COVID-19: The Fall of the West

COVID-19 in Europe and North America is now like a raging fire. Especially in the US the situation is extremely alarming. It seems like both the government and the citizens are clueless on what to do.

March 16th was the day when the number of non-China confirmed cases exceeded the number of China cases. What was more alarming, was the trend curve, almost vertically growing up for the non-China cases. And as of today it continues to do so, leaving the Chinese cases far behind... I'm writing this blog on Mar 28, and we have 650 thousand cases, with the US and Italy have exceeded China and Spain, Germany and France not being far behind.

United States has two fundamental problems with the coronavirus epidemic. Historically this country was considering itself safe due to the military power and the legal system. Unfortunately now neither the soldiers (even with drones and satellites) nor the courts can stop the virus from taking the death toll.

America has been always very precisely guiding the citizens. You know all these warnings about the hot contents of a coffee cup or road signs telling drivers to remove sunglasses when entering a tunnel. And people learned feeling safe with this system, protected by lawyers and the army of aircraft carriers operating across the globe to seecure American interests. The USA also was a superpower, and this status clearly blinded politicians and decision makers. And this superpower is completely lost now. Not being able to protect their people and having no defense against the virus whatsoever.

I think there is one move that has a potential to save millions. Open the big data archives.

I know this is against democracy and especially against privacy, but this has to be done. Like the countries which fought the virus successfully did: Taiwan, Singapore, or even Montenegro.

In the vast databases there are records about everyone. Credit card transactions. Phone calls. Phone location logs. They can be combined together and provide traces to all potentially exposed victims. Like they have been doing it in Singapore (courtesy BBC):

It was one of those calls on a sunny Saturday afternoon during a barbecue that led to Singapore-based British yoga teacher Melissa (not her real name) learning she was at risk of contracting the virus.
"It was surreal," she says, describing the moment an unknown number flashed up on her phone.
"They asked 'were you in a taxi at 18:47 on Wednesday?' It was very precise. I guess I panicked a bit, I couldn't think straight."
Melissa eventually remembered that she was in that taxi - and later when she looked at her taxi app realised it was a trip that took just six minutes.
To date, she doesn't know whether it was the driver or another passenger who was infected.
All she knows is that it was an officer at Singapore's health ministry that made the phone call, and told her that she needed to stay at home and be quarantined.

We have all that data. And we have powers to process it. The computers can pinpoint the potential victims we need to quarantine. This is the only way this epidemic can be put out - like putting out a fire by cutting the supply of oxygen. General quarantine is not enough. We must do contact tracing on a full scale. This is what the Eastern countries have done. I know this is violation of privacy. But this is the time to choose: privacy or life (of a nation). Unfortunately I don't think the Western democracy is ready for that move. This means the fire will be unstoppable and continue to blaze through the West.