A COVID-19 positive man walks into a Seoul bar...and 1900 people need to get traced-and-tested, with 40 positives found already and 2000 venues shut down a week after they reopened.
What are a country& #39;s options?

Two poles are emerging: the total state or market anarchy.

Let& #39;s talk about the total state first, starting with the codes China put into WeChat.

Green? You can travel
Yellow? Exposed, stay home
Red? Supervised quarantine
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/business/china-coronavirus-surveillance.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/0...
So, a system like that in South Korea would make test-and-trace much easier. A total state, literally tracking everyone at all times.

If a yellow or red code moved, let alone walked into a sea of greens, you& #39;d see it. And you& #39;d message all the greens, and mark them yellow.
Now, that system is indeed total surveillance.

Yet on the other hand, you can& #39;t repeat the exercise of manually tracing-and-testing 1900 people every time a COVID-19 positive walks into a bar.

For an urban economy with crowds of strangers, this is one option nations may choose.
The other option is market anarchy.

Refuse a WeChat-like system, but either (a) give up the urban economy & go rural or (b) build a new isolated urban economy of people who are immune, vaccinated, or don& #39;t care about the virus.
In market anarchy option (a) you believe that the virus is a real danger, and an inhibitor to normal economic activity, but you also don& #39;t want to be tracked.

So you go to a rural setting. Space yourself out, avoid urban crowds of strangers, slash your consumption, be autarkic.
In option (b) you don& #39;t believe the virus is a real danger. The issue though is that ~50% of fellow citizens don& #39;t agree, so demand will crash.

So to actually build a functional urban economy without WeChat-style tracking, you& #39;ll need people who are immune, vaccinated, or DGAF.
Now, the best option of all is to get a drug, vaccine, or some other form of treatment that solves the pandemic. Then you don& #39;t need to choose between bad options.

(Herd immunity will also "work", but at the cost of many dead & hard-to-foresee consequences.)

So, focus on tech.
Upon deliberation, that means there are three options.

1) The total state: sacrifice privacy to control the virus

2) Market anarchy: preserve privacy, but don& #39;t control the virus

3) Superior technology: develop biomedical tech so good the virus and any successors don& #39;t matter
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