Contact tracing is the most absurd idea of the century. No common sense. Whoever dreamed up the concept is a fool.
When conducted with public health in mind, contact tracing is an excellent public health measure.
But this ain’t about public health.
Was there contact tracing during the HIV epidemic? I thought not!
Contact tracing in Wuhan last December might have been effective. Five months later and a million infections?.......not so much.
Nope, subtle.
Here's a historical precident, as you read it substitute "contact tracer" for "cabbie" and "conservative" for "government official":
Remember when the Vietcong took over Huế? They were able to round up every government official, march them all off into the jungle and kill every last one of them in one single night.They knew exactly where they lived, who they visited, where they shopped and where they ate dinner, and when.
How you ask?
The cabbies had been providing the data on their every move for years in advance.
Soooo, where do most of the cabbies in your berg come from? In Washington DC, it's Somalia...
Just because we've forgotten the lessons of Huế and the lessons of the Sepoy Rebellion's "The Perfect Day" doesn't mean our enemies have.
Contact tracing is epidemiology 101. Except for AIDS, of course, where the disease vectors are a privileged class.