Privacy vs. PUBLIC HEALTH
BEFORE THE PANDEMIC, THE PLAN would have seemed like something ripped from a distant dystopian future in which the human race fully surrenders to Big Tech. On the April 10 online document, the logos of Google and Apple sat atop a description of the companies’ joint plan to enable America’s cellphones to keep track of everyone with whom their owners come into contact.
Who would sign on to such extensive surveillance? Much of the world already has. In South Korea, health officials use apps and video cameras to track down people who came into contact with COVID-19 patients before symptoms appeared. China, Singapore and Australia already have phone-based contact-tracing in place, and much of Europe is following suit. The UK’s National Health Service, for instance, has endorsed a scheme that’s undergoing a pilot test, and Germany’s government is close behind.
As US governors consider how to open up and allow people to go back to work, experts warn that the coronavirus, which is still in circulation, is almost certain to flare up again. To avoid more emergency-room disasters like the one that overwhelmed New York City in April, public-health officials must act aggressively to stop small outbreaks before they develop into big ones. The key, experts say, is contact tracing. For each new COVID-19 case, health care workers would develop a list of people the patient might have interacted with before symptoms developed. Then they would contact each one and recommend self-quarantine.
Contact tracing was used effectively during previous outbreaks, notably HIV/AIDS. With COVID-19, inquiries wouldn’t be as intrusive as questions about sexual partners, of course, but they would reach many more people—in a country where citizens take to the streets over such assaults against their liberty as the closing
