It's worth highlighting the differences between the UK and the rest of the world. The NHS is embedded into the UK's culture. Since the start of lockdown, drawings of rainbows are commonly seen in windows with captions like 'Thank you NHS and key workers' and on Thursdays at 8pm, people stand on doorsteps and clap for the NHS. The NHS is very well trusted and this app, if viewed as a creation of NHS (or NHSX) and not 'the government', could still remain successful despite privacy concerns.
Unlike other countries, the UK has the opportunity to frame this as an NHS-created app, rather than a state-created app. If they're able to do that, then it wouldn't surprise me that the UK's population takes up the app.
Additionally, few people consider data privacy concerns at the best of times. Given the circumstances, I think more people are willing to prioritise public health over privacy concerns.[1] So, they seem to have judged that the richer data trumps the slight reduction in usage.
The combination of these factors could be the rationale behind this judgment call.
I don't think so. They can use a decentralized approach, the Google/Apple APIs, and still call it the NHS app. They can even put additional random opt-in features in their app if they really want to, why could they not?
Plus it won't be practical at all to use a centralized solution on iPhone and it may be less practical to use it on Android, so this won't be just a slight reduction in usage, this risk to be a major one.
This is quite the generalization, equivalent to saying that Americans love the Democratic Party. A poll in 2019 found that satisfaction with the NHS hit an eleven year low, with 53% of respondents satisfied with services in the year prior.
There's a difference between being satisfied with the healthcare it provides and loving the NHS. People in the UK love the NHS as a concept and an institution, even if we're still often critical of the quality of service provided. Additionally most people lay the blame for that quality on underfunding from the government. The NHS is largely believed to be doing a decent job with the resources is has and has been screwed over by austerity again and again.
As far as I know it was a genuinely grassroots initiative, started by Dutch Londoner, after a similar phenomenon in the Netherlands (which I think followed from Italy).
Unlike other countries, the UK has the opportunity to frame this as an NHS-created app, rather than a state-created app. If they're able to do that, then it wouldn't surprise me that the UK's population takes up the app.
Additionally, few people consider data privacy concerns at the best of times. Given the circumstances, I think more people are willing to prioritise public health over privacy concerns.[1] So, they seem to have judged that the richer data trumps the slight reduction in usage.
The combination of these factors could be the rationale behind this judgment call.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/1752affb-24dc-4ad9-8503-78f9ce1ad... (there's a paywall, so the link below shows a similar poll)
[2] Ipsos MORI poll https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/coronaviru...