[BostonCard]

Good thoughts, and I agree that there may be some social desirability bias in responses for people who engaged in risky behavior to say "I don't know how I got it", even if they hosted a large backyard barbecue with sporadic mask-wearing.  I think it is important for contact tracers to state that their purpose is not to get people in trouble or pass judgment, only to identify other people who may have gotten infected.  Another important point is to make that contact tracing can only sometimes definitively identify how someone contacted COVID-19; sometime patients will have had multiple possible transmission events.  Still, agree with your point about needing to have a BS detector.

That there are two main reasons why knowing "how" is important.  The first (and, IMHO most important) is to be able to craft policy.  If you find out a lot of transmissions are happening from bars and few transmissions are happening at schools, you close bars and leave schools open.  If you find out private parties are a problem, you focus your communications on letting people know the risks and urging them not to have backyard barbecues.  If you find a hotspot (for example, a meat packing plant) you close it down or work with the employer to reduce the risk.

The second reason is that you want to find other people who might have been exposed.  If it is a workplace transmission, you test other people at that workplace to see if others have been infected.  If you know that one person has been infected, then it is likely that more will have been infected.

BC

[BostonCard]

Good thoughts, and I agree that there may be some social desirability bias in responses for people who engaged in risky behavior to say "I don't know how I got it", even if they hosted a large backyard barbecue with sporadic mask-wearing.  I think it is important for contact tracers to state that their purpose is not to get people in trouble or pass judgment, only to identify other people who may have gotten infected.  Another important point is to make that contact tracing can only sometimes definitively identify how someone contacted COVID-19; sometime patients will have had multiple possible transmission events.  Still, agree with your point about needing to have a BS detector.

That there are two main reasons why knowing "how" is important.  The first (and, IMHO most important) is to be able to craft policy.  If you find out a lot of transmissions are happening from bars and few transmissions are happening at schools, you close bars and leave schools open.  If you find out private parties are a problem, you focus your communications on letting people know the risks and urging them not to have backyard barbecues.  If you find a hotspot (for example, a meat packing plant) you close it down or work with the employer to reduce the risk.

The second reason is that you want to find other people who might have been exposed.  If it is a workplace transmission, you test other people at that workplace to see if others have been infected.  If you know that one person has been infected, then it is likely that more will have been infected.

BC