Death of the NHS Covid Pingdemic App

The app responsible for England’s hated ‘pingdemic’ is on the brink of death, according to experts. NHS data showed usage is up to 180 times lower than it was. MailOnline has more.

At the peak of its powers in summer, there were as many as 14.5million check-ins a week, the equivalent of around one in four people scanning a barcode once.

Yet latest figures reveal just 220,000 people used the QR-code software to sign in at pubs, restaurants and other venues in the week ending October 27, meaning usage has plummeted 60-fold nationally.

But MailOnline analysis of the NHS data shows the drop was even starker in parts of the country. Just 557 check-ins were made in Liverpool during the final week of October, compared to around 100,000 in June. Manchester and Wandsworth also saw massive drops.

Scientists today called on ministers to ‘junk’ the app for good or encourage people to use it more, warning it was now only having an ‘at best’ minimal impact on the spread of the virus.

The software was part of the £37 billion Test and Trace, which MPs labelled an “eye-watering” waste of taxpayers’ money that “did not achieve” its main objective of putting the lid on the spread of the virus. It also played a huge role in the country’s ‘pingdemic’, urging hundreds of thousands of workers to quarantine at home, leaving shelves empty and rubbish piled high in the streets.

Professor Kevin McConway, a statistician at the Open University, argued it was likely even fewer people were using the app, which cost £35 million to develop, than the figures suggested because the few still plugged in were likely using it to check-in to more than one venue a week.

He warned that checking into venues using the software was “perhaps not far off being dead”.

Worth reading in full.

Fantastic news!

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karenovirus
4 years ago

Never downloaded it so I wouldn’t know.

Aleajactaest
4 years ago
Reply to  karenovirus

Yep, same here. Never downloaded it, never signed in anywhere, ever. No mask, no testing, no tracing, no jibby jabs.

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  Aleajactaest

Didn’t download it, never signed in anywhere except under false pretences (pubs, gastropubs etc.).
Wear a mask in healthcare locations only.
Tested as inpatient in hospital (first few times when all drugged up with morphine substitute).
Never been traced or harassed by Track’n’Trace.
Took first 2 jabs as outlined previously but not out of fear of Covid, my own convenience but won’t be getting the booster.

So not a Purist but I signed up to Lockdownsceptics, not Vaccinesceptics.

Shoot me after the revolution but until then Solidarity Rules.

AN other lockdown sceptic
AN other lockdown sceptic
4 years ago
Reply to  Aleajactaest

Snap 🙂

Smelly Melly
4 years ago
Reply to  karenovirus

Never downloaded it and blocked the phone number they use. (You cannot believe that they spent billions developing this “world beating” app and used 1 phone number).

Mark
4 years ago

Well, we’ve still got the masks as idiot-detectors, so the big brother app won’t be missed.

JayBee
4 years ago

The daily piece of good news…

cornubian
4 years ago

The principle of this criminal regime being able to track and record your every movement will never be allowed to die. It will be transferred to the ‘covid pass’ movement license, which will in turn morph into the worldwide compulsory digital ID the globalist empire needs to implement its social credit system. Problem – Reaction – Solution.

Rogerborg
4 years ago
Reply to  cornubian

Indeed. I’m glad we can see this coming, but I’m not sure what we can do about the social credit score apps.

I mean, as a population, given how many will comply, as they did with Spy-n-Snitch, under the badly mistaken impression that it’ll be a temporary, limited form of despotism, rather than the end game that was planned all along.

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

It’s probably better knowing that is the endgame. As they reimposed lockdown this time last year disguised as Tiers, that is what was confusing me; Why?
Since it clearly had nothing to do with their been and gone turned out to be a bad flu ‘Pandemic’.

crisisgarden
4 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

This gets to the crux of it. If as you say technocratic rule is the objective, they would give up the vaxx requirement, wouldn’t they? They don’t actually need to inject anything into our bodies to implement this. Just give us a qr code and cbdc/wallet to buy things. Done. Except they really want to inject something into us. The question is why?
That’s why I think the whole thing is a tactic designed to cause a schism and social breakdown in order to disguise an economic meltdown. I think they’re driving the vaccines hard because they know it’s something a proportion of the population will never agree to (particularly in the US); I think the end game is civil war.

cornubian
4 years ago
Reply to  crisisgarden

Fomenting social breakdown, anarchy and societal collapse is part of the means by which the NWO commies implement their form of governance. Marxist theory – order out of chaos.

Hester
Hester
4 years ago
Reply to  crisisgarden

I agree it is the Marxist method,and also the Great Reset intention to rebuild or as in Boris Johnsons parrot phrase “build back better”. To build back you have to destroy first, and that is what they have been doing for the past 20 months. I do think there will be civil war in the States, the South against the North progressive states. However; that will not happen here or in Europe or Australia the people are too cowardly in the majority and will put up with anything, as long as they can have their Strictly, their couple of nights out a week and a holiday once a year they don’t even mind if its in their own country, and of course their cars, As long as they have those things you can do with them what you like.

maggie may
4 years ago
Reply to  Hester

But if they are not allowed to fill up their cars with petrol (while they still have an ICE car that is) because they have had their month’s quota according to the social credit app, maybe that will move them?

maggie may
4 years ago
Reply to  crisisgarden

I found this a bit difficult to read tbh but it’s pointing in the same direction

https://leftlockdownsceptics.com/2021/11/tyranny-by-health-emergency-or-the-dystopian-implosion-of-contemporary-capitalism

Milo
Milo
4 years ago
Reply to  maggie may

Yes – very difficult to read, but good article nonetheless. Wish more people could see through it like he does. Not a day goes by that I don’t think to myself that if we continue to engage in THEIR talk of “cases” and “deaths” we are just doing no more than naval gazing and playing Globocap’s game. This much I did understand without much difficulty: “We are therefore in the midst of a global geo-financial and geo-political mutation, one of those watershed moments that very rarely occur during one’s lifetime. In this respect, economic implosion and the exercise of biopower should be regarded as two sides of the same coin. The ongoing narrative based on cases and variants works as a smokescreen hatched by the perverse imagination of the elites and their behavioural psychology advisors. Their aim now is to normalise the state of exception in the hope that the people will accept their servitude spontaneously. At the moment, the asymmetric warfare by Virus is still the most effective tool in the hands of those presiding over our future. If, however, the pandemic bubble should continue to deflate, other politically expendable alibis will be made available by the emergency industry, from… Read more »

Proveritate
4 years ago
Reply to  cornubian

That’s right, it was only ever an interim solution on the way to a vaccine passport, a euphemistically-called ‘freedom pass’ or ‘opportunity pass’ (yes, they really do call them that in some countries – how Orwellian!), which would morph into digital ID. Strange, isn’t it, how rejection of ID cards was once a hill for Conservative MPs (including BJ) to die on. And what about coercion to take the vaccine? This is what Patricia Gibson (SNP) said last December: Indeed, the Scottish Government—and, I believe, the UK Government—have explicitly said that they will not utilise coercive measures to ensure compliance and increase vaccination rates…It certainly seems unlikely that businesses will be able to legally insist that those whom they employ must be vaccinated. And how about Nadhim Zahawi: Before I address some of those complexities, I will set out the facts. First, there are currently no plans to place restrictions on those who refuse to have a covid vaccination. As my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington reminded us, we have no plans to introduce so-called vaccine passporting.Mandating vaccinations is discriminatory and completely wrong, and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe and others, I urge businesses… Read more »

Sforzesca
Sforzesca
4 years ago
Reply to  Proveritate

Indeed.

One can only hope for a Nuremburg 2 for the bastards behind this.
If not in this world then surely the next. “I sit by the river and watch the corpses go by”.

Christ, it’s a long list and wait.

Superunknown
Superunknown
4 years ago

Money well spent, instead of wasting it on health care, infrastructure, education, or anything else that would have benefitted the nation….

Hester
Hester
4 years ago
Reply to  Superunknown

I wonder how many more hospital beds there are as a learning from Covid? I bet next to none.

Cristi.Neagu
4 years ago

It’s ok. It achieved its goal brilliantly, and then some.

Why are you looking at my comment like that? Oh, I get it. You thought the purpose of this app was contact tracing? No, no, no, my gullible friend. The purpose of the app was to shift a lot of money into some particular pockets. And as far as I can tell, a lot of money was shifted.

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  Cristi.Neagu

Someone here recently said they could have produced as good an app, or better, for a few hundred quid while WFH.

TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
4 years ago
Reply to  karenovirus

The Jab-Passport cert is an (unsigned) QR code of a base64 encoded (un-encrypted) JSON string detailing name jab1, jab2 etc.
So god knows how shite this track app is, i didn’t even put it in my android emulator to see how it works.

Aleajactaest
4 years ago

If love to know if you could “replicate” that jab passport cert TLWL, know what I mean, nudge nudge, wink wink….

Nice piece of freeware could come out of that

karenovirus
4 years ago

QR Code = Glorified barcode which I know a bit about since I was responsible for getting them for a company I worked for years ago.

Perhaps they thought using a bar code would put people off since it would be clear that we were being looked at like a tin of sardines in the supermarket.

rayc
rayc
4 years ago
Reply to  Cristi.Neagu

The perfect crime is a crime perpetrated by few on many or everyone. Because when you steal just a little bit from everyone, you achieve your goal as a criminal while minimizing the risk of prosecution and retribution – on the surface there are no victims. Of course, such crimes are easiest to pull off when you are (in cahoots with) the government – and they are also a big incentive for politicians to enter their profession.

TheGreenAcres
4 years ago

Had a look at the App when it came out but I rejected the T&C’s so unfortunately I couldn’t use it.

Rogerborg
4 years ago

It’s done its job well: funnelling £37 billion (with a b) to cronies, and prepping us for the social credit score apps.

Which, lest we forget, are already here, just not imposed by law yet inside England.

We’ll need to Save Our Christmas though, won’t we?

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

They have been using that figure of £37billion since it was set up, surely it will have incurred running costs unless it was a number picked out of thin air as a one off contract price?

PatrickF
PatrickF
4 years ago

One of the tools in the tool box, devised by tools and followed by tools.

snoozle
snoozle
4 years ago

At the peak of its powers in summer, there were as many as 14.5million check-ins a week, the equivalent of around one in four people scanning a barcode once. Thinking about it, though, people either use it or they don’t and so you can’t say 25% of the people used it once a week. Given that you probably go to many venues each week with a barcode, even including in my case my son’s football practice and many other such places. Let’s say, it’s more like 5% of the people were signing in 5 times a week. It’s likely that it was even less people signing in more. So, even at it’s peak, essentially no one was using it. I certainly never downloaded it as I and many people that I knew thought that it was stupid from the beginning. And to get into venues, all you had to do was tell the staff that you’d already done it whilst you were waiting for them to show up. Waste of thirty-seven billion pounds, which is coincidentally less than the 1.5% NI tax and dividend tax raise will bring in. Our brand spanking new tax won’t even pay for this atrocious… Read more »

TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
4 years ago
Reply to  snoozle

so an average of 24 transactions per second…

It’s not Amazon is it?

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  snoozle

At the peak of its powers in the summer people were using it hoping to skive off work having had 3 months to get used to it.

iandel
iandel
4 years ago

Billions of pounds wasted on a useless app – resources that could have been spent providing affordable homes. Doesn’t the phrase ”money for old rope” come to mind?

TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
4 years ago
Reply to  iandel

It “only” cost 35 million quid to develop this app..

although I can’t work out why it should’ve cost over 350K! if written in a sensible way.

iane
iane
4 years ago

Doubtless Whitty, Vallance and a host of Ministers with shiny new Mercs could explain!

Hopeless
4 years ago

A curse on this and “smartphones”. They are just spies in your pocket, and anyone who is fool enough to have one and then load this spyware on it needs a serious re-education in the nature of our new Surveillance State.

TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
4 years ago
Reply to  Hopeless

Absence is more apparent than polluted data and data pollution is more harmful

Aleajactaest
4 years ago
Reply to  Hopeless

That’s what Faraday pockets are for my friend….

Screenshot_20211105-115849_Brave.jpg
Anti_socialist
4 years ago
Reply to  Aleajactaest

Exactly what are they for? Your phone doesn’t work inside one, & once you take it out to use, they know everything about you, location, activity, contacts etc.

Mark
4 years ago
Reply to  Anti_socialist

Presumably so they don’t have the location info from during the intervening period.

crisisgarden
4 years ago
Reply to  Anti_socialist

Means you can’t be pinged (of course there are much easier alternatives such as turning off bluetooth or not having a mobile in the first place!)

Anti_socialist
4 years ago
Reply to  crisisgarden

Means no one can contact you either so why have a phone, if you want total privacy don’t have a phone & don’t use any form of digital coms. Otherwise, your activity is being tracked & recorded

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  Anti_socialist

Does that apply to my 10+ year old stupid Nokia which is my preferred device for phone and text contact?

Hopeless
4 years ago
Reply to  karenovirus

Any phone that connects to a phone tower or point is trackable. Turning a phone off doesn’t disable this either. Like PCs, phones have a sub-battery that maintains stored data. If you have a phone where you can remove the main battery (many phones now you can’t), you will likely find that taking out the main battery doesn’t lose your time and date settings, for example. In other words, they’re not stone dead.

Faraday cages will isolate a phone completely (a lead box works well), but when you take it out to use it, you’re back in the tracking/-able picture. Fine if you want to carry a phone as an emergency “just in case” thing, but nbg for normal use. The only way around it is to not have one of any sort, or leave it at home in its Faraday cage.

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  Hopeless

Thank you for that Hopeless, at the moment I have nothing to hide but when CCP Social Credit comes around who knows?

I recall a pre-covid conversation with a car passenger about how many devices were tracking my speed at any given time.
1. My phone #1
2. My phone #2
3. The work related app on my phone (employer liked to keep track).
4. My Tomtom (remember those, LOL).
6. Car central computer.
7. Passengers device(s).

Have I forgotten anything?

Hopeless
4 years ago
Reply to  karenovirus

Roadside/gantry cameras?

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  Hopeless

We didn’t include outside agency.

Anti_socialist
4 years ago
Reply to  karenovirus

If it’s connected to the network, you’re being surveyed! They will know your location(s), old phones aren’t capable of high encryption, so you’re more vulnerable to being hacked.

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  crisisgarden

Does Ping wait until you reconnect as with text messages?

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  Anti_socialist

I told recently about when I clicked ‘sign out of Google and delete all Google records on this device’.
It took ten minutes and I was wondering what had taken all that time to delete or if anything had been deleted at all.
Someone suggested my entire browsing and search history but that is still there.

The only thing that changed is that I had to sign into everywhere again, including here.
I’ll check about my location history when I get a chance.

Anti_socialist
4 years ago
Reply to  karenovirus

cookies! & other nefarious trackers.

rayc
rayc
4 years ago
Reply to  Aleajactaest

No, the solution is to use a good old landline and don’t carry around the damn bug with you.

Milo
Milo
4 years ago
Reply to  rayc

LANDLINE IS SOOOOO UNCOOL. But it is all I have.

I never fail yo enjoy the look on people’s faces when they ask for my mobile no and I tell them I don’t have one. And then there is the “but how on earth do you manage without one” question.

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  Hopeless

Remember the alarm caused when it appeared that the app had been automatically downloaded onto all smartphones but that turned out just to be just operating instructions for those idiots stupid enough to download the app itself.

rayc
rayc
4 years ago
Reply to  Hopeless

The only reason I have smartphone is banking and 2F authentication. Unfortunately, these are very serious reasons, and they are a crucial foundation of the global campaign to enslave humanity.

isobar
4 years ago

My wife and I have been to numerous venues over the past month and we certainly didn’t check in as we refused to down load the app on principle. But we haven’t seen anyone else check in either, not a single person.

Mark
4 years ago
Reply to  isobar

£37b well spent…

iane
iane
4 years ago
Reply to  Mark

Doubtless, Whitty, Vallance and a host of Ministers with shiny new Mercs would agree!

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  iane

They will be keeping low with the loot, Goodfellas style.

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  isobar

I had a rare visit to a gastropub with an old friend this week. No hint of signing in, no sanitizer; didn’t think about it at the time but not even staff wearing masks, certainly not customers.

TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
4 years ago
Reply to  karenovirus

I had to laugh in Sainburys recently, masked up people distancing in the queue to buy their ‘baccy.

bennyboy
bennyboy
4 years ago

Im double jabbed and i applied for a paper vacc cert a couple of months ago When they bring in the vaccine passport, i will say i dont have a smart phone and will use that. I wont be having a booster or flue jab. I think most places wont bother scanning it, so should be ok for the shops/ pub.I know i would have issues with international travel but will cross that bridge when i come to it.
Unintended consequences and all that, i think johnson has been badly damaged by the Patterson scandal, taking a private jet for a piss up with his mates, not a good look, and people not interested in politics are beginning to appreciate the one rule for them meme. My tax bill next year will be £450 higher and for what?. I think he will think hard about introducing the passports, but then again, its probably not his call.

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  bennyboy

Likewise double jabbed but they were still urging me to get 1st a month after. They blamed my GP Practice for poor record keeping, GP Practice sent me a pdf with full jab history which I forwarded to NHS Vaccine Central who lost it.
By then I had lost interest so did not pursue it further.
I have my QR code vax passport (never been asked for it even in hospital) which has to be renewed monthly, I expect that will be disabled once I decline to take their booster.

Readers can downtick if they like but they don’t know the circumstances, as we don’t know yours bennyboy, unless they read when I posted about it a couple of times in the past. Can’t be a*sed to do so again.

John001
John001
4 years ago
Reply to  karenovirus

In a country with two main parties and without PR, a decline in the governing party’s support is likely to mean more votes for an opposition which is clearly much worse … except that most of the Labour left voted in March against renewing the police state legislation (in other words, Jeremy Corbyn and Clive Lewis sided with David Davis and Desmond Swayne.)

All I hope for in 2024 or whenever it comes is a badly-hung parliament … I won’t make the obvious joke, you can if you want!

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  John001

Sorry John001, was that intended as a reply to me?
If so I don’t get your point but would agree that a hung or nearly hung parliament is the best thing we might hope for to get some kind of Opposition working again.

crisisgarden
4 years ago

The mere thought of installing it hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.

crisisgarden
4 years ago
Reply to  crisisgarden

When they announced they were developing such an app I got a Nokia 3310 on eBay.

Jo Starlin
4 years ago

What kind of weirdo ever used it in the first place?

CynicalRealist
4 years ago
Reply to  Jo Starlin

What kind of weirdo ever used it in the first place?

Covidians – here are loads of them out there. I know plenty and I’m sure you do too – they are often people who would have been expected to show a lot more common sense and to not believe all the shite that comes out of Westminster. Oddly, a lot of them previously regarded everything the government said with suspicion.

Milo
Milo
4 years ago
Reply to  Jo Starlin

unfortunately plenty of supposedly intelligent people I know used it, and then whinged pitifully when they got pinged and couldn’t go to work/go on holiday/had to self isolate/ missed out on family celebrations etc etc etc.

I know of one family who, on holiday in England, got pinged and had to self isolate for duration of entire holiday. I should have felt sorry for them but couldn’t find it within me to do so.

CoronanationStreet
CoronanationStreet
4 years ago

TRANSLATION:

The Track & Trace app isn’t needed anymore, as it’ll soon be replaced everywhere with a jab-only version.

rayc
rayc
4 years ago

Correct, the German version has evolved from being what the Track&Trace did into a vaxx-passport (enthusiastically endorsed by many of its foolish users).

Victoria
4 years ago

Yes the huge £ billions spending was for something much BIGGER

CynicalRealist
4 years ago

Potentially rolled into a general-purpose NHS app which the government can also use for assorted other nefarious purposes as and when it feels like adding functions.

Manjushri
Manjushri
4 years ago

Focussing on the NWO positives:
1) This compliant government wins the prize for the most creative way of spunking away £100m + a day.
2) It was a successful trial of future digital id passports, which will include injection status anyway.
3) Its more taxpayer debt incurred to the global private banking elites.

Smelly Melly
4 years ago

Let’s not forget that on this day in 1605 was the last time anybody entered Parliament with an honest intention.

I am Spartacas
4 years ago

Vaccine Mandates are the New Prohibition
Worth a read …

https://brownstone.org/articles/vaccine-mandates-are-the-new-prohibition/

TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
4 years ago
Reply to  I am Spartacas

We can argue the degree to which vaccination rates reduce infection”

They do not reduce , they increase! The authors need to see the data and post an update

tom171uk
4 years ago

My only surprise is that anyone ever used the bugger in the first place.

isobar
4 years ago

Effigy of Guy Fawkes in mask with vaccine needles in his arms in Lewes

https://mol.im/a/10169881

CynicalRealist
4 years ago
Reply to  isobar

The one of Hancock is pretty good too!

Of course, the article also reports that killjoy Covidian doomsters are trying to keep people away by not running trains and closing roads. Clearly still maintaining the fiction that outdoor events cause it to spread, despite this not happening on each of the many times they have predicted it over the past 18 months.

Milo
Milo
4 years ago
Reply to  CynicalRealist

Goons.

Don’t see too many at the rugby autumn internationals or the PL football matches too worried about outdoor spread.

BS665
BS665
4 years ago

‘Hey, Zachary, I heard you can ignore the app or uninstall it….’

Middle class light bulb moment

grob1234
grob1234
4 years ago

Great news!
Like many on here I’ve never had this app but have occasionally flashed my phone camera at a barcode to appease a nervous waitress!
I’d love to know the mindset of the people still checking in.
Probably government employees looking for 2 weeks off.

JayBee
4 years ago

I think this is a decent example for successful civil disobedience.
Restaurants couldn’t bother, patrons neither after an initial half hearted effort. The pingdemic put even the more compliant off. Since about 8 weeks or so, no one asks anymore, nor can the QR codes be spotted anymore.
Good.
We need- much- more of that spirit and non compiance, from the public AND businesses.

Milo
Milo
4 years ago
Reply to  JayBee

we need same attitude to be shown to vaxx passes too. kill them stone dead with absence of interest

LonePatriot
LonePatriot
4 years ago

While the MSM condemns the use of ivermectin, the most populated state in India just declared they are officially COVID free after promoting widespread use of the safe, proven medicine. In addition to this, Ivermectin attaches to covid spikes and prevents them from binding to ACE2. Get your Ivermectin today while you still can! https://health.p0l.org/

debra
4 years ago

That’s good news – but I don’t think for one moment that the money was spent on this app. It was a smoke and mirrors exercise. Bio/Digital ID development is where the real money was spent just wait and see.

Hester
Hester
4 years ago

This was never about a virus, those who signed up to the app even if they deleted it, have given the Government access to their mobile numbers, plus the app can probably be switched back on, they will not close down the test and trace they will keep it and morph it into something else such that further controls on liberty can be exercised. Countries in the West governments have invested so much in controlling us, they are well into the programme they are not going to step back now, Too much money and power to be made

marebobowl
marebobowl
4 years ago

At every single turn, this country has managed to get every single covid measure absolutely f’ing wrong. I could weep at the thought of how many knee and hip ops could have been done with the £36 billion spent on track and trace. And this is just one dozens of useless measures which have not only cost thousands of taxpayers £’s, but citizens lives. Those responsible for implementing these useless and dangerous measures should have their day in court and sent to jail.

karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  marebobowl

Provided the law is upheld and the lawyers and judges do their jobs properly they will but it’s going to take some time.