OPINION | EDITORIAL: 833-CVD-2019

A spiral goes both ways

Silly us. A few months ago, when Arkansas had a particularly bad day in its covid-19 report, we told somebody: Look at it this way--a spike in reported virus cases means a spike in efforts to quarantine those folks. And trace everywhere they've been and everybody they'd been around. Eventually this train will stop. Because the virus won't have anywhere else to go!

And now here we are.

Kat Stromquist's article on 1A Sunday--and it deserved to be on 1A on a Sunday--was more scary than anything you'll see Saturday night. The lede: "After months of practice and thousands of phone calls, Arkansas contact tracers still fail to reach hundreds of people each week who were exposed to someone with covid-19, and those numbers are growing. . . ."

There are several outfits trying to trace these folks, some larger than others. The two main outfits are 1) a defense contractor called General Dynamics Information Technology; and 2) the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care. According to the report, the number of those who've been exposed to the virus but can't be found has gone double-digits. Contact tracing and quarantining aren't going to stop this virus if more than 10 percent of the contacts can't be traced.

The state says it's trying: It is working with those vendors to increase the number of phone calls and expanded the hours of calling. But anybody with a cell phone knows how that can work. A body sees an unfamiliar number, a body doesn't answer the unfamiliar number.

Some suggest that contact tracing violates privacy. Which is almost as silly as those who say rules requiring wearing of masks violates their rights. One of government's first jobs is protection, of everybody. Medical history shows that contact tracing helps slow pandemics, by limiting new off-ramps for the virus. Getting a phone call, and being told to stay home from work or school for a few days, isn't exactly the stuff of Big Brother.

Right now, the state of Arkansas, and many other states, are in an upward spiral of covid-19 cases. That can be turned around. And even before a vaccine is available.

"If you see 833-CVD-2019 on your phone, please answer," says a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care. "It's very important."

Answering this call hurts less than a flu shot. But it could be even more effective.

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