onfocus

A number of leading public health authorities, universities, and NGOs around the world have been doing important work to develop opt-in contact tracing technology. To further this cause, Apple and Google will be launching a comprehensive solution that includes application programming interfaces (APIs) and operating system-level technology to assist in enabling contact tracing.

I'm extremely concerned about privacy related to these companies and I also think this is a great development. We're going to need to trade some privacy for safety to get society going again. Kottke had a neat comic explainer about how contact tracing works: How Privacy-Friendly Contact Tracing Can Help Stop the Spread of Covid-19.

"Your employee didn’t choose this; it’s not like she decided to work with a toddler lurking around in order to save on child care expenses. We’re in a pandemic and a public health crisis. She, like millions of parents across the country, is an impossible situation and is trying to make it work as best as she can."

If you're lucky enough to be able to work from home you're not experiencing standard work from home right now. It feels more like crisis management at home plus work.

In a video posted to Twitter, Cook says Apple has sourced more than 20 million masks through its global supply chain and is working with governments to donate them where they’re needed.

Nice work! Take a look at the assembly instructions for a sense of what the face shields are like.

“New York needs more ventilators, and we are answering their call for help,” Brown wrote. “We’ll be sending 140 ventilators to help NY because Oregon is in a better position right now. We must do all that we can to help those on the front lines of this response.”

Very happy to see this! I could read stories like this or this or this all day.

"If we lift the restrictions and risk rising cases again without being prepared in our hospitals, we have the potential to expose our doctors and nurses to the same thing that they’re going through now—which is basically a crisis. In many places, they’re not well protected or they’re running out of equipment. So we need to make sure that the supply-chain problems have been sorted out before we begin to experiment with lifting social distancing."

This is a Johns Hopkins health security expert on how we get to less physical distancing. And on wearing masks:

"This is an unprecedented epidemic, and we should be leaning toward doing things even if we’re unsure of their full benefit. If the downside is perceived to be low, and there’s demand for an additional preventative benefit, I think we should do it."

We have a ways to go.

Improvised filters with household materials. Short answer: pillowcases and t-shirts work best.

"By the end of the month, wearing a face mask should be like wearing a shirt—a routine social behavior that is expected of everyone and gets you weird looks if you don't do it."

Yes, time for masks! I just made my first mask today and I can barely sew.

"People actually do need to buy significantly more toilet paper during the pandemic — not because they’re making more trips to the bathroom, but because they’re making more of them at home."

This is more than I ever thought I’d need to know about toilet paper supply chain logistics. This is useful for thinking about other shortages we have now too.

"H-2A workers have been deemed essential by the government, and should be allowed to work in the United States. These workers don't seem to be avoiding coming to the United States for fear of catching Covid-19 — the economic incentive is just too large to give up, Carr said. But workers may eventually decide it's too risky to enter the United States."

Interesting look at how agriculture could be disrupted.

Tests to detect antibodies will also be able to identify those who have had infections in the past and may now be immune. In the short term, this will be important because it will permit the authorities to identify who may return to their jobs without risk of infecting others.

This is good news.

"With an immunization specifically targeted against the pandemic-causing Covid-19 disease at least a year away, the World Health Organization says it’s important to know whether the BCG vaccine can reduce disease in those infected with the coronavirus, and is encouraging international groups to collaborate with a study led by Nigel Curtis, head of infectious diseases research, at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne."

Encouraging research.