With contact tracing, don’t let perceptions of big tech be the enemy of the greater good

As April turns to May, the United States is preparing for another phase of the COVID-19 pandemic response: contact tracing. A public health intervention dating back to the 18th century is getting rolled out in fits and starts, often on a county by county basis and in limited cases statewide. Experts project the US will require roughly 300,000 human tracers to chart and break ongoing expansion of the pandemic. We currently have between 8,000 and 14,000. Our point of view is that the only path to success is the combination of a surge in human tracers, digital technologies to capture and share accurate and timely data with public health departments, and the will for public health entities...