> This is the sort of problem that could be solved in a better world; collecting location data to find interactions between people would allow you to get them tested faster
NO. Global data about who interacts with who and where should NOT be available to anyone. Especially NOT to HEALTHCARE orgs, I couldn't imagine less trustworthy and skewed-incentives institutions! At least you can trust that a country's secret service like your NSA would keep most of that data safe (as in "safe even the eyes of from judges & prosecutors unless you have a national security issue" etc.). Like in I'd rather have +10k deaths from preventable contagious diseases per year and take the chance of being amongst them then having this on a wide scale.
> civic trust in our community organizations and institutions was built up over time
You have no reason to trust anyone and anything. Stop doing so.
> a responsible institution
There's no such thing. Any institution should be considered thoroughly corrupted in the absence of evidence to the contrary.
> our secret agencies are actively planning to exploit this
It's their job to do so! If you want to provide solid security in globally connected world the "protectors" need to be a bit above the law - it's OK as long as what they collect stays in their archives and you prevent them from holding political or financial power.
The point is to build societies that can function TRUSTLESSLY and where everything is SECRET BY DEFAULT unless explicitly shared.
That's the only way to have an open society! Sure, in small isolated pockets you can have your "trust" in institutions and stuff.
Otherwise it's a choice between:
(1) accept framework of trustlessness + secrecy-by-default + broad exceptions for security agencies mostly as long as they DON'T share data with anyone (no, not even to "save lives", unless you're taking more than thousands...)
(2) drop the global interconnectedness, drop most free travel and work (I don't mean relocation - you'd also need to drop the kind of temporary travel that can't be easily monitored!), move to a more localist society - here you can have trust in the institutions of your own "pocket" that you voted for yourself.
Unfortunately it seems that the pendulum will now swing towards (2) as you seem to say you prefer - ...too bad, I'm sure we could've made the global-village thing work too :( probably we need to try again when tech advances a few extra steps, eg. neural-interfaces + pervasive-AI + usable distributed financial tech. and use the tech properly to make the openness and interlinking irreversible!