07-28-2020, 06:46 AM
To give credit when credit is due, San Mateo County has added statistics to their website about how contact tracing is going. They are also clearly showing the current "R" value for the county. I would say their attempt is much better than Santa Clara or San Francisco has done. The link is
https://www.smchealth.org/coronavirus-metric-scorecards
Take a look. That is the good news, and I have to give them credit for making the data available. The graphs showing the percentage of the positive cases who are isolating and the percentage of the contacts who are quarantining are very telling. Everybody should look at these numbers because it shows what the extent of the problem is in San Mateo County. Ouch! I fear that the situation in Sanata Clara County is actually much worse, but they don't provide the data to let the residents know.
Unfortunately they are not reporting the number of contacts traced and reached, only the percentage. That is not enough to know what effect they are actually having, because if they aren't getting good cooperation and an adequate number of contacts even reaching 100% of them wouldn't help much. I will work on getting this data added to the site.
It is clear that San Mateo County has some serious issues with their contact tracing. It was much better earlier on when there were fewer cases. Right now, it would appear they are overwhelmed a bit. I suspect they are also a bit exhausted, because if you are pulling double shifts for months at a time, you eventually lose your edge. The percentage of people not properly quarantining and isolating is obviously a big, big problem all by itself. There are also some ambiguities in the numbers, but however those are resolved, it shows that our attempt to "dance" has been a failure. That isn't on the national leadership. We should be able to do this, and we simply aren't. If we need more resources, fine. Say what is needed and the community can at least attempt to provide the resources. For months San Mateo County has said everything was fine in contact tracing. Not quite.
https://www.smchealth.org/coronavirus-metric-scorecards
Take a look. That is the good news, and I have to give them credit for making the data available. The graphs showing the percentage of the positive cases who are isolating and the percentage of the contacts who are quarantining are very telling. Everybody should look at these numbers because it shows what the extent of the problem is in San Mateo County. Ouch! I fear that the situation in Sanata Clara County is actually much worse, but they don't provide the data to let the residents know.
Unfortunately they are not reporting the number of contacts traced and reached, only the percentage. That is not enough to know what effect they are actually having, because if they aren't getting good cooperation and an adequate number of contacts even reaching 100% of them wouldn't help much. I will work on getting this data added to the site.
It is clear that San Mateo County has some serious issues with their contact tracing. It was much better earlier on when there were fewer cases. Right now, it would appear they are overwhelmed a bit. I suspect they are also a bit exhausted, because if you are pulling double shifts for months at a time, you eventually lose your edge. The percentage of people not properly quarantining and isolating is obviously a big, big problem all by itself. There are also some ambiguities in the numbers, but however those are resolved, it shows that our attempt to "dance" has been a failure. That isn't on the national leadership. We should be able to do this, and we simply aren't. If we need more resources, fine. Say what is needed and the community can at least attempt to provide the resources. For months San Mateo County has said everything was fine in contact tracing. Not quite.