Chris Hayes was pissed last week. He raged at the Trump administration’s many failures. People have made tremendous sacrifices for months and his government still doesn’t have the testing and contact tracing capacity we need.
His guest, former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, spoke about the disaster in Florida and brought up just how bad our contact tracing is.
9,000 new cases in one day. 29,000 in the last seven days. It’s a disaster. It’s a catastrophic failure of leadership. Of our Governor, of our President. The mayors are scrambling to try to do the right thing.
We don’t have contact tracers as you pointed out. Listen. Rwanda, in Africa, has 12 million people. They have 60,000 contact tracers. We’re not even in the ball game.
I’ve been writing about contact tracing issues since the beginning of this pandemic. I wrote “Let’s Track The COVIDIOT Protesters” back in April. By now I thought I’d be writing about privacy concerns in a national database. But it hasn’t been implemented because of another massive failure of Trump admin.
In April I though the Michigan state police should have enforced the Governor’s executive orders about wearing masks and social distancing. They didn’t, possibly because the protesters were white–and armed.
The state also had the ability to trace the people protesting the lockdown in Lansing. They didn’t. However, Dr. Rob Davidson (@DrRobDavidson) and my friends at the Committee to Protect Medicare did. To be more exact, they traced the cell phones of 300 of the 3,000 at the protest. The data suggested the people at the Lansing protest spread COVID-19 throughout the state.
The Governor Whitmer then begged Mike Pence, the head of the Coronavirus Task Force, to tell people to stay home because evidence showed an event with no social distancing and few masks spread CORONAVIRUS. He didn’t.
Contact tracing should to be used for public health and not co-opted for other uses. I attended a conference on technology, public health and the pandemic recently. (Flatten the Curve Summitt) They stressed all contact tracing programs must have oversight designed in so misuse can be detected and stopped.
They also discussed privacy and apps on smart phones but pointed out not everyone has one. The good news is the basics of contact tracing can be done with humans talking to humans.
Some worried the Trump administration would use the data in a national database to go after their enemies and deport “illegals.” Instead the Trump admin just didn’t develop a national contact tracing program at all. Contact tracing was pushed off to the states and then wasn’t sufficiently funded
Then the Trump Campaign held a big rally of unmasked people standing close together while shouting about their freedums. This is a textbook superspreader event.
6,000 at Trump’s Tulsa Rally, June 20
Dozens of Secret Service officers and agents told to self-quarantine after Trump’s Tulsa rally, June 24 (link)
The failure of Trump’s campaign to keep their own people infection free will lead to more infections and deaths.
In the Washington Post article you can already see how the campaign staff are stalling. Every day they delay more can get infected.
- How long is the incubation period for the disease?
Two to 14 days, but typically five days.
- When does someone become contagious?
Two days before showing symptoms.
From COVID-19 Contact Tracing course offered by Johns Hopkins University (link)
We don’t know yet if the campaign even turned over their attendee data to the understaffed Oklahoma State Department of Health.
State Plans to Hire Fewer Contact Tracers Than Experts Recommend
(Maybe Campaign head Brad Parscale @parscale dumped the million ticket requests on them and said, “Sorry about all those TikToc users!”)
A functioning CDC or state department of health could use the infection rate at rallies to prove the dangers of maskless indoor shout fests. But the Trump admin does NOT want to know the results of testing and tracing of people at the rallies.
Reporter at Trump’s Tulsa rally tests positive for COVID-19, June 26 (link)
Paul Monies @pmonies was the Oklahoma Watch reporter who tested positive.
Friends, I tested positive for #COVID19. I’m pretty surprised. I have zero symptoms (so far) and I feel fine. In fact, I ran 5 miles this morning. I spent the last few hours calling people I know I’ve been in contact with in the last 14 days. Be safe out there. 😷 https://t.co/oGpKsGs5u0
— Paul Monies (@pmonies) June 26, 2020
3,000 at Trump’s Phoenix Rally, June 23
Trump held two rallies in Tucson and Phoenix where about 9,000 gathered indoors to cheer and chant. Most didn’t wear masks.
When the news shows covered the Trump rallies they discussed concern about the spread of COVID-19. It was met online with classic Whataboutism. “Where was your concern when you were praising BLM protests?!!!”
I’ve always been concerned about big gathering. Was that maskless person on the left in the photo infected? If people were exposed to COVID-19 at a protest or a rally there should be contact tracing so that the people exposed can take steps to be tested and to self isolate.
Both groups should be traced. It’s not supposed to be political, it’s about public health.
In this video I combined an interview with the Director of Arizona’s Department of Health Services, Dr. Cara Christ, discussing contact tracing with video from the Phoenix rally. I then followed it with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey telling people to expect a call from public health.
Before the event 700 medical professionals signed a letter to the Governor asking him to ban large inside events. The event went on anyway. Before the event they could have been testing of everyone entering, but there wasn’t.
Once it was revealed people infected with COVID-19 attended the rally the contact tracing for everyone should have started–not just for Trump’s advance team and Secret Service.
Contact tracing is just another part of this pandemic Trump botched because he doesn’t want to know the number of infected, even if it will save the lives of his own followers. (Remember the attack on Saddam Hussein? “He gassed his own people!”)
If the “Right” people die–in the right way–things change
Eventually we will get a general idea of how many of Trump’s rally attendees were suicide bombers and how many were just bomb carriers. If we had enough contact tracing capacity before these events lives could have been saved.
In the future I hope Governors will ban indoor, maskless rallies. But based on their past actions they will only do so if enough of the “Right” people die (i.e. white men and women who are Trump supporters).
To make a ban happen they will need hard evidence, otherwise the right will cry “We didn’t KNOW if they got it from that event! They might have gotten it from some place else! Like a BLM protest!” They are very good at working the scientist refs. A good scientist has to acknowledge they can’t know for certain if a person was infected at the event unless that person
1) Tested negative before the event
2) Only attended the event
3) Went into 14 day quarantine
4) Tested positive following the 2-14 day incubation period.
(These steps are EXACTLY what OSDH suggested people do on June 16th!)
I don’t have a lot of hope that we’ll see any good contact tracing following the two Trump rallies. But the one good thing that has happened with all the attention on the maskless indoor shoutfest is that Mike Pence just canceled his rallies in Tucson and Florida!
Good news! It looks like @PaulaReidCBS's question made an impact! Pence canceled his live "Faith in America" rallies in Tuscon & Sarasota Florida. @KTAR923 @jboehm_NEWS @ejmontini @SoonerReporter @pmonies @suekroll @kylegriffin1 @VinGuptaMD @DrRobDavidson https://t.co/onsjAzv97g pic.twitter.com/kP7EzrhTaF
— Spocko (@spockosbrain) June 28, 2020