If you want New Jersey to reopen and reopen now, how much do you want it? To reopen safely contact tracing is one key element; finding who an infected person has been around to keep a huge second wave of COVID-19 from occurring. In the old days that medical detective work hold only involve asking the infected person all the places they’ve been and people they’ve seen in so many days. Then warnings are put out and those individuals contacted.

Now it’s far more involved. Cell phone technology means you can do high tech contact tracing by following the movement of an infected person’s cell phone over a past number of days and pair that information with all the cell phones it came within so many feet of, and then warn those cell phone owners. That’s the simplest way to describe a technological feat that can be done in a number of ways. There’s a great article on this on PCmag.com.

About half the country is leery of being tracked by their cell phones if a medical organization does it. If it were done more directly by the government itself those leery of being tracked climbs to about 70%.


QUEST FOR A CURE: Thursday at 7 p.m., New Jersey 101.5 hosts a live discussion on NJ-driven advancements in coronavirus treatment and research that could save lives, help return NJ to work and even make progress toward a vaccine. Listen on New Jersey 101.5 FM, the NJ 101.5 app or Facebook.com/NJ1015.


So how bad do you want to reopen? If this is the best and safest way to reopen while keeping a second wave of coronavirus at bay would you be willing to partake? If it’s voluntary, I would volunteer and go along with it. Normally I would not. I’m not a fan of being surveilled by authority. But these are not normal times and I’d be willing to make this one time exception under these unprecedented circumstances in order to save potentially thousands of lives.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski. Any opinions expressed are Jeff Deminski's own.

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