{"id":2458265,"date":"2020-05-09T21:52:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-10T03:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/elizabeth-milias-box-it-in-good-luck-with-that\/"},"modified":"2020-05-09T21:52:00","modified_gmt":"2020-05-10T03:52:00","slug":"elizabeth-milias-box-it-in-good-luck-with-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/elizabeth-milias-box-it-in-good-luck-with-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Milias: Box it in? Good luck with that"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

When the county pronounced its official COVID-19 response, the \u201cbox it in\u201d strategy, it became the latest \u201cwhat we\u2019re doing now.\u201d This was a dramatic pivot from the days-earlier plan to test the citizenry for the valuable antibodies, for which we had received an initial 1,000 tests. These were shelved ostensibly because of uncertainty about accuracy, but they\u2019re precisely what we need.<\/p>\n

Antibody tests will provide data on how many people have been exposed to and have acquired the antibodies from the virus, giving us a clue as to how our desperately needed herd immunity is coming. Now we\u2019re only testing for the active virus, which tells us who is sick today \u2014 not exactly valuable information as we attempt to get our lives back and our economy moving.<\/p>\n

Box-it-in is a progressive political model championed by Vital Strategies, a consortium of World Bank, Planned Parenthood and World Health Organization alumni who tout its success against Ebola in sub-Saharan Africa. It enables the government to track not just those who get sick, but also everyone they report having come in contact with, with the power to quarantine all of them regardless of health status.<\/p>\n

In other words, the government can sideline large numbers of people for 14 days at a time whether or not they have symptoms. Imagine getting quarantined because your name popped up on someone\u2019s list? Sure, perhaps you\u2019d been exposed, but you also could be perfectly healthy or even in possession of the valuable antibodies from an earlier brush with the virus. Either way, sorry, you\u2019re on lockdown. And theoretically, what\u2019s to prevent this from happening to you numerous times? Notably, the very high proportion of asymptomatic COVID carriers defeats the purpose of both active virus testing as well as contact tracing, not to mention lockdowns.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Support Local Journalism<\/h3>\n