Six months in, Covid-19 exposure notification apps in the US at under 20% of states
Imagine if there was a way to anonymously tell your friends that you might have infected them with something that while probably wasn’t going to hurt them, might inadvertently kill someone they loved. Imagine it was completely anonymous to them who they got the disease from and all you were doing was letting them know to be careful for the next couple of weeks. That the health department didn’t know who you were, who they were, but the notice was given.
The tech for anonymous contact tracing was offered for free by Apple and Google months ago, and so far it looks like very few states have taken it up with their uncoordinated health department approaches. Might also be the reason that the US is currently at about 25% of Covid cases worldwide while being 4% of the population.
Android Police posted a round-up of exposure notification apps, and if you’re in Alabama, Arizona, Nevada, North Dakota, Wyoming, Virginia, Rhode Island, Utah you’ve got some options. Other states? Not so much.
There are also apps for Puerto Rico, Palm Beach County in Florida, and Guam.
So if you’ve got a phone, live in one of the few areas that you can actually help out with your health department, and maybe want your friend’s loved ones (or anyone for that matter,) to not be exposed to a deadly virus you brought on them before there’s a vaccine available, maybe consider using one of these apps.
As has been demonstrated many times before, if you have a cell phone it’s not like if they wanted to force it on you you’d ever even know it.
