scholarly journals COVID-19 Contact Tracing and Privacy: A Longitudinal Study of Public Opinion

Author(s):  
Lucy Simko ◽  
Jack Chang ◽  
Maggie Jiang ◽  
Ryan Calo ◽  
Franziska Roesner ◽  
...  

There is growing use of technology-enabled contact tracing, the process of identifying potentially infected COVID-19 patients by notifying all recent contacts of an infected person. Governments, technology companies, and research groups alike have been working towards releasing smartphone apps, using IoT devices, and distributing wearable technology to automatically track "close contacts" and identify prior contacts in the event an individual tests positive. However, there has been significant public discussion about the tensions between effective technology-based contact tracing and the privacy of individuals. To inform this discussion, we present the results of seven months of online surveys focused on contact tracing and privacy, each with 100 participants. Our first surveys were on April 1 and 3, before the first peak of the virus in the US, and we continued to conduct the surveys weekly for 10 weeks (through June), and then fortnightly through November, adding topical questions to reflect current discussions about contact tracing and COVID-19. Our results present the diversity of public opinion and can inform policy makers, technologists, researchers, and public health experts on whether and how to leverage technology to reduce the spread of COVID-19, while considering potential privacy concerns.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantin D. Pandl ◽  
Scott Thiebes ◽  
Manuel Schmidt-Kraepelin ◽  
Ali Sunyaev

AbstractTo combat the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries around the globe have adopted digital contact tracing apps. Various technologies exist to trace contacts that are potentially prone to different types of tracing errors. Here, we study the impact of different proximity detection ranges on the effectiveness and efficiency of digital contact tracing apps. Furthermore, we study a usage stop effect induced by a false positive quarantine. Our results reveal that policy makers should adjust digital contact tracing apps to the behavioral characteristics of a society. Based on this, the proximity detection range should at least cover the range of a disease spread, and be much wider in certain cases. The widely used Bluetooth Low Energy protocol may not necessarily be the most effective technology for contact tracing.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 303-311
Author(s):  
Gundu H. R. Rao

The first human case of COVID-19, caused by the novel coronavirus, was reported by health officials in the city of Wuhan, China, in December of 2019. The virus was identified as a novel coronavirus in early January 2020, and its genetic sequence was shared publicly on January 11, 2020. The novel virus, previously called 2019-novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), is currently designated as the severe respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). On January 23, Wuhan was locked down, and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a “public health emergency of international concern.” The viral genome of SARS-CoV-2 is around 29.8 kilobase, containing six major open reading frames. The most common clinical symptoms were fever, cough, fatigue, shortness of breath, dyspnea, muscle ache, headache, chest pain, vomiting, sore throat, and sputum production. The main mode of transmission is through respiratory particles. The incubation period is 3 to 7 days. Both asymptomatic and symptomatic patients seem to be infectious. Spike (S) proteins of SARS-CoV-2 seem to have a 10- to 20-fold higher affinity to the human angiotensin enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor than that of SARS-CoV. The high affinity of S protein to theACE2 receptor, and the additional advantages offered by the transfection facilitators Furin and Neutropilin-1, likely, contributes to the rapid spreading of this novel virus. Since these receptors are highly expressed on a variety of cells, including vascular endothelial cells and adipose tissue, individuals with compromised function of these tissues drive greater infection and severity in patients with COVID-19. Global health experts estimate that one in five individuals worldwide could be at risk for severe COVID-19, due to underlying health conditions. There is a great need for a rapid, specific, cost-effective test for monitoring the infected individuals. Even though a 15- minute, antigen test was made available by Abbott recently, it seems that the schools, colleges, and business establishments lack the ability to use these tests effectively to keep their businesses open safely. Management of the infected individuals seems to be based on clinical symptoms that manifest as the disease progresses. The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), has created a special emergency program for possible therapies, the Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program (CTAP). The program uses every available method to move new and emerging treatments as quickly as possible, keeping in mind the safety and efficacy of such therapies. According to the WHO report, there are currently more than 150 COVID-19 vaccine candidates under development. Several vaccines are in Phase 3 clinical trials. In an unprecedented effort, one of the experimental monoclonal antibody cocktails of Regeneron was used for therapeutic purposes when the US president was tested positive for COVID-19. There are no drugs or other therapeutics approved by the US FDA to prevent or treat COVID-19. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have published interim guidelines for the medical management of COVID-19. In the absence of a cure, the only choice we all have is to follow the best practices recommended by the public health experts—use of face masks (coverings), frequent hand washing with soap, contact tracing of infected individuals, and quarantining COVID-19 positive individuals, till they are free of the highly infectious virus.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunfei Xing ◽  
Yuhai Li ◽  
Feng-Kwei Wang

PurposeCOVID-19, an infectious disease first identified in China, has resulted in an ongoing pandemic all over the world. Most of the countries have been experiencing a difficult period during the fighting of this pandemic. The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of privacy concerns and cultural differences on public opinion related to the pandemic. The authors conducted a comparative analysis of public opinion in the US and in China as a case study, in order to determine the results.Design/methodology/approachNational policies on important issues faced during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US and in China were examined through a comparative analysis. The authors used text clustering and visualization to mine public opinion on two popular social media platforms, Twitter and Weibo. From the perspectives of concern for privacy and of national culture, this study combines qualitative and quantitative analysis to discover the acceptance level of national policies by the public in the two countries.FindingsThe anti-pandemic policies and measures of the US and China reflect the different characteristics of their respective political systems and national cultures. When considering the culture of the US, it is hard to establish and enforce a rigorous regulation on either mask wearing in public or home quarantine on the national level. The opinions of US people are diverse, regarding national COVID-19 policies, but they are rather unified on privacy issues. On the other hand, Chinese people show a high acceptance of national policies based on their mask-wearing customs and their culture of collectivism.Originality/valuePrior studies have paid insufficient attention to the ways in which user privacy and cultural difference affect public opinion on national policies between the US and China. This case study that compares public opinion on current and topical issues which are closely bound up with public life shows originality, as it innovatively provides a cross-cultural perspective on the research of public opinion dissemination during emergencies by considering the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.


1998 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Shields ◽  
Brenda Dervin

As policy-makers in various countries have turned to devising policy in the relatively unfamiliar terrain of telephone privacy, it is evident that they have done so with little empirical evidence concerning the relevant perceptions and behaviours of residential telephone users. We have two objectives. First, focusing on the US context, we seek to build on the little empirical work that has been done on these users' perceptions and behaviours regarding telephone privacy. Second, we discuss the implications of our analysis for policy deliberations. Emphasis is placed on the need to construct appropriate public education campaigns that can aid in reducing the gulf between privacy concerns expressed by telecommunication privacy experts and those expressed by residential users.


Author(s):  
Vladimir Kontorovich

The academic study of the Soviet economy in the US was created to help fight the Cold War, part of a broader mobilization of the social sciences for national security needs. The Soviet strategic challenge rested on the ability of its economy to produce large numbers of sophisticated weapons. The military sector was the dominant part of the economy, and the most successful one. However, a comprehensive survey of scholarship on the Soviet economy from 1948-1991 shows that it paid little attention to the military sector, compared to other less important parts of the economy. Soviet secrecy does not explain this pattern of neglect. Western scholars developed strained civilian interpretations for several aspects of the economy which the Soviets themselves acknowledged to have military significance. A close reading of the economic literature, combined with insights from other disciplines, suggest three complementary explanations for civilianization of the Soviet economy. Soviet studies was a peripheral field in economics, and its practitioners sought recognition by pursuing the agenda of the mainstream discipline, however ill-fitting their subject. The Soviet economy was supposed to be about socialism, and the military sector appeared to be unrelated to that. By stressing the militarization, one risked being viewed as a Cold War monger. The conflict identified in this book between the incentives of academia and the demands of policy makers (to say nothing of accurate analysis) has broad relevance for national security uses of social science.


Author(s):  
Dennis C. Spies

The chapter summarizes the New Progressive Dilemma (NPD) debate, identifying three arguments from comparative welfare state and party research likely to be relevant to the relationship between immigration and welfare state retrenchment: public opinion, welfare institutions, and political parties. Alignment of anti-immigrant sentiments and welfare support varies considerably between countries, especially between the US and Europe, leading to different party incentives vis-à-vis welfare state retrenchment. The chapter introduces insights from comparative welfare state and party research to the debate, discussing inter alia, political parties in terms of welfare retrenchment, immigrants as a voter group, and cross-national variation of existing welfare institutions. It addresses the complex debates around attitudinal change caused by immigration, levels of welfare support, voting behavior, and social expenditures. Combining these strands of literature, a common theoretical framework is developed that is subsequently applied to both the US and Western European context.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 5367
Author(s):  
Amirarsalan Rajabi ◽  
Alexander V. Mantzaris ◽  
Ece C. Mutlu ◽  
Ozlem O. Garibay

Governments, policy makers, and officials around the globe are working to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic by making decisions that strive to save the most lives and impose the least economic costs. Making these decisions require comprehensive understanding of the dynamics by which the disease spreads. In traditional epidemiological models, individuals do not adapt their contact behavior during an epidemic, yet adaptive behavior is well documented (i.e., fear-induced social distancing). In this work we revisit Epstein’s “coupled contagion dynamics of fear and disease” model in order to extend and adapt it to explore fear-driven behavioral adaptations and their impact on efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The inclusion of contact behavior adaptation endows the resulting model with a rich dynamics that under certain conditions reproduce endogenously multiple waves of infection. We show that the model provides an appropriate test bed for different containment strategies such as: testing with contact tracing and travel restrictions. The results show that while both strategies could result in flattening the epidemic curve and a significant reduction of the maximum number of infected individuals; testing should be applied along with tracing previous contacts of the tested individuals to be effective. The results show how the curve is flattened with testing partnered with contact tracing, and the imposition of travel restrictions.


Informatics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 48
Author(s):  
My Villius Zetterholm ◽  
Yanqing Lin ◽  
Päivi Jokela

Digital contact tracing applications (CTAs) have been one of the most widely discussed technical methods of controlling the COVID-19 outbreak. The effectiveness of this technology and its ethical justification depend highly on public acceptance and adoption. This study aims to describe the current knowledge about public acceptance of CTAs and identify individual perspectives, which are essential to consider concerning CTA acceptance and adoption. In this scoping review, 25 studies from four continents across the globe are compiled, and critical topics are identified and discussed. The results show that public acceptance varies across national cultures and sociodemographic strata. Lower acceptance among people who are mistrusting, socially disadvantaged, or those with low technical skills suggest a risk that CTAs may amplify existing inequities. Regarding determinants of acceptance, eight themes emerged, covering both attitudes and behavioral perspectives that can influence acceptance, including trust, privacy concerns, social responsibility, perceived health threat, experience of and access to technologies, performance expectancy and perceived benefits, and understanding. Furthermore, widespread misconceptions about the CTA function are a topic in need of immediate attention to ensure the safe use of CTAs. The intention-action gap is another topic in need of more research.


1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 203-229
Author(s):  
John D. Blum

National economies worldwide are in disarray, evidenced by escalating debts and growing deficits. As countries struggle with their faltering economies they are hard pressed to fulfill commitments of social programs made in more prosperous times, much less take on new government initiatives. The current experiences in health reform in the United States present an interesting example of the dilemmas governments now face when they embark on new ventures. While great political pressures have been launched and high expectations abound, the reality of American health reform quickly reveals that expanded access will come at a high price that won't be offset easily by conventional cost containment or market forces.In the search for an acceptable model for health reform, it was popular for policy makers and academics to turn their attentions to the health systems of other nations. Recommendations were made that the US should adopt a German or Canadian solution for our health problems.


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