Yes, Phil Murphy said a bit wistfully today, he’s heard the charge of “Big Brother.”

And what better way to combat allegations of “1984” in 2020 New Jersey than with clever PR.

Maybe we’re being a bit flippant here, but the governor did talk about a “broad public relations campaign” to sell the public on contact tracing.

This budding campaign seems to have two main points. One is that contact tracing is good and necessary in the continued fight against COVID-19. And two, contact tracing is not a sinister plot to spy on the people.

The first aim is pretty straightforward. There is nothing new in employing contact tracing in tracking infectious diseases and stopping their spread.

Here’s how it works in the case at hand.

If a person tests positive for the coronavirus, a contact tracer (a real, live human being) will ask said individual who he, or she, came in contact with over the last week or so. The contact standard is being within six-feet of someone for at least 10 minutes. So, people passing each other in the street, the supermarket or while jogging do not count.

This is voluntary; individuals do not have to cooperate. Assuming they do, the contact tracer will reach out to those who were in contact with the infected person and suggest they get tested or perhaps
self-quarantine. That’s voluntary too. People do not have to listen to the contact tracer.

About 900 people have been hired for this mission already and more will be hired in the future. The governor said the plan is to hire a diverse group of contact tracers to make it easier for them to mesh with the state’s diverse population. Their goal is to convince people all this is in the name of good health and the common good.

Murphy tried to ease fears of those with genuine privacy concerns by stressing that the state will not use cell phones or any electronic device to track people.

“This is legitimate. Your privacy is protected,” the governor said.

But then, there are those whose concerns veer into never-never land. I heard that a few weeks ago when listening to a virtual meeting of the Morris County freeholders. The public portion featured contact tracing critics who brought up that evil Bill Gates, the “new world order” and Agenda 21 of the United Nations.

The UN’s Agenda 21, especially, is one of those black holes of conspiracy theories. Enter and you can come out believing that COVID-19 is a secret plot to turn humans into puppets at the behest of amoral aliens, or maybe the Clintons.

It’s going to take quite the PR effort to convince that group.