Corona in the USA: Americans' fear of contact tracing

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A maximum of four poker players per table, that is the new rule in the "Bellagio" casino.

Plexiglass walls stand between the chairs, and a mask is required.

And those who book a room in the hotel receive a small gold pen to use the buttons in the elevator.

Las Vegas tries a lot, but Corona, it seems, cannot be stopped.

The virus is now spreading uncontrollably.

The city long ago abandoned contact tracing - an important weapon in the fight against the epidemic.

"It's just no longer possible," says Devin Raman, an epidemic expert for a health agency in the US state of Nevada, where Las Vegas is located.

"The number of cases is too high."

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Raman estimates that her office's contact trainees only track between 25 and 40 percent of those infected.

"We're trying," she says, "somehow to keep our heads above water."

Many cities in the United States fare like Las Vegas.

The country, it seems, is capitulating to the virus.

The authorities hardly try to follow the pathogen's trail anymore.

Actually, all citizens who receive a positive test result should be called within 48 hours.

The point is to find out who the infected people have been in contact with lately - and to warn these people and ask them to quarantine.

But the offices can no longer keep up.

On the one hand, because the epidemic is spreading too quickly.

And secondly, because many Americans don't cooperate.

In some places, districts have completely given up contact tracing

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The state governor of Maine recently announced the virus is jumping from person to person faster than contact tracers can be trained.

In New Hampshire only elderly people are called.

In Minnesota and North Dakota, some counties have stopped tracking contacts altogether and are advising citizens to notify their acquaintances themselves.

And only a few Americans use a corona warning app.

In Las Vegas, for example, three percent of residents have so far downloaded the program onto their smartphones.

Contact tracking is seen as a key element in containing the epidemic.

But in the USA, the richest country in the world, it collapses.

In some Florida cities, authorities reach fewer than a fifth of people who test positive.

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In New Jersey, 70 percent of people who answer the phone refuse to reveal their contacts.

In Philadelphia, one of the most densely populated metropolises in America, every third person infected claims not to have recently come into contact with anyone.

Why do the experts get through to so few people?

One reason is that Americans - annoyed by almost daily advertising calls and many attempts at fraud - are pushing away unknown phone numbers.

Research by the Washington-based think tank Pew shows that only one in five regularly picks up each time the doorbell rings.

But the biggest problem is the distrust of the authorities that many citizens seem to harbor.

According to Pew, four in ten do not want to work with the health authorities, mainly because they fear their personal information will be disclosed.

But some are also afraid of worse: officers forcibly entering their homes and abducting family members.

Fathers, mothers and children, it is said on social media, could be locked in state quarantine facilities against their will - one of the many pieces of misinformation that is circulating about Corona in the USA.

The Americans are generally much more skeptical of their state than the Germans.

"Many citizens," said immunologist Anthony Fauci at a recent press conference, "shy away from talking to government officials."

There is also great distrust among Republicans

Blacks and Hispanics in particular avoid the offices - of all people, among whom the virus is currently spreading fastest.

What are you afraid of?

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Some may have felt discriminated against by the authorities in the past, especially the police.

Others fear deportation.

The ten million undocumented people in the United States are unlikely to answer calls from public authorities.

There is also great distrust of the government among Republicans.

More than one in two refuses to cooperate with the authorities.

In addition, many of them see contact tracing, quarantine and masks as symbols of submission.

The state, they say, is interfering too much in their private life.

In Texas, Republican MP Valoree Swanson recently called contact tracing a "threat to freedom."

Only in surveillance states, said Swanson, is there such a thing.

And still-President Donald Trump repeatedly played down the epidemic and even called on citizens to resist regionally imposed lockdowns.

In addition, a decade of austerity has drained the American healthcare system.

The posts are sparse, especially in rural areas.

The CDC epidemic authority recommends 30 contact followers per 100,000 inhabitants - roughly this rate is also the target in Germany.

For six months there have been 650 corona deaths in these refrigerated trucks

The refrigerated trucks in New York were intended to serve as mobile morgues only temporarily.

Half a year after the peak of the first corona wave, however, around 650 Covid 19 victims are still being stored there.

Source: WORLD / Laura Fritsch

Here as there it is not reached everywhere.

But while Germany is increasing its capacities, for example with the help of the Bundeswehr, the contact tracing project in the USA seems to have failed.

Only six out of 50 states are considered well-equipped.

In addition, many Americans are reluctant when the health department reports.

There are strange fears that haunt some.

On the White House website, more than 100,000 people have signed a petition describing contact tracing as a "Nazi method" and calling for a ban.

Many are also confused by the number of the law that allows authorities to call and question infected people: It is 6666 - and reminds some US citizens too much of the number of the devil.

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