LyrArc Article Gist
Contact tracing being setup using iphones and android phones with bluetooth technology by Apple and Google. The idea is being studied for adoption by the U.S. government. The problem is that this kind of contact tracing is not as effective as the kind used by South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore with information from cellphone carriers. Contact tracing apps would be written by developers for each country and chosen by Apple and Google one for each country.

How it works- When a person comes down with symptoms he can upload the information about who he has been close to stored on the phone. This information would then be used to contact the person who was exposed to the person with symptoms but unaware of this. A message would tell that person he was exposed to someone who now has symptoms and to contact public health authorites and take effective steps. When the person with symptoms gets tested if he was positive that would also appear on a exposed person's phone without name or other information. 

The normal contact tracing is time intensive requiring many phone calls and using data from cellphone carriers. This is done in Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea. It is considered to be more effective. The approach of these Asian countries is more thorough and allows effective tracing and isolation, quarantining of persons having coronavirus or having exposure in countries with rampant coronavirus.

The U.S. needs to move quickly to adopt the methods used in these Asian countries. The loss of hundreds of thousands of lives should be weighed against privacy concerns and clearly there should be a way to allow one time use of personal information for coronavirus, so that this kind of information is used only in public emergency situations. All three Asian countries are democracies. Putting health care workers at great risk including working pregnant doctors, as in the story in WSJ about a hospital in Maryland, should make it clear that everything including privacy concern should be placed in context, and use of personal information be permitted in a public emergency such as a contagious virus- with information protections removal for the period of the crisis.