Corona Daily 287: Please Answer the Call

By now, you probably know contact tracing is an effective tool to check the spread of the virus. A person testing positive gets a phone call, is asked about his movements, and people he came in “close contact” with. To make life easier, America’s CDC (Centers for Disease Control) had defined a close contact as anyone within 6 feet of an infected person for 15 minutes or more. If you had the misfortune of qualifying as a close contact, you must quarantine yourself.  South Korea and China very effectively used the test-trace-quarantine mechanism.

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Billings Public Schools belong to the largest school district of Montana. The administrators devised a brilliant, innovative scheme. In every classroom, the teachers started shuffling the students every 14 minutes. Greg Upham, the superintendent of the 16500-student district said the movement idea was not intended to “game the system” (which meant it was). Kelly Hornby, principal of Billings West High school, wrote an email to the staff saying moving students around every few minutes and then returning them to their original desks would help dissipate airborne droplets containing the coronavirus, to the point “where the risk of being contaminated is greatly reduced.”

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The scientists at CDC were understandably traumatized on reading the reports. Schools are imparting education, what about common sense?

This week, on 21 October, CDC issued amended guidance. Now a “close contact” is someone within 6 feet for a total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period. A 20-year old prison employee who had multiple brief interactions with prisoners before infecting them was offered as the official reason. But I suspect the clever ploy devised by the school principals was the key trigger.

Under the new definition co-workers who spend a few minutes in the elevator, at a water cooler, then at lunch will qualify for quarantine as long as they spent a total of 15 minutes with an infected colleague during the working day.

You would think this will now improve the contact tracing in the USA. No chance. None of these regulations have any relevance. Why?

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On my last trip to the USA, my family had flown in to San Francisco from Toronto. One of our suitcases didn’t arrive. I wanted to warn my waiting relatives we would get delayed. Being an educated Indian, I have more than forty relatives in the Bay area. Meticulously, I was carrying all the phone numbers. Since our bag was misplaced, the airline kindly allowed me to use their phone. I tried each number in the list. Not a single person answered. Prima facie, it looked like a conspiracy or prank at best. Finally, when I confronted my uncle who met us, he said: “In America, we never answer unknown numbers.”

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Robocalls, phone calls made in millions by computer programs, are a real menace in America. In 2019, Americans received 58.5 billion robocalls. They try to steal the caller’s information, passwords, identity. The more innocent calls may advertise a product or ask a person to vote for Trump. Since March, scammers are preying on pandemic fears, offering bogus testing or covid information. In September alone, 3.8 billion calls were made, which is an average 12 calls per person per day.

To combat this, the state of Louisiana sends letters by snail mail. (By the time the correspondence is over half of Louisiana is infected).  Washington residents who feel suspicious about the contact tracing call are asked to visit the nearest police station, and have an officer take a detailed report. (The authorities forget they may be sending an infected person to the police station).

Till today, more than 230,000 Americans have lost lives to Covid-19. The virus of spam and fishing calls has greatly contributed to that number.

Ravi