
Ask HN: A tool for Covid patients to “flag” people/places they may have exposed? - colinmcd
This is just a thought, but I&#x27;m surprised I haven&#x27;t seen any effort along these lines.<p>It would be useful if people who have tested positive for the virus could flag people and locations they came into contact with in the days before they became symptomatic.<p>This might be useful on a variety of levels:<p>1) informing the potentially exposed individuals without requiring the patient to individually contact each person<p>2) let others avoid those who have a higher probability of exposure (or at least give them a data point to help them make a risk-benefit estimate)<p>3) identify &quot;hot spots&quot; (businesses, restaurants, etc)<p>4) making the spread or potential spread of the virus more tangible for people who don&#x27;t personally know anyone who has contracted the virus<p>Plus it would just be a fascinating dataset for visualizing the spread through communities.<p>Of course, I see the potential for this to exacerbate panic and enable social shaming&#x2F;exclusion. I expect the perception that you&#x27;re &quot;throwing people under the bus publicly would decrease utilization of this tool even if it existed. Any ideas for how to avoid that perception?<p>Seems like this could be implemented pretty easily on top of Facebook APIs for Friends and Business Pages.
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buboard
I m sure ppl have considered various similar ideas, but the legal risk seems
too large to take, esp. for a sector that has been conditioned to sell virtual
trivialities for decades

