Tag Archives: coronavirus

Joint Task Force – National Capital Region

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The Joint Task Force – National Capital Region is the unified military command responsible for Washington, D.C. and surrounding regions if they become a “battlefield”. In other words, if there is an armed attack, or if all hell breaks loose for whatever reason, and civilian government functions break down. According to Newsweek, it has been activated.

JTF-NCR is responsible for what the military calls “homeland defense”: what to do in the face of an armed attack on the United States, everything from guarding Washington’s skies to preparing for the civil unrest that could occur if a nuclear weapon were detonated in the capital. But most immediate, JTF-NCR is charged with facilitating continuity of government, particularly moving civil and military leaders to secret locations were the order given to evacuate the city.

Newsweek

You would assume that the commander in chief has command over the commander of this unit, which would be comforting in even remotely normal times. But the commander of this unit does have the authority to take whatever steps he or she (it’s a he) deems necessary if there is no civilian oversight available.

It seems unlikely there are any missiles inbound. It seems entirely likely that the Covid/election season could be the time a foreign enemy could try a cyberattack or attack critical infrastructure like the electric grid – kick your enemy while they are down. Hopefully we are ready for that.

Newsweek was the first “main stream media” source of news I paid attention to when I became aware of current events sometime in middle school. I don’t know if it is still the credible source of information I considered it back then (or if I was right back then.) One questionable claim did catch my eye – “Federal officials in the nation’s capital expect a New York-like epidemic in the District, Maryland and Virginia, one that could potentially cripple the government.” Taking a look at that claim on the University of Washington modeling site, it doesn’t hold up. The entire Boston-to-DC corridor is in fact hard hit, but the death rate and hospital utilization rates in DC are peaking right about now (I’m writing on Saturday April 18, the Newsweek article is from Thursday April 16) and both are projected to start falling. Hospitals in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia are busy but not expected to be overrun like they were in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. So it’s not clear what evidence the “federal officials” cited above would lead to a projected “New York-like epidemic…that could potentially cripple the government”. Perhaps some of these officials are used to working from home anyway, like in a white house for example.

the next crisis

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In the thick of the Covid-19 crisis, it’s hard to think about the next crisis. But how many articles are there right now talking about all the research, all the warnings, all the reports and studies and past evidence pointing to something like this being inevitable? So if I were President (or anyone in charge of anything at any level), I would be asking what the ten or so biggest risks are out there that we need to be preparing for. We will probably be prepared if another coronavirus or flu pandemic somewhat similar to this one comes along. But what about an even more horrifying disease, or god forbid one created on purpose in a laboratory? That dark day may come.

Nuclear terrorism, war or accidents would certainly be on the list. We spend a lot of time thinking about this and a fair amount of effort on prevention and preparation, but still it seems like this day may come.

Earthquakes, like disease outbreaks, just happen – small ones happen a lot, big ones less often, catastrophic ones very rarely. A big earthquake or volcanic eruption should be on our list.

A major food crisis should be close to the top if not at the top of our list. We are closing in on 8 billion humans on the planet and have managed to feed most of them most of the time with some to spare. Dwindling groundwater, melting glaciers and snowpacks, heat and drought and floods depressing crop yields especially in the tropics, and the collapse of fisheries all have the potential to change this. Disease outbreaks can also affect crops and livestock, and the less genetic variety in our crops and animals the more susceptible they may be. Habitat loss and other unknown factors are devastating insects, which pollinate our crops and form the base of the food chain. What if one or more of these factors strike at once, and/or a volcano or nuclear exchange blocks out sunlight for years on end?

“Climate change” is real, but part of the problem in building public support to actually deal with it is that it is too broad and too vague. I would try to break it down into concrete things that are going to affect people like the loss of coastal cities, floods, fires, droughts, famines, hurricanes, etc. People should be able to understand how those are going to affect them.

Our complex financial, communication, energy, water, and transportation systems can just melt down if they are not carefully planned, maintained, renewed and continually invested in. External threats like cyberattacks and climate change do not make these challenges easier to deal with, or even easy for the experts to understand and explain well enough to build support for action.

And there is always good old fashioned war.

At the same time, I would want to know how many of the citizens I am accountable to are dying of preventable causes like car accidents, air pollution, diabetes, drug overdoses, homicides and suicides. Maybe the cost of these is such that they should be on the list above some of the existential threats.

Elect me and I won’t promise to solve all these problems, but I will promise to at least make a list of them! Then I’ll figure out how to attack the top 2 or 3, and maybe add one each year for the duration of my administration. I’ll also work on health care, child care, education, infrastructure, research and development. Doesn’t that all sound pretty good?

more from Bill Gates on coronavirus

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You can still decide for yourself if Bill Gates is someone we should listen to on coronavirus. But he sounds cautiously optimistic, at least when it comes to developed Asia and the U.S.

[Someone asking Bill a question on Reddit: ]I read the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team report as well as this explanation in a historical context. Essentially, it says that by doing nothing, 4 million Americans die. Through the mitigation strategy—i.e. social distancing and “flattening the curve”— it says that 1.1-2 million Americans will die. However, it also says that the suppression strategy, or “shutting everything down for 18 months”—will lead to only a few thousand people dying...

[Bill’s answer: ]Fortunately it appears the parameters used in that model were too negative. The experience in China is the most critical data we have. They did their “shut down” and were able to reduce the number of cases. They are testing widely so they see rebounds immediately and so far there have not been a lot. They avoided widespread infection. The Imperial model does not match this experience…

China is seeing very few cases now because their testing and “shut down” was very effective. If a country does a good job with testing and “shut down” then within 6-10 weeks they should see very few cases and be able to open back up…

Gates Notes

more coronavirus tracking

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This massive data analysis entry from Our World in Data is a pretty good example of how to take a data set and beat the crap out of it from every angle.

I like what they did. Since it’s by country, it allows interesting comparisons across countries but is not meant to provide local or regional-specific information. Countries are pretty big. My favorite trackers that are most relevant to my situation are still the City Observatory analyses of U.S. metro areas and the University of Washington simulations of available hospital capacity. The latter are by state.

could coronavirus lead to food shortages?

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The coronavirus is a worldwide tragedy, but for the moment at least, most of us seem to have a reliable supply of water, energy, and food (at least, those of us who normally have these things – some people in the world clearly do not and that is not equitable or fair in the best of times).

But could the coronavirus situation somehow lead to food shortages? Well, there are a few ways. One is if countries that normally export food decide to stop doing so, at least temporarily. This would hurt countries that import a significant amount of food – small, densely populated nations come to mind, as do populous nations in inhospitable environments like deserts. Bloomberg says there are some indications this process has started, but only on a small scale so far.

Kazakhstan, one of the world’s biggest shippers of wheat flour, banned exports of that product along with others, including carrots, sugar and potatoes. Vietnam temporarily suspended new rice export contracts. Serbia has stopped the flow of its sunflower oil and other goods, while Russia is leaving the door open to shipment bans and said it’s assessing the situation weekly.

Bloomberg

The problem would not be an absolute lack of food, but a possible lack of workers to pick specific crops at specific times. Then there could be supply chain problems as the crisis impacts truck drivers, warehouse workers, grocery store workers, etc.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization maintains a food price index, updated monthly. At the end of February, the index was a relative low indicating ample supply and smoothly functioning trade and supply chains.

So it sounds to me like the food supply may weather this particular storm unless we are unlucky enough to have major droughts, storms, floods, heat waves, etc. in key food growing regions at the same time.

When it comes to electricity, Wired says the U.S. supply is safe for the time being. One concern there is that mostly automated power plants are run by a relatively small number of highly skilled people, and if significant numbers of them were to get sick at the same time it would cause problems. Add to this the possibility of severe weather putting further strain on the system, and again we need a certain amount of luck to get through this.

Relying on luck is not the hallmark of robust, resilient, long-lasting systems.

an immunity test for Covid?

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This article raises the possibility that maybe an immunity test for Covid-2 could be rolled out faster than a vaccine. The concept is that people who have had the disease and recovered, thereby developing some immunity (which is still being studied and not 100% confirmed that it is long-lasting), could be identified and allowed to resume their normal routines before people who have not been exposed and/or are at high risk.

March 2020 in Review

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To state the obvious, March 2020 was all about the coronavirus. At the beginning of the month, we here in the U.S. watched with horror as it spread through Europe. We were hearing about a few cases in Seattle and California, and stories about people flying back from Italy and entering the greater New York area and other U.S. cities without medical screening. It was horrible, but still something happening mostly to other people far away on TV. In the middle of the month, schools and offices started to close. By the end of the month, it was a full blown crisis overwhelming hospitals in New York and New Jersey and starting to ramp up in other U.S. cities. It’s a little hard to follow my usual format this month but I’ll try. Most frightening and/or depressing story:
  • Hmm…could it be…THE CORONAVIRUS??? The way the CDC dropped the ball on testing and tracking, after preparing for this for years, might be the single most maddening thing of all. There are big mistakes, there are enormously unfathomable mistakes, and then there are mistakes that kill hundreds of thousands of people (at least) and cost tens of trillions of dollars. I got over-excited about Coronavirus dashboards and simulations towards the beginning of month, and kind of tired of looking at them by the end of the month.
Most hopeful story:
  • Some diabetics are hacking their own insulin pumps. Okay, I don’t know if this is a good thing. But if medical device companies are not meeting their patient/customers’ needs, and some of those customers are savvy enough to write software that meets their needs, maybe the medical device companies could learn something.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
  • I studied up a little on the emergency powers available to local, state, and the U.S. federal government in a health crisis. Local jurisdictions are generally subordinate to the state, and that is more or less the way it has played out in Pennsylvania. For the most part, the state governor made the policy decisions and Philadelphia added a few details and implemented them. The article I read said that states could choose to put their personnel under CDC direction, but that hasn’t happened. In fact, the CDC seems somewhat absent in all this other than as a provider of public service announcements. The federal government officials we see on TV are from the “Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases”, which most people never heard of, and to a certain extent the surgeon general. I suppose my expectations on this were created mostly by Hollywood, and if this were a movie the CDC would be swooping in with white suits and saving us, or possibly incinerating the few to save the many. If this were a movie, the coronavirus would also be mutating into a fog that would seep into my living room and turn me inside out, so at least there’s that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4chSOb3bY6Y

Bill Gates warning of pandemic risk in 2015

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In 2015, Bill Gates put the risk of a global pandemic “worse than Ebola” at 50% within his lifetime. Bill Gates is 64. Should we listen to Bill Gates because he is rich? Of course not. But we should listen to him because his foundation is focused on public health, preventing and preparing for the sort of thing that is unfolding right now.

hospital capacity data visualization

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I was going to stop posting coronavirus tracker apps but this one looks really useful. Now that we know most infected people aren’t tested, the number of confirmed cases isn’t all that helpful as a metric except maybe to look at trends over time. The number of people in the hospital, on the other hand, is a hard number, and comparing that number to hospital capacity is very useful. This app from the University of Washington does that. It also forecasts future hospitalizations and gives a confidence range (which is quite wide, but there it is to ponder.)

This is by state, which is a slightly big and arbitrary geographic unit. Looking at my home state of Pennsylvania, things look almost reassuring, but then looking at New Jersey, they look dire. It would take me five hours to drive to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania but I could almost spit on Camden, New Jersey. There will clearly be pressure to move patients across state lines within and between nearby metro areas, and in fact that is already in the news this morning.

The situation in New York looks just awful. I didn’t look at all 50 states, but a quick sampling suggests that states with large cities (and by proxy, probably large hospital systems), and states that started social distancing relatively early, are likely to do a lot better. People might think they would be safer in more rural areas, and perhaps it is true that your odds of infection are much lower, but your chances of survival if you do get infected could also be much lower. This is partially speculation and based on a few anecdotes I have heard, but I do know that this trend holds for car accidents and gun shot wounds.

To this water resource engineer, the differences in capacity use between states and the differences in the timing of available capacity suggest that you could move patients around, or move equipment and medical staff around, between regions in an organized way and save lives. Maybe somebody should get on that if they haven’t already.