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Dennis OConnor

In the coronavirus pandemic, we're making decisions without reliable data - 4 views

www.statnews.com/...ecisions-without-reliable-data

covid testing research pandemic data

shared by Dennis OConnor on 19 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
  • This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19.
  • As most health systems have limited testing capacity, selection bias may even worsen in the near future.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher.
  • Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data — there were just seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew — the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%).
  • Although successful surveillance systems have long existed for influenza, the disease is confirmed by a laboratory in a tiny minority of cases.
  • Some worry that the 68 deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S. as of March 1610 will increase exponentially to 680, 6,800, 68,000, 680,000 … along with similar catastrophic patterns around the globe. Is that a realistic scenario, or bad science fiction? How can we tell at what point such a curve might stop?
  • In the absence of data, prepare-for-the-worst reasoning leads to extreme measures of social distancing and lockdowns.
  • This has been the perspective behind the different stance of the United Kingdom keeping schools open12, at least until as I write this. In the absence of data on the real course of the epidemic, we don’t know whether this perspective was brilliant or catastrophic.
  • One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health.
  • At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making.
  • Dennis OConnor on 19 Mar 20
     
    Dr. Michael Kurisu D.O. "My take is this article is written by a very credible source. John P.A. Ioannidis is from Stanford and great resource. Makes argument that we are basing a LOT of our decisions on faulty or NO data ! Its fascinating to me that there has been less than 10,000 deaths globally and we have had SO MUCH DISRUPTION in the economy. I definitely feel we should be tracking the amount of deaths that are going to occur from people that will be pushed into poverty as well as the number of people being denied access to medical care right now. Yes… with COVID19, it CAN get much worse…. But maybe not… we don't know yet. This article actually increased my morale and put me on track to help GET MORE DATA. Then we can make informed decisions. And then TRACK ALL THE DATA moving forward.
  • Dennis OConnor on 19 Mar 20
     
    DeAunne Denmark, MD, PhD, "Excellent piece spelling out the pervasive and critical issues due to abysmal lack/tardiness in US testing, especially of large populations where initial outbreaks occurred, for those both visibly sick and not. And most importantly, healthcare workers. We cannot even begin to estimate CFR, much less develop reliable projection models, without valid data on everybody who is carrying. "The most valuable piece of information for answering those questions would be to know the current prevalence of the infection in a random sample of a population and to repeat this exercise at regular time intervals to estimate the incidence of new infections."
Dennis OConnor

Norman Doidge: Placebo Possibilities - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

placebo Doidge

shared by Dennis OConnor on 23 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Dennis OConnor on 23 Oct 19
     
    Interview with Dr. Norman Doige, part of a series of interviews on Brain Plasticity, Healing and "The Brain That Changes Itself".
  • Dennis OConnor on 23 Oct 19
     
    Dr. Michael Kurisu D.O. recommended Doidge's book, "The Brain That Changes Itself" to me several years ago. Reading the rich and detailed case studies in his book opened me to so many intriguing ideas. In particular, his explanations of how the placebo effect relates to neuroplasticity.
Dennis OConnor

Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., NIAID Director | NIH: National Institute of Allergy and Infecti... - 0 views

www.niaid.nih.gov/director

covid research reliable-sources

shared by Dennis OConnor on 20 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Dr. Fauci was appointed Director of NIAID in 1984.
  • Dr. Fauci has advised six Presidents on HIV/AIDS and many other domestic and global health issues.
  • Dennis OConnor on 20 Mar 20
     
    DeAunne Denmark, MD, PhD - Recommends Dr. Anthony Fauci as a highly credible source of information.
Dennis OConnor

What We Know So Far About SARS-CoV-2 - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...608338

covid research testing

shared by Dennis OConnor on 23 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • March 20, 2020
  • One of the few mercies during this crisis is that, by their nature, individual coronaviruses are easily destroyed.
  • These viruses don’t endure in the world. They need bodies.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • To be clear, SARS-CoV-2 is not the flu. It causes a disease with different symptoms, spreads and kills more readily,
  • his family, the coronaviruses, includes just six other members that infect humans
  • OC43, HKU1, NL63, and 229E—have been gently annoying humans for more than a century, causing a third of common colds
  • MERS and SARS (or “SARS-classic,” as some virologists have started calling it)—both cause far more severe disease.
  • hy was this seventh coronavirus the one to go pandemic?
  • The structure of the virus provides some clues about its success. In shape, it’s essentially a spiky ball. Those spikes recognize and stick to a protein called ACE2
  • This is the first step to an infection
  • he exact contours of SARS-CoV-2’s spikes allow it to stick far more strongly to ACE2 than SARS-classic did
  • But in SARS-CoV-2, the bridge that connects the two halves can be easily cut by an enzyme called furin, which is made by human cells and—crucially—is found across many tissues. “This is probably important for some of the really unusual things we see in this virus,” says Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research Translational Institute.
  • SARS-CoV-2 seems to infect both upper and lower airways,
  • his double whammy could also conceivably explain why the virus can spread between people before symptoms show up
  • All of this is plausible but totally hypothetical; the virus was only discovered in January, and most of its biology is still a mystery.
  • The closest wild relative of SARS-CoV-2 is found in bats, which suggests it originated in a bat, then jumped to humans either directly or through another species.
  • Another coronavirus found in wild pangolins also resembles SARS-CoV-2
  • Indeed, why some coronaviruses are deadly and some are not is unclear. “There’s really no understanding at all of why SARS or SARS-CoV-2 are so bad but OC43 just gives you a runny nose,” Frieman says.
  • Once in the body, it likely attacks the ACE2-bearing cells that line our airways.
  • The immune system fights back and attacks the virus; this is what causes inflammation and fever
  • in extreme cases, the immune system goes berserk
  • These damaging overreactions are called cytokine storms.
  • they’re probably behind the most severe cases of COVID-19.
  • During a cytokine storm, the immune system isn’t just going berserk but is also generally off its game, attacking at will without hitting the right targets.
  • But why do some people with COVID-19 get incredibly sick, while others escape with mild or nonexistent symptoms
  • Age is a factor.
  • other factors—a person’s genes, the vagaries of their immune system, the amount of virus they’re exposed to, the other microbes in their bodies
  • “it’s a mystery why some people have mild disease, even within the same age group,”
  • Coronaviruses, much like influenza, tend to be winter viruses.
  • In the heat and humidity of summer, both trends reverse, and respiratory viruses struggle to get a foothold.
  • irus is tearing through a world of immunologically naive people, and that vulnerability is likely to swamp any seasonal variations.
  • And one recent modeling study concluded that “SARS-CoV-2 can proliferate at any time of year.
  • Unless people can slow the spread of the virus by sticking to physical-distancing recommendations, the summer alone won’t save us.
  • Dennis OConnor on 23 Mar 20
     
    Dr. Michael Kurisu D.O.: We've known about SARS-CoV-2 for only three months, but scientists can make some educated guesses about where it came from and why it's behaving in such an extreme way.
Dennis OConnor

Coronavirus Pandemic Update 37: The ACE-2 Receptor - The Doorway to COVID-19 (ACE Inhib... - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

covid research ACE-2

shared by Dennis OConnor on 23 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Dennis OConnor on 23 Mar 20
     
    "Dr. Michael Kurisu D.O." called this video "molecurlar biology 101" It is from the Youtube Channel: MedCram - Medical Lectures Explained CLEARLY
  • Dennis OConnor on 23 Mar 20
     
    Forwarded to the Project Apollo listserve by "Dr. Michael Kurisu D.O." from Christina Mnatzaganian. This is from the UCSD Family Medicine Faculty Listserve. Hi Deepa, The statement below is from ACC/HFSA/AHA on March 17th. Essentially, there is no human data yet and data is evolving. See below, particularly the red area: *The following joint statement from the ACC, American Heart Association and Heart Failure Society of America was posted online on March 17 and addresses using renin angiotensin aldosterone system (RAAS) antagonists in COVID-19. "The continued highest standard of care for cardiovascular disease patients diagnosed with COVID-19 is top priority, but there are no experimental or clinical data demonstrating beneficial or adverse outcomes among COVID-19 patients using ACE-I or ARB medications," said Richard J. Kovacs, MD, FACC. "We urge urgent, additional research that can guide us to optimal care for the millions of people worldwide with cardiovascular disease and who may contract COVID-19. These recommendations will be adjusted as needed to correspond with the latest research." Patients with underlying cardiovascular diseases appear to have an increased risk for adverse outcomes with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Although the clinical manifestations of COVID-19 are dominated by respiratory symptoms, some patients also may have severe cardiovascular damage. Angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors have been shown to be the entry point into human cells for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. In a few experimental studies with animal models, both angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) have been shown to upregulate ACE2 expression in the heart. Though these have not been shown in human studies, or in the setting of COVID-19, such potential upregulation of ACE2 by ACE inhibitors or ARBs has resulted in a speculation of potential increased risk for COVID-19 infection in patients with
Dennis OConnor

Doctors on the Frontlines of the Coronavirus Fight - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...608509

covid research testing first-responders

shared by Dennis OConnor on 23 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Yui had always counted herself lucky to be among a family of doctors. Now the family is facing the greatest challenge of their lives as they wrestle with the dilemma of caring for their patients even though this risks exposing their loved one
  • Will her family survive the crisis intact?
  • Doctors across America are facing similar predicaments, made all the more acute by the government’s failure to protect them—to warn the public, to provide tests, and to supply enough protective equipment.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • When it comes to us being doctors, I worry about [family members] Stephanie and Alex and Jennifer and Pam—about their health, and about the eventual burnout due to everything that’s going on,”
  • As a primary-care physician, she’s the first point of contact with the medical system for many patients.
  • Pam recommended a hospital visit to be tested. “It was already too late for me and my family,” Pamela told me—she had been potentially exposed. Her patient got tested on March 12, and is still waiting for results. “My patient’s test was sent from Baltimore to a lab in Utah, then due to a reagent shortage [a substance needed to process the tests] sent from Utah to Arizona, Arizona back to a lab in North Carolina,” she said.
  • This is a mirror of the dysfunction and delays surrounding the country’s testing crisis, a major factor hamstringing the fight against the virus.
  • Meanwhile, she started feeling sick on Tuesday, and took the test herself. Self-quarantined at home, she thinks it’s only a matter of time, if she does have the virus, before she infects her two children—totally isolating from them would be all but impossible.
  • As a health-care provider, if I test positive, it has big implications for my office, my staff, and all the patients,”
  • Emergency-room doctors, he noted, are among those most at risk.
  • Her emergency room has been seeing more and more patients who have symptoms
  • She wears protective equipment but knows that the hospital could run out.
  • It’s not lost on Koo and her family that medical professionals worldwide have been dying fighting the coronavirus.
  • the main dilemma they’re grappling with is not so much getting sick themselves but spreading the virus to their families, their patients, and the public.
  • his might be the greatest fear of doctors across the country—that they’ll move from being part of the solution to part of the problem.
  • should. It weighs heavily on people.”Yui, for her part, told me she’d never let her fears over the virus stop her from doing her job.
  • Dennis OConnor on 23 Mar 20
     
    Dr. Michael Kurisu D.O.: Another article capturing the dialogue that i hear from a lot of my colleagues and others. We have doctors as well In my family : -My sister is Neuro ICU and director of stroke at Tri city hospital in Oceanside -Her husband is ER doc -My little sister is the PhD in sociology. (She specializes in education programs for the incarcerated and has interest on health access for prisons - which is a frightful place during this pandemic)
  • Dennis OConnor on 23 Mar 20
     
    We are in a war against this virus. First responders are the first line of defense. There is a lack of supplies and central leadership. However, there is no shortagage of courage. When you meet a first responder, say, "Thank you for your service."
Dennis OConnor

Coronavirus: Digital Health Projects and Resources | Stats-of-1 - 0 views

statsof1.netlify.com/fforts-in-fighting-coronavirus

data covid research testing N-of-One

shared by Dennis OConnor on 07 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Dennis OConnor on 07 Apr 20
     
    Recommended by Dr. Michael Kurisu D.O.: ...the owner of the blog is Eric Daza DrPH. He is a biostatitician that does modeling on causal beliefs for Nof1 studies for individuals.
Dennis OConnor

Projects / Blog | Eric J. Daza, DrPH, MPS - 0 views

www.ericjdaza.com/projects

data N-of-One tracking Dr. Michael Kurisu D.O.

shared by Dennis OConnor on 07 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Causes and Associations in Single-Individual Analysis (CASIA) [pronounced: ka-sha] | Project
  • The Situation: You have a lot of data from your wearable or implantable device, sensor, or mobile app. You have a recurring outcome you’d like to change (e.g., weight, irritable bowel syndrome, migraine headaches, asthma attacks, chronic pain, blood glucose levels). You’ve identified possible triggers, but their effects may take some time to appear---and it may be expensive or painful to test all or even just a few of them.
  • The Challenge: Design experiments to conduct on yourself to characterize the effects of only the most likely triggers.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Creating Evidence from Real World Patient Digital Data | Project
Dennis OConnor

Every Vaccine and Treatment in Development for COVID-19, So Far - 1 views

www.visualcapitalist.com/cine-treatment-covid-19-so-far

covid testing research

shared by Dennis OConnor on 03 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Dennis OConnor on 03 Apr 20
     
    Recommended by DeAunne Denmark, MD, PhD : "The projects these companies are working on can be organized into three distinct groups: Diagnostics: Quickly and effectively detecting the disease in the first place Treatments: Alleviating symptoms so people who have disease experience milder symptoms, and lowering the overall mortality rate Vaccines: Preventing transmission by making the population immune to COVID-19"
Dennis OConnor

FAQs on Diagnostic Testing for SARS-CoV-2 | FDA - 0 views

www.fda.gov/...-diagnostic-testing-sars-cov-2

FDA testing covid DeAunne Denmark MD PhD

shared by Dennis OConnor on 02 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Dennis OConnor on 02 Apr 20
     
    Explanation from DeAunne Denmark, MD, PhD : And just to clarify for all, since all of the testing jargon and landscape can be *extremely* confusing, especially now: The FDA has currently relaxed regulations for COVID diagnostics under "Emergency Use" (EUA). This authorizes, not approves, test kits, machines and devices to run those kits, and all other aspects involved in diagnostic testing. Authorize vs approve are very different animals under FDA. And you will see this repeatedly emphasized on the FDA site. But most often neglected, skipped over, mistaken in the wider press. Many articles and press releases use "approve" which is technically wrong - they mean authorize, or "grant use", or "use will not be objected to by FDA." If you have the stamina, I highly recommended reading as much of this as you can: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/emergency-situations-medical-devices/faqs-diagnostic-testing-sars-cov-2 "Validation" is yet an additional aspect that is probably the grayest zone of all, since it is left to each company/testing entity how exactly this is done. Validation can range from excellent to pretty cruddy science and still meet FDA "standards". These will be the devilish details we need to sort out re: collaborating with partners. And will unfortunately likely be a big mess for many outpatient Drs trying to figure out which test to order.
Dennis OConnor

Harnessing wearable device data to improve state-level real-time surveillance of influe... - 0 views

www.thelancet.com/...fulltext

testing research data health tracking

shared by Dennis OConnor on 06 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Dennis OConnor on 06 Apr 20
     
    "Jennifer M Radin, PhD Nathan E Wineinger, PhD Prof Eric J Topol, MD Steven R Steinhubl, MD"
Dennis OConnor

How To Care For Your Lungs, According To Chinese Medicine - 0 views

thechalkboardmag.com/g-health-tips-chinese-medicine

Chinese-medicine

shared by Dennis OConnor on 06 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Dennis OConnor on 06 Apr 20
     
    recommended by Erin Raskin
Dennis OConnor

Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) - 1 views

gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/...index.html

covid data data visualization

shared by Dennis OConnor on 04 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Dennis OConnor on 04 Apr 20
     
    Interactive Map - Global to city range.
Dennis OConnor

Supplies Needed - Biocom - 0 views

www.biocom.org/...coronavirus-supplies-needed

covid

shared by Dennis OConnor on 31 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Dennis OConnor on 31 Mar 20
     
    "To contribute supplies to one of the below organizations, please click directly on their corresponding links."
Dennis OConnor

What This Chart Actually Means for COVID-19 - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

covid

shared by Dennis OConnor on 29 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Dennis OConnor on 29 Mar 20
     
    Recommended by Sharon Wampler
Dennis OConnor

We need #masks4all - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

covid data

shared by Dennis OConnor on 29 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Dennis OConnor on 29 Mar 20
     
    Recommended by Sharon Wampler
Dennis OConnor

Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here's How. - POLITICO - 0 views

www.politico.com/...-society-analysis-covid-135579

future disruption covid

shared by Dennis OConnor on 28 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Instead of asking, “Is there a reason to do this online?” we’ll be asking, “Is there any good reason to do this in person?”
  • saluting our doctors and nurses, genuflecting and saying, “Thank you for your service,”
  • give them guaranteed health benefits and corporate discounts
  • ...131 more annotations...
  • it will force us to reconsider who we are and what we value, and, in the long run, it could help us rediscover the better version of ourselves.
  • has the potential to break America out of the 50-plus year pattern of escalating political and cultural polarization
  • the “common enemy” scenario, in which people begin to look past their differences when faced with a shared external threat
  • second reason is the “political shock wave” scenario
  • enduring relational patterns often become more susceptible to change after some type of major shock destabilizes them
  • now is the time to begin to promote more constructive patterns in our cultural and political discourse. The time for change is clearly ripening.
  • The COVID-19 crisis
  • has already forced people back to accepting that expertise matters.
  • move them back toward the idea that government is a matter for serious people.
  • the end of our romance with market society and hyper-individualism.
  • We could turn toward authoritarianism
  • reorient our politics and make substantial new investments in public goods—for health, especially—and public services.
  • to allowing partial homeschooling or online learning for K-12 kids has been swept away by necessity.
  • the social order it helps support—will collapse if the government doesn’t guarantee income for the millions of workers who will lose their jobs in a major recession or depression
  • de-militarization of American patriotism and love of community will be one of the benefits to come out of this whole awful mess.
  • But how do an Easter people observe their holiest day if they cannot rejoice together on Easter morning?
  • How do Jews celebrate their deliverance from bondage when Passover Seders must take place on Zoom
  • Can Muslim families celebrate Ramadan if they cannot visit local mosques for Tarawih prayers
  • All faiths have dealt with the challenge of keeping faith alive under the adverse conditions of war or diaspora or persecution—but never all faiths at the same time.
  • Contemplative practices may gain popularity
  • One group of Americans has lived through a transformational epidemic in recent memory: gay men. Of course, HIV/AIDS
  • Plagues drive change.
  • awakened us to the need for the protection of marriage
  • People are finding new ways to connect and support each other in adversity
  • demand major changes in the health-care system
  • COVID-19 will sweep away many of the artificial barriers to moving more of our lives online
  • uptake on genuinely useful online tools has been slowed by powerful legacy players,
  • collaboration with overcautious bureaucrats
  • Medicare allowing billing for telemedicine was a long-overdue change
  • s was revisiting HIPAA to permit more medical providers to use the same tools the rest of us use every day to communicate, such as Skype, Facetime and email.
  • The resistance
  • we will be better able to see how our fates are linked.
  • near-impossible to put that genie back in the bottle in the fall
  • college
  • forcing massive changes in a sector that has been ripe for innovation for a long time.
  • Once companies sort out their remote work dance steps, it will be harder—and more expensive—to deny employees those options.
  • Yo-Yo Ma
  • Perhaps we can use our time with our devices to rethink the kinds of community we can create through them
  • This is a different life on the screen from disappearing into a video game or polishing one’s avatar.
  • breaking open a medium with human generosity and empathy
  • Not only alone together, but together alone.
  • The rise of telemedicine
  • Out of necessity, remote office visits could skyrocket in popularity as traditional-care settings are overwhelmed by the pandemic
  • they’ve been forced to make impossible choices among their families, their health and financial ruin.
  • This crisis should unleash widespread political support for Universal Family Care
  • single public federal fund that we all contribute to, that we all benefit from, that helps us take care of our families while we work, from child care and elder care to support for people with disabilities and paid family leave.
  • potlight on unmet needs of the growing older population
  • The reality of fragile supply chains for active pharmaceutical ingredients coupled with public outrage over patent abuses that limit the availability of new treatments has led to an emerging, bipartisan consensus that the public sector must take far more active and direct responsibility for the development and manufacture of medicines.
  • resilient government approach will replace our failed, 40-year experiment with market-based incentives
  • Science reigns again.
  • Truth and its most popular emissary, science, have been declining in credibility for more than a generation
  • Quickly, however, Americans are being reacquainted with scientific concepts like germ theory and exponential growth
  • Unlike with tobacco use or climate change, science doubters will be able to see the impacts of the coronavirus immediately
  • for the next 35 years, I think we can expect that public respect for expertise in public health and epidemics to be at least partially restored
  • Congress can finally go virtual.
  • We need Congress to continue working through this crisis, but given advice to limit gatherings to 10 people or fewer, meeting on the floor of the House of Representatives is not an especially wise option right now
  • nstead, this is a great time for congresspeople to return to their districts and start the process of virtual legislating—permanently
  • Lawmakers will be closer to the voters they represent
  • sensitive to local perspectives and issues
  • A virtual Congress is harder to lobby
  • Party conformity also might loosen with representatives remembering local loyalties over party ties.
  • Big government makes a comeback.
  • Not only will America need a massive dose of big government
  • we will need big, and wise, government more than ever in its aftermath.
  • The widely accepted idea that government is inherently bad won’t persist after coronavirus.
  • functioning government is crucial for a healthy society
  • most people are desperately hoping
  • a rebirth of the patriotic honor of working for the government.
  • the coronavirus crisis might sow the seeds of a new civic federalism, in which states and localities become centers of justice, solidarity and far-sighted democratic problem-solving.
  • we will see that some communities handled the crisis much better than others.
  • success came in states where government, civic and private-sector leaders joined their strengths together in a spirit of self-sacrifice for the common good.
  • The coronavirus is this century’s most urgent challenge to humanity.
  • a new sense of solidarity, citizens of states
  • The rules we’ve lived by won’t all apply
  • pandemic has revealed a simple truth:
  • many policies that our elected officials have long told us were impossible and impractical were eminently possible and practical all along.
  • student loans and medical debt
  • evictions were avoidable; the homeless could’ve been housed
  • Trump has already put a freeze on interest for federal student loans
  • Governor Andrew Cuomo has paused all medical and student debt owed to New York State
  • Democrats and Republicans are discussing suspending collection on—or outright canceling—student loans as part of a larger economic stimulus package
  • It’s clear that in a crisis, the rules don’t apply
  • an unprecedented opportunity to not just hit the pause button and temporarily ease the pain, but to permanently change the rules so that untold millions of people aren’t so vulnerable to begin with.
  • Revived trust in institutions.
  • oronavirus pandemic, one hopes, will jolt Americans into a realization that the institutions and values Donald Trump has spent his presidency assailing are essential to the functioning of a democracy—and to its ability to grapple effectively with a national crisis.
  • government institutions
  • need to be staffed with experts (not political loyalists),
  • decisions need to be made through a reasoned policy process and predicated on evidence-based science and historical and geopolitical knowledge
  • we need to return to multilateral diplomacy,
  • to the understanding that co-operation with allies—and adversaries, too—is especially necessary when it comes to dealing with global problems like climate change and viral pandemics.
  • t public trust is crucial to governance
  • 1918 flu pandemic
  • the main lesson from that catastrophe is that “those in authority must retain the public’s trust” and “the way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one.”
  • Expect a political uprising.
  • Occupy Wall Street 2.0, but this time much more massive and angrier.
  • Electronic voting goes mainstream.
  • how to allow for safe voting in the midst of a pandemic, the adoption of more advanced technology
  • To be clear, proven technologies now exist that offer mobile, at-home voting while still generating paper ballots.
  • This system is not an idea; it is a reality that has been used in more than 1,000 elections for nearly a decade by our overseas military and disabled voters.
  • hould be the new normal.
  • Election Day will become Election Month.
  • The change will come through expanded early voting and no-excuse mail-in balloting, effectively turning Election Day into Election Month
  • Once citizens experience the convenience of early voting and/or voting by mail, they won’t want to give it up.
  • . Some states, such as Washington, Oregon and Utah, already let everyone vote at home.
  • Voters already receive registration cards and elections guides by mail. Why not ballots?
  • First, every eligible voter should be mailed a ballot and a self-sealing return envelope with prepaid postage.
  • Elections administrators should receive extra resources to recruit younger poll workers, to ensure their and in-person voters’ health and safety, and to expand capacity to quickly and accurately process what will likely be an unprecedented volume of mail-in votes.
  • In the best-case scenario, the trauma of the pandemic will force society to accept restraints on mass consumer culture as a reasonable price to pay to defend ourselves against future contagions and climate disasters alike.
  • In the years ahead, however, expect to see more support from Democrats, Republicans, academics and diplomats for the notion that government has a much bigger role to play in creating adequate redundancy in supply chains—resilient even to trade shocks from allies. This will be a substantial reorientation from even the very recent past.
  • pressure on corporations to weigh the efficiency and costs/benefits of a globalized supply chain system against the robustness of a domestic-based supply chain.
  • other gap that has grown is between the top fifth and all the rest—and that gap will be exacerbated by this crisis.
  • In this crisis, most will earn steady incomes while having necessities delivered to their front doors.
  • other 80 percent of Americans lack that financial cushion.
  • will struggle
  • A hunger for diversion.
  • After the disastrous 1918-19 Spanish flu and the end of World War I, many Americans sought carefree entertainment, which the introduction of cars and the radio facilitated.
  • The economy quickly rebounded and flourished for about 10 years, until irrational investment tilted the United States and the world into the Great Depression.
  • human beings will respond with the same sense of relief and a search for community, relief from stress and pleasure.
  • Less communal dining—but maybe more cooking
  • many people will learn or relearn how to cook over the next weeks.
  • ikely there will be many fewer sit-down restaurants in Europe and the United States. We will be less communal at least for a while.
  • A revival of parks.
  • Urban parks—in which most major cities have made significant investments over the past decade—are big enough to accommodate both crowds and social distancing.
  • Society might come out of the pandemic valuing these big spaces even more,
  • A change in our understanding of ‘change.’
  • Americans have said goodbye to a society of frivolity and ceaseless activity in a flash
  • Our collective notions of the possible have changed already
  • The tyranny of habit no more.
  • Maybe, as in Camus’ time, it will take the dual specters of autocracy and disease to get us to listen to our common sense, our imaginations, our eccentricities—and not our programming.
  • and environmentally and physiologically devastating behaviors (including our favorites: driving cars, eating meat, burning electricity)
  • echarged commitment to a closer-to-the-bone worldview that recognizes we have a short time on earth
Dennis OConnor

Keeping the Coronavirus from Infecting Health-Care Workers | The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...-infecting-health-care-workers

covid research

shared by Dennis OConnor on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • #StayHome
  • Wuhan
  • The city began to run out of doctors and nurses. Forty-two thousand more had to be brought in from elsewhere to treat the sick.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • methods were found that protected all the new health-care workers: none—zero—were infected.
  • methods were Draconian
  • health-care workers seeing at-risk patients were housed away from their families
  • They wore full-body protective gear,
  • goggles, complete head coverings, N95 particle-filtering masks, and hazmat-style suits
  • So what happens if you are exposed to a coronavirus patient and you don’t have the ability to go full Wuhan?
  • Partners HealthCare, has already sent more than a hundred staff members home for fourteen days of self-quarantine because they were exposed to the coronavirus without complete protection.
  • The success that Hong Kong and Singapore achieved by screening for people with fever- or flu-like symptoms suggests that the risk of asymptomatic contagion could be much lower than we thought.
Dennis OConnor

Stop, collaborate and listen - Crowdsourcing to fight covid-19 | International | The Ec... - 0 views

www.economist.com/...rowdsourcing-to-fight-covid-19

covid testing research crowdsourcing

shared by Dennis OConnor on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • , the World Health Organisation (WHO) is crowdsourcing what hospitals are learning.
  • submit anonymised covid-19 patient records to its global database
  • isting the drugs prescribed, procedures carried out and outcomes.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Clinicians who treat covid-19 patients in 30 countries chime in at a twice-weekly virtual gathering run by the WHO.
  • Their input, plus the clinical studies that are being published at a steady clip, are distilled into the WHO’s standards of care.
  • these standards have been revised five times in less than two months.
  • On March 12th eight Chinese doctors, led by Liang Zongang, a professor of cardiopulmonary reanimation, arrived in Italy on a charter flight that brought medical equipment supplied by the Chinese Red Cross.
  • ollowed on March 18th by around 300 Chinese intensive-care doctors.
  • Online learning about covid-19 is gathering speed, especially in developing countries.
  • To save the lives of gravely ill patients, doctors are trying many drugs
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