This article is a good fanciful laugh if you like a rewrite of history. Let's look a bit closer...
Turns out app doesn't work on iPhones! Korski says you would have only found this out after extensive testing. Does this stand up? No ...
... not only was it widely known and discussed (I flagged it by email on 11 April), but *before the Isle of Wight study*, @TheRegister ran an article detailing the problem theregister.com/2020/05/05/uk_…. And not only that...
This issue was already detailed and reproduced on GitHub by volunteers within 24 hours of the NHS app code being open sourcd, which they only did the day after Isle of Wight tests started. Didn't need field tests to see this was a problem. github.com/nhsx/COVID-19-…
While Hancock states this was happening, DHSC and NHSX denied it to every journalist. Who was right? Furthermore, developer versions of the API were around in April.
The common statement that NHSX was first, then others followed, also deserves more scrutiny. Apple/Google based their system off of the pan-European research project DP-3T, which I am involved in, which also included UK academics who were not asked to advise. Plenty of lead time.
How about the code for the Swiss app, which was open sourced before NHSX's, with the protocol released and scrutinised before NHSX even announced the idea of an app, and involved UK universities in its conception?
This is not the decentralised-centralised debate. It's about the specific technical hurdle that NHSX fell over in the end. That was alerted to them from multiple angles in early April onwards, and was not taken seriously. And so, predictably, they fell over it.
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