Not necessarily. I couldn’t say off the top of my head what the age of the youngest person in the world to die from COVID-19 is but it is certainly less than 68. [citation needed] 
It is true of course that the majority of deaths from COVID-19 are in older people. [citation needed]
Looks like I can’t keep editing that post from earlier.
But since there are people who cared about this more than I did (because development seemed to be going nowhere and I’d disabled google play services a while ago anyway),
There’s a convenient wikipedia article about this which has more information than is reasonable to put in a forum post anyway.
Of note, installing it is mandatory in Quatar and Singapore (at least), and there are nine competing standards, meaning any app you can actually expect to work needs to incorporate every single standard people came up with for attempting something like this, all at once.
Which is unexpected. When I first heard of this I thought it was google putting its foot down and deciding what the standard would be for everyone.
you mean to say PLAN-demic 
what are your sources and what OTHER alternative sources have you consulted and compared to draw SUCH conclusions ?
So does that mean that it is illegal to use a Linux phone (or a Windows phone) in those countries?
Read https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935120307854 specifically Section 3.5 (Table 4).
You will see that I am specifically referring to young COVID patients who are without comorbidities i.e. without underlying pre-existing conditions that make them unusually susceptible either to illnesses generally or to respiratory illnesses specifically (or even who could be said to have died from their pre-existing conditions rather than from COVID).
In other words, if you are young and healthy, you can still die from COVID.
If you are young and healthy and you don’t die from COVID, you can still give COVID to your older friends or relatives who do go on to die from COVID. That’s not, I think, something that anyone would want on their conscience.
So … all up … be sensible, take the recommended precautions and don’t get COVID in the first place.
why is no one talking about the fact that “it” has NOT been PROPERLY isolated ? … and this bullshit PCR tests for genetic material … blow it up and voila - you get MORE “results”
everything just screams “we don’t know what we’re doing …”
I don’t know but I doubt it. It’s easier to enforce the usage of an application (e.g. by turning away those who don’t have it) than to take a handheld object away from someone. Unless there’s some weird limit on phone ownership (like your device must be registered to you and you can only register one phone at a time). But even then I suppose you could dual boot an Android port to get around that provided the government ID/contact tracing app doesn’t refuse to work without hardware support on the SoC.
Also, I found a better source for what apps are mandatory where, as well as how invasive each is. But it only focuses on apps chosen by national governments.
For those in “voluntary” countries I would be more concerned with businesses refusing to let you in without these apps. There is pressure to do that. Employers might be obliged to provide a phone if they mandate it (but that’s conjecture based on certain decisions I know were made for CMMC multi factor authentication requirements).
That could lead to another related question: Is it illegal not to own a smartphone?
There are various classes of people who will have a problem if it becomes mandatory to install some app
As you say, “illegality” is only one tool of coercion. Letting business do the government’s dirty work is another. Similar pressure from the government itself is another.
yeah but government is just another KIND of business … if WE pay for it and get an invoice back then that means that SERVICES have been rendered … at least on paper
what i do NOT like is to PAY for something that MOST people in the world SEEM to have a problem with …
Since Apple and Google try to roll out Contact Tracing without an app, by mainline Google Playstore or Apple Support (not sure about old phones, they may be excluded).
But for rooted Lineageos Phones. You can use some googlefree one with a microg.org enhanced Build and it will support some Tracing Apps too. So we have Lineageos-microG Builds which work with some tracing apps or the default Usage by Google/Apple.
Too many posts to get a grip on the latest spyware, AKA Tracing “app” updates but as I read, Google/Apple NEW phones (AKA leash) come with the tracing burned in - no off switch. It’s on, like it or not. And people I have spoken to think the new phones with embedded stalker (old phones) will beep or warn them somehow if they are near a infected person. Duh! (Facebookies?)
It is my opinion that in time, the ‘app’ will be extended to allow - - - drum roll please - ‘law enforcement’ to trace where someone has been; like the liqueur store that was just robbed. The ‘app’ lets the leash-holder (Google/Apple) grab a area off a map, and display names of all those little red dots on the map - - so close to that store. The police then have ‘grounds to believe (anything that fits)’ and one is whisked away to prove they are not guilty, including trials via the usual courts of social media.
If cell towers ping your phone every 3 seconds now, and triangulation is no longer a way of zeroing in on a perp, then isn’t the chip/app just a enhancement to have YOU record EXACTLY where you’ve been, and for how long instead of bastardizing cell towers and clouds’ to map your travels?
All the more reason to get PURISM stuff. But, hiding from tracing via phones with tracing may become ‘hazardous for the general public’ and punishable if not used, cracked, or otherwise disabled.
Mark my words young’uns - Big Bro is already here and its minions Google, Apple and ilk et alia are already *SMIRCing up a storm and is here to stay.
~s~
*Stalk, Monitor, Inject, Record, and Control.
I think more accurately phones with the latest software (whether strictly new or not) come with tracing burned in i.e. the capability is present in the core operating system - no off switch for the capability (can’t deinstall / disable) but
That is nowhere near as good as a Librem 5, where (of course) the software can be verified so even a software “off” switch can be verified but you also have a hardware “off” switch and for the truly paranoid you can remove the WiFi/BT card; and you choose whether or not to install tracing software in the first place (in the unlikely event that it is available for the Librem 5).
Is it possible that governments will abuse this tracing functionality now or in the future? Yes. It may depend in part on where a customer lives. Some governments are more enthusiastic tech abusers.
However this kind of contact tracing is only one piece of the tracking puzzle. Cell tower tracking is another piece, as you mention. On the COVID front, even QR code sign-in is a piece.
we’re very close to preCrime no doubt about it … now where to get myself a pair of preCogs ? 
also keep an eye out for A and G removing the usb connector as that might imply that they’re very close to forcing you to EXCLUSIVELY use their radio communications to interact with other peripherals …
Though, in the end, the tracing is only tracking the phone, not the person. If the person wishes, they could have the phone surgically removed from their hand and leave it at home - the phone, not the hand. Unless of course they don’t want to be putting the ‘public’ at great risk, then they should carry the leash with them.
Since I do not own a phone and I will not buy any on the market except perhaps Purism stuff, and tell people “I don’t have a smart phone - not even a clever one”, I am often met with that ‘deer in the headlights’ stare when I tell them. The comments from most people makes me feel confident that I will survive a EMP blast along with any nuclear winter and may have their food, and water and just become another surviving phoneless person
~s~
i have a clever one but i use it ONLY as a dumb one and NOT because i NEED to but because i WANT to …
There’s been a recent development that I felt made it worth bumping this topic for.
So after all this time, and now that the decided-upon solution to the problem has been rolled out to most people theoretically rendering this moot, residents of the state of Massachusetts are finding that the MassNotify app has been installed on their phones without their knowledge or consent. According to some screenshots that were supposedly from earlier today (going off the filenames on the site I found them on), the play store rating, was 1.3 stars (I guess until google started deleting those reviews, it’s 4 now!).
Edit:
Although it looks like maybe people are only having it auto-download if they had the “exposure notifications” turned on. I thought that was supposed to be not enabled by default (I wouldn’t know, my phones don’t have google services), but I could see second hand phones, or new phones purchased after this started, having it on by default.
Can you de-install the MassNotify app?
(A rather unfortunate app name. They might as well call it MassSurveillance.)
I always thought of cell phones as being MassHypnosis devices with leashes called ‘apps’.
Why would people spend so much money on a leash I’ll never know.
/s\
Also, given that the Exposure Notification System(ENS) binary is pushed to your phone, and subsequent updates, and settings/config possibly chnaged on an update; even if we could see the source that they show us, they can push any subsequent changes at any time. They can enable(opt-in) ENS on your behalf behind your back without your permission.
To control what comes in to a L5, is it possible to use the firewall settings and block all of Google’s incoming anythings? And, to set what is allowed, all else can pound sand?
ICYMI: FLoC is Dead. But Topics Won’t Fix Google’s Ad Targeting Problems. [protocol.com]
Google is replacing “FLoC” with “Topics” as its tracking method in Chrome but privacy advocates aren’t fans of it (neither are we)…DuckDuck news Feb 2, 2022.
I think cell renters are losing the right-to-privacy battle. Google’s actions has made it clear it will devour all privacy barriers and we’ll get what they want us to have whether we like it or not. In time, we will like it. Too many already do.
~s
