Democrat governors throughout the United States have made it abundantly clear that they have no respect for personal privacy. Now, their counterparts in the House of Representatives are joining them with a $100 billion bill that calls for the U.S. Government to hire an army of “contact tracers” to spy on people to ensure they comply with quarantine orders.
“The COVID-19 TRACE Act will allow us to do this by creating a $100 billion dollar grant program for local organizations to hire, train, and pay individuals and to purchase supplies to run mobile testing units and door-to-door outreach as is safe and necessary, with special preference being given to those operating in hot spots and medically underserved communities, as well as those entities who commit to hiring from these neighborhoods,” Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush said in a press release.
Rep. Rush asserts that testing is voluntary and patronizingly states that people won’t be forced to isolate against their will. However, clear evidence abounds that this program is going to be misused in a myriad of ways.
First of all, there is no single government entity in charge of training the testers or even monitoring their actions. Instead, the bill would order the CDC to give grants to “qualifying” organizations that volunteer to hire and train the testers.
Second, it’s almost certain that many governors and mayors who have already shown draconian inclinations are going to use the bill as an excuse to force people to get tested through authoritarian means.
It’s also worth noting that one California county is already discussing the possibility of forcibly removing people who test positive for COVID-19 from their homes if they cannot safely quarantine. Keep in mind that one’s ability to “safely quarantine” won’t be determined by the affected individual and his or her family members, but rather some random contact tracer who may or may not have any previous medical experience — or even basic common sense.
Contact tracing, at this point, isn’t going to do much to stop the spread of COVID-19. The virus spread via asymptomatic carriers for the most part, and it can live on various surfaces for days on end. By the time a person begins showing symptoms, it’s too late to start checking who that person may have come in contact with. It will be impossible to trace people who may have touched a surface that a person who was later diagnosed with COVID-19 touched before showing symptoms.
The move to hire contract tracers to run around checking everyone is not just a massive waste of money, it’s also about extending government control over the lives of ordinary citizens.
The good news is that the bill has no chance of passing the Senate, much less being signed into law by President Donald Trump. The bad news is that it could very well become the law of the land if Democrats regain control next year.
