To the editors:

Jay Bhattacharya and Mikko Packalen have written an excellent and important essay explaining why contact tracing is a futile strategy in dealing with COVID-19. I have two comments.

First, while all epidemiologists recognize contact tracing as critically important for some infectious diseases, and while there are some who support it for COVID-19, the majority of infectious disease epidemiologists that I know do not advocate it for this pandemic.

Second, the current large-scale contact tracing programs are eroding trust and cooperation between the public and public health agencies. This may have dire consequences during future disease outbreaks for which contact tracing could be a critical component of the disease control efforts. I am very concerned about that.