I am bringing this up because I don’t hear much talk about it in the news, or even here on dKos. The importance of testing has got a lot more attention, and many of the states have made a lot of progress in that direction. But without Contact Tracing, testing can only do so much, whereas combining both of these with social distancing could be quite effective. If we want to save the economy while continuing to reduce the spread of COVID-19, this is a must. Other countries, like South Korea, have had tremendous success with this approach. If Republicans want to save the economy, they should be demanding it. And of course the Democrats and all of us should be doing so.
The technology already exists. Google, Apple, and Facebook should all be working together to make this a reality. Of course this effort would be stymied by not only the brain dead minority of Trump supporters, but also by a large number of “independents” so in love with their freedumb that it would be hard to get this to work on a large scale. I think there have been some attempts at doing this, and even myself signed up for one of these with a smartphone app, but nothing ever came out of it of which I am aware. I would surmise that getting buy-in is probably the stumbling block, among people who are paranoid about giving up their privacy — which they don’t really have anyway if they have a smartphone and any kind of internet presence. Even the New Yorker describes South Korea’s experiment as “radical” — as if we weren’t living through a pandemic that should in fact require radical measures — not picking on them, at least they covered this.
While discussing the media silence on this with a friend today, it became clear to me that I would have to try to do something, even though I consider myself massively underqualified for the undertaking. But it is so important I feel I must — maybe I will learn on the way, and others will help me to carry the message forward.
UPDATE 1: I learned from the comments that NY has initiated a Contact Tracing program. Also, I found the original MIT effort on this, “Private Kit — Safe Paths”. It shows up as “Private Kit” in the Google Play Store. I just re-installed after getting an error. You can voluntarily add your Google Location. It also has the option to add Trusted Information Sources from your local area — of which there are none in my area, anyway.
Monday, Jul 6, 2020 · 4:49:55 AM +00:00
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DeepLooker
Update 2 (just discovered the update feature): It turns out WA state does in fact have Contact Tracing, perhaps similar to what NY has in the sense that it is done mainly by interviews with those diagnosed with it and their close relatives, etc. No penalty for declining to be interviewed. And not done through SmartPhone apps. I plan to reach out to find out why they are not available as a Trusted Information source for the Private Kit app. Also, I heard of another effort between UofW and Microsoft, so I will have to look into this, and support it any way I can.