As the United States breaks records in COVID-19 case counts and Congress considers a new economic stimulus, Congress must seek approaches that also help public health. In particular, a new economic stimulus could pay every American $ 1,000 to download and use a digital contact tracking application.
Contact tracking apps, like Google and Apple’s joint solution, allow smartphones to track physical proximity to other smartphones via Bluetooth. When one smartphone is kept close to another, they exchange random tokens. If I am diagnosed with COVID-19, I enter it into an application integrated into the Google / Apple system. Everyone who has the app and my token on their phone will receive a notification that they were close to someone with COVID-19. They can then be tested, quarantined, and hopefully take other preventive measures before spreading the disease.
In theory, digital contact tracking can create what is effectively the herd’s digital immunity. New cases are identified and contain so quickly that the disease cannot survive. But such immunity requires about 60 percent of the population to use the solution, and reality can show that the estimates are low: We may need more than 60 percent of people to use it. While lower adoption rates still improve public health, they are not enough to beat the disease.
Global experiences with similar tools show limited public adoption. In France, less than 3 percent of the population downloaded their contact tracking app, while in Germany only 14 percent did. Some of this is likely due to declining case rates in those countries (conversely, cases are increasing in the United States), but some doubts are due to privacy concerns. People understandably don’t want to lose control over confidential health information.
So far, the U.S. follow-up plans for contacts have also gone awry. A particular challenge is that, instead of a national approach, each state has to make its own decisions. Politico reports that most states currently do not have plans for contact tracking applications, and the applications that do exist may not necessarily communicate with each other. Even states with a solution in place have faced low adoption: Less than 5 percent of the North Dakota population had downloaded the state app as of June 11. (There appears to be no more recent data available.) Americans just don’t seem interested in technology. In a June survey, 71 percent of Americans did not plan to download a contact tracking app. Americans who did not want to use a contact tracking app cited privacy as a top concern. Other respondents said they did not believe the contact tracking apps were successful.
Paying Americans to download and maintain the app changes the equation. In a working paper, Jemima A. Frimpong and Stephane Helleringer of Johns Hopkins University found that cash payments of up to $ 100 “were more than twice as important in the decision-making process about [digital contact tracing] app downloads that privacy and accuracy. “Surely, much higher cash payments would be even more desirable. In exchange for downloading an app, the rent is paid.
A high cash payment would also help people who don’t have smartphones. According to Pew Research, most people over 65 have cell phones, but only 53 percent have smart phones. Smartphone ownership is also much lower among the lowest-income groups, with 71 percent of people making less than $ 30,000 a year owning smartphones. But numerous smartphones are available for just a few hundred dollars. A payment of $ 1,000 would cover this cost and probably any increase in monthly rates, at least initially. Alternatively, people in those groups could receive tax breaks or coupons for smartphone purchases and monthly payments to avoid worsening income inequality, even if only marginally.
The stimulus can also pay for itself. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that COVID-19 will likely save $ 8 trillion from the economy by 2030. Preventing even one-tenth of this cost would far exceed $ 330 billion in paying every American $ 1,000 for the request. Furthermore, millions of new cases could be prevented and hundreds of thousands of lives saved.
There will undoubtedly be implementation challenges to overcome. The system would need to make sure I didn’t download the app on five devices and claim five controls. You should also discourage me from downloading the app, accepting the payment, and then deleting it the next day. Similarly, the system would need to protect itself from nefarious actors seeking to steal my identity, violate my privacy, or simply create chaos.
Creating a separate website to verify who you are could solve these challenges. The platform could be linked to the Internal Revenue Service databases to verify the identity of the user and provide a one-time verification code. Once the code was used, the user would be paid $ 500. New verification codes may be required monthly to receive future payments.
In practice, Congress will likely need to establish a single request at the national level. Digital contact tracking applications must communicate with each other to be effective. If Deborah’s excellent “John Gates University COVID-19 Tracking” app can’t speak to Norman’s great “COVID-19 Stopping NOW”. Upon request, Deborah would not yet know that Norman contracted COVID-19, and public health benefits would be lost. A nationwide solution would ensure that applications can communicate and be useful to states without applications. Congress should ensure that any app is secure, not a small feat. The new website would require extensive and rapid penetration testing, vulnerability assessment, bug bounty programs, and other security measures. Application-based authentication would also be necessary to confirm any COVID-19 test results to prevent trolls from creating false outbreaks.
Google and Apple’s joint solution could work to a national standard. Google and Apple use a decentralized approach that preserves privacy: Data on a user’s COVID-19 test status is shared only between users with the same random token. This means that the data is not stored on a central server that could be compromised. Other contact tracking apps, by contrast, collect location data, posing greater privacy risks. If the Google / Apple approach is adopted across the country, public education about privacy protections within the system can offset this concern. While Americans still don’t believe the app is effective in fighting COVID-19, I don’t need to believe in the power of contact tracking apps to believe in a month of free rent.
There may still be very few Americans who download the app to develop true herd digital immunity, but the approach is self-correcting. If the stimulus is tied to download and adoption, low download rates mean less money spent. Fewer lives would be saved, but some would still be saved through advance warning and deferred spread. A single community can adopt the application at high rates, creating digital immunity bags for herds. But if enough Americans download the app, the disease could be defeated.
If Congress pays all Americans to download a digital contact tracking app, it could stimulate the economy, improve public health, and save thousands of lives.
The views expressed are those of the author and not those of any current or future employer, funder, or affiliate.
Future Tense is an association of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
