Talk:COVID-19/Lessons from COVID-19

Who Knew?

Consider adding a section, perhaps titled "Who Knew?" that documents early warning signs, responsible forecasts and predictions, and preparation work performed. Seek to provide insight and "teachable moments" while avoiding "I told you so" accusations. Consider naming the section "Early Warnings" or "Missed Opportunities". Study what was learned, how these helped, and what more could have been learned or done to prepare.

Here are some candidates:

• Bill Gates TED Talk, The Next Outbreak, We're not ready. at: https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready?
• Pandemic scenario warning. See: https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/03/16/trump-inauguration-warning-scenario-pandemic-132797
• The Crimson Contagion simulation.
• It was New Year's Eve when BlueDot's computer spat out an alert: a Chinese business paper had just reported 27 cases of a mysterious flu-like disease in Wuhan, a city of 11 million. The signs were ominous. Seven people were already in hospitals. See: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-outbreak-computer-algorithm-artificial-intelligence/

Thanks! --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 12:21, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Role of System's Thinking

A recent Atlantic article claims:

"We had time to prepare for this pandemic at the state, local, and household level, even if the government was terribly lagging, but we squandered it because of widespread asystemic thinking: the inability to think about complex systems and their dynamics." See: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/03/what-really-doomed-americas-coronavirus-response/608596/

Consider adding a topic on system's thinking to the course. --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 20:23, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Shifts

The pandemic has caused many shifts to occur throughout our personal, family, social, and work lives. Working from home, student's at home, businesses closed, and many other profound changes are taking place. Many are using video chat to attend school, attend religious services, meet with friends etc, while restaurants and hotels are largely closed. On the darker side, vulnerabilities are being exploited in a variety of ways, including hoaxes, and fraud. It will be useful to document the various shifts that occur, and perhaps the new paradigms that may arise.

Shifts that are becoming apparent include:

• Reliance on internet access,
• Video chat,
• Mainstream use of telemedicine,
• Flexible access to voting,
• Distance learning,
• Work from home,
• Physical distancing,
• Social Connection,
• Handshake alternatives,
• Universal child care,
• Grocery delivery,
• Essential work,
• Religion at a distance,
• Virtual happy hours,
• Family Time,
• Home cooked meals
• Baking bread,
• Universal healthcare,
• Refuge for the homeless,
• Facing facts,
• Reliance on science,
• Test and trace,
• Vaccine advocacy,
• Improved risk assessment,
• Questions about wildlife trade,
• Universal basic income,
• Privacy concerns,
• Integration of freedom and equality,
• Global perspective,
• Focusing on what matters.

--Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 20:30, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Andrew Cuomo Questions

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been giving televised press conferences each day during this crisis. Transcripts are available. On April 1, he asked several questions that we can follow as this unfolds. They begin at 24:31 into the transcript and include:

• Question is, how do you get up? Well first, do you get up and second, if you get up, how do you get up? Do you get up smarter? Do you get up wiser, or do you get up bitter, and you get up angry, and you get up fearful? We are in control of that and we have to start think about that.
• We also have to be smarter from what we went through. How do you make the economy more resilient? What happens when something like this happens again, and something like this will happen again? “Oh no, this is a once in a lifetime. Never again.” Something like this will happen again. We’re seeing it in the environment, we’re seeing it with floods, we’re seeing it with hurricanes. Something like this will happen again. You can’t just turn off the economy like a light switch.
• How do governments work together? You can’t figure it out on the fly; what the federal government, they do what the state government does, what the local governments do. Figure it out before. Learn the lessons from this. --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 11:24, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Recovered Superheros

If people who have recovered from their infection are immune to reinfection (this may only be temporary and has not yet been adequately studied) then these people are uniquely suited to help provide essential services without spreading infection further. It will be instructive to notice how such people are identified, how they emerge from convalescence, what they choose to do, and if they take key roles providing essential services. They could become superheros! --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 11:40, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Social-Political Transformations

The experiences of this pandemic may result in several social-political transformations. We already saw the traditionally fiscally conservative republican-controlled Senate unanimously pass a $2 Trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.

Other potential transformations include:

• Growing support for Universal Basic Income. See: https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriacollins/2020/03/19/covid-19-and-universal-basic-income-lessons-for-governments-from-the-tech-world/
• Increased support for vote by mail and other reforms to simplify voting. See: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/03/30/covid-19_crisis_makes_reformers_all_in_for_vote-by-mail_142808.html
• Increased support for universal healthcare. See: https://www.salon.com/2020/03/08/the-covid-19-outbreak-has-made-universal-healthcare-into-a-national-security-issue/

--Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 13:39, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Missteps

Opinions are forming about mistakes made in handling the crisis. Below is transcribed one list, provided by the MoveOn organization as an email sent on April 9:

Here are 10 key ways that Trump has let the coronavirus pandemic get out of control:

1. Refusing to take responsibility for his administration's response to the pandemic. Trump doesn't believe he's responsible for how he and his administration are dealing with the crisis. When asked by reporters about it, he said, "I don't take any responsibility at all."6
2. Shutting down the White House pandemic office. Trump closed the White House's National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense in 2018—despite official briefings starting even before his inauguration about the threat posed by pandemics.7,8
3. Ignoring intelligence warnings. Trump ignored dire warnings in January and February from U.S. intelligence agencies about the coronavirus pandemic, downplaying the threat and blocking necessary preparations.9 He also stonewalled inquiries from Congress starting in early February.10
4. Failing to test. Trump failed to mobilize the government and private sector to establish testing early on to contain the spread of the virus.11 Dr. Fauci calls the lack of early testing "a failing" of the U.S. response.12 Now, we're left with lockdowns and intense social and economic disruptions to try to mitigate the harm.
5. Failing to procure medical supplies. Trump failed to marshal the powers of the federal government to procure the medical supplies and hospital beds needed to meet the scale of this public health crisis. For instance, if the Trump administration had reacted in February to the ventilator shortage, the shortage would have been resolved by mid-to-late April. Because the administration failed to react, we might have enough ventilators only in early June, at best.13
6. Spreading lies and misinformation. Early in the crisis, Trump said that the coronavirus would simply disappear. "It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle—it will disappear."14 Then, he promoted a risky antimalarial drug as a treatment, with no evidence.15 He accused governors of not needing the personal protective equipment and ventilators they asked for, and he accused health care workers of stealing and selling masks.16,17 And he still continues to spread lies and advance his own political agenda, boasting about his poll numbers and television ratings.
7. Appointing Mike Pence to run the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Pence has a history of skepticism and denialism around science and a record of poor response to public health crises as governor of Indiana.18
8. Blocking access to health care, which puts all of us at risk. Trump and his Republican lackeys in Congress refuse to pay for coronavirus and COVID-19 medical care—except for testing.19 But even the testing provision is full of loopholes, with reports that people are showing up at hospitals to get tested and then getting billed thousands of dollars because, while the tests are free, the emergency room visits are not.
9. Favoring governors who are political allies when distributing lifesaving medical supplies and pitting states against one another instead of distributing supplies based on most urgent need and fostering cooperation in this national emergency.20
10. Failing to hire competent experts to manage this crisis. Trump and his administration are incompetent, and, as a result, people are needlessly dying. There is tremendous turnover in key administration positions, many positions are left unfilled, and people are often unqualified for their jobs. This results in horrifying incompetence in the best of times, and catastrophic inadequacy now.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg ...

Trump's political strategy is to falsely repeat over and over that the coronavirus is unprecedented, that no one saw it coming, and that his response has been "great."21

And the American public believes him. It's up to us to get the truth out and hold Trump accountable as the pandemic continues to ravage our communities.

Sources:

1. "Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count," The New York Times, accessed April 2, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119369?t=6&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
2. "Coronavirus May Kill 100,000 to 240,000 in U.S. Despite Actions, Officials Say," The New York Times, March 31, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119370?t=8&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
3. "Coronavirus job losses could total 47 million, unemployment rate may hit 32 percent, Fed estimates," NBC News, March 30, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119371?t=10&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
4. "President Trump's Job Approval Rating Up to 49%," Gallup, March 24, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119008?t=12&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
5. Ibid.
6. "Trump: 'I Don't Take Responsibility at All,'" New York, March 13, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119011?t=14&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
7. "I ran the White House pandemic office. Trump closed it." The Washington Post, March 13, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119372?t=16&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
8. "Before Trump's inauguration, a warning: 'The worst influenza pandemic since 1918,'" Politico, March 16, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119373?t=18&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
9. "U.S. intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic," The Washington Post, March 20, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119374?t=20&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
10. "Congress Wanted Answers From Trump on Coronavirus. He Blew Them Off." The Daily Beast, March 20, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119375?t=22&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
11. "The Lost Month: How a Failure to Test Blinded the U.S. to Covid-19," The New York Times, March 28, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119376?t=24&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
12. "Top health official Fauci: People in US not easily getting coronavirus testing 'is a failing,'" The Hill, March 12, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119377?t=26&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
13. "Slow Response to the Coronavirus Measured in Lost Opportunity," The New York Times, March 24, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119378?t=28&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
14. "All the President's Lies About the Coronavirus," The Atlantic, March 24, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119010?t=30&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. "Trump could help solve the mask problem. Instead he's making baseless attacks on New York nurses." Vox, March 30, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119379?t=32&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
18. "Mike Pence is exactly the wrong guy for this job," CNN, February 27, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119380?t=34&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
19. "He Got Tested for Coronavirus. Then Came the Flood of Medical Bills." The New York Times, March 30, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119361?t=36&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
20. "Governors plead for medical equipment from federal stockpile plagued by shortages and confusion," The Washington Post, March 31, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119381?t=38&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK
21. "Trump said his coronavirus response has been a perfect '10.' Public-health experts say that it's 'abysmal' and that he needs to 'stop talking.'" Business Insider, March 17, 2020 https://act.moveon.org/go/119382?t=40&akid=261362%2E11029118%2EBA-5iK

--Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 11:41, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Consider the book American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

Consider reading the book American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic and integrating ideas presented into this course. --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 02:10, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Consider the book Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live

Read the book Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live by Nicholas A. Christakis MD PhD and improve the course based on what is learned from the book. --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 18:13, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Consider the book Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

Read the book Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, by Fareed Zakaria and integrate lessons from that book into this course. --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 20:49, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

More book suggestions

The books Greatest Influenza, by John Berry and Black Death at Golden Gate, by David Randal relate to two big epidemics in the 20th Century. They may provide insights into this COVID pandemic that is useful for this course. --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 23:02, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Another book suggestion

The book Aftershocks And Opportunities: Scenarios for a Post-Pandemic Future by Rohit Talwar, Steve Wells, Alexandra Whittington suggests steps we can take to prepare for the (inevitable) next pandemic. It may provide insights into this COVID pandemic that are useful for this course. --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 13:13, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Yet another book suggestion

Add the book Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen to the list of recommended books. Gather this list and add a "Recommended Reading" section to the course. --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 02:09, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Engineering the Apocalypse

The April 23, 2021 podcast Engineering the Apocalypse, provides many suggestions for how we can detect, prevent, and treat future pandemics. It will be helpful to integrate some of these suggestions into this learning resource. --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 22:35, 27 April 2021 (UTC)