BY MEGAN CERULLO
As U.S. unemployment soars to historic levels, the hottest job of the year could be a lifesaver: contact tracing. Containing the coronavirus as the economy gradually reopens has created an urgent need for hundreds of thousands of people trained to identify infected individuals and track down anyone and everyone they could have exposed to the virus.
In the absence of a federal plan, some city and state health departments are already seeking to fill thousands of these positions. Experts estimate that between 100,000 and 300,000 contact tracers — who can earn up to $65,000 per year — will be needed nationwide based on state populations and projected COVID-19 infection rates.
"I do think that it's a fantastic job for people who have been furloughed, and it's something that people can be trained to do," said Roger Shapiro, a professor of medicine at the Harvard School of Public Health. "It takes some training, but it's not impossible to train almost anybody with reasonable social skills, who can work off a script, begin a conversation with people, convey a few key messages and collect data," he said.
Contact tracers identify infected individuals based on test results, obtained by city and state health departments. Then they contact people — initially by phone, in most cases — who have tested positive for the coronavirus. Tracers will ask them to recall the names of everyone with whom they have recently come into contact. Finally, contact tracers will warn those people of their potential exposure, advise them to self-quarantine and provide them with access to resources they might need in order to follow protocol.
Apps can help, too. Apple and Google have made tools available to public health organizations so they can develop contact tracing apps that allow coronavirus-positive individuals to record their diagnoses and use Bluetooth technology to alert other app users that they had been in close proximity.
But experts stress that technology can't replace human contact tracers, who conduct lengthy interviews and perform detective-like work in hunting down the myriad and winding paths disease can take as it races through the population.
Meanwhile, a paper from the Brookings Institution argues that contact-tracing apps could threaten privacy and "serve as vehicles for abuse and disinformation, while providing a false sense of security to justify reopening local and national economies well before it is safe to do so."
Among the initiatives to hire contact tracers now underway:
- In New York state, Governor Andrew Cuomo last week announced that the state will hire up to 17,000 tracers as part of a reopening strategy in coordination with Bloomberg Philanthropies and Johns Hopkins University.
- New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has partnered with the Fund for Public Health in New York City to hire its own corps of contact tracers. Successful applicants will earn a salary of $65,000.
- In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has said he wants 10,000 contact tracers investigating webs of transmission throughout the state.
- Massachusetts recently announced plans to recruit 1,000 individuals to conduct contact tracing activities, in concert with Boston nonprofit Partners in Health. Its job description cites the need for "excellent interpersonal skills" and "the ability to interact professionally with culturally diverse individuals during a time of crisis and distress." While fluency in English is required, the ability to speak a second is also valuable, according to the job posting. The job's salary is not advertised.
- The Georgia Department of Public Health is also advertising openings for contact trainers, who can expect to earn up to $15 per hour for their work. Minimum qualifications include a high school diploma, excellent interpersonal skills and more.
- In Washington, D.C., Contrace Public Health Corps, a social enterprise, is helping local and state agencies screen and train people who want to become contact tracers (To be considered, apply here.)
- Washington State Governor Jay Inslee last month said he expected roughly 1,500 contact tracers to be working in the state by mid-May.
A 2020 Rockefeller Foundation Paper now proposes the next phase of the solution to the coronavirus crisis – after the 2010 Rockefeller Foundation Paper which predicted and analyzed the problem and reaction.
2020 Rockefeller Foundation Paper entitled National Covid-19 Testing Action Plan – Pragmatic steps to reopen our workplaces and our communities. This came after countless MSM appearances by NWO frontman, eugenicist and depopulation-via-vaccines enthusiast Bill Gates claiming you would need digital certificates and immunity passports to travel around again, and that your inherent rights such as the right to gather or assemble may never return unless you’re vaccinated.
It calls for testing and tracing of all Americans – initially 1 million per week, then 3 million per week and finally 30 million per week (the “1-3-30 Plan”) until every single American is assimilated into the database.
The foreword of the paper paints a grim picture (with propagandistic ideas of a resurgence and a 2nd wave in the background):
instead of ricocheting between an unsustainable shutdown and a dangerous, uncertain return to normalcy, the United States must mount a sustainable strategy with better tests and contact tracing, and stay the course for as long as it takes to develop a vaccine or cure.
The next quote pushes their insidious 1-3-30 Plan which aims to test every single American within the next 6 months:
We are proposing our nation come together around the bold, ambitious, but achievable goal of rapidly expanding testing capacity to 30 million tests per week over the next six months. This 1-3-30 Plan would be achieved by: (1) creating an Emergency Network for Covid-19 Testing to coordinate and underwrite the testing market, (2) launching an eight-week National Testing Laboratory Optimization Initiative to increase output to 3 million tests per week from the current one million, and (3) investing in a Testing Technology Accelerator to further grow U.S. testing capacity from 3 million to 30 million tests per week.
Bladerunner ...
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