Would knowing if an spread was caused by riots help with reopening plans? Theoretically you could say that bc of moving into phase 1 reopening didn't cause an uptick and anything was bc of riots not opening stores etc so we can safely move onto phase 2....
Sorry, I'm not sure I got this. I think you're asking:
The riots occurred during phase 1, when stores were opened. If there's an uptick in covid cases now, wouldn't we want to know whether the uptick was caused by the store openings or by the riots? If it was caused by the store openings, we might want to close the stores again, but if it was caused by the riots, we could leave stores open and safely move into phase 2.
Yes, you have a point there. (If this was, in fact, your point.) But when two things happen at the same time (store opening and riots), it is difficult to figure out which led to the result. You could do this research, but it would probably take longer to get an answer than you'd want to wait, before moving to phase 2.
Also, even if you wanted to figure this out, it wouldn't be comfortable to ask questions about this in the same interview in which you're doing the contact tracing. This would be like a boy goes for a farher and the questions from the rebbe alternate with questions from the rebbetzin about shidduchim. Different investigations need a different kind of interview.