Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast live from Music Row on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – Leahy was joined in the studio by the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael.
At the top of the third hour, Carmichael outlined his thoughts on contact tracing and cited reasons why it wouldn’t work. He added that there were two reasons why the government would want to do it which included a stupid government that wants to look like its doing something and a more sinister reason which would resemble the tracking that China is doing of its own citizens.
Leahy: In the studio with us, all-star panelist Crom Carmichael. Crom, we are about to have a lively discussion, you and I about contact tracing. And we haven’t had a full discussion on it. You’ve expressed your skepticism about it.
Carmichael: That’s a kind word.
Leahy: I’m a kind person. (Laughter) But I watched something last night and I had a little different view than you did on it. But I watched Dr. Atlas from the Hoover Institute on Tucker Carlson last night and he was quite persuasive.
Carmichael: Did he shrug?
(Laughter)
Leahy: Boom!
Carmichael: Sorry I just had to say that.
Leahy: We’re just having too much fun here. Some Democrats will tell us that we’re just being selfish. And we must apologize for that or they’ll put us in jail. First outline if you will your opposition to contact tracing. And then we’ll talk about Dr. Atlas and what he said. I was sort of on a different perspective than you.
Carmichael: OK.
Leahy: But I found him very persuasive.
Carmichael: I’m opposed to contact tracing for two reasons: One it’s a dumb idea and it won’t work. Literally it won’t work. And I’ve said this all along. As soon as the idea of contact tracing was raised, I said, that won’t work. You can’t do that. COVID-19 is such an easy infection to catch or to transmit.
And the period in which a person can transmit it is a fairly lengthy period of time. Once the city opens back up and it has to open back up or we are going to end up with many many many more deaths from poverty and from starvation. If you want to take it to its logical conclusion about this lock up and all this stuff that these Democrats seem to want to do. Who by the way, aren’t losing any of their own personal pay.
Leahy: Let me just insert one little point here. Our good friend, King Andrew Cuomo…
Carmichael: Yes.
Leahy: He acknowledged yesterday that two-thirds of the new cases in New York City came from people who are, wait for it…staying at home.
Carmichael: That’s very surprising and then he doesn’t change anything.
Leahy: Exactly.
Carmichael: So going back to contact tracing. If you have something like HIV, contact tracing of HIV makes sense because people transmit HIV by doing one of two things. It was either a form of sex or it was needles.
Leahy: And you would remember that.
Carmichael: And you would know who you did that with.
Leahy: Yes.
Carmichael: OK. And so you could do that. But with this, you are going to be passing in the last few days if you are out and about you are going to be walking past a whole bunch of people that you don’t even know who they are. So this idea of contact tracing will not name the people who you were with.
It’s somehow having a digital file of everybody’s whereabouts down to the point of exactly where they were. Well, so what! If you are walking past a bunch of people downtown and you happen then later test positive for COVID-19 what are they going to do? Go back and find the 200 people you walked past?
Leahy: Which of those 200 people who’s names you don’t know tested positive? (Laughs)
Carmichael: Then are you going to erase that and try to find out who they were next too? It’s one of those things where I think they said with some expression but I’m going to get it wrong but get close enough to where you can nail it down. How many times is it removed that I know you and you know people I don’t know?
Leahy: Degrees of separation.
Carmichael: Degrees of separation. Thank you.
Leahy: You’re welcome. (Giggles)
Carmichael: There are not many degrees of separation before you get to an extremely large population of people.
Leahy: Very large.
Carmichael: This is even bigger because in the degrees of separation it has to do with people you know. Not people you walked past. The only reason I can think of that government people want to do this is two reasons. One is they want to act like that they’re being proactive and they’re stupid and don’t know what they’re recommending.
Or, the more sinister one is they really would like the government in the United States to be like the government in China and that is the ability to be able to track the activities of all its citizens. Which is the other reason I think it’s a terrible idea.
The other reason I don’t like it is it simply won’t work. Newsom uses the word, an army of 20,000 people. Well first of all in a state of 40 million people 20,000 people won’t be enough. We need to tell the governors you need an army of 5 million.
Listen to the third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
