It has been a harrowing month. All but essential businesses are closed, college and university campuses as well as our museums and public libraries have closed their physical locations and invite us to meet them online. Young or old, if you did not know how to operate a computer before the coronavirus struck, you will probably have learned by now how to use applications like FaceTime and Zoom. Here in Washington State we believe that we are very close (within a week) to the top of a curve that turns out to be not so high as initially projected—in great part because of the series of gubernatorial orders issued early on. On March 9, the University of Washington closed classrooms and moved online. On March 13, the governor expanded K-12 school closures statewide and put restrictions on large gatherings. On March 23, the governor issued a “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order effective through early May. That was the strongest of a series of orders that have effectively moved most employees to working from home, strongly encouraged physical distancing of six feet apart, and closed all businesses that are not considered “essential.” Those of us teaching at the University of Washington will be teaching online through the end of spring quarter (mid-June), and through the summer quarter as well.
There is so much to read everyday on the virus and on the medical advice related to the virus that it is easy to lose track of the fact that the policy of staying at home only buys us time to develop a vaccine, estimated at 12 to 18 months for clinical trials. While there are at least 20 vaccines and several therapeutics that are in clinical trials right now, several other possible treatments are under study, including a convalescent serum antibody as well as the re-purposing of existing antivirals, such as Gilead Sciences’ experimental antiviral drug remdesivir, which was used on the first diagnosed case in Snohomish, Washington.
While trials go on, scientists will be gathering more information on the virus itself and its behavior. As more people are tested, we will have more data available for analysis, and the number of those who have been infected will most probably go up. We know any number of people are carriers of the virus without ever having developed symptoms and we have seen the modeling that shows what happens when one person is infected by another, and how those infections grow from subsequent contacts with others.
Large American technology companies have been encouraged to step up and develop tools to assist in the battle, or to re-purpose tools they have already developed. We have already seen how other countries like South Korea, Israel, Singapore and Taiwan imposed digital contact tracing. In his excellent testimony to the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, UW Professor Ryan Calo notes that
"But to the extent that technology-based contact tracing has been effective in these Jurisdictions, they have not been voluntary, self-reported, or involved self-help. Rather Public officials have forced compliance and dispatched investigators to interview and, if necessary, forcibly quarantine exposed individuals. I see it as an open question whether Americans would be comfortable with this level of state expenditure and intervention."
In a new white paper titled “The Limits of Location Tracking in an Epidemic,” Jay Stanley and Jennifer Stisa Granick argue on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that
"…location data contains an enormously invasive and personal set of information about each of us, with the potential to reveal such things as people’s social, sexual, religious and political associations. The potential for invasions of privacy, abuse, and stigmatization is enormous. Any uses of such data should be temporary, restricted to public health agencies and purposes, and should make the greatest possible use of available techniques that allow for privacy and anonymity to be protected, even as the data is used."
The ACLU paper examines four proposed uses of the data and extensively examines each of those uses. I highly recommend reading both Professor Calo’s testimony and the ACLU white paper in full. Both appeared just as The New York Times reported that “Apple and Google said they were building software into smartphones that would tell people if they were recently in contact with someone who was infected with it [coronavirus].” The companies also stated they expected to release the embedded tool in the operating systems, letting phones continuously monitor other devices thus enabling the contact tracing that Calo and the ACLU discuss.
Of course, both companies – fierce rivals in the past – assure us that users would have to opt in, and that reporting infection would be voluntary. Without repeating arguments from Calo and the ACLU, I am not persuaded by the attestations of both Tim Cook from Apple and Sundar Pichai of Google that any tool developed would have “strong controls and protections for user privacy.” That feature in the operating system probably would not be removed for many years (because there will always be another pandemic lurking on the horizon) any more than the “temporary” surveillance powers given to the government during 9/11 have been significantly curtailed.
We would do better to improve and ramp up testing in this country so that we begin to have a clearer picture of the number infected, the number who have recovered and the number who have died. It is unforgivable that the so many medical offices, clinics and hospitals still do not have an adequate number of test kits. Such testing would make possible individual quarantine orders and a ramping up of the traditional public health contact tracing that is still underutilized.
I could not close here without paying my respects to the medical personnel in this country who go to work every day knowing that they may become infected and intubated. We have seen doctors, nurses, EMTs, fire fighters and police officers all die from the simple act of doing their job. The time cannot come too soon when they have adequate personal protective equipment as well as regular working hours and some relief from looking unceasingly into the dark regions of death.
In this state, our stay at home policy allows us non-essential workers to go out to shop for groceries or go to a medical appointment, get takeout or go outside for walks if we are six feet apart. Thanks also to all those who work in “essential businesses” and encounter us in their work. Whether it’s the trucker driving products to market, or the grocery checker, or the pharmacist dispensing vital medicines, or the bus driver or postal carrier who continues to do the job, we are grateful.
In the end, it will be as much about people as it is about technology.