Nuntius wrote:Metallikid wrote:Ainosterhaspie wrote:This right here explains why this was never going to be contained in the US. This is from the county I live in. We could immediately spread useful information to people who may have been infected by these people, but instead we are protecting their privacy. So now people who may be carriers don't know that they may be carriers. They can't and/or won't go get tested themselves. They may not be self-quaranteening as rigidly as they could and should be.
Spread that could be stopped may instead be transmitted two and three steps out. There is an unnecessary, incredibly counterproductive barrier which limits our ability to control the spread. This is what I'm talking about when I say the east is more equipped to nip this sort of thing in the bud. The west has to fundamentally reexamine privacy or it will always be impossible to contain this sort of thing.
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They could easily mention the places/areas an infected person had been in without revealing their identity. If they can override the Constitution then privacy laws shouldn't be much at all, at least when it comes to containing the spread geographically.
Exactly. That's what South Korea reportedly did. They immediately notified their citizens (through a governmental number installed in every phone) about the area of a potential Covid-19 case AND about their recent whereabouts (X grocery store, Y dry cleaners, Z restaurant etc). You don't have to divulge names to do that.
Yeah, that is what is happening in Korea. I guess one fear of doing this is that it is really bad publicity for these businesses so they would complain and perhaps even file lawsuits? (for some reason, you don't see much of that from the businesses here in Korea) One other thing is that Korea did this from the get go, so we were given healthy amount of information that wouldn't overload our brains. For a country like US to adopt this system, I would not be surprised if in some of the hot locations (e.g. New York, SF), you get hundreds of these messages every day. That would ratchet up panic to a whole different level.
I am not saying one should not do it, but I am almost thinking that it is too late for the US.