Knowing

Some people say that reducing the sensitivity of the NHS contact-tracking app is necessary to keep people using it.

This is rubbish.

There are two things the app does:

• it gives you an indication that you may have been exposed to CV19;
• it tells you what you should do if so.

The virus does not care how sensitive the app is: it does not magically become less likely to infect you because the app has been made less sensitive. Lowering the sensitivity of the app simply reduces the amount of knowledge its users have about how likely they are to be infected. This is the government forcing everyone to close their eyes and say 'la la la' rather than listen to bad news.

But the app does two things: as well as telling you whether you may have been exposed it tells you what you should do in that case. Perhaps, instead of telling you what to do it could simply give you the information you need and advise you on what you should do. You would not, for instance, be required to self-isolate unless you decided that you cared about other people and chose to do so, but you would also not be deprived of the information you needed to make that decision.

A government which was in favour of individual liberty and responsibility would surely support such an approach. Instead the johnsonists treat people as cattle to be herded into the abattoir, where they can be be slaughtered for profit.