Resistance to contact tracing, negative social media complicating battle

Shawano County COVID cases spiked in last 2-week reporting period
By: 
Tim Ryan
Reporter

Health officials working to contain the spread of COVID-19 are increasingly facing the additional challenges of negative social media backlash and a growing number of people refusing to cooperate with contact tracing.

It is not just a local problem.

“This is happening across the state as well,” said Vicki Dantoin, health officer for Shawano-Menominee Counties Health Department, at a meeting of the Shawano County Board of Health Monday.

“We don’t know the solution. We don’t know how to fix that, but it’s becoming more of an issue,” she said.

Contact tracing is seen as a vital tool for identifying where and how the coronavirus is being spread and keeping it contained, but that tool requires public cooperation.

“More and more people are not compliant or they don’t want to give us information,” Dantoin said. “They tell us its an invasion of their privacy. They tell us it’s none of our business. They tell us contact tracing is useless.”

Claims that COVID-19 is all just a conspiracy sometimes come up as well, she said.

The lack of compliance can also hamper efforts to identify workplaces where COVID-19 could be being spread.

“They’re not telling us their workplaces,” Dantoin said. “So then you’re getting more cases at workplaces and we find out later on, ‘oh yeah, we had six cases there.’ We didn’t know about it because they wouldn’t tell us they worked there.”

The increased resistance comes at a time when Shawano County is seeing a marked increase in positive cases of COVID-19.

As of Monday, the health department was reporting 115 confirmed positive cases in Shawano County, an increase of eight cases in only three days. Menominee County held steady at nine confirmed cases.

Both Shawano and Menominee counties are listed by the state Department of Health Services as having a moderately high burden, the total number of cases per 100,000 Wisconsin residents in the last two weeks.

The COVID activity level for both counties is also listed as high.

Dantoin said the increased numbers are not just the result of testing.

Fewer tests were administered in Shawano County during the last two-week reporting period, while the number of positive cases more than doubled.

There were 935 tests given between June 14 and June 27, which turned up 10 positive cases.

Over the next two weeks, from June 28 through July 11, there were 801 tests and 24 positive results.

Efforts to keep the public informed of those numbers is also meeting with some resistance, with an increasing number of negative comments on Facebook.

“I’ve heard this from other health officers across the state,” Dantoin said.

The comments have ranged from criticism that department is exaggerating the coronavirus threat to claims that COVID-19 is a conspiracy.

“There are about 30 comments a day, most of them negative,” Dantoin said.

There have also been threats made, mostly through private Facebook messages.

“It hasn’t been physical harm,” Dantoin said, “but it’s like, ‘You need to be out of there,’ and ‘You’re a disgrace to humanity,’ and those types of things.”

Some health departments elsewhere in the state have added disclaimers to their Facebook pages saying the department is not responsible for Facebook comments.

“Others have deactivated their Facebook pages because of such negative commenting,” Dantoin said.

Those departments instead are relying entirely on websites to inform the public.

The Board of Health discussed whether Shawano County should follow suit, but was split on a resolution to deactivate the Facebook page.

Several members felt the Facebook page continues to provide an important source of information for the public and gets more traffic than the county’s website.

The board ultimately voted unanimously to keep the Facebook page going but add a disclaimer regarding the comments.

tryan@newmedia-wi.com