by WashingtonPark
Arborwayfan wrote: βMon Feb 15, 2021 9:31 pm Contact tracing does not have to be digital recording of people's movements via electronic device. The classic form of contact tracing is having people (the contract tracers) interview each person who is diagnosed and find out who they spent time with and sometimes what congested public spaces they spent time in in the previous x days. And then getting in touch with those contacts, advising them to quarantine for a while and get tested, and sometimes asking them who they have spent time with. This is what happens as work when one of us tests positive. With a disease like Covid-19, which you're not very likely to catch while walking past someone on the street, this method is probably enough to keep small outbreaks small -- even if a few people refuse to answer and even though most people don't know the names of absolutely everyone they have spent some time near. I think there are already US and/or state laws about keeping contact-tracing information -- like census answers -- out of the hands of other parts of the government, and we could reasonably tighten those up. That's not going to satisfy people who just don't want anyone knowing where they've been and who they've been with, but it's a far cry from putting everyone's test results in a public database that everyone's phone can access.The only problem with that is that 74% of the people in NJ have refused to cooperate with the the contact tracers over the phone, and the state is heavily Democratic at that. After angrily referring to his constituents as "knuckleheads" even Murphy has given up on it. Compliance has actually decreased from 40%.