(Two-minute depressing read)

This is a very dangerous situation.

With the economies melting all around the world, countries nearing bankruptcy, the world is becoming ripe for a one-world currency, controlled by unregulated AI tracking.

We are still living as if nothing is going to happen and losing sight of what is important.

If we are not vigilant COVID -19 is going to turn us all into trackable slaves with no recourse as to who, what, or how, any of this collected information is used.

We have been so conditioned by television, the internet, smartphone, magazines, billboards, etc, we are inclined to just take things for granted.

Of course, we still have a right to our own opinions. 

However, with a blink of an eye, our world is changing.

Are we about to see the end of the covetous age when people thought about ME, ME, ME!.

Because tracking data is going to create a world of the Have and Have not.

Why?

Whatever about you I don’t want to live in a world of Social Stratification. In a society that is categorized into groups of people depending on whether they are COVID_19 free or not.

IT IS BAD ENOUGH AS IT IS WITH RACISM, RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY, WALL BUILDING, ETC.

We have for years listened to the current rhetoric that deals with wealth alone creating preconceived notions surrounding those of lower socioeconomic class.

We hear about wealth inequality, and lawmakers push policies designed to redistribute wealth, usually by increasing taxes on the successful to support programs for those that have less. Redistributing that wealth doesn’t help solve the issue because it destroys the very thing you are trying to preserve, the focus should be the equality of ability and opportunity. 

The 1 percent vs. the 99 percent.

Either way, the theme is simple: Someone has something, and others don’t. 

All of this is going to get worse if we allow unregulated tracking which will result in a world where everyone is afraid of commitment.

With the coming, economic depression I don’t want to live in a world of ignorance before the Next Pandemic arrives. 

What is needed is more transparency not less so we can know that the second coming is ‘at the door.’

So what if anything should we be doing. What is needed is a de stimulating package to secure the future. 

We should as it is obvious to be reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

We should be preparing for the impacts of climate change.

We should be restoring the vitality of natural systems

We should be increasing local, regional, and national self-sufficiency.

We should be developing a circular economy.

We should be more socially responsible.

We should be all working together. 

We should be achieving all of them at the same time.

We should not have a mindset of we’ll do whatever it takes. 

We should not allow the introduction of unregulated tracking. 

I can hear you saying that we are all already tracked. 

This is true and perhaps a well-designed tool could offer public health benefits, but a poorly designed one could pose unnecessary and significant risks to privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. 

For there to be trust.

The tool must protect privacy, be voluntary, and store data on an individual’s device rather than in a centralized repository.

Even then there will still need to be strict policies to mitigate against overreach and abuse.

The data should not be used for purposes other than public health — not for advertising and especially not for any punitive or law enforcement purposes.

Rather than identify the people who own the phones, apps based on the protocol could use identifiers that cannot easily be traced back to phone owners. 

Then how does the tool define an epidemiologically relevant “contact”?

The public needs to know if it is a good technological approximation of what public health professionals believe is a concern. Otherwise, the tool could be collecting far more personal information than is warranted by the crisis or could cause too many false alarms.

Another issue is whether phone users control when to submit their proximity logs for publication to the exposure database.

Also, when users share their proximity logs, what will they reveal?

Both the technology and related policies and procedures should ensure the deletion of data when there is no longer a need to hold it. To ensure tracking does not outlive the effort against COVID-19.

When people feel that their phones are antagonistic rather than helpful, they will just turn location functions off or turn their phones off entirely.

In the coming weeks and months, we are going to see a push to reopen the economy — an effort that will rely heavily on public health measures that include contact tracing.

Obviously, you’d have absolutely no civil liberties, freedoms, or powers, if you are deceased.

The COVID-19, however, has set in motion a paradigm shift in how nations prioritize and conceptualize personal freedom. So if the virus weren’t scary enough, its potential ramifications for privacy and civil liberties make it even scarier.

We all live here because Earth is the only planet known to humans that sustain life.

The signs of the end are prevalent.

I think it’s time that more people open their eyes to the problems of our society and acknowledge that we do, in fact, have a problem.

Yet these impacts will be trivial compared to the likely economic and social disruption if we continue to destroy the environment.

Short term thinking is prevailing. The sort of thinking that will condemn us to a very risky future.