Toms River, NJ – Dr. Anthony Fauci is now saying the U.S. government is throwing around the idea of a COVID-19 immunity identification card in order to get the economy to the next level and to get more people back to work. “It’s one of those things that we talk about when we want to make sure who the vulnerable people are and not,” Fauci said. “I think it might actually have some merit.”
Related: COVID 19 Cards? Why not voter ID and Citizenship ID?
What are immunity identification cards?
What does that really mean? According to a recent story in USA Today, immunity certificates – documentation verifying a person is immune to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 – could help reopen the economy by allowing some people to safely return to work, eat at restaurants and partake in activities prohibited by social distancing restrictions. You know, those people who already got COVID-19 whether it was by their own fault or not. According to today’s figures, that is 1.5 million or so Americans.
What about the 326 million others, out of 328 million total Americans, or roughly 99.96% of Americans who did not test positive for COVID-19? Will they now be penalized for following the rules? Will they be penalized for sacrificing their jobs, their businesses and the past 60 days of their life in quarantine so the small portion of society, the infected, will roam free while those who did everything they were supposed to sit at home and watch?
Some countries are now looking into mandatory antibody testing. Contact tracing is the new go-to pandemic tracker quickly gaining ground in many states in America. Contact tracing means the government will be tracking the non-infected majority. An army of 100,000 contact tracers will be needed nationwide to accomplish the mission of tracking healthy Americans and logging their comings and goings.
What is contact tracing?
“It means that as soon as you know of a person who may have a virus or have tested presumptive positive, you work immediately to first isolate that person so they do not spread it further,” Freeman said. “You keep them away from other people, and then you work with that person directly to understand who they have come in contact with,” according to Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer for the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
Contact Tracing and Immunity Cards…what will that world look like?
Will the previously infected who brandish immunity cards be exempt from contact tracing as they make their way back to work and cross paths with a non-infected still living in quarantine, scraping by to buy groceries at the supermarket? The new normal isn’t looking great for people who did everything they were supposed to do. When you think about COVID-19 and that we have successfully contained the virus and cut it dead in its tracks for now through proper hygiene, awareness and social distancing and factor in the elephant in the room, what are we doing? Most people who have contracted and had serious complications were those who have underlying issues and comorbidity factors. When it comes to the death rate, nearly 86% of COVID-19 patients were elderly and a large portion of those patients resided in assisted living facilities, especially in New York and New Jersey where the outbreak has been the most severe in the nation.
So is the government’s one-size-fits-all approach to fighting COVID-19 fundamentally flawed? Should more resources be diverted towards sheltering those at higher risk, the elderly and front line workers who come into daily contact with COVID-19 patients? None of it is making sense. It appears to be turning into a sociopolitical science experiment that has no basis on any sort of reality or medical science but leans more towards social and political science.
At some point, there will be a cure. Until then research is there that is giving the most severe patients a fighting chance, including earlier access to hydroxychloroquine, then remdesivir. In late stages, convalescent plasma treatment has brought many back from the brink of death. Here in New Jersey, one of the hardest-hit states, figures show that just under 2% of the entire population has contracted the virus, 145,000 in a state of 8.2 million. The fatality rate statewide is 1/10th of 1%.
At the end of the day, the biggest fear those 8,065,000 in New Jersey has right now isn’t the coronavirus, but financial ruin. Most are out of work, on the cusp of losing their homes, their health insurance, the jobs and worst of all, their dignity. If the country does adopt the immunity card system, 99.9% of the New Jersey population have the most to lose if things don’t change quick.