Ask people getting tested where they’ve been recently

THE CORONAVIRUS surge proves that testing has become like nailing Jell-O to the wall. We will have a vaccine before we have enough test kits and testing reagents to do enough testing fast enough to effectively quarantine positive people, which is the main goal of testing. The overlooked alternate goal of testing is, where/how are people getting infected? Let us concentrate on that now.

What we should do is survey people who come in for a test. This survey would list a number of common activities done with others and a box to enter how many times you did each activity in the past three weeks and a box to check if you were wearing a mask while doing that activity. The list would include indoor dining, gym workouts, church, protests, parties, family groupings, etc.

The survey would be printed on a stiff card with a stubby golf course pencil stuck on it, so people can fill them out in the car — no dirty clipboards. The survey should not be any more onerous than the typical medical history form.

The surveys would then be tabulated along with tests for both positive and negative results. Summarizing the surveys for both results will show what is safe and what is risky. Medical directives that are currently being issued, or not issued, could then be based on factual evidence which officials could cite.

Maybe we could end the debates about indoor dining and wearing masks while exercising or even not wearing masks at all, because we would reduce the guesswork. Right now, to quote columnist David Brooks, we are all our own epidemiologists.

Immediately stopping risky behavior would be even more effective than quarantining positive people because we would be preventing infections before they happen. If we had begun surveying in April, we probably would not be in the place we are in today.

ROCK TOPE Albuquerque