Coronavirus News (65)

Combating COVID-19: Lessons from Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan How have Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea leveraged their IT infrastructure and capabilities to deal with the crisis? What could other governments learn from their experience? ..........

Newspapers, television, and social media have been awash with reports about COVID-19 developments.

.......... the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the country’s communication regulator, gave temporary access to the 5.9GHz spectrum for rural wireless broadband. Temporary access was granted to 33 fixed-wireless internet service providers (WISPs) ...... The agency’s stated aim behind this move was to bring access to telehealth, distance learning and telework to rural communities in several states. ....... in a bold legislative move, Congress relaxed several restrictions on the use of telemedicine to treat people covered under the Medicare program. .......

unlike in the world of business, there are no unambiguously measurable financial targets — such as profits, market share, unit costs and market capitalization – in the public administration of health

......... how

Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea

overcame daunting challenges and deployed technology to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. .......... There is perhaps no better example than that of Singapore when it comes to using ICT for rapid, large-scale social orchestration. ......... Singapore, which has a population density as well as a population comparable to that of New York City, reported its first case of COVID-19 on January 23, while New York confirmed its first case on March 1. Singapore had 9,125 cases on April 21, compared to New York’s 251,720 (and 11 deaths to NYC’s 14,828 on April 21). ............. At the heart of Singapore’s response to the pandemic is contact tracing, a process by which every newly discovered infected case (person) is mapped on to all the people that might have been potentially infected by that person. Within 24 hours of each new infection being discovered, more than 100 contact tracers working around the clock put together the contact map for that person. ...................... “Singapore invested heavily in developing capacity and an infrastructure to deal with these types of outbreaks over the past 10 to 15 years, including increasing capacity for intensive care and patient isolation facilities, building expertise in infectious disease.” ................... Singapore’s digital technological capabilities paid off. They enabled the state to take

extraordinarily thorough and swift measures at scale in the face of the pandemic

. ................ The capabilities that South Korea developed to fight disaster stemming from geopolitical conflicts were amplified by its use of digital technologies to orchestrate a swift and cohesive response at scale to the pandemic. ............ Ever since the SARS epidemic of 2003, Taiwan has been in a state of constant readiness to combat epidemics arising from China, given the deep and extensive contact between the two countries. As many as 2.71 million visitors from China entered Taiwan in 2019. ............. After the SARS outbreak in 2002, Taiwan had created a disaster management and recovery center — National Health Command Center (NHCC) – which focused on large disease outbreaks and served as the operational command for a coordinated response across multiple agencies and regions. In the face of the rapidly escalating pandemic, Taiwan was able to calm its citizens and convince them that the government was in control of several critical tasks. These ranged from border control, quarantine monitoring and resource mobilization to the effective management of logistics and operations. Careful and accurate communication helped Taiwan keep its citizenry well informed and fight misinformation.

The vice president of Taiwan, an epidemiologist by training, led the public information campaign from the office of the president.

................ Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s use of Facebook to reach out to the citizens. The PM posted “…Once a case is confirmed, within two hours [contact tracers] create a detailed activity log of the patient’s movements and interactions in the 14 days before admission….” ............ The ministry of health also provided regular and consistent WhatsApp group updates of what was happening in the country and the extent to which the virus had spread. The government opted for transparency and people were told in stark terms what could happen next. Not only did the delivery of information on social media channels help control panic, it also strengthened the credibility of the public administration in the eyes of its citizens. ..................

the investment in administrative capabilities in public health was strengthened by its digital technology capabilities and vice versa.

............. when a new COVID-19 case was found in a neighborhood, people within that geography were alerted by information sent to their mobile phones. The alert provided information about the patient’s demographic details as well the patient’s travel history. .......... Sharing of aggregate population trends and tracking of events in real-time are possible even in regimes that have stringent privacy laws. South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) provides for comprehensive safeguards for the protection of citizens’ privacy. Taiwan, too, has very strict data protection and privacy legislation including the Personal Data Protection Act, which regulates collection, processing and use of personal data. These laws have not restricted these countries from using information effectively when a swift response was called for in an emergency. .............. a contact-tracing smartphone app – TraceTogether – developed by GovTech that identifies people that have been within two meters of a patient for at least 30 minutes for follow up action by contact tracers. ............. Taiwan tracks quarantined peoples’ cell phone signals for possible violation of quarantine requirements. Texts to those found outside the quarantine zone as well alerts to enforcement authorities are sent by the automated system. Taiwan imposes a fine on people who leave quarantine without a phone. ............ Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan all made a distinction between the use of data to advance commercial objectives and the use of data to protect the well-being of citizens in an emergency. In all three cases, the use of data was restricted to narrowly defined and specific usage contexts that were only related to responding to the contagion. ..................

The authority that moves large numbers of people to cohesive action is not the coercive power of the state as much as the authority of specialists and the credibility that they command.

............. Singapore’s citizens have always been led by a technocratic government often praised for its efficiency. Within a week of China’s lock down of Wuhan, the government of Singapore closed its borders, set up a virus fighting task force and imposed stringent home quarantine measures. The initial response was led by Vernon Lee, director of the communicable diseases division at Singapore’s Ministry of Health, who said

his goal was to get ahead of the pandemic rather than to chase it and fall behind

. ............ Taiwan’s big data efforts coopted the public as collaborative partners. Rather than treat patients as careless offenders, the CECC took the view that the population faced a looming peril which was best combatted using collective measures. ..............

Taiwan’s approach was not only ‘big data’ but also ‘big tent’ – which means Taiwan did not seek to assign blame or take punitive measures against those infected and/or quarantined.

........... the approval ratings of the president and premier were about 70% and the minister of health and welfare was over 80% ..............

Taiwan .. has 420 cases and 6 deaths with a mortality rate of 0.25 per million people (the U.S. has a mortality rate of about 85 per million people).

........... a month after the surge in new cases, New York City reported about 7,500 new cases a day. ........... In each case, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan learned from the past and put in place a set of competencies and response capabilities. These capabilities required effective communication techniques, rapid dissemination of information, the ability to recognize emerging patterns and act on them, and finally, the ability to reach the individual citizen and orchestrate cohesive group action. ............. Any large-scale deployment of an information network will of course carry with it the hazards of cyber-attacks. Such hazards are no different from those faced by financial systems, public transportation systems, and indeed the power grid. ....... robust protections are needed both for the physical security of the information processing network as well as the privacy of individuals from overreach by commercial entities and bureaucrats ........ Indeed, the internet itself was first designed with the objective being able to withstand just about any catastrophe.

We are now officially living an era that many scientists call Anthropozoic or Anthropocene. An era where a class of man...

Posted by Partha Banerjee on Thursday, April 30, 2020

Not Like the Flu, Not Like Car Crashes, Not Like... It’s about the spike.
Donald Trump reveals plans to bring back his '25,000 people rallies' as he says he will travel to Arizona and Ohio, saying 'I'd like to get out' - and says of the virus 'it's going to leave'
NYC subway to end 24-hour service for first time for coronavirus disinfection
Japanese island suffering second wave of coronavirus after lifting lockdown too early
Singapore's coronavirus spike sends world a wake-up call Migrant worker infections turn success story into cautionary lesson ...... Surging coronavirus infections in Singapore's migrant worker communities have underscored the difficulty of stomping out the disease -- and may offer lessons for other countries.

Coronavirus News (64)

How the COVID-19 Pandemic Could End Recent epidemics provide clues to ways the current crisis could stop .......... We know how the COVID-19 pandemic began: Bats near Wuhan, China, hold a mix of coronavirus strains, and sometime last fall one of the strains, opportunistic enough to cross species lines, left its host or hosts and ended up in a person. Then it was on the loose. ............ This coronavirus is unprecedented in the combination of its easy transmissibility, a range of symptoms going from none at all to deadly, and the extent that it has disrupted the world. A highly susceptible population led to near exponential growth in cases.

“This is a distinct and very new situation”

........... what happens next depends on both the evolution of the pathogen and of the human response to it, both biological and social.......... the H1N1 influenza outbreak of 1918–1919. Doctors and public health officials had far fewer weapons than they do today, and the effectiveness of control measures such as school closures depended on how early and decisively they were implemented.

Over two years and three waves, the pandemic infected 500 million and killed between 50 million and 100 million.

It ended only as natural infections conferred immunity on those who recovered. .................. The H1N1 strain became endemic, an infectious disease that was constantly with us at less severe levels, circulating for another 40 years as a seasonal virus. It took another pandemic—H2N2 in 1957—to extinguish most of the 1918 strain. One flu virus kicked out another one, essentially, and scientists don’t really know how. ...........

Of the seven known human coronaviruses, four circulate widely, causing up to a third of common colds.

........... Influenza viruses are slippery, mutating rapidly to escape immunity. As a result, the vaccines must be updated every year and given regularly. ............ Projections about how COVID-19 will play out are speculative, but the end game will most likely involve a mix of everything that checked past pandemics:

Continued social-control measures to buy time, new antiviral medications to ease symptoms, and a vaccine.

.......... “The question of how the pandemic plays out is at least 50 percent social and political” .......... Researchers have banded together like never before ........... Compared with flu viruses, coronaviruses don’t have as many ways to interact with host cells. “If that interaction goes away, [the virus] can’t replicate anymore” ......... It is not clear whether a vaccine will confer long-term immunity as with measles or short-term immunity as with flu shots. But “any vaccine at all would be helpful at this point” ............ Unless a vaccine is administered to all of the world’s eight billion inhabitants who are not currently sick or recovered, COVID-19 is likely to become endemic. It will circulate and make people sick seasonally—sometimes very sick. ......... The combination of vaccination and natural immunity will protect many of us. The coronavirus, like most viruses, will live on—but not as a planetary plague. 

Galileo's Lessons for Living and Working Through a Plague An outbreak in Italy in the 1630s forced him to find new ways of doing his research and connecting with family ..............

Isaac Newton has repeatedly been held up as a model of epidemic-induced productivity, since he spent his 1666 “year of miracles” avoiding the plague in the English countryside and developing his ideas on gravity, optics and calculus.

.......... But isolation and quiet contemplation is only one model of science during plague times, and one to which few of us can really relate. ........... several of the most public and turbulent years of Galileo’s life took place during the great plague outbreak of 1630–33. .......... Galileo, who was born in 1564, had been a child in Florence during the previous major Italian outbreak of plague in 1575–77, which ravaged Northern Italy and killed 50,000 people in Venice—one third of the total population. .......... “Let me say first that when I decided to come here I did so out of desire to save my life, not for recreation or a change of air.” ........... “I want to live well… but he wants me to die healthy…. As long as I don’t die of plague, he’s happy to have me die of hunger.” .................. As we confront our own separation from loved ones, we should remember the ways in which Galileo’s devoted family supported him at a distance during this tumultuous period. ............ The challenges of articulating novel scientific discoveries that conflict with political and religious doctrine. The challenges of continuing an international scientific program over the course of nearly a decade of isolation and imprisonment. And, of course, the challenges of living in a time devastated by epidemic. ............ hold up

Galileo as our exemplary plague scientist

. Bolstered by his relationships with his family and friends and strengthened by electuaries of dried fruit and honey, Galileo’s life teaches us that pursuing science has never been straightforward during an epidemic, and that it is nonetheless essential to persevere.

Global coronavirus death toll could be 60% higher than reported Mortality statistics show 122,000 deaths in excess of normal levels across 14 countries analysed by the FT ....... Mortality statistics show 122,000 deaths in excess of normal levels across these locations, considerably higher than the 77,000 official Covid-19 deaths reported for the same places and time periods............ If the same level of under-reporting observed in these countries was happening worldwide, the global Covid-19 death toll would rise from the current official total of 201,000 to as high as 318,000.......... the daily counts in the UK, for instance, were “far too low” because they only accounted for hospital deaths. ........ This is especially worrying for many emerging economies, where total excess mortality is orders of magnitude higher than official coronavirus fatalities. .......... In Ecuador’s Guayas province, just 245 official Covid-related deaths were reported between March 1 and April 15, but data on total deaths show that about 10,200 more people died during this period than in a typical year — an increase of 350 per cent. ............ In the northern Italian region of Lombardy, the heart of Europe’s worst outbreak, there are more than 13,000 excess deaths in the official statistics for the nearly 1,700 municipalities for which data is available. This is an uptick of 155 per cent on the historical average and far higher than the 4,348 reported Covid deaths in the region. .........

In the Indonesian capital Jakarta, data on burials shows an increase of 1,400 relative to the historical average during the same period — 15 times the official figure of 90 Covid deaths for the same period.

...... Even the much higher numbers of deaths in the pandemic suggested by excess mortality statistics are likely to be conservative, as lockdowns mean that “mortality from numerous conditions such as traffic accidents and occupational injuries possibly went down” .........

What if immunity to covid-19 doesn’t last? Researchers say people can catch mild, cold-causing coronaviruses twice in the same year. .......... four coronaviruses, HKU1, NL63, OC42, and C229E, which circulate widely every year but don’t get much attention because they only cause common colds. ........ a new coronavirus in the same broad family, SARS-CoV-2, has the world on lockdown .......... people frequently got reinfected with the same coronavirus, even in the same year, and sometimes more than once. Over a year and a half, a dozen of the volunteers tested positive two or three times for the same virus, in one case with just four weeks between positive results. .........

For the coronaviruses “immunity seems to wane quickly”

........ even though most people have previously developed antibodies to them, they get the viruses again ......... We’re currently in the pandemic phase. That’s when a new virus, which humans are entirely susceptible to, rockets around the planet. And humanity is still a greenfield for covid-19—as of April 26, there were about three million confirmed cases, or one in 2,500 people on the planet. (Even though the true number of infections is undoubtedly higher .........

until a vaccine is available, the world should get ready for a “new way of living.”

...... “There are a lot of people who were infected and survived, and they are walking around, and they don’t seem to be getting reinfected or infecting other people” ..........

if immunity is short, as it is for the common coronaviruses, covid-19 could set itself up as a seasonal superflu with a high fatality rate—one that emerges in a nasty wave winter after winter.

....... “Even though the common cold costs the US $20 billion a year, these viruses don’t kill, and anything that does not kill, we don’t have surveillance for.” ........... Is there a chance the disease will turn into a killer version of the common cold, constantly out there, infecting 10% or 20% of the population each year, but also continuing to kill one in a hundred? If so, it would amount to a plague capable of shaving the current rate of world population growth by a tenth. ............. “I don’t know when this goes away, and if anyone says they know, they don’t know what they are talking about”

Coronavirus News (64) https://t.co/YVTjGMNipV #TrumpMeltdown #disinfectant #coronavirus #COVIDー19 #lockdown #pandemic

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) April 30, 2020