The Government of Canada today officially pulled the plug on the federal COVID Alert app for iOS and Android.
“Following a thorough review of COVID Alert, the Government of Canada has decommissioned the application effective today, June 17, 2022,” Health Canada said in a statement. “The exposure notification service is disabled and users can delete the app from their devices.”
COVID Alert used the COVID-19 exposure alert API co-developed by Apple and Google to notify users if they came into close proximity with anyone who had tested positive for the illness in the last 14 days. The app did so without storing any location data or collecting sensitive personal information.
The news comes after several reports of COVID Alert hitting end-of-life sometime this week surfaced on Monday. With PCR testing on a downtrend across Canada, COVID Alert isn’t actually being used all that much and supporting it no longer makes any sense.
COVID Alert launched in July 2020 but never managed to make its way onto enough devices to be effective.
According to the COVID Alert app dashboard, the app amassed 6,893,423 downloads as of February 1, 2022. Only nine provinces and territories actually adopted the app, with several jurisdictions opting instead to create their own alternatives to the federal contract tracing solution. A total of only 57,704 one-time keys were ever issued to be used within the app.
As of February, the federal government had spent $21 million in taxpayer dollars on the COVID Alert app. In return, the app sent 371,000 notifications over its lifetime. COVID Alert was reportedly only used 869 times in November 2021.
What’s more, a previous report indicated the government had already abandoned COVID Alert by December 2021. However, it simply took the feds until now to take the app out of circulation.
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Given their unwillingness to update the parameters as the understanding of covid evolved, they clearly had no expectation that it would be useful. The 2m/15 minutes parameters were implemented back when Tam and Trudeau were claiming droplets and no aerosol spread. As understanding that it was airborne developed and as omicron completely demolished their previous fiction and they still refused to acknowledge the newer understanding by updating how the app worked, they effectively admitted that it was all theatre.
Then explain to me how even right now today sickos in triple masks ask me to stay 2 meters away from them in line? Happened to me yesterday at a post office.
PTSD and conditioned fear.
They were given bad info for 2 years, conditioned to be afraid of people and being in public and told they were being heroic if they followed arbitrary rules obediently. That kind of mind-F is going to be more difficult for some to cope with than others.
If someone wanted to run an experiment to see how effectively they could mentally and emotionally break people at a population level, they no longer need to experiment. Actually, since the Canadian military ran an effective psy-op to influence the behaviour of the Canadian populace during covid, I guess someone already did.
Source for the claim on Canadian military psy-op?
CBC, Ottawa citizen.
This was back in 2020. They ran the ops for months after ostensibly being ordered to shut them down.
Remember those irrational and unusually negative feelings some had towards the trucker convoy? Or how so many people strangely simply accepted a suspension of civil liberties and constitutional rights? You were being conditioned 2 years beforehand to have exactly that response. By the military.
Sound familiar? Think it was limited to just the military? Or do you accept Trudeau at his word when he said the covid response would be a whole of government operation? We’ve been manipulated by our government during the pandemic to be obedient and to shame those that would dare to even question them. Worked better than they could ever have hoped.
Thanks for the source. I don’t see from what you posted that it was anything more than the plan. Any confirmation on if and to what extent they acted on that plan? I would be curious to see what outlets of mass communication army had on their disposal to disseminate the influence in shaping the public sentiment. Also, it takes a lot more for something to reach the criteria of being a psy-op and only after first surpasses the low levels of ordinary lies and then propaganda in the media.
To your question, I don’t trust any politician at their word. In fact, there were just one or two politicians I would shake hands with. Politics in general attracts the kind of people that is not my favourite.
I wasn’t really asking if you trust politicians. I asked if you recognized the specific manipulations and behaviours and opinions they were crafting as being similar to what we’ve all experienced over the last 2.5 years. Very specific conditioned reactions and behaviours that had previously been alien to Canadians.
It went past planning and into execution. Hard to find specific details on what activities were implemented before being formally shuttered, but it was an active, operationalized campaign against Canadians.
Not unexpected from a government that had previously employed people associated with the Cambridge Analytica scandal to get elected using similar techniques.
Sorry, you specifically asked “do you accept Trudeau at his word?”, so I was replying to that. Otherwise, I clearly see at least some of the manipulation that goes on on a daily basis but that is not something specific to just one ruling party or one specific political leaning. They all do it and depending on one’s political bias it appears more apparent when it is coming from the other side of the isle.
I’m not sure that some feelings and attitudes provoked by what was going on in Ottawa could be considered alien to Canadians. Some, although negative towards truckers, were not un-Canadian and more so, they were not entirely baseless and undeserved. If there were some some attempts to capitalize on them and to amplify them? Probably. But there were also open attempts to diminish the negative aspects of the protest and often falsely paint some of them as heroes. So it goes both ways.
My point is that I don’t want to dismiss any organized attempts at manipulating the population by saying everyone is doing it. That’s an ugly thing no matter the side it is coming from. I just don’t share your impression how insidious and malevolent it was in this case.
I see. My question wasn’t so much whether you trust him, but was meant to see whether you thought the information operations against Canadians were limited to out military or if Justin used all of government, since he said his covid response, of which this was a part, would be all of gov.
The part about the negative feelings towards the truckers wasn’t that it was amplified. It was pre-planted and triggered on cue. An entirely peaceful demonstration by working class people concerned about their job requirements and conditions. Usually, the urban, white elites would drop to their knees to support such a movement. But in this case, they reverted to seeing them all as deplorables. They reacted exactly as the military/government operations planned and programmed them to, even against their usual behaviours. Coincidence?
deleted! im gonna have to tell my kids about this pandemic and they’re gonna hear about the app