The Pingdemic: More Than Half a Million People in England ‘Pinged’ by Test and Trace App in Just One Week

2 min read

Given the number of people being ‘pinged’ by Test and Trace, it is no wonder that so many are deleting the NHS Covid app or never bothered downloading it in the first place. The latest figures show that in just one week, more than half a million people in England alone were told they needed to self-isolate after coming into contact with someone who tested positive for Covid. Sky News has the story.

A total of 520,194 alerts were sent to users of the NHS Covid app in the week to July 7th, telling them they had been in close contact with someone who had tested positive for coronavirus.

This is up from 356,677 the previous week – a rise of 46% – and is the highest weekly figure since data was first published in January.

It comes as some companies are reportedly missing 20% of their workers.

Factories across Britain are in danger of closing down as a result of employees being ‘pinged’ by the app, union Unite warned.

The union said large numbers of workers are being told to self-isolate, with companies in the automotive industry particularly affected.

This morning Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said the Government is “concerned” about the number of people off work due to being ‘pinged’ by the app.

Mr Jenrick told LBC radio today: “It is important that we have the app, that we take it seriously, that when we do get those messages we act accordingly.”

But Mr Jenrick said ministers would give “further thought” on how the Government can ensure it is a “proportionate response”.

Worth reading in full.

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120 Comments
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Derek Toyne
Derek Toyne
5 years ago

Why is healthcare workers using the app when any fool would know if your working with patients your going to get pinged. For everyone else don’t bother unless you want time off work you not only letting down your colleagues but you could end up losing your job. Lastly if your infected you should be isolating so no one else gets pinged.

Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
5 years ago

Research: Natural covid infection creates real immunity while vaccines destroy it
https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-07-16-covid-infection-creates-real-immunity-vaccines-destroy.html

Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow anti lockdown freedom lovers, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.

Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
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Home Schooling – Ex-Primary School Teacher
on Resistance GB YouTube Channel: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ5oS2ejye0
https://www.hopesussex.co.uk/our-mission

marebobowl
marebobowl
5 years ago

Honestly this government, this track and trace and nearly all the other wild and crazy things they have instigated are getting sillier and sillier. However, I would imagine the taxpayer watching their pounds go down the COVID drain would not use the word silly. They would probably use words I cannot use in polite company.💕💕

Newman20
Newman20
5 years ago

I would never use this nonsensical app. I never answer my ‘phone to numbers that I don’t recognise and immediately delete any emails or text messages imploring me to get vaccinated.

If necessary, I can think of numerous aliases I can use should any omnipotent moral busybody ask for my demographic details.

vivaldi
vivaldi
5 years ago
Reply to  Newman20

Yes…never respond even if the txt says, press ‘No’ if you don’t wish to be contacted. ‘They’ don’t know either way your views on ‘vaccinations’, including the flu. ” We have your flu/corona vaxx waiting for you… make a appointment”.

PatrickF
PatrickF
5 years ago

My pingaling, my pingaling, I want you to play with my pingaling.

Maxine
Maxine
5 years ago

Given what I have heard anecdotally, I am wondering if there has been a ‘problem’ with the app and ‘missed’ pings going back months have all happened in the past few weeks – a system catch-up kind of scenario. Don’t get me wrong, its based on this virus only being passed in direct contact with others, it doesn’t even work properly on that basis and as such is unnecessary AND unfit for purpose, but it would explain why we are seeing what we have currently

Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
5 years ago

Boris Called Out By MPs & The BMJ For Ignoring Consent & Choice With Mandatory Jabs In Care Homes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5sskd6Oyh8

Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow anti lockdown freedom lovers, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.

Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
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Peter W
Peter W
5 years ago

When has the government ever cared about “proportionate response”?

Zoomer@14
Zoomer@14
5 years ago

So this is why the supermarket shelves are empty. Not enough staff/warehouse staff/drivers as they are all off because of this stupid app. Get rid of the app and get back to work idiots.

misslawbore
misslawbore
5 years ago
Reply to  Zoomer@14

Yes but ordering online and choosing delivery option gets you a perfect or near perfect result. People are cottoning on to this though so delivery slots are filling up again

mojo
mojo
5 years ago

It’s important that people start making their own decisions again. There is nothing more frightening than ‘I’m from the Government and I’m here to help’. Anything governments are involved in end up a disaster and a danger to society.

If you were really intelligent you would never download any app from the government.

chaos
chaos
5 years ago

the idiots dragging us down with them…

WhatsApp Image 2021-07-09 at 18.23.01.jpeg
Arfur Mo
Arfur Mo
5 years ago
Reply to  chaos

Koncerned Karen?

Splatt
Splatt
5 years ago

Anyone still isolating from this app deserves all they get.
Even if you have to use the app the alerts are VOLUNTARY.

If the app does ping you then you can legally ignore it and go to the pub.

The app doesnt force a single person to isolate even if people do use it.

misslawbore
misslawbore
5 years ago
Reply to  Splatt

True and well said

Aslangeo
Aslangeo
5 years ago

Nobody with any sense would download this app on their phone – if you need to sign in a café or restaurant -ask to do so manually if they insist – if they refuse then go somewhere else

Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
5 years ago

Big Pharma cashing in on the plandemic: $19 BILLION for Moderna in just one year
https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-07-14-big-pharma-cashing-in-plandemic-19billion-moderna.html

Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
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Manjushri
Manjushri
5 years ago

Wondering if The Peoples Health Ministry requested everyone to wear plastic bags tightly over their heads to combat the spread of covid just how many of the gullible dumbed down would actually comply?

Cranmer
Cranmer
5 years ago
Reply to  Manjushri

Some would. A hoaxer a few years ago started a campaign to get women to upload videos to facebook of themselves wetting their pants in solidarity with some made up charity or other, and quite a few did it apparently.

peyrole
peyrole
5 years ago

There is a delicious irony about these apps. If this is the way governments think they are going to control their populations, then thankfully they are sadly mistaken. Every time a new one is produced it takes approx 24 hrs before a steady stream of replicas are available. Unless the ‘Gestapo/Stasi’ is resurected ( and that of course is always possible) , these systems are impossible to police.

Lucan Grey
Lucan Grey
5 years ago

Where’s the details of the number of people who have developed Covid within the ten days?

Surely after all this time we should have hard data about whether there is any point to this ritual.

Julian
Julian
5 years ago
Reply to  Lucan Grey

As with so much else it’s clear that TPTB have no interest in actually useful information
It’s all theatre

Jo Starlin
Jo Starlin
5 years ago

Reading Toby’s Spectator article about his experiences at Wembley last Sunday. Seems the hordes who forced entry through the outer barriers were grabbing the phones of ticket holders to gain entry to the turnstiles and claim their seats. A taste of things to come?

peyrole
peyrole
5 years ago
Reply to  Jo Starlin

This article from the Times ( hope it can be read) is the best description I have seen. Its quite a long read.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-i-got-caught-up-in-the-wembley-invasion-at-the-euro-2020-final-8vlnfc97f

Jo Starlin
Jo Starlin
5 years ago
Reply to  peyrole

Thanks, did the free trial to read it (must remember to cancel as I loathe the Times). The shiny vax/test/ticket apps didn’t work too well did they?

Arfur Mo
Arfur Mo
5 years ago
Reply to  Jo Starlin

<cough>Hack & Trace</cough>

https://hack-and-trace.me/

Bella Donna
Bella Donna
5 years ago

“King’s College London scientists estimated 33,118 people were catching the virus daily in the week ending July 10 — compared to 33,723 in the previous seven-day spell. 
But 47 per cent are now among those who have received at least one dose of the Covid vaccine, surging upwards from 25 per cent at the start of June. 
This does not mean the jabs do not work. Scientists have always been honest that they are not perfect and millions will still be vulnerable to infection even after both doses.
Professor Tim Spector, who leads the study run with health-technology company ZOE, said the shift in trends was likely because the virus was ‘running out’ of non-jabbed Britons to infect, with nearly 90 per cent of adults now jabbed with at least one dose.”

I have highlighted the sentences I think are the most incredulous in that article. The scientists have always been honest (LOL) and the virus was running out of non jabbed Britons so was reinfecting ?? How can you take this seriously FGS!

Jo Starlin
Jo Starlin
5 years ago
Reply to  Bella Donna

I’d have thought the completely arbitrary, made up figures of how many people are catching it every day are just as preposterous.

Lucan Grey
Lucan Grey
5 years ago
Reply to  Bella Donna

“How can you take this seriously FGS!”

It’s called “Mathematics”. Specifically the branch called “statistics”.

The reason you exist at all is due the to law of large numbers. A somewhat smaller effect is happening with viral infections.

Scale it down to infections per group and you’ll see the true effect. Both journalists and the nefarious are swapping percentages and absolute numbers around to have maximum impact for persuasion purposes.

If the country is gripped with anything it is an epidemic of propaganda.

huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
5 years ago
Reply to  Bella Donna

Thanks. Made me smile – “running out of non-jabbed.”

Duckin hell. Have they no shame?

MadJock1
MadJock1
5 years ago
Reply to  Bella Donna

All you need to consider are the words “health-technology company ZOE” to be deeply suspicious of any statistics coming from this guy. He has been, and remains, in this scam for the same reason as most of its perpetrators – MONEY AND INFLUENCE

misslawbore
misslawbore
5 years ago
Reply to  Bella Donna

I agree this is a total nonsense statement. I lost faith in Tim Spector many months ago when it became clear that he was espousing the government agenda

David101
David101
5 years ago

And this is when only 5 million out of a population of 67 million have even downloaded the app – so imagine if everybody had downloaded it: 67 / 5 = 13.4. 13.4 * 520,194 = 6,970,599. That is nearly 7 million people that would be pinged by the app in a week if everybody had it! In just over two months, nearly the entire population would have been told to isolate at some point.

The worrying thing is, the app had in fact been recommended to… everybody!

Brett_McS
Brett_McS
5 years ago
Reply to  David101

The network effect when enough people have the app would mean that everyone would end up being pinged all the time. It’s the Kevin Bacon game played out.

TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
5 years ago

Try wading through this horseshit of lies…

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-07-view-covid-vaccine-safety-efficacy.html

I reckon about 1 lie per paragraph.

MizakeTheMizan
MizakeTheMizan
5 years ago

Never had the App on my phone. Never worn a mask. Never been tested. Never been vaccinated. And never will.

Lucan Grey
Lucan Grey
5 years ago
Reply to  MizakeTheMizan

Like the Puritans of old, we are obsessed with the fact that others might not be as they seem, with hypocrisy, with transparency. And like the Puritans, we are obsessed with parading our inner righteousness in moral testimonies for all to see, making public demonstrations of sincerity. We now call this virtue signalling — which is not about younger people being more self-righteous, but more about the need to demonstrate moral sincerity in a context where so many of the traditional mechanisms for establishing it have collapsed.

https://unherd.com/2021/07/our-politicians-deserve-to-be-mocked/

twi5ted
twi5ted
5 years ago

I would hazard a guess the sensitivity / range of the geo-location has been increased as we approach 19 Jul. Likewise the amplification on the pcr will be increased to build positive outcomes. What reassurance do we have these secret variables are not being manipulated as the high number of tests are not feeding into excess deaths so something smells very fishy.

Hopeless
Hopeless
5 years ago
Reply to  twi5ted

It’s as easy to tweak app parameters as it is for Whitty to produce fake graphs or Ferguson to invent fallacious models.

misslawbore
misslawbore
5 years ago
Reply to  twi5ted

None whatsoever

alw
alw
5 years ago

It’s only downloaded by skivers who want time off work. So much of this Covid nonsense is a charter for criminals.

Julian
Julian
5 years ago
Reply to  alw

I beg to differ. I know people who have downloaded it who are neither skivers nor criminals. They think that by having it they are doing the right thing. I also suspect some workplaces insist on it, though not sure how they’d check.

KidFury
KidFury
5 years ago
Reply to  Julian

And this is the crux of it. Some people want to “do the right thing”, follow the rules, be good citizens. Yesterday i was somewhere with lots of people(funeral and wake) and someone was saying how they left their phone at home as they are going to Silverstone on the weekend and didn’t want to get alerted and have to miss it. I said why do you have the app? They said “we need everyone to do their bit, and we should all have the app”.

No idea what to even say to that.

matt81
matt81
5 years ago
Reply to  KidFury

“We need everyone to do their bit, except you when it might inconvenience you?”

misslawbore
misslawbore
5 years ago
Reply to  matt81

Good answer to a hypocrite

Julian
Julian
5 years ago
Reply to  KidFury

Lots of people I know have broken some rules but supported the narrative and the lockdowns
“But we’ve been sensible” they say, not realistic that there are different versions of sensible and that’s the point of rules

misslawbore
misslawbore
5 years ago
Reply to  Julian

It’s the British way of muddling through a difficult situation lol

Jaguarpig
Jaguarpig
5 years ago
Reply to  KidFury

You dizzy twat.

misslawbore
misslawbore
5 years ago
Reply to  Julian

I know people like that too. They are the backbone of Britain in a war situation, in this one though they are the unwitting enemy because of ignorance

Rowan
Rowan
5 years ago

Government still crashing the economy. Things still going to plan.

realarthurdent
realarthurdent
5 years ago

I work in IT. The IT world is full of people for whom IT is the solution to everything. In fact one of the biggest issues I face in my daily job is that technology enthusiasts are constantly providing solutions for problems which don’t exist. They can’t imagine a world where not everyone has the latest most expensive iPhone, is surrounded by the latest technology and is desperate for more “apps”.

Track and trace was doomed to failure from the very beginning – it suffers from technology failings, it suffers from “human factors” failings, it was rolled out far too late (when the virus was already widespread) to make any difference. Not everyone has a mobile phone, not everyone has a mobile phone capable of running the app, not everyone downloads the app, the policing of the “paper alternative” to the app is non-existent (and policing it properly is in the hands of people whose businesses will suffer if they police it properly).

It’s exactly the sort of solution you get when IT-obsessed people and the bureaucrats of central government get together. A complete 24 carat clusterfuck.

I’m amazed it has survived this long. It looks like even the people… Read more »

Kat
Kat
5 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

How do you think the vaccine passport scheme will fair? My only hope is that something will gum up the works and that it will fail, like track and trace. What do you think?

realarthurdent
realarthurdent
5 years ago
Reply to  Kat

If they only started developing it late last year, I think it will be quite some time before they even get the technology working properly and deployed where it is needed. Then there is the problem of getting a couple of hundred global governments to agree on the requirements, policies etc. and keeping them updated with different vaccine developments etc.

I don’t see it working smoothly everywhere for many years, personally. That’s even before we get to the levels of public resistance to it in many countries.

Kat
Kat
5 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

Thank you. It’s good to hear from someone who actually knows what is involved. We only seem to hear from politicians like Tony Blair who didn’t even know how to send emails when he first started opining about ID cards, back in the early 2000s.

Bella Donna
Bella Donna
5 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

We are governed by people who have never had a job in the private sector, this is the downside to public sector workers.

Niborxof
Niborxof
5 years ago
Reply to  Bella Donna

They now subcontract to the likes of palantir who are far too efficient to thin nit won’t work effectively. Sadly.

miketa1957
miketa1957
5 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

Another IT guy here. Can confirm that the IT world thinks IT is always the solution.

realarthurdent
realarthurdent
5 years ago
Reply to  miketa1957

I suppose it’s natural that you want to create more business solutions for your company or industry. But IT isn’t always the answer. It’s a bit like the old saying “when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.

tom171uk
tom171uk
5 years ago
Reply to  miketa1957

Remember how we saved the world from the Millennium Bug? No planes fell out of the sky on my watch. 🙂

Lucan Grey
Lucan Grey
5 years ago
Reply to  tom171uk

Remember how we saved the world from the Millennium Bug? 

I remember it well. I cleared my inbox while writing the biggest invoice I’ll ever write in my life.

All safe in the knowledge that absolutely nothing would happen.

Jo Starlin
Jo Starlin
5 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

A bit like the pharma industry thinking more drugs are the answer to everything.

tom171uk
tom171uk
5 years ago
Reply to  Jo Starlin

And governments thinking that more government is the answer to everything.

TheTartanEagle
TheTartanEagle
5 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

I don’t work in IT, but my life is blighted more and more by the IT systems they thrust upon us. Nothing ever works as advertised. Trying to access the bloody document I am trying to read has become more and more onerous, to the detriment of the real job, ie applying considerable technical and specialist skills to assess the contents of the document. Training courses in new systems? Don’t make me laugh. Never, in a couple of decades. I’d say 80% of my effort now goes into IT workarounds, rather than the technical aspects of the real work. It’s feckin’ tragic.

Why should an average person be required to carry hundreds of pounds worth of technology with them, plus a charger, plus subscriptions, plus maintain secure emails…… Etc etc just to go about normal daily business. And when you get older and need glasses to see the screen, and when your fingers are work hardened, it all becomes high workload and error ridden.

David101
David101
5 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

A further irony is that by the time the tech is sufficiently developed to operate effectively and practically for the population of an entire country, it will have out-lived its usefulness. Not that ever really had any, or at least not for its stated purpose.

Or is this app the thin end of a very insidious wedge that is intended to act in perpetuity to find reasons to make people isolate on a regular basis. That would only require the slightest tweak of the parameters of the software to accomplish. For example, it currently instructs a person to isolate if the phone app has sensed a close proximity to the phone carried by someone who has tested positive for Covid. It would require the alteration of only a few lines of code to make it respond to the detection of positive tests for other conditions as well as this.
This is why all these things set a dangerous precedent and must be resisted en-masse.

chris c
chris c
5 years ago
Reply to  David101

I was told “Exponential Rounding” would be the solution to all my problems. However the idiots were Exponential Rounding on the wrong numbers. I had to design some special printouts so a colleague and I could go in and tweak a load of numbers before the MRP was run.

My hope is that the same sort of idiots design the vax passports. They already did the track and trace.

GCarty80
GCarty80
5 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

Track and trace worked very well in South Korea: what made the difference there?

Was it down to a society regimented in response to the existential military threat posed by North Korea, and which had been scared really badly by MERS and realizing the next novel coronavirus might be far more transmissible?

misslawbore
misslawbore
5 years ago
Reply to  GCarty80

My son worked in S Korea as a teacher for 15 years. They are totalitarian with their restrictions and lockdowns as you might expect. He is home again now and does not want to return despite his Korean partner being there. A reason could be that East Asians don’t get Covid because of their ancient Denisovan DNA. DNA is responsible for many human differences. I just read The World Before Us on this. A fascinating book

GCarty80
GCarty80
5 years ago
Reply to  misslawbore

Has South Korea had any actual lockdowns (as opposed to just using an Orwellian-level track-and-trace system: my question was more why they accept such a system while Westerners don’t)?

I discount any genetic explanation for the low death rates in Asia: aren’t there enough Westerners of East Asian ancestry that we’d have noticed very quickly if they were less vulnerable to Covid than the white or black populations…

misslawbore
misslawbore
5 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

Great comment

Arfur Mo
Arfur Mo
5 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

“I’m amazed it has survived this long”

I’m not. There are Big Bucks to be made from it.

Sandra Barwick
Sandra Barwick
5 years ago

De Piffle Johnson continuing to work hard here to destroy the British economy.

huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
5 years ago
Reply to  Sandra Barwick

Yes. I think it will rank among his biggest achievements.

Margaret
Margaret
5 years ago

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/ministers-secretly-part-jail-free-181923081.html

All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.

steve_w
steve_w
5 years ago

“The Australian state of Victoria – home to the country’s second largest city Melbourne – is set to enter a snap lockdown late on Thursday, after it recorded two more local cases of the virus.

The latest outbreak brings the total number of virus cases there to 18.

This is the fifth lockdown Victoria has experienced since the pandemic began and will last until Tuesday.

It means that about 40% of Australia’s population is now under a stay-at-home order.”

Lol! I thought if you did a lockdown properly you only have to do it once. I think Devi Sridhar told me! 5th hard lockdown!

wendy
wendy
5 years ago
Reply to  steve_w

Oh the joys of zero covid!!!

GCarty80
GCarty80
5 years ago
Reply to  steve_w

The lockdowns in Australia and New Zealand this year have resulted from breaches in their hotel quarantine. However, since those countries have already banned almost all non-citizens from entering (even with hotel quarantine), doesn’t that suggest there’s an logical endpoint for them even without immunity?

Once they’ve repatriated their last citizen abroad, couldn’t they hermetically seal the borders, so that there is absolutely no way that the virus can get back in and prompt any more lockdowns?

At least until the year 2234 when the 23rd-century equivalent of Commodore Perry’s gunboats shows up. 😉

Hugh
Hugh
5 years ago
Reply to  GCarty80

How long does it take for this to have catastrophic effects on their immune system? Like that island that can’t have any outsiders visiting?

Carmen B
Carmen B
5 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

There are still plenty of people coming and going – we’re not completely cut off. I have no doubt KungFlu was loose in Australia before our borders were “shut” and I simply don’t believe our glorious health authorities have managed to track down every person who was ever infected. The idea that the resumption of mass travel would result in awful health consequences for the population doesn’t seem to me to be accurate.

GCarty80
GCarty80
5 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

While it is true that the Native Americans were all-but-exterminated by European diseases, they were cursed not just by their geographic isolation but also by an extremely small ancestral gene pool: about 70 individuals IIRC?

Emerald Fox
Emerald Fox
5 years ago
Reply to  GCarty80

Australia is just another province of China now. Same with New Zealand and the horse-faced bitch they call Prime Minister. They are alone down there. Expect no help from them.

Newman20
Newman20
5 years ago
Reply to  steve_w

18 out of a population of more than 5 million.

I would suggest that the response is somewhat disproportionate to the threat.

What has happened to the larrakin Australian? There seem to be a majority of wowsers now.

BJs Brain is Missing
BJs Brain is Missing
5 years ago

Got rid of my smartphone… At what point will people, and all sectors of society, realise that track and trace, and the smartphone app culture will cripple everything?

By the way, is that Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick, or Communist Secretary Robert Jenrick?

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