Rockland County Issuing Subpoenas for People Who Avoid Contact Tracers

Contact Tracers are going to be literal Blade Runners.

This is actually awesome and I’m thinking about signing up to work for the Jews as a neo-noir cyberpunk bounty hunter that entraps and murders people who are alleged to be infected with a harmless flu virus in-between my sessions of brooding darkly in my soul-crushing and dehumanizing multicultural hellscape.

It’s gonna be lit.

The Hill:

Officials in New York’s Rockland County said Wednesday they are being forced to issue subpoenas to compel people to speak to contact tracers about a coronavirus outbreak because they are not speaking voluntarily.

The country’s health commissioner, Patricia Rupert, said at a news conference that subpoenas are being issued to eight people who were infected at a recent party in Clarkstown, N.Y., north of New York City, but who are refusing to cooperate with contact tracers seeking to interview them to determine who else they were in contact with and could be at risk of spreading the virus.

The drastic step of issuing subpoenas in a contact-tracing investigation illustrates a problem officials have cited around the country, that many people are not answering their phones or cooperating when contact tracers try to talk to them.

Public health officials say contact tracing is a key step in slowing the spread of the coronavirus. The process interviews infected people about who they have been in contact with so that those people can be notified and asked to quarantine for 14 days to prevent further spread of the virus.

Rupert said the host of the party in question was symptomatic with coronavirus but held the party anyway. At least eight people have been infected and officials are trying to figure out if more were exposed.

“We are not receiving the necessary cooperation when we contact those who are positive for COVID-19 or those who had been at some of these gatherings,” Rupert said. “My staff has been told that a person does not wish to or have to speak to my disease investigators. They hang up, they deny being at the party, even though we have found their name from another party attendee, or a parent provides us with the information.”

“Many do not answer their cell phones and do not call back,” she added. “Sometimes parents answer for their adult children and promise that they have been home consistently, when they have not been. This must stop.”

The frustrations have now led to subpoenas, she said.

Yeah, because we’re going to do successful contact tracing when over 20 million people have come in contact with the virus.

Sure.

Makes total sense.

*Grins awkwardly, reaches for seizure medication*