This New York Times article suggests utilizing communicative approaches similar to Taiwan could provide Americans with transparency while protecting their privacy.
Currently in the United States, privacy seems to be trumping transparency, even though transparent communication has long been touted as an essential practice during a pandemic. Less information leads to more mistrust, which then affects willingness to comply. Beyond the public’s need and desire to know, research is compromised because of the lack of specific data, particularly related to testing, symptoms, and locations of infected individuals. The United States needs to systematically collect more detailed information so that researchers are not relying on other countries’ data to make projections here. Utilizing some of the privacy-sensitive proactive approaches used in Taiwan (e.g., anonymized case tracing) could be beneficial.
