Making early sense of the pandemic

“I saw the coronavirus coming in January”

I saw the coronavirus coming in January and have been tracking the pandemic ever since. It’s been uniquely disturbing to see a mysterious wave of illness and death surging toward us, with far too many people refusing to face it.

~ Andrew M. Slavitt (former Acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services)

“A wave of illness and death is surging toward us with far too many people refusing to face it”

I’d been looking to see which flus were coming out of China as my family members and business associates were heading to CES in Las Vegas in mid January. I wanted to know which bugs they might be dealing with at the massive consumer electronics trade show.

I’ve been highlighting points made on Twitter by various sources about the COVID-19 pandemic — and the antivax movement, which as it happens will be even more destructive a force in society with this true-blue no-vaccine killer virus on the loose.

So I found the pandemic in January. In February I found the general response we’d need to preserve our medical system and suppress the spread of the virus.

I'd discovered the below graph of Philadelphia vs. St. Louis deaths from the Spanish Flu, showing how social isolation helped depress the infections and deaths in one town while the other’s lax policy resulted in a spike of unnecessary deaths.

A response blueprint in February

I saw a German computer scientist share this Spanish Flu example of what we need to do as a society to flatten the curve of COVID

Correct public health policy saves lives

A French multinational biotech company shared this study of how public health decisions saved citizens and flattened the curve of the Spanish Flu

It was great to see a Bloomberg deep dive on the same example when it came out a few weeks later, and the term “flatten the curve” make its way into public health communications on COVID.

Collecting resources for all in March

Click through to reach my list.

I also follow these COVID lists, click on their names to see: Kim Mai-Cutler and Brian Koppelman.

I started a Twitter list of COVID-19 expert sources in early March.

It seemed especially important to gather my own science and public safety sources (and follow other lists compiled by early pandemic watchers) at a time when the president and far too many government leaders were ignoring or downplaying the disastrous and monumental impact of this virus on the planet’s human population. The disinformation campaign against early effective action will go down in history as a genocide.

“People said “I don’t need that leaflet - I don’t live here.”
That’s ok, viruses love to travel! ”

In early March I was activated by the Fire Department as an emergency response worker for disaster preparedness. SF had declared a health emergency the prior week. The activation meant passing out coronavirus health department leaflets downtown (wash your hands, don’t touch your face [impossible for humans I believe], elbow cough, make plans).

Handing out public health COVID preparation leaflets on that busy Financial District street corner was brutal. People didn’t want to hear it.

Some people laughed, some people said no!, some people said “I don’t need that - I don’t live here.” I thought, That’s ok, viruses love to travel! A handful were grateful and said “hey thanks for doing this.” They knew we’re all in it together and with 2 community transmission cases in SF that very day, the virus was already here, and also waiting in a cruise ship off the Golden Gate.

To be continued…

In the news & behind the scenes: it’s the flywheel

Scott Galloway takes on the streaming wars in this week’s No Mercy/No Malice newsletter.

He writes

“My colleague Sonia Marciano teaches that to achieve success, the best strategy is to find the dimension with the greatest variance — the biggest delta between best and worst. In the streaming wars, both flywheel and distribution offer the greatest variance, and monopolies dominate those categories. 

“A flywheel is a disk that stores kinetic energy and then spins it out to a nearby engine. In the context of business, as the flywheel rotates it increases output or revenue without increasing input or cost. The ultimate flywheel is Amazon. Amazon Prime attracts shoppers who want a wide assortment of products with rapid fulfillment. These subscribers also enjoy the benefits of services like Amazon Prime Video, which increase the stickiness of Prime and time spent on the platform.” 

From “Land of the Undead” | No Mercy / No Malice from Scott ‘Prof’ Galloway

Here’s Galloway on how these flywheels, or feedback loops, can work in the world of video on demand, the world of 10 Block…the mobile streaming platform I’ve been running as chief operating officer for the past two years.

“In the context of the streaming wars, SVOD adds momentum to the flywheel. Movies and entertainment evoke powerful emotions. The connective tissue of the flywheel is increasingly emotion. The NPS score (consumers’ emotional connection to a company) is negative to zero for ecommerce and internet companies, but it’s strong for SVOD companies. Loving Fleabag means you’ll buy your next toaster from Amazon, not Target or Williams-Sonoma.” 

It was interesting to read Scott Galloway today talking about the winner-take-all effect of flywheels in the context of the streaming war macrocosm. As the cofounder of a mobile streaming platform, talking about the microcosm of the flywheel we built into the product fills my days. Those emotions that drive the flywheel in our patent-pending social discovery system drive viewers to share what they’re watching, what they think of it, and invite friends to view with them.

I took a peek back at some of my own shorthand sources and insights on flywheels and growth loops captured on a Trello card. (Trello is my favorite productivity tool at the moment, and for quite a while, BTW. <More on that later.)