Editorial: Following clues in covid-19 contact

There are ways that fixing a pandemic can be a little like solving a crime.

It takes a lot of legwork. There are clues to follow. It is as important to figure out the what as it is the who and the where to reconstruct what happened and try to stop it from happening again.

With covid-19, the first step is testing. The second is contact tracing. That is usually associated with finding who came in contact with someone who tested positive and the spiderwebs of interaction that radiate out from there.

Usually, that is associated with people. What we now call contact tracing is the modern-day version of how an engineer hired to investigate outbreaks of typhoid fever in New York in the 1900s connected the dots of deaths in fancy households. He discovered the source wasn’t contaminated water — but a cook, named Mary Mallon. You may know her as Typhoid Mary.

But tracing those connections tells another story. It also tells where disease is spread. Where may be better than who, because it is a better predictor of patterns.

Who can tell us what did happen. Where can tell us what will if nothing changes.

On July 2, Allegheny County Health Director Dr. Debra Bogen looked at the data and a steady increase in numbers — the kind of thing that also was happening in states such as Florida and Texas — and issued an order closing down in-person dining at bars and restaurants.

On Wednesday, she said those patterns had changed. Now people were gathering in different places, and contact tracing was placing infected individuals at parties, weddings and funerals instead.

Between June 28 and July 4, 221 infected people said they had visited bars or restaurants, and 45 reported going to parties. Between July 12 and 18, the restaurant and bar number fell to 127, but 72 attended parties and other private functions.

Allegheny County has had record numbers of hospitalizations this week and eight consecutive days of new cases exceeding 100 in 24 hours.

Private gatherings are not as easy to limit as a public space, nor should they be. But the right to privacy comes with a responsibility for safety.

That is why it is important for everyone — not just bar owners and restaurant operators — to pay attention to the state’s recommendations for how to keep a gathering as safe as possible.

It also is why we need more contact tracing. We need to be able to know what behavior we should watch and where we should use the most care. We have a responsibility to each other — to our friends and our family and our neighbors — to not have our hospitality become a hospital stay.