Why did I support Martin O'Malley for President in 2016, a man so disparaged by his own party and by liberal-leaning commentators that, as recently as six months ago, Zerlina Maxwell referred to him as "the governor from Baltimore?" Because, as President, O'Malley - who ran because he didn't think Hillary Clinton could win the White House - would have nipped COVID-19 in the bud just as well as anyone not named Donald Trump would have done, like, say Hillary. Except that, had O'Malley been the nominee, he would have won. And contact tracing to find the origins of COVID-19 would have been first and foremost in an O'Malley administration.
I'm now handing over this blog entry to O'Malley himself, who explained the importance of contact tracing in an e-mail sent this past Monday to his onetime supporters from 2016. Take it away, Martin!
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Contact tracing — it’s a race to the finish. A race between us and this virus. It is a race to identify, isolate, track, and kill. And in most states — even as we begin to reopen — the virus is still winning. But it doesn’t need to be this way. Even as scientists work to develop cures and vaccines, we — the people — already have better tools to identify, isolate, and track a deadly outbreak than any prior generation of humans has ever had. Among these tools are instantaneous communications, location technology, and the Internet of Things. Our problem is not a lack of technology, it is a lack of effective governing. And that governing problem is two-fold. First, “a bad case of the slows” when it comes to deploying proven technologies and solutions. And second, a lack of trust among the self-governed. A memo from the House Energy and Commerce Committee recently declared: “Congress should develop a national program to track, identify, and isolate all possible traces of this disease. If we attempted to reopen this country without a sweeping approach that matches the magnitude of the crisis, more Americans will unnecessarily die.” Well said. But under this President, it is not going to happen. Executing a national program would require a Commander-inChief committed to its execution. After ignoring every national security warning about the coming pandemic, it took President Trump another few weeks to understand what the Defense Production Act is. Even when he did, he used it to order meat-packers back to work rather than accelerating the production of testing kits. For better or worse, the buck has been passed. Therefore, our resilience — our ability to save lives and avert a total economic collapse — will depend on the speed of local and state governments to identify, isolate, and track.
So let’s embrace the reality and take action. Federal dollars are essential, but the execution will need to be state and local — the places where civic trust is greatest; and the places where most innovations in American governing are happening anyway. As the production of testing kits slowly increases to meet demand, here are four actions our state and local leaders can take right now to fix this plane even as we fly it. Hire and Train Contact Tracers Now — Congress has already appropriated a fair amount of dollars for states and larger cities and counties to hire “armies of contact tracers” — it isn’t really enough for armies but a thousand more contact tracers in midsized state is about 990 more than they used to have. A hundred in a large city is a lot more than they have ever been able to hire this side of penicillin. People are idle and looking to make a difference. Hire the young, the motivated, and the culturally competent, and hire them now. The tools, technology, and training we provide them will improve as the battle progresses. There is plenty of contact tracing work to be done in the meantime. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. Hire them now. Immediately Create A Wellness Surveillance System — A sampling of 1,200 households — if geographically and demographically balanced — would provide a real-time and statistically representative daily reading on the health and well-being of any city, county, or state. Ask citizens to be a part of it. The goal is to get the jump locally on any new outbreak. Thanks to the Internet, these systems can be easily stood up with a simple app, four questions, and a civic duty to report. Household Information can be kept anonymous. It would be shared with public health professionals only as needed. And it would be shared with the public only down to the neighborhood or ZIP code level.
After 9/11 when a bioterrorism attack was a much anticipated threat, many cities and states set up bio-surveillance systems based on data streams fed automatically from paramedic runs, emergency room admissions, over-the counter pharmaceutical sales, school absences, and dead animal complaints. The purpose was to get a jump on any outbreak and contain it. Same concept today; but, for the fight against future COVID outbreaks in your community, it is more real-time and more crowd-sourced — right down to the household level. A cadre a civic-minded and voluntarily reporting households could easily be augmented with additional surveys — automated or personally conducted over the phone. Use 911 and 311 Systems to Survey, Communicate, and Alert for new outbreaks — One of the subtle but significant movements in our ability to better govern ourselves with better technology has been the movement from a government that responds to calls for service (think, fire, burglary, flood) to a government that alerts citizens to avoid the coming threat of a fire, burglary, or flood. The systems which enabled this movement (grounded in location technology) are 911 and it’s “all-services” progeny, 311. These everyday operational systems of customer service need to be deployed in the fight against COVID flare ups. As with the alerts we now receive on our phones to warn of dangerous weather events like tornadoes or severe storms, these systems have the ability to send narrowly targeted but urgent messages to exactly the right areas of a state, of a county, or of a city. So, in addition to the early alert that incoming calls from the public already provide, these systems can also be turned around into a vital public messaging and public alert system down to a very granular level to help neighbors identify, isolate , and contain future outbreaks.
Use Cell-Phone Location Technology to Speed Contact Tracing — Ask me what I did and who I saw last Wednesday, and I’d have a hard time remembering. Last Wednesday seemed a lot like last Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday — a lot like Groundhog Day, every day. But my phone — which I almost always carry with me — could tell you exactly where I was when. And so can every phone in the world otherwise the phone wouldn’t function. The location technology embedded in our phones can also tell you the numbers of the other cellphones I came within six feet of on my nightly walk and whether — and for how long — I might have lingered in close proximity to them. This technology didn’t exist in 1918. If it did, I’m quite sure our American great grandparents would have used it in light of the obvious public health emergency and lives hanging in the balance. So now, should we. Concerns about privacy and freedom of association should be openly and legally addressed. But some city, county, or state needs to lead. Others will follow. When a Mayor, Governor, or County Executive petitions a court to affirm the use of cell-phone location technology to identify, isolate, and contain localized outbreaks, they will win. And the openness of this data can be limited to public health professionals for a time-limited to the duration of the emergency. One might envision a state or city showing of “ongoing emergency” before a judicial officer every two weeks to continue its public health use. The truth is that retailers have been using cell-phone location data for very personalized and targeted marketing campaigns for years. Isn’t the fight to save lives from COVID at least as important as selling socks or purses? Ultimately this race ends when we discover an effective therapeutic and vaccine. But in the meantime, we are in fire suppression mode. All fires are local. And a lot of lives are at stake. As the production of test kits rises to meet the extraordinary demand, Governors, Mayors, and County Executives already have plenty of tools at their disposal — right now — to fight the localized outbreaks that are inevitably coming. And right now, most Americans have greater trust in their state and local governments than we do in our national government. So, let’s go. This is no time for the "slows."
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And that, my friends, is what Martin O'Malley meant by new leadership so many years ago. We can only hope in 2020 that Joe Biden is listening to him now, even if few others are. You had your chance for a humane, liberal President in 2016, boys and girls, and you blew it because you were with "her." And to those who ridiculed O'Malley back in the last election cycle . . . I accept your apology.
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