Eastern Adams County's Only Independent Voice Since 1887
Eastern Adams County's Only Independent Voice Since 1887
Voluntary must have a different meaning inside state government offices.
Last Tuesday, Gov. Jay Inslee and other participants in his coronavirus press conference said participation in a statewide contact tracing program would be voluntary.
Except it’s really not.
Under the program, anyone who tests positive for coronavirus would be contacted by the Washington National Guard, “trained” state Department of Licensing employees or other so-called “health professionals” to determine an infected person’s whereabouts and ascertain their personal interactions.
Those who test positive would also be quarantined in their homes, along with their families. The contact tracing “army,” as Gov. Inslee called it, would then contact the individual daily to make sure they are home.
To keep someone from going out in public, that army will bring groceries, provide on-telephone counseling and generally manage the life of the infected individual, as well as the lives of their family members and anyone they’ve been in contact with.
From there, the governor’s coronavirus brigade will hunt down those individuals who came in contact with an infected person. Those individuals — infected or not — will also be quarantined, along with the other members of their households.
I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like voluntary participation to me.
And that’s just the beginning.
Gov. Inslee had planned to require restaurants and taverns keep tabs on you for a change, if you want table service, once they are allowed to reopen. He was also contemplating ways to make patrons prove who they were. He only backed off that authoritarian move when restaurant owners and the public overwhelmingly rejected the idea.
But that may not matter, if you pay for your meals with a credit card, paypal or some other traceable means. Combine that with cellphone data, which can be used to identify who was present at a business, and the governor’s initial attempt at using restaurants to control the public may have been a moot point.
Back to tracing ...
Should someone you interact with personally test positive for coronavirus, you will receive a call from the governor’s new army and be ordered to quarantine in your home. No grocery stores, no family visits, just locked up at home with contact tracers checking up on you daily.
The governor boasts that his new army already has 351 Washington National Guardsmen, 390 state Department of Licensing employees and the 630 state and local health care workers charged to trace your whereabouts and interactions. Toss in the fact that they’re already working with technology companies to monitor the mobility of the smart phone in your pocket, and voluntary can be erased from the government dictionary.
And if you take steps to avoid voluntarily participation, a civil or criminal court date may be in your future.
“They are going to have to comply, eventually,” the governor said, when questioned about American citizens who refuse to comply. “If they don’t, there are sanctions they will face.”
That doesn’t sound voluntary to me.
— Roger Harnack is the Free Press Publishing publisher. Email him at [email protected].
Roger Harnack is owner/publisher of Free Press Publishing. An award-winning journalist, photographer, editor and publisher who grew up in Eastern Washington, he's one of only two Washington state journalists ever to receive the international Golden Quill for editorial/commentary writing. Roger is committed to preserving local media, and along with it, a local voice for Eastern Washington.
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