A challenge to Bits&Chips readers

Before summer, I expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of a corona tracking app. Echoing expert opinion on the limitations of using Bluetooth to gauge distance, I didn’t think it would be possible to reliably catch exposure events without generating heaps of false positives. Who would want to quarantine because they happened to be at the grocery isles while, at the same time, an (unaware) corona carrier happened to linger at the nearby meat section a few meters across?

Well, the app has been released, and I’m sure you’re dying to know whether I installed Coronamelder on my phone. The answer is: I did. When 15 minutes of proximity is required for an encounter to be considered a potential corona-transmitting event, Bluetooth’s shortcomings aren’t that important. I don’t know if virologically it makes sense to set the minimum at 15 minutes, but for sure, the characteristics of Bluetooth make such a long time span a necessity.