How We Reopen
Added 2020-04-20 20:51:46 +0000 UTCA month ago I became involved in a bipartisan effort to really understand what it would take to get through the COVID-19 crisis in the US.
My first contribution was helping write a white paper on digital contact tracing. It was inspiring and humbling to work with so many incredible folks jumping in to help and being willing to evolve their thinking as they shared their concerns with each other and as the situation evolved.
And so I've thrown everything into continuing to work with this group. Today we have released a Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience that puts together all our previous research into a comprehensive and actionable plan with bipartisan support: https://ethics.harvard.edu/covid-roadmap
It's a good plan. The basic idea is to massively scale up testing, tracing, and supported isolation (TTSI). We propose a national Pandemic Testing Board to immediately get the supply chain working on this.
We can then reopen in 4 phases, starting by supporting those most vulnerable and prioritizing the essential workers who are already out there.
Our group already has some connections in politics, but as the situation is changing quickly I hope any of you who feel inspired to reach out to your local and elected leaders will do so. We think this has a real shot of happening, because everyone wants a way out of this that minimizes loss of life as well as economic losses, and we don't have to choose one or the other.
Supporting materials like in-depth papers on different aspects: https://www.pandemictesting.org/
Some recent press:
https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/04/20/harvard-ethics-roadmap-to-pandemic-resilience-danielle-allen
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/20/three-key-ideas-stake-post-coronavirus-future/
I am genuinely excited and hopeful. The folks working on this are amazing! I know most of what people hear about on the news is extreme disagreements about two bad plans and which is worse, shutdown until a vaccine or reopen and surrender to the virus, but I have faith that we all want a better alternative. That's how we've already gotten bipartisan momentum. We CAN do this.
I know many of you are probably having a rough time of it right now, and I hope you're taking care of yourselves. I've focused my life around working from home for long enough that stay-at-home orders have impacted me a lot less than many other people. I'm grateful to have a full time job with benefits, and extraordinarily lucky that my organization is supportive of employees spending time on outside efforts during this crisis, so I can contribute to things like this.
On a more personal note, as some of you know, John Conway died of COVID-19 earlier this month. I met him many times, and his comments that Pi should be 2Pi were the inspiration for my first annual Pi Day video 10 years ago. In the blog post for this year's Pi Day video, which was a PSA on coronavirus, I worried I would be seen as overreacting. I was willing to be seen as overreacting.
I almost didn't include this sentence, for fear of looking dramatic:
"I have a lot of older friends, relatives, and colleagues, and from what I understand it is likely that many of them will get this new virus in the coming months and years, and unlikely that all of them will live through it."
I don't like it. I don't like it.
There's a lot about this I don't like.
There's a lot about this situation I can't control.
But there's things I can control, and those things include how much energy I spend focusing on the things I don't like and how much energy I spend promoting the things I do. I think it's healthy and necessary to take time to recognize and have feelings about the sad and frustrating things we can't control. I have every sympathy for those who don't have time or energy to spare for anything except anger and blame. I'm in a position to have time and energy to be sad sometimes AND work towards solutions most of the time, so that is exactly what I am going to keep doing.
Please give the video and report a look if you can, I have hope and faith in amounts I haven't had in years. This will not be easy, but we really can do this.
My best to you,
Vi
Comments
9 months after this video was posted, I'm so sad that we all failed. Sure there are parts of the Country that they behave like there is no pandemic but the number of the death or ICU bed availability doesn't lie. The biggest failure was the supported isolation part, not just for the infected patients but for those who became unemployed or businesses that had to shut down. If the Federal Gov't supported those people by basic universal income, people have stayed at home and the infection spread was prevented not too many people didn't have to die.
2021-01-25 15:46:50 +0000 UTCJust seeing this now. The "Adaptive Response" graph is proving eerily in phase with current reality, though the second spike is happening a bit earlier, and may end up higher than the first :-( I'm going to stay North of the border and wish you guys good luck.
Vincent Pelletier
2020-07-03 02:33:54 +0000 UTC
