COVID-19 Resources

Some helpful resources for learning and understanding our global pandemic, which I hope unites us in achieving a global, human perspective: we’re all in this together.

The authority and primary resource: World Health Organization = https://www.who.int/

A helpful clearing house of information: http://flattenthecurve.com

• Visualizing how social distancing helps flatten the curve and what happens when we don’t: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/
• Science Insider YouTube video Playlist: Novel Coronavirus
  • What Coronavirus Symptoms Look Like, Day By Day: symptoms and treatment timelines
• Soap versus Hand Sanitizer
• Safely bringing supplies into your home: gotta find that link again
• Helping the elderly understand social distancing: https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2020/03/16/mel-brooks-max-brooks-coronavirus-social-distancing-message-mh-orig.cnn
• WIRED magazine: News and Science: Cause and Control playlist features Dr. Seema Yasmin
• How to deal with reopening an economy: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/covid-19-reopen/
  • The Risks - Know Them - Avoid Them

Postscript: 2020-06-07: Unfinished Thoughts on Juneteenth

I’ve tried to help my family stay sane while self-isolating to protect the herd. There will be no return to normal: until there is accurate and accessible testing while we wait for an accurate and accessible vaccine, which improves workplace protocols and a return to safe location based, in-person work for the majority. These are primarily manual labor and physical work related.

In summary: the problems are: X, the solutions are: Y.

• protect the herd: minimize risk of exposure through self-isolation until we have testing and vaccination
• demand accurate, accessible testing for all
• demand PPE for all, but protect our heath system first, then essential workers
• demand work safety protocols for the new normal There can be no other priorities for our government, except the integrity of the American Constitution.

Postscript: 2025-01-27: COVID-19 Retrospective

Many people equated COVID-19 lock downs and masking to the government control of their bodily autonomy, exclusively making it a political issue, but it was a societal health and economic priority issue first. Social media disinformation (such as Anti-Vaxers, false equivalency to the flu) amplified fear during those times as the science progressed to unlock personal protection and testing supply chains were restored while the economy took a large hit to in-person work. As the science advanced, politicians used any change for criticism, usually for political gain by dividing opinion.

COVID-19 was always a health issue first. We learned many things and we lost over a million Americans: worse than any US war. The bodily autonomy argument against masks and vaccination was hypocritically forgotten when voters asserted anti-abortion government controls over a woman’s bodily autonomy in many red states.

While it is ultimately true that spreading the virus will boost the overall surviving population’s resistance to it, the unchecked spread of disease comes with significant costs:

1. Increases the most vulnerable of our society’s risk of death
2. Rapidly overwhelms our health resources: clinics, hospitals, equipment, etc. and drains the economy
3. Which taxes and kills our first responders: doctors, nurses, paramedics, etc. (we found many ambulance drivers live on minimal compensation)
4. Disease reduces worker protection and productivity; drains the economy.

So disease outbreak must be controlled: masks were effective in reducing transmission to others (but selfish people inverted the problem and thought that masks were ineffective protecting them). The vaccine absolutely worked for the majority (but selfish people demanded it be 100% effective without any side effects and last longer), but a minority certainly had side-effects. I believe it was fashionable to complain about your vaccination discomfort, but I think it was vanity for attention. We are still learning and having trouble classifying long COVID effects and treatment, but most of America wants to forget it. The lock-downs, when driven by health outbreak numbers to control our emergency health response, were justified even though they hurt the economy and many people’s livelihoods. We couldn’t justify the end of them until science advanced and more people took personal responsibility for public health with vaccination and masks to control the spread.

Return to Office Mandates

It is evident that work has changed: return to office mandates for many remote workers is a mixed topic today. The positive aspects of remote work: higher productivity due to work/life balance and scheduling, elimination of commutes, savings on office space. Negative aspects for remote workers exist: video conference fatigue and participants lacking manners, early career workers benefit from increased contact and gain experience working with other people: elbow to elbow work, mentoring, walking over to someone, and random hallway interactions. Mostly, return to office is for landlords to reclaim revenue and for lessees to recoup their commitment until lease expiration. Another factor is poor control: some managers cannot exude influence (and intimidation) remotely, while other organizations are using return to office as a way to layoff staff, and some extroverts cannot wait to return to the water cooler for office interactions which may not be valued by the introverts.