Ross: Tracking spread of virus is now a giant game of tag

Finally! States are slowly opening up, with more testing on the way so we can do it safely.

But here in Washington state, we got a reminder that the testing that we have all been demanding is not just to satisfy our curiosity. It’s also to give people doing contact tracing a place to start.

“First interviewing the person who has a positive test, and then going out to everyone around them, and finding out who could potentially have been affected, getting those people tested,” Gov. Jay Inslee said will be necessary steps toward reopening.

That being so, people who test positive should expect a phone call from the virus brigade, “to make sure that we investigate all the people they have come in contact with, so that we can contact those people and get those people isolated, so that they can protect their health and they don’t continue to spread the pandemic,” Inslee detailed.

The state will keep all its tracing confidential, but, yes, you’ll be asked for the names of everyone you came in contact with, so that you and they can be placed in isolation if necessary.

That puts a different spin on what opening up really means. It means you are free to move about the country, but it also means you’ve joined a giant game of tag, where the phone could ring at any time to inform you that, ready or not, you’re “it.”

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