In the light of modern cryptography these sorts of utilities could certainly be effectively deployed without compromising privacy, but as you mentioned in a lot of ways that ship has already sailed with practically any phone as is. Although I think it's less than futile to attempt to maintain some semblance of privacy, but that's just me.

"I treat Covid like a bad case of the flu."

Seems fair to me. At least you're not saying it's a hoax or using it as an excuse to scapegoat the Chinese.

I really have been living in lock down and you seem to have actually been out there on the front lines so to speak so you'd probably know better than me, but I don't hear as much about long lasting sequelae from influenza as from diseases like Covid (SARS, MERS, etc).

Oh and government's mere existence seems like overreach to me, so I'm right there with you on those expectations.