as kovat 19 continues to spread around
the globe one tactic in particular
called contact tracing has been highly
effective in countries like Taiwan
Singapore and Iceland but there is a
trade off contact tracing asks us all to
share data with the government and
corporations information that some
people prefer to keep private so the
question becomes how much privacy would
you be willing to trade to save lives
the specifics of contact tracing vary by
country but the basics remain the same
step 1 identify and isolate confirmed
cases of kovat 19 step to trace their
movement and contact with others
backwards finding people who may be at
risk without knowing it step 3
quarantine and track the movements of
confirmed cases going forward it's a
very requires many different steps but
at the end what we're trying to achieve
this great bet between of transmission
so that way you don't have new outbreaks
if you all are new cases of the disease
itself rather than spending time
treating new cases contact tracing
allows officials to stop the spread of
the virus in the first place that's how
countries that have implemented contact
tracing have been able to flatten the
curve this requires a lot of manpower it
also requires a monumental amount of
data which is where the issue of privacy
comes into play to make contact tracing
truly effective it is important to have
verifiable records of people's
whereabouts and contact with others some
countries have developed apps that trace
your cell phone's GPS signal thus
keeping a log of every place you've been
to many that might sound like the start
of a dystopian horror movie the
government tracking your every move and
knowing everyone you speak with on the
other hand the kovat 19 pandemic seems
straight out of a horror film itself and
the results of contact tracing speak for
themselves
take Singapore for example the number of
confirmed cases in the country is around
4,500 as of April 16th despite being
relatively near China the country where
experts believe the virus originated
Singapore was aggressive and adopting
contact tracing the country utilised the
National Health Service Police
Detectives and a contact tracing app to
track the spread of the virus their
contact tracing program was so effective
that about 40% of people in the first
wave of confirmed kovat 19 cases in the
country
discover that they had been exposed to
the virus when they received a phone
call from Singapore's Ministry of Health
the call informed them of when where and
how they came into contact with the
virus and told them to be tested and
isolated meanwhile in the United States
government authorities have not yet
aggressively pursued contact tracing as
a tactic to help prevent the spread of
kovat 19 despite the fact that there are
now more confirmed cases in the US than
any other country in the world we saw
this play out in New York City where the
first confirmed case of the novel
coronavirus was diagnosed on March 1st
just a week prior the woman who tested
positive had returned to New York from
Doha Qatar landing at John F Kennedy
International Airport public officials
promised to track down every person who
had been aboard her flight to identify
other potential cases but according to
the New York Times that never happened
a lack of available tests and the
uniquely dense population of New York
City also contributed to the rapid
spread of the virus in the city and the
state where more than 240,000 cases have
now been reported and while New York did
engage in contact tracing to an extent
it was nowhere near as vigorous as in
countries where the practice has been
highly effective China for example
implemented a huge work force and they
were able to do tens of thousands of
contact tracing every single day we do
not have that here in the United States
yet another thing to note is that they
were just doing it in a very small area
of China we would need to do it
throughout the United States because we
are having hot spots throughout the
United States in New York City where the
population is over 8.3 million 50
disease detectives were deployed to
trace the spread of the virus in the
early days of the outbreak that's only
one disease detective for every 166
thousand people Wuhan China where the
crisis is thought to have originated has
a slightly higher population there more
than 9,000 disease detectives were
deployed to trace known cases this
disparity is not unique to New York
however in the United States only about
3600 disease detectives have been
trained by the epidemic intelligence
service program since 1951 that's for a
population of over 329 million people
while manual contact tracing is
important data helps Singapore has
released an app that not only tracks
users location but also uses blue to
to record proximity to others who are
using the app and though manual contact
tracing may not be as robust in the
United States data collection certainly
is citizens movements are on full
display via Silicon Valley companies big
and small lesser-known entities like
cubic and unicast have already been
providing tracking data to the public
and while unicast collects its data via
an opt-in app Kubek says only that it
relies on cubics first party data to
create its interactive map so with the
technology and data for contact tracing
readily available the question remains
why was the u.s. so slow to adopt
contact tracing on a wider scale the
answer may be our own rights to privacy
and how dearly we hold them Americans
attitudes about their private data being
shared are well documented wiretapping
phones of American citizens was a
hot-button political issue in the not so
distant past and more recently large
corporations mining us for data has come
to the forefront of the national
consciousness those attitudes may shift
as the kovat 19 crisis continues
[Music]
restrictions and you know for all
intensive purposes resume whatever our
normal lives will look like we need to
make sure we're able to implement
rigorous contact tracing to be able to
isolate those individuals and quarantine
individuals that may have the disease
itself while a recent poll showed that a
majority of Americans agree that
measures like closing schools and
businesses are necessary to combat the
coronavirus they also share a desire to
return the day-to-day operations of the
country to as close to normal as
possible as soon and as safely as
possible at the same time health experts
predict a second wave of the virus to
hit sometime in 2020 or twenty
twenty-one so offering up our location
information might be the best way to get
through this safeguarding privacy but at
the same time I think that we are living
in a very technology savvy society where
we we should be able to with some degree
you know work around that I think we can
have this even as a voluntary basis
being able to
in a way and letting them know this is
obviously what's great not just for them
but for the greater communities you want
to resume our normal life whatever
that's gonna look like you know this is
something that needs to be done the tech
world has already started to publicly
collect this data Facebook's data for
good program has created data maps that
show distributions of people reporting
kovat symptoms density of at-risk
populations areas that are socially
connected to current hotspots and more
Apple and Google have announced plans
for a joint venture to create an opt-in
contact tracing app that would be
compatible with both Apple and Android
phones but with this push for more
government access to location tracking
data also comes another push for more
user protection as of now there are no
comprehensive federal laws around data
privacy in the United States it's
happened only on a state level in 2018
the California Consumer Privacy Act was
enacted giving California users a legal
right to know what data is collected the
right to delete personal information
held by businesses and the right to opt
out of the sale of personal information
other states are following california's
lead nevada passed similar legislation
and New York Texas and Washington have
also proposed legislation similar to
California's privacy act in other states
legal rights to data privacy are not
nearly as clear or strong so in the case
of the US what we do know is that large
amounts of data including location
tracking are already being collected the
questions become what we as a nation
will do with that data to confront the
Cova 19 crisis whether the public is
willing to release it and how we will
protect that data going forward