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This will sound weird coming from a professional tech writer: Technology will not end a pandemic. People will.

There has been both hype and hand-wringing about tech that turns people’s smartphones into disease sentinels. Governments, health care authorities and companies around the world are using information about where we go to help locate coronavirus hot spots or notify potentially infected people.

There are good elements of this location-tracking technology, and serious shortcomings. Mostly, though, I’m concerned that citizens, companies and political leaders will fixate on this technology at the expense of more helpful but difficult policy choices.

If so, we’ll waste money, risk lives and provide an opening for technologists to oversell what they do.