in the foreground. whilst the Android App may work well enough to be useful the iOS App is unlikely to do so. With 50% iOS ratio iOS is involved in far more than 50% of contacts so the effect is dissproportinate
– Singapore apparently has about 40% adoption. I would have expected 80% by now given the importance of the issue and the compliance of Singapore’s populace, so something is holding that back. 40% adoption is consistent with at most about 25% contacts, which might be enough to be useful when joined to some fairly sophisticated analysis (although the TraceTogether product owner has asserted this is not the case)
– It is very difficult to see how Australian adoption would be higher than that in Singapore. What really pisses me off is that there are plenty of SME developers in Australia who could do it better, but there is apparently a preference for remarketing something developed overseas rather than doing it ourselves
The comments from the product owner were linked to this blog (probably the previous thread), perhaps even by me. From memory his name is Tay.
There is also these inconsistent messages
There has been calls for children at any age to get the flu shot, because they are not immune to the flu and will spread it if they attend school or any other public place , private .
It should be the same message for the corona virus as well , but Morrison and his chief CMO for some reason claiming there is small evidence of children getting it and spreading it ?
Assuming the app works as stated then it can potentially identify a carried who would not otherwise be identified. In those circumstances it could reduce future transmissions and potentially save lives.
Assantdj
The problem with trains, buses and shops is that these are exactly the kinds of places where you can get infected by someone who isn’t right in front of you – yet the app will only record “close” contacts. Meaning those with a high signal strength. Not everyone in the carriage or bus. It should be logging everyone in Bluetooth range (typically 10 meters without obstruction).
Scott
They are being more devious than this. They are saying that kids “are not at risk”. They are saying that kids are less likely to get severe symptoms. All of this is spin. Its meant to mislead you into thinking that kids are less likely to be infectious – which is simply not proven.
EGT last I heard the Singapore app has 20 percent.
Talk to an app developer. Very, very few apps get close to 40 percent and those have something very specific to offer you – stuff like Facebook, Whatsapp etc. Most app developers would kill for a 20 percent take up. We’re not offering people a real incentive to use the app and we should be – even if its just a lottery.
Just downloaded and setup app. Very simple. Have to get my parents to do the same.
……..”Surely Morrison and Chief CMO would have to resign”………
Morrison resign…..there’s a greater chance of Pauline Hanson becoming PM than Morrison resigning because of a fuck up….he’ll blame the Premiers….lol
Davidwh potentially an app could discover a contact that you’d honestly not noticed. True. But this only starts to get useful when its 70+ percent takeup. A large fraction of the population don’t even have smartphones.
What a useless article. It says exactly nothing about Kim that hasn’t been written elsewhere.
What “senior government source” is going to say “Who gives a stuff about Kim?”
Cud Chewer @ #2135 Sunday, April 26th, 2020 – 6:39 pm
Surely tracking down any potential infection is beneficial.
Obviously the greater the uptake, the more effective it is as a tool.
Cud agree. I don’t see the app as a silver bullet just one possible tool in what will be a long and difficult fight. Social distancing , testing and personal responsibility will remain the critical tools for a while yet.
“Surely tracking down any potential infection is beneficial.”
That’s what contract tracers already do. The question you have to ask is, under what specific circumstances does the app make a difference? The app won’t trace all contacts even at 100 percent takeup. In particular the app won’t trace contacts that are in Bluetooth range but not at a high signal strength. Meaning many of the most dangerous scenarios (food court, train, classroom etc) where the infection can be spread far wider than a couple of metres won’t be traced.
The danger is being told its a panacea and then being told we can all go back to life as normal. That’s what bothers me, given the nature of the PM.
davidwh
3 things are far more important than an app.
1. The PM recognising that waiting a few weeks longer for elimination of the virus is far, far safer than taking a substantial risk that we can control outbreaks from a weaker starting point.
2. The PM and the CMO actually doing the hard yards in terms of procuring millions of tests and millions of masks.
3. The CMO reversing his position on mask wearing.
I wonder how this app would go on my iPhone 4? The phone is getting old and the battery tends to lose its charge rather quickly and needs to be recharged often.
Apparently the app is hard on battery charge. The phone will be useless if the battery goes flat while I am out.
If my iPhone 4 won’t cut it, I may have to get a mobile with a bigger battery.
CC
“EGT last I heard the Singapore app has 20 percent.”
Yes, uptake as of 4 days ago is around 20%.
It is a tool a Govt with credibility and without a track record of corruption, abuse of power, unlawful behaviour and complete lack of credibility could have almost every single Australian using.
If you trust this Govt you deserve to be jailed for life after a secret trial, because that level of stupidity should be punished harshly.
Australia’s coronavirus contact tracing app Covidsafe: what we know so far
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/australias-coronavirus-contact-tracing-app-what-we-know-so-far
“Health minister Greg Hunt said the government’s target for uptake of the app is 40% of the population.
:::
The government has published a privacy impact assessment on potential concerns with the app. In its response, the government has also indicated it will release the source code for the app, subject to the approval of the Australian Cyber Security Centre. It’s not clear yet whether the entire source code will be released.”
DIL thinking about putting new SIM card in old phone and registering it to the store. If kept at front counter would be notified if any infectious customers had been in.
There has been a noticeable uptick in number of browsing customers since Easter and the restrictions haven’t eased yet. Starting to worry about safety of herself and staff if foot traffic returns to normal before elimination.
WWP if you had read my previous posts you should have realized your post was unnecessary if aimed at me.
COVIDSafe’s effectiveness on iPhone in question as Government releases coronavirus contact tracing app
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-26/coronavirus-tracing-app-covidsafe-apple-iphone-covid-19/12187448
Can even one of the anti-app drama queens here, the ones getting their knickers in knots over how “The Government” is coming to get them by tracing their trips to the supermarket or to Bunnings, please explain exactly what it is about their boring and uneventful lives they are afraid of anyone at all knowing anything about?
Are you holding secret Anarchist Meetings in basements? Printing a seditious news pamphlet on an old Gestetner machine? Planning the Great Train Robbery? Dodging the draft? Running boat people across the border? Helping allied aircrew escape across the Blue Mountains so they may return to their homelands and fight another day?
Anyone who’s filled out a Centrelink form, a tax return, a Census paper, a driver’s license application, opened a bank account, travelled overseas, applied for a loan or made enquiries concerning comprehensive car insurance has given over 20 or 30 times the personal information requested by this app. It’s not an episode of the X Files. Theg’re trying to wipe out a disease thaf’s close to wiping us out, economically, if not literally.
They already know who you are, where you are (routine police rego plate logging anyone?), who you’ve been talking to on your phone, and where you shop. Or if they don’t, they can find out in 5 minutes.
The gate is shut, Nervous Nellies, and the horse is long gone.
And if I’m wrong, and it all turns to shit, just delete the app. There’ll be millions of users ready to report the slightest anomaly or misuse of data.
In the meantime you’re working youselves up over very little, and you might save some lives, including your own