How humans are beating machines in the effort to fight the spread of COVID-19
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Last week I wrote about a set of predictions that I got spectacularly wrong. Today, to soothe my fragile ego, let's talk about a case where I was a closer to the mark.
In April, after talking with public health experts, I wrote about why Bluetooth-based approaches to finding new cases of COVID-19 seemed likely to fall short. A combination of human behaviors and technical challenges seemed likely to limit the effectiveness of a pandemic response scheme that relied on our phones passively pinging each other wherever we went. At the same time, I wrote, a more old-fashioned approach - using human beings to make phone calls and identify people who may have been exposed to the disease - seemed much more promising.
Somewhat hilariously, at...