"Contact tracing has helped Asian countries like South Korea and Singapore contain the spread of the virus, but their systems rely heavily on digital surveillance..."

"... using patients’ digital footprints to automatically alert their contacts, an intrusion that many Americans would not accept Massachusetts is opting for an old-school, labor-intensive method: people.... The idea of training a corps of contact tracers is emerging in many places at the same time, as leaders think ahead to the point when social distancing constraints will be lifted.... It is built around one-on-one telephone interviews of newly diagnosed patients and their contacts, so that subjects must answer the phone when it rings.... The downside of human contact tracing is that it is expensive, can overlook contacts a subject may not recall, and, some argue, is too slow for a fast-moving virus.... Within the next two hours, the case investigator will aim to reach the patient by phone and compile a list of every person he or she had been in close contact with for 48 hours before the onset of symptoms. The names of the contacts — the expectation is 10 people per new case — will then be passed to contact tracers, who will attempt to reach each one by telephone within 48 hours, calling back three times in succession to signal the call’s importance. For now, tracers are not leaving messages or call back numbers...."

From "An Army of Virus Tracers Takes Shape in Massachusetts/Asian countries have invested heavily in digital contact-tracing, which uses technology to warn people when they have been exposed to the coronavirus. Massachusetts is using an old-fashioned means: people" (NYT).

Reading the headline, I thought that article would be more of a pitch to go to digital surveillance, but it's promoting hiring huge numbers of contract tracers. Does that seem likely to work well in America? The Times doesn't come out and say it, but one might expect Americans to rankle at digital surveillance. The Times is politically correct enough not to lean heavily into the notion that surveillance is an "Asian" approach, but the implication seems to be there. The corollary is that the personal, individual connection is more suited to Americans.

But is it?! It's all about phone calls — phone calls from unknown numbers. Do we even answer the phone when we don't know the caller? I don't.  And what's your reaction when a call comes through without showing the caller's number — especially if they call back 3 times and never leave a message? I would never answer that call. Would you? Would the average American?

The article begins with an anecdote about a caller who not only gets the phone answered, but talks to a woman for 45 minutes. The 2 of them "giggled and commiserated." So... I'm sure some people pick up and love to talk to a stranger about their personal predicament. But I don't believe that's the way most of us Americans are using the phone these days.

The NYT should lay out the digital surveillance option and let us judge for ourselves whether it's superior to these hordes of human telephoners. If I'm protected from digital surveillance, then explain to me why the government that wants to call me on the telephone has my number? If you already can get to my number, then maybe when it's a matter of life and death, you should just go ahead and do the digital surveillance needed to trace the contagion and spare me the nonsense of a nice lady calling on the phone to giggle and commiserate with me for 45 minutes.

IN THE COMMENTS: I Have Misplaced My Pants identifies the worst flaw with the personal approach to contacts tracing:

Can state law require that churches permit women to breastfeed openly — with no covering — in the congregation during a service?

Virginia has a law that gives women a right to breastfeed wherever they are "lawfully present." I can see why laws like this get passed, and I feel sympathy for this woman who was embarrassed to be told she can't breastfeed in the manner she presumably believed was okay (especially after the government has purported to enshrine this right in the law)...


But I think privately owned places — especially religious institutions — should be allowed to impose their own standards of modesty. There's a big difference between being deprived of the freedom to  breastfeed wherever you are and being required to drape a light cloth over the exposed breast.

This WaPo report on the subject completely takes the perspective of the woman and makes the churchgoers seem prudish and ignorant of the law:

A woman promptly asked the Dumfries mother to decamp to a private room, she said. Peguero declined and was later told that the church does not allow breast-feeding without a cover because it could make men, teenagers or new churchgoers “uncomfortable,” she said. One woman told her the sermon was being live-streamed and that she would not want Peguero to be seen breast-feeding....

It is also a legally protected right in Virginia, where the legislature passed a 2015 law that says women have a right to breast-feed anywhere they have a legal right to be....

The woman, Annie Peguero, is described as a "42-year-old personal trainer and fitness and nutrition specialist" and — these are her words — a “hippie mama."

It seems to me that churches — and other religious organizations — have rules about how covered up you need to be in the building or during a service. And the last time I looked, Virginia has a Religious Freedom Preservation Act, § 57-2.02:

No government entity shall substantially burden a person's free exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability unless it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person is (i) essential to further a compelling governmental interest and (ii) the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.

Quite aside from whether Peguero has a statutory right to breastfeed uncovered in church (and I don't think she does), as a matter of etiquette and caring for others, she should have willingly covered her breast as soon as she noticed the exposure distracted or bothered anybody.

Here's the highest-rated comment at WaPo:

As someone who has lived all over the world, I can assure you America is the only place on earth where people get hysterical seeing mothers breastfeed their babies.

Exactly what is it about a breast that has you guys upset? It is not a sex organ. It was made for women to feed their babies. The fact that it has been sexualized by men does not make it a sex organ.

Here's the second-highest-rated:

I get the whole "it's natural" thing, but have a little consideration for those around you. You still cannot walk around nude freely in our society. And, it does make people uncomfortable ... which is also "natural". Use a blanket or step out of the room. Why is that such a huge deal?

 ADDED: I'd originally misread a sentence in the article that said: "Now Peguero, and an attorney, are pressing church leaders to issue a statement and reverse their policy." I've corrected the post.

IN THE COMMENTS: I Have Misplaced My Pants said:

Haha. Women who make a fuss about this are almost always attention seekers best ignored.

I am on my fourth breastfed-into-toddlerhood child over 15 years (didn't breastfeed the adopted one, alas) and I have always nursed wherever I happen to be and no one has ever once given me so much as the stink-eye, let alone approached me and been an ass. Of course I've been discreet when appropriate, finding a quiet corner if it seemed like the thing to do, but I have never nursed under a drape or cover of any kind and I have never nursed in a bathroom.

The whole "zomg men sexualize the breast waah waah waah" thing is a hoax. Again, in 15 years of off and on public breastfeeding and hanging out with other public breastfeeders I have never had a man be anything but polite. I'm calling bullshit.

Policraticus said...

You know, I'm all for modesty and things having a time and place. I am sure the mother in question could have been a little more discreet.

But... the reaction of the church officials crosses over into the absurd. The idea that a woman breastfeeding a child should hardly be shocking. The image of Maria Lactans is ubiquitous in Christian art and you can find images of Mary breastfeeding the infant Jesus pretty much everywhere you look. Irony. It can be pretty ironic sometimes.

Good point (though I think the images of Mary are not so common among protestants). Here's an example:



There's also Lactatio Bernardi, where Mary squirts some milk sideways onto Saint Bernard:

"And so he was really trying to dominate and then literally stalk me around the stage and I would just feel this presence behind me."

Said Hillary Clinton, talking about the last debate to Ellen DeGeneres. She also said: "He was really all wrought up, and you could just sense how much anger he had."

Sexist claptrap, in my opinion, but Trump's response, which starts out okay, ends in what I'm seeing as a rape joke:

“So I’m standing at my podium by my chair. She walks across the room. She’s standing in front of me, right next to me,” Trump claimed.“And the next day I said what did the papers say? They said, ‘he invaded her space,’” he said. “Believe me, the last space that I want to invade is her space.”

IN THE COMMENTS: A lot of people are unable or unwilling to see the innuendo that I see, perhaps because you want to protect Trump. For example I Have Misplaced My Pants says:

I see no evidence that he is referring to Clinton's [I presume Althouse suggests] vagina. Althouse, you have a dirty mind. You do this a lot. Is your mind and your blog--just want to counterbalance!

On the other hand, Unknown says:

Of course he was using double entendre. How dense are you people?

And then there is EDH:

Althouse: "ends in what I'm seeing as a rape joke" ... which I guess is okay if you're a liberal, like Norman Lear?

"Who'd wanna rape you, anyway?"

David Lee Roth explains the "no brown M&Ms" contract term.

The brown M&Ms strategy is discussed by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen Dubner, in "How to Trick the Guilty and Gullible into Revealing Themselves/It starts with a basic understanding of game theory and incentives."

Levitt and Dubner are the "Freakonomics" guys. They have a new book coming out Monday: "Think Like a Freak."

IN THE COMMENTS: I Have Misplaced My Pants said: "This American Life covered that territory years ago (explaining the brown M&Ms clause)." I don't know when the video I've embedded was recorded but it was uploaded in 2012. The "This American Life" episode — here, "Fine Print" — originally aired in April 2011, but Ira Glass is quoting David Lee Roth's autobiography, and that was published back in 1998. So Roth told his own story first. I'm just seeing it today because of that "Think Like a Freak" piece. I figure if I haven't seen something before, maybe you haven't. That said, I'm a big fan of "This American Life," and I've listened to nearly all the episodes, but I don't always remember what I've heard before. That "Fine Print" episode is one of the most law-oriented ones.