#because covid19 shut down the whole city i work in

[vadaphra-sin-bin]

Wow okay so I know it’s been like a million years since I last posted anything and this is all I’ve got

But I’m getting notifications for a lot of the AUs I’ve posted here and holy smokes I forgot how hilarious y’all are

And honestly it makes me want more funny Vadaphra stuff, so if anyone is still shipping this little ship then please send me your funny headcanons/AU headcanons/AU ideas because honestly times are weird right now and we could all use a good laugh

[allthingsfern]

In order, my responses to comments in Reply of my COVID19 era post that was my answer to my question “My answer to my questions: Has the era of COVID19 changed your photography? How? And perhaps also, why?“ I am so confused now...

adventuresofalgy

Algy thinks you are lucky and - certainly if compared with Europeans - perhaps quite unusual in not having experienced a more profound effect on your creative outlets and expression. Many of Algy's creative friends have experienced wide-ranging and often severe impacts on their creativity and associated motivation - and therefore on their mental health as well.

themazette

As @adventuresofalgy Jenny said.... you are lucky...

I am indeed very lucky, or as I think of it, blessed. However, it is no way a US thing, nor even a California thing. I add California, because I know many in the US and around the world think of the Golden State as a haven, a progressive, hippie filled state that is all about peace and love and marijuana. However, that is far from the truth. California is like Germany in the 1920s and 30s. There was Berlin, where there was a wildness in the city that was not shared, and was often looked-down on, by those in the majority of the country, who lived in more conservative areas and who, often, economically could not afford the grand life of partying Berliners. In California it is the same. Except for a few urban areas, the state is full of very conservative folks, and for them, like for those in the cities (and in the rest of the world) this COVID19 era has been devastating. Well, and the fires for Californians have been too.

Even in this cool college town where I live, which is lovely and quiet and inspiring, the painfully empty streets, movie theaters, restaurants, shops (think of all those unemployed people) is (still) staggering. In mid-March last year, right after lockdown, I took several phone videos of the deserted street in our town and the campus, but I could not bring myself to share them, since I knew that so many others here on Tumblr were experiencing the same desolation in many different ways. (I figured: “Why add to the sorrow we are living, almost globally?”) I was overwhelmed by the emptiness of the major (well, major for a small town of around 65,000 people) street where I live and the empty bicycle trails and street on campus. And by empty, I mean that even now, I see maybe 3 cyclists per hour, and very little car traffic. Remember, this is a bicycle town; I do not own a car, doing most all my errands on my bike with its 2 fordable baskets in the rear.

And now, over a year later, that same heavy, oppressive emptiness persists. And no, I am not used to it. And yes, I traveled over the last year, but I found the same suffocating blanket of emptiness in each city I visited, even in Las Vegas. It was unnerving. As a matter of fact, last year when I drove to San Francisco 2 months after lockdown for my birthday, I wound up getting depressed and disoriented, in a city where I lived for almost 7 years. Driving back home across the Golden Gate Bridge with tears of sadness in my eyes on my birthday was not what I expected. However, I did get some solid photos of the malaise that hung thick in the air, a malaise that physically took up the space that once was taken up by crowds of people.

Now, I am also very aware that my situation is unique. (Not a fan of the word exceptional, since it can mean both unique and special, and I do not see my situation as special.) My life situation is very unique in that I have a job I love and I work with a great team of characters. We get work done and we have fun, share about our lives. My job is often, especially since COVID19 first got noticed in early 2020, stressful and demands my colleagues and I learn (and sometimes then teach) lots of new technology and that we adapt to the vagaries of the technology gods, which are sometimes unfriendly and unresponsive. And a big part of my job is trying to figure out how to get the technology gods to like us again and grace us with their gifts. (I never realized, until now, with this discussion, that the troubleshooting that is a big part of my job is creative and probably fuels my photographic creativity. Who knew?) Yet, as a group, my colleagues and I support each other. And I am fortunate to count my closest colleague, Steve, as a friend. We have been a great emotional support to each other over the years and now through this COVID19 era. And I recently was reminded (as if I needed reminding) just how unique my work situation is because I participated in a committee that was going over responses to a UC Davis-wide survey exploring levels of employee satisfaction. My 2 colleagues who were also on that committee and I did not have the complaints that others from other departments shared. We work well together, have supportive management that share what is going on and include us (as mush as possible) in the decision making process. And as a department, we get stuff done.

Possibly the best example of how blessedly unique my situation is is what happened this morning when I was talking (yes, on ZOOM) with my immediate supervisor. We discussed the work related stuff, including how at around 10:30 pm the night before I figured something out about an online tool integration I had never done before that I knew was easy but I did not see as easy until I reread the overly complicated instructions a couple of times and just figured out how and where to cut and paste the lines of code (it was that easy, just fucking cut and paste some lines of JSON code) that got the fucking thing to work. Then we talked about his dealing with his young children returning to school and how “normal” now is not “normal” from before and how disruptive the whole thing has been, yet since we work in a supportive atmosphere (and are both salaried), he was able to deal and keep living.

Then, and you are gonna love this, I shared about my original COVID19 question post and the responses and pretty much said to him what I am sharing here.

We talked for a little over an hour. That kind of rapport is rare, for any job, anywhere.

And then there is another way my situation is unique. In some ways, previous “bad things” were actually a preparation for this era of physical distance and uncertainty. In mid-2019, from July to August, first because of my work related bowling concussion and then an antibiotic resistant infection, I was bedridden for about 5 weeks and then had several absences because of concussion issues, like sudden and extreme anger flare ups, nausea, headaches. But however bad I thought that concussion and infection were, the concussion induced forgetfulness and my desire to sharpen my mind and nurture and nourish it have lead me to become, in my old age, organized. I now often take notes of important stuff, add work and personal dates and notes to my Outlook calendar, and even know what day it is, which bugs my colleagues who often find they have no idea what day and/or date it is. Yep, unique, but the bad concussion shit got me to be organized in ways that I was never able to be before, no matter what I tried. This time, I just fucking get organized, without thinking about it too much. And if I fuck up with my being organized, like I did the other day for work, I admit it, fix it, and move on.

Preparation for isolation (and unexpected natural threats) came by way of the 2018 Northern California (the region where I live) fires that year, which caused the campus to shut down for about a week. (As my friend Steve called it, the smoking break.) And for work, my colleagues and I faced a couple of long term, emergency technical outages that impacted all of the UC Davis faculty, one of them for over a month. Pretty much on a professional and personal level, I was, if not ready, at least getting used to the WTF of whatever life decides to surprise me with. (And lets not forget the really bad fire last September, seen in this video I posted of ash “snow” falling. We did not have to shut down the campus because there was no one there anyway.)

Another aspect of this last year, and one that has been present in my life for a few years now, is the BLM movement and the brutal police violence against Black people in this country. As someone who was a teaching assistant and taught in African American Studies and worked closely with students of color on campus in a student run organization, I was and am still devastated, in part because I know, from hearing so many personal accounts, the pain many of my friends, former colleagues, and former students, are still facing and how overwhelmed they felt and still feel. I understand, if as an outsider, their emotional exhaustion. This has been going on for a while, plus add the years of anti-immigrant hate against the Latinx in the US and the rising tide of violent hate against Asians, and yes, it has been sorrowful. Heartbreaking. And I have, in several ways, including my photography, tried to capture the sorrow and resilience of US people of color. It hurts, almost physically, that many people of color are just tired of talking and dealing with the hate.

So, yes, my situation is unique, but with its own emotionally draining weight. And yes, I am extremely grateful. This leads to the other 2 comments in Reply:

kkomppa

Thank you for sharing, Fern. Very interesting. Like you, I would say my output hasn’t changed much. However, I have sought locations deeper in the wilderness. This has been fulfilling.

schwarzkaeppchen

Really interesting thoughts. We live in strange times, but creativity and motivation comes and goes for so many different reasons. My photography has changed a lot. I used to work as a photographer at events and took portraits for fun... Now I'm officially a portrait photographer.

Both of these comments point to another unique aspect of my life situation: For some of us, our photography and how we do it, has not changed much, and if it has, that has been a part of our overall experience with this art form we love so much.

For me, because of my depressive tendencies, the Zen of photography, at least the way I do it, is therapeutic. And I do not use the  term “Zen” lightly here, because my spiritual life has helped me come to terms with the WTF surprises that are pretty much life, if at times the WTF of it is more impactful, as it is during this COVID19 era. And that is part of what I was trying to share with my original post: Before this period of isolation and disorientation, I was already coming to grips with the gospel truth that “creativity and motivation comes and goes for so many different reasons.” as @schwarzkaeppchen​ said. In no way do I diminish the anguish flared up by these bleak times that impact so many around the world. And really, when you think about it, bleak times have been a norm, at least here in the US, since late 2016, though, of course, lockdowns and physical distance make it all worse. But, at least for me, I try to learn from the bleak times, even if I abhor going through them. And when dealing with the highs and lows of creative energy, at least for me, I have a calm certainty that photography is part of my life and I do not have to worry, since I only love it more each day. And the other side to my certainty is that if someday my love of photography fades, some other treasure of creativity will replace it.

Let’s be real, because of photography. I think about stuff like this and get to have discussions with so many great Tumblr original photographers.

And I am grateful for it, and no, this is not unique to my life situation. I know many of us love being here and sharing the good, the bad, the confounding.

Please think about joining @tvoom and me for InConverversation this month. It has been a long time since we talked, and this COVID19 era will be our topic.

I am grateful for all y’all.

[junghosunshine]

Shut In

pairing: Kim Taehyung X reader

word count: 4k+

summary: Without a place to stay after you are kicked out of your dorm amidst the Coronavirus outbreak, you have no choice but to stay with Kim Taehyung (the son of one of your moms friends whom you have never met). You worry that it will be awkward but you are pleasantly surprised by the bond you end up forming with the overly welcoming man.

warnings: Smut, Fluff, overprotective, slightly dom!tae, mentions of covid19 and quarantine, age gap (5 years), unprotected sex (please use protection guys) 

notes: This was written to calm me down while being stuck in my house in no way am I trying to offend anyone. Please go easy on me i’m sensitive :)

_______________________________________________________________________

You should probably be thankful that you have somewhere to stay during quarantine but at this particular moment you were dreading the next few weeks.

“Mom, why can’t I just stay in a hotel?” You asked over the phone. You knew you were being irrational and that this was much better than paying a hundred dollars a night (even if you would feel much more comfortable). Ever since your classes had been canceled, you had been living in the dorms at your college but they had begun to kick students out. Going to school overseas seemed like such a fun idea, and it probably would have been, but because you were in another country during the corona virus outbreak, there was no way you could get home especially with the travel restrictions. You had called your mom sobbing, worried that you would be homeless through the pandemic in a country you barely knew. Luckily, within an hour your mom had reached out to one of her friends who had a son living in Seoul and you suddenly had a place to stay. “Mom, that is going to be so weird. I don’t know him and now I’m going to live with him. Alone. For who knows how long?!”

“Y/N, I’m not paying money for you to stay in a hotel when there is a perfectly good, free place for you to stay. This is the only option.”

You gave in knowing your arguments were useless against this woman. You just wanted to go home and see your family and to be honest you were scared at how big this whole thing had become.

“Okay. Stay safe mom. Love you.”

“I love you too sweetie. Be careful and make sure you thank Taehyung for giving up his space.”

After you hung up with your mom you felt a bit empty. This much change in only a few days was a lot to take in and processing it all was near impossible. ‘Its going to be okay’ you told yourself.Your had mom told you that Taehyung was 24 and she had seen him a few times when he had just been born but didn’t know much about him other than that he apparently worked as a graphic designer for a popular art company. She had gone to college with his mom and they had been very close until mom moved to the US after college. Regardless of your mom’s connection, it felt awkward to be moving into some complete stranger’s space.

——————————————————————————————————————————

Pulling up the email your mom had sent you, you found the address to Taehyung’s house and his phone number. Sighing, you forced yourself to send him a text to let him know you were coming to his place.

To: XXX-XXX-XXXX

iMessage: Hi, this is Y/N… my mom just sent me your address. I should be there in about an hour. Thanks for letting me stay with you.

You put your phone back in your pocket and gathered you bags. Struggling to stand upright you wobbled out of your dorm and made your way to the subway.

Thanks to the virus the subway was not crowded and you had a place to rest all of your stuff. Once you sat down your phone vibrated and you pulled it out to see a response from Taehyung.

iMessage: Y/N, it is my pleasure! My mom told me to treat you well since you are her best friend’s daughter. Ill see you soon!

He was sweet. You felt yourself relax a bit. Maybe it wouldn’t be as awkward as you had thought it would be. You certainly hoped you were right otherwise this was going to be the most uncomfortable period of time you have ever experienced.

Once you were off the subway you lugged your bags up to the street level. Looking around your confidence wavered a bit. You had only been living in Korea for the last few months for college and while you went out a lot but you rarely ventured outside of the college area. The fact that there was no one outside made it even harder because you couldn’t ask anyone for directions. Oh no, there was no way you were going to find his building. You typed the address into Maps and attempted to both hold all of your stuff and navigate.

You were having very little luck and you were afraid your phone was going to die if you continued like this. As you stopped to calm yourself down, your phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Y/N?”

“Oh hi, is this Taehyung?”

“Yeah, Im just calling to make sure you’re okay. You said you’d be here in an hour two hours ago and my mom would kill me if anything happened to you.”

“Oh… Uh…” As much as you didn’t want to cry you couldn’t help yourself. It had been a long few days and the fact that you couldn’t even navigate was infuriating. “Im a little lost.” You managed to say through tears.

“Are there any restaurants or stores near you?” He asked. Looking around you found you were next to a pet store.

“There is pet store near me and I’m right across from a park.”

You heard shuffling from his end of the line. “Okay,” He said finally. “Wait there I’m coming to get you.”

——————————————————————————————————————————

Exhausted, you sank to the ground and rested your head on your knees. It was embarrassing that Taehyung had to go out of his way to find you before you had even met him. He probably thought you were incompetent. And it was even worse that there was an outbreak going on.

Only a few minutes had passed when a black Hyundai pulled up next to you. A guy got out and walked toward you.

“Y/N?” You looked up at him as he came to a stop above you. You nodded and embarrassed yourself by pouting a little. Something you did at home when you were sad or angry. You noticed immediately how striking he was with dark hair that fell into his eyes. He was distractingly handsome and as you stood up, you noticed, very tall as well. Taehyung smiled warmly and reached for your bags. “Go sit in the car, i'll load these in the back.” You complied grateful that he didn’t seem upset with you. He loaded your bags into the trunk and returned to the drivers seat.

“Im Tae by the way.” You took his extended hand.

“I am so sorry for inconveniencing you like this especially now. I promise i’ll make it up to you. I’m not usually this helpless.” Taehyung chuckled. “No problem. I’m glad I had an excuse to go out one last time before the lockdown.” You blushed at his kindness and were relieved when he began to drive.

Taehyung’s apartment was very clean and well decorated. You could immediately tell he was into art as his walls were covered in it. It was an open concept and the living room was only separated from the kitchen by a large kitchen island. He led you across the flat to a door on the far side, opening it to a small bedroom. It looked as if it had never been used and it smelled very clean. There was a large window overlooking the city and you gasped at how pretty it was.

“I’m glad I finally have someone here to use the guest bedroom. It was getting kinda lonely here.” It was shocking how welcoming he was considering you were dumped on him at the last possible moment.

“Thank you so much.” You walked in and he helped place your bags on the bed before leaving you to unpack.

That night, He made you dinner. It was so odd since it had been months since you’d eaten like a normal human. College life was certainly not luxurious. He waited for you to take the first bite and hum with pleasure before he was satisfied enough to eat.

“So, you were attending college here.”  He said. You nodded. “Yeah I’m in my second year at Yonsei. Er- was.”

“This virus is kinda fucking things up isn’t it?”

“Yeah, Im kinda pissed off that I can’t even see my family during it.” Taehyung nodded. “Well I’m lucky that you are keeping me company right now.” You coughed and he watched amusedly as you tried to cover up your awkwardness by taking a sip of water.

“How old are you?” He asked you. “Nineteen.” You replied. He smiled a secret smile before taking another bite of his food.

“Thank you so much for dinner.” You said when you had both finished. He shrugged like it was nothing. “Im happy to do it.”

You tried to help him with dishes but he insisted that you get some rest after your long day.

——————————————————————————————————————————

Usually you woke up around seven the morning so that you could get started on the day but with nothing to do, it seemed a bit unnecessary. Still, your internal clock was hard to reset so despite your empty schedule, you were up. You assumed that Taehyung was probably asleep so you made your way into the kitchen and put on some hot water for tea. This was a ritual of yours. That you had been taught by your mother.

Unconsciously you began humming and you didn’t notice that Taehyung had exited his bedroom or that he was standing shirtless at the kitchen island smiling as he watched you work. You looked cute with your little shorts and oversized t-shirt he was going to have a hard time not thinking about that all day. Turning, you let out a yelp when you saw him, spilling hot tea on your had and causing the mug to break on the ground.

Taehyung immediately rushed over to you and grabbed your wrist before you could pick up any of the pieces of ceramic. “Are you hurt?” The way he looked at you with so much concern made your cheeks flush.

“No, I’m fine, I just got a little surprised.” He chuckled and continued to hold your wrist “Sorry, I didn’t want to disturb you, you looked like you were meditating.”

You tried to pick up the pieces again but he stoped you. “I’ll get it, let’s treat your burn first.” He led you to the bathroom and sat you. on the edge of the tub. Rummaging through the medicine cabinet he found some gauze. You cringed a bit. “Taehyung, it’s not that serious, it’s just a little red that’s all.” Taehyung shook his head. “Better to be safe than sorry. Give me your hand.” You were a bit too happy to have him hold your hand as he ran it under cold water. He was so careful and the way he touched you made you want him to never stop. He dried your hand before wrapping it with gauze, clearly pleased with his work. “There!” He smiled. “Good as new.”

“Thank you.” You laughed and the two of you locked eyes. With him looking at you, you suddenly became hyper aware of his bare chest. He wasn’t super buff but he was lean and toned. He looked very strong and it was hard to look away but you made yourself.

For the next few days, you continued to get up early and make tea, careful not to drop it again.

It was getting really fucking hard for Taehyung to not look at you. It seemed like the only thing you owned were little shorts and huge ass t-shirts. Every time he saw you he wanted to push you against a wall and destroy you. Taehyung had take showers very frequently because of you.

——————————————————————————————————————————

Quarantine was not the most fun and besides meal time, you and Taehyung had not interacted very much. He was very sweet and funny but you were too shy to ask him to hang out.

He must have been going stir crazy too because eventually there was a knock on your door.

“Come in.” You said. Taehyung slowly opened the door. He was wearing sweats and a dark blue sweatshirt. It was annoying that he looked good in even the lumpiest clothes.

“Hey, Im really fucking bored out here can you come watch a movie with me.”

“Sure.” You followed him out to the living room “What movie?” “Im not sure.” He said sitting down. “What do you like to watch?”

You shrugged, to be honest you. Weren’t really a movie person. You. Spent a lot of time listening to music and reading but movies weren’t something you did too often. Being away from your family was making you a bit nostalgic and you recalled movies you watched with them.

“When I was little I really liked Howls Moving Castle.” Taehyung raised an eyebrow at you. “Out of every movie you want to watch a cartoon?” He asked.

“What?!” You giggled. “Howl was like my dream guy when I was younger.” You looked at him as earnestly as you could. “Please can we watch it. I really want to now.” He sighed dramatically but didn’t object.

Once it started you were immediately spellbound. You had forgotten how beautiful Miyazaki movies were. At one point without thinking you said “Howl kind of reminds me of you.” Taehyung looked at you but you were too entranced to notice. His eyes roamed the curves of your face and made their way down your neck, to your shoulder which was bare as your huge shirt slipped off of it. He cleared his throat and returned to watching the movie. There was no way he would let himself think about you. That wasn’t fair to you at all.

Yo had forgotten how sad and intense Miyazaki movies got and you hated when there was conflict in stories. A couple of times you reached out for tae’s arm and he let you. He hated how much he liked the feeling that you needed him there. After your fourth time grabbing onto him, He took your hand and laced his fingers through yours. He watched you register this and look at him. Your eyes were so big and innocent. God, he wanted to ruin you. You smiled at him and continued to watch the rest of the movie. He stopped himself from doing anything stupid. He couldn’t help but be a little disappointed when the film was over and you released his hand. “Thanks for watching with me.” He said. You nodded “Thanks for letting me choose the movie, I forgot how much I loved it.”

There was a silence as he looked at you in the now dark living room. You let him allowing yourself to observe him as well.

“Y/N.” Taehyung’s gaze was filled with a sudden intensity. It scared you a little.

“Yes?” Taehyung pulled you into his arms and buried his head in your hair breathing you in. “I would be so goddamn lonely if you weren’t here.” He said his voice a bit muffled. You were taken aback by his sudden affection that it took you a moment to return it. You gently wrapped your arms around his neck. He smelled so good it was hard for you to think about letting go. Lucky for you Taehyung didn’t. He stayed like that for a long time, so long that you fell asleep and then he fell asleep.

The next morning you woke up still wrapped around each other. He was observing you when you opened your eyes and grinned when he noticed you had woken up.

“Good morning.” You felt a bit awkward that you had ended up in this situation.

“Morning.” You replied avoiding is stare. Taehyung only released you when he was worried you’d be able to feel him. When you finally untangled your limbs from his, he rushed to the shower.

——————————————————————————————————————————

You had started to notice the Tae had become very touchy with you. Not that you were complaining, you loved it. You were definitely starting to develop a crush on him and as much as you hated to admit it you were definitely flirting with him. If you were cooking he would find ways to pass behind you and touch your waist. At the dinner table he began to sit next to you and would knock his knee against yours. He’d even started to put his arm around you when you watched movies which had become a very frequent thing. Regardless of how much you enjoyed his touches you decided not to put too much weight behind it. Tae was like an older brother and in this short time you had been living together, he looked after you. You refused to get his affection confused with attraction.

“Hey, my mom just sent an old picture of her and your mom in college.” Tae called from the living room. You ran out to see jumping on the couch next to him and looking over his shoulder.  You immediately recognize your mom which made you miss her a lot. The woman next to her in the picture looked like she had just stepped off a runway, you could see where Tae had gotten his good looks.

“Wow, She’s beautiful you look so much like her.” You said. He leaned back into your lab and looked up at you grinning. “Y/N, are you calling me beautiful?” You choked on the air. “No! Um, er- you are beautiful, but- I wasn’t..” Tae turned towards you and poked your nose. “You’re so cute.” You felt yourself turn completely red.

“Im not cute.” You mumbled, punching him in the shoulder.

“You are ridiculously cute. It’s almost too much.” You found yourself pouting again and you crossed your arms. Reached up and pulled your face towards him. “See? Thats cute. If you keep doing that I’m not going to be able to stop myself from doing bad things to you.”

You found yourself at a loss for words. Tae rand is thumb over your bottom lip before laughing. Anger overwhelmed you. “You’re an asshole!” You shoved him away from you. He continued to laugh “Oh yeah? Am I?” He tickled your side and you shrieked jumping off the couch and running away from him. He chased you around the apartment and when he caught up to you he threw you over his shoulder. “Tae!” You giggled. He threw you onto the couch and plopped down next to you. “Don’t deny who you are.”

“Shut up.”

——————————————————————————————————————————

Tae picked the movie tonight. It was the notebook and apparently he was a huge fan of Rachel McAdams. You didn’t blame him, she was very pretty but you did feel weirdly jealous. You noticed he didn’t put his arm around you like he normally did which kinda disappointed you. You wondered if he was mad at you which made it hard for you relax. You sat with your arms wrapped around your legs. In your head you started to go through everything you had done during the day that could have upset him but you weren’t finding anything he had seemed happy all day which is why it was weird that he wasn’t acting like he usually did. You were about to start crying until you felt him touching your thigh. He looked like he didn’t know he was doing it as he continued to watch the movie.You couldn’t focus at all, his touches felt so good and you closed your eyes accidentally sighing with pleasure. You felt his hand travel closer to the line of your shorts until they ghosted over your core. Taken aback you looked at tae, worried that he was unaware of what he was doing but he was looking right at you now, his eyes full of something dark and wild. He pulled you closer to him and applied more pressure which made you moan more and you leaned your head against his chest. His other hand caressed your head. “You are so pretty.” He mumbled. “You have no idea how much I want to ruin you.” As he rubbed harder you could feel yourself building up to something you bit your lip and felt your hips roll against his hand. “Do you like that?” Taehyung asked

“Mhmn.” Was the most you could say. “Do you want to come?” You nodded but tae wasn’t satisfied. “I asked if you want to come.” He said.

“Yes! I want to come!” You shouted and almost instantly you felt yourself reach the edge. He continued to move his hand against you as you shook. “Oh my god.”You exhaled. Once you came down from your high you couldn’t bare to look at him and kept your head buried in his shirt. He kissed your hair and then your forehead, your eyes cheeks, nose, before making his way to your lips. It was soft and too brief you almost felt like it hadn’t happened. But he didn’t offer anything more. He got off the couch and walked to the bathroom. You heard him start the shower and you fell asleep before he opened the door again.

——————————————————————————————————————————

It had been three days since whatever happened between you two had happened. You weren’t sure what to call it just as much as you weren’t sure what it meant. You were so confused and too afraid to ask him. Tae seemed just as goofy as he always was which was a relief though he didn’t touch you as much. In fact you had tried to hug him earlier and you could swear you saw him flinch. This was infuriating! He was the one who has initiated the whole thing and now he wasn’t even going to acknowledge it. There was no way you were letting him get away with this. If he was going to make you mad then you were going to mess with him.

“Hey Y/N I’m bored come play cards with me.”

You were sitting in your room reading. You smiled to yourself as you ignored his request.

“Y/N?” Again no response. You. Could hear him walking to your room. He stood in the doorway looking at you.

“Y/N, did you hear me?” You put on your most innocent face before looking at him. “No, did you call me?” He scratched his head clearly confused before sighing. “No, never mind.” You stuck your tongue out at him when he walked away.

When he made dinner that night you told him you had already eaten. “When?” He asked. You shrugged, “I had some crackers earlier and I’m full.”  You could tell that he was getting frustrated. But he still didn’t ask you what was going on.

You didn’t watch a movie that night but you hadn’t in three days so it wasn’t that weird. When  He closed his bedroom door you waited an hour before leaving your room and slipping into his. He was definitely asleep when you got under the covers. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and you were pleased when he moved to wrap his arms around you groaning into you.

——————————————————————————————————————————

In the morning he was not in the room and the door was opened. You got up and found him at the island waiting for you. You liked the way he looked in the morning his har disheveled hid voice incredibly deep.

“Y/N.” He spoke. You shivered at the way he said it. He was angry and it was very hot.

“Tae.” You responded. He shook his head at you and you went on pretending to be oblivious.

“Can you make me pancakes?” You asked sweetly. “‘Im, hungry.” You opened one of the cabinets and got a glass for water. Before you could open the fridge Tae moved grabbed you and pushed you against the counter placing a hand on either side of you.

“Y/N, why are you doing this to me?” Although you were a bit shocked you forced yourself to continue the act. “Doing what Tae, I just asked for pancakes.” Then he actually growled, leaning his head onto your shoulder. You felt blood rush to your core you were so turned on. “Goddamn it, Y/N. I keep convincing myself that this is a bad idea but you keep doing things that make me want to teach you a lesson.”

“Then teach me.” You say. He lifted his head from your shoulder and looked into your eyes. The darkness had returned and his eyes seemed heavy as he looked down at your lips. Suddenly he was devouring you. This kiss was nothing like the ghost one from before. This one felt like he was trying to suck all of the life out of you. And it was working. Your knees went weak and you had to hold onto his shoulders to help yourself stay upright. He slipped his tongue into your mouth and you moaned into him. He tasted so good and just as you felt like he was giving himself to you he pulled away. You whined. “Y/N, tell me what you want.” You rolled your eyes and he gripped your face with his hands. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want you.” He kissed you smiling against your mouth. “Where do you want me?”

“Everywhere.” You moved his hands to your breasts and he quickly lifted up your shirt to reveal your breasts.

“Holy fuck I can’t believe you slept next to me like this.” He moved his mouth down your neck before latching onto you nipple and sucking hard.

“Oh my god.” You ran your fingers though his hair. Tae slipped his fingers down to the waistline of your shorts and you let him pull them down along with your underwear. “Such a pretty little cunt.” He said before slapping it making you gasp. He turned you around and licked your folds your eyes rolling back. He began to suck on your clit and you lost it. “Fuck, oh my god! Yes!” Without warning tae pushed you to the ground and stood up you could see the bulge that had formed in his sweats. He placed your hand over it and rolled his head back while you massaged it. Then he pulled down his sweats to reveal a very large very erect cock. You swallowed and looked up at him. ‘Fuck, Y/N you have no idea how pure you look. I can’t wait to fucking ruin you.” Grabbing onto your hair he pushed his dick into your mouth. “Good girl.” He said gently. Tae watched as you tried not to choke on him. “You're doing so good.” He began to buck his hips into you and you gagged on him getting saliva all over his length. When you almost couldn’t take it he pulled out and picked you up placing you on the counter.

“Are you ready for me baby?” He asked and you nodded. He didn’t move. “I need an answer.”

“Yes, Please fuck me.” You beg. And then the pushed into you stretching you out so much you stoped breathing for a second. But as he pulled out you immediately wanted him back inside. Tae grabbed your neck. “I want you to look at me when I’m fucking you.” He pounded into you and when he thrusted at just the right angle your eyes started to water but you kept looking at him. “You feel so fucking good, Y/N. I’ve thought about this so much and you are even tighter than I expected.” The lack of oxygen was heightening your pleasure and you started to feel your orgasm coming on. “Im going to come!” You screamed. He pounded into you harder. “Not yet baby, Not until I say so.” You bit your lip in an effort to hold it back but your vision blurred and there was no stopping it. Tae kept thrusting as you rode it out and as you squeezed around him he reached his climax. He pulled out and his juices poured out of you. He wrapped his arms around you and hugged you for a long time. After some time he picked you up and carried you to the bathroom. He turned on the shower and pulled you inside. As the water ran he took your face in his hards and kissed you softly. He kissed your shoulders and your breasts. He knelt kissing your stomach, thighs, knees and feet. You grabbed his face and pulled him back up into your lips. He felt safe and secure. You let him wash your body and he let you wash his. Finally he stepped out of the shower and dried off before opening the bathroom door.

“Where are you going?” You asked him.

“To make you pancakes.”

[mujeebblogs]

post COVID  world

Post COVID world: an imagination

In today’s scenario when the whole world is passing through a state of horror,tension,uncertainty and a fear of the unexpected.. CORONA, COVID19, novel corona virus have become household words since last few days. Definitely, it’s the most devastating pandemic humans have ever seen, it has brought the whole world on the back foot, the entire world locked down, people shut in their houses, fear all over everywhere. But somewhere in our hearts we have a hope that we will overcome this too as we have come out of all previous catastrophes. But as per the law of nature every upheaval has got an aftermath so the post COVID 19 will also have. Can you imagine how the post COVID world would be like? Believe me its going be a very different world altogether.

My blog is to bring smiles on your faces in these tough times.

How the world is going to look like with people in masks, gloves and face shields, may be body suits, maintaining social distance and not able to do all those things which they were freely doing before COVID.

I am sharing my imagination here

People, specially Indian people are going to miss their pleasure of sneezing, picking their nose or even coughing because now onward  all these gestures will turn heads.

Sneezing before covid was considered a pleasurable activity which everyone used to enjoy I distinctly remember seeing my grandfather and people of that age using “NASWAR”( it is a moist, powdered tobacco usually sniffed) to make them sneeze.

When we look into the process of sneezing it appears to be no less than a rocket science. Sneezing in itself is a whole process right from getting into the mood which involves making of funny faces to taking a stance, than a little bending behind with head tilted back and then the final act of explosion , definitely it is like launching a rocket into space and the best of all is the contentment on the face of who sneezes, he looks content, relieved and as if he has achieved something in his life. Similarly picking one’s nose was also a pastime and for some people it was a gesture associated with intense thinking, the deeper the thinking- faster the finger use to dig into deep corners of their noses, and during this intense intellectual process their face becomes so flexible that at times their mouth seems to reach almost to their ears.

Another gesture is coughing which has been a very strong and interesting verbal communication sign since times immemorial. which was further made famous by Maduhri dixit and Salman khan in the film HUM APKE HAIN KAUN ,that famous “AHO -AHU” which became a symbol for communicating amongst love birds will now be seen with a raised eyebrows ,disapproval and contempt.. even fear .

Sneezing, coughing in public will be a more heinous crime than farting. I guess farting is going to be treated a respectable gesture now.

Mask definitely is a protective gear against the virus but it s going to change the scenario altogether ,after Covid it may be beneficial for many whereas disheartening for some, lets look at this:-

Firstly for the people who have borrowed money can now roam in the city without the fear of being caught by their lenders.

Love birds who use to cover their faces earlier for the fear of getting caught but were always spotted because they use to look very odd in the crowd and it use to become very obvious now they can do it officially.

Robbers and chain snatchers are going to have gala time as they will no more be scared of being suspects.

Eve teasing will be on next level now, as the girls will never be able to figure out who whistled at them or who passed a comment on them.

For girls Its going to save lots of money ,they now can get their upper lip done at their own convenience of budget and time etc as now they have a facility of easily hiding it under a designer or a flowery mask .

Some rituals are also going to be changed, in weddings the “MUH DIKHAI ceremony will now onwards will be a “MASK HATAO” ceremony and for that matter masks are going get designer now with diamonds or may be gold embroidery.

India is going to be cleaner now because all those people who used to spit here and there will end up spitting in their masks as getting use to the mask is going to take time and by the time they will forget this habit of spitting.

The toothpaste and tooth whitening companies are going to suffer a big loss as people will care a damn for white teeth and their bad breath.

Anti tan cream companies will see their sales figure shoot up as people will be using to get rid of their mask marks on their face.

Corporate will be very happy to have another reason for cost cutting . Now they can do away with their pantry and housekeeping staff because when they find that after lock down their staff is very well equipped with all these skills. we might see a rooster in offices for assigning these works on rotation basis to the employees. The support staff might see a fear of losing their jobs. similarly the house maids will also have a tough time, they might lose their jobs or will have to raise their performances levels as their performances will always be compared with their lock-down replacement their own “ sahabs”.

Lastly the HINDI language word “karona”, means asking ‘to do’ like “eis matter mey kuch karona”will be out of fashoin as people will be alarmed to hear karona and hear it as CORONA. instead people will start using “kariye”

Any ways as the saying goes “Change is the Essence of life” so lets prepare ourselves for this change. In the meantime stay at home and stay safe.

keep visiting my blog

waiting for your comment and likes

bye for now

[nomorevanillabeanicecream]

no more vanilla bean ice cream

they were out of vanilla bean ice cream, they had vanilla, french vanilla, sweet cream vanilla and cheesecake vanilla, but not vanilla bean, when did everyone all of a sudden get into vanilla bean, everyone was a pig they could not care less about the bean in the vanilla or not, but now apparently everyone was into vanilla bean ice cream because last week there was a full row of umpqua vanilla bean ice cream and now there was none

so I’m waiting in line at safeway with my subpar vanilla ice cream after I had gone on a much needed quarantine run right after spending two hours texting my friend and she was telling me about how google owns all the data in the world and not only has enough data to know me better than myself, but since they know everyone else’s data too, they know my friends data so they know me in context, the whole thing was very depressing so depressing i didnt even want to use a period in my writing anymore because what the fuck was the point of punctuation anyway in this world, i would still be nice and use commas, just to give my fingers a break and be able to get a thought in or so. 

i guess i could also accommodate for paragraphs break at visually appropriate times, it didn't matter if it was contextually appropriate or not, i was going to drop a paragraph break because i know people like paragraphs, charles dickens and dostoevsky and jane austen and leo tolstoy never made paragraph breaks that's why no one ever read their books, people just say they read them to seem smart but they never really read them they just knew it was the right thing to say that they were literary geniuses because their books were so long, see people like to lie and say they know the work of a great author even though they only read a few  quotes by them, but that was enough to say good and bad things about writers without ever knowing what the hell they did, few understand the theory of relativity but everyone calls einstein a genius. 

the thing about quarantine was that at this point i had gotten used to seeing very few people in my life and i was enjoying it so whenever i had to go to the supermarket i had to see all these people and boy were they gross, maybe i would not have seen them as so gross if had gotten my vanilla bean ice cream but i had not so, they were gross, they were all getting so fat, and fat in like weird ways, not like fat on the sides like the michelin tire guy or a cute belly like the pillsbury dough boy or like that kinda funny superfat like homer simpson or peter griffin they were just gross fat, like it looked like they had just been eating garbage and watching netflix fat, like this one guy seemed like if you got a pillowcase filled it up with hot lard and then poked two pool cues on the bottom of it, this other lady looked like a minifridge emptied into a potato sack.

the asses were the worst part, it was kinda hot so everyone was wearing shorts and it was not appropriate when they wear shorts always have that like red line right under the shorts and it does not look that great, the oddest one was the skinny ass but with fat legs, i did not get that one, the person would have no ass mass at all but then the legs were super fat i did not understand what they were doing to get their bodies to look this way, a lot of people were also walking around with wedgies, a lot of people were also walking around in pajamas covered in animal hair and it was gross, its like you have nowhere to go, you are all complaining about not having the right to go out, so when you do go out why not maybe spruce things up, honour life, honour your fellow human, no, screw that we are all going to behave like the whole entire public sphere is a big ass pijama party,

the whole facemask thing, wait before, i start talking about the facemask thing, everytime i start a new paragraph, google is trying to force me into capitalizing the first letter, it doesn't even ask me if i want to capitalize it, it just goes ahead and does it, google is such an presumptuous douche sometimes, now when i write in gmail, it autocompletes all my sentences, great so we can all sound like robots, and it does it like automatically, so i ending having to erase the lame sentence it wrote, i mean i would have probably come up with something similar or exactly the same too, after all there are only  so many ways to say goodbye, but id like to think it was my idea, these engineers had no savoir faire, just so you know, so now i hope that everytime you start to read a new paragraph you imagine me hitting the backspace button to delete their fascist capital letters, and its frustrating because im really trying to write as fast as i can, i bet you can tell

see it happened again, and its not that i just have to hit the delete, i have to get my mouse and put my cursor there so it like detects its not just on mistake i am trying to delete their smartass capital letter, so yeah to the facemask thing, the whole facemask thing was pretty dumb, i mean if the facemask was the windshield to the coronavirus i didnt get how casual people were being about, they would just pull it right down under their noise, oh great now you have all your coronavirus on your nostrils, what the hell, i didnt get it, im pretty sure noone in that safeway store had coronavirus, and it was coronavirus not covid19, what is it about us having to find dandy little names for things, it was the coronavirus and thats that, so yeah we were all carrying about these facemasks that if they were really protecting us from the coronavirus lingering in the air then we were being flagrantly irresponsible in our use, but deep down we all felt it wasnt, but we just had to wear one because it was the rule, but we all knew noone in the store had coronavirus

it may sound weird, but i think you know when someone has coronavirus, its like you can just tell, you know like other things you can just tell about a person, i remember i once went up to san francisco about a month ago, and i saw this guy on the muni line headed to the bayview that for sure had coronavirus, he wasnt coughing or anything, but i saw him and i knew he definitely had coronavirus, it wasnt because he was black or chinese or  anything, this isnt like a hidden racist joke, i could just tell, i freaked out , and i havent gone up to the city since then, and then, lo and behold they announced that a muni driver got the corona and that the bayview district had the most corona cases in the cities, see sometimes you can just tell

im pretty sure that day i even had the corona on me, i mean i didnt get it, but im pretty sure it landed on my hand, but i washed it before i touched any of my mucous parts, but it was there with me, i dont think it was from the guy on the bus thought, i think it landed from this other guy, i went to a deli to buy water, bananas, coca cola and chocolate and this guy was kinda drunk and talking real loud and coming real close and i could feel the air get really moist when he passed by me and my hand was exposed and i know that at that moment some of it got on my hand, but i didnt panic, i knew i couldnt lose my cool, i had to just play it smooth, and wait till i could get to the studio and wash my hand and everything else, i was really thorough i walked the whole way back to the studio with my hand outstretched so it wouldnt touch my jacket or anything, i could feel it was there, it was for sure there, but i played it cool and washed it and nothing happen, but i was that close 

 and thats why you have to wash your hands because you could be that close too to having coronavirus, so see im not that crazy, that the reason they recommend us all to wash our hands, because at some point it could be that close to you, and if you don't wash your hand before your touch your eye, boom you got coronavirus, crazy to think that you too could have had coronavirus on you, and you could have, but now i think there isnt that much coronavirus on things anywhere, i think the coronavirus is like hiding or something, i think the coronavirus are like finding their niches and stuff, like if you ask me i think the coronavirus right now is probably somewhere where the sun dont shine, i bet it like flew to a a dirty dive bar that was totally shut down windows boarded and everything, but its there just chilling on the sticky counter, waiting to come back in the summer, i also think it might be at like some nasty to-go food place, like there is this wing place open till midnite around my house, i bet there is a little coronavirus there, but only a little bit, and its like one of the lazy ones, so i dont think it feels like jumping on anyone

at work i have to tell the staff how to wash their hands, i tell them they have to wash on top of their hand, palm of their hand, each finger, in between fingers, under the finger nails, and up to the elbow, but i mean if they have coronavirus, and their touching my food, i think its going to get on the to go box anyway, but its the rules so i play along, i even translated the rules, and told them to sign a paper, the paper also said that they had to wear a facemask, its not like they have multiple facemasks, i mean we are going to give them a few, but its up to them to wash it, one guy asked me if he could use the same one for a few days, i told him no, but i mean even if he washes his facemask before work and then lets say he puts it in his pocket, what if his jacket has corona but his facemask doesnt, itd be a real shame if his corona jacket infected his noncorona facemask, but i saw him and i dont think he had corona anyway

im repeating the same point and the rant is losing steam, so i gotta ramp it back up, or maybe no, maybe its not all just about ranting, maybe i should tell you some good things, like ill tell you about my run, the day was so nice, it was bright and sunny, and thats really all i gotta say, the point that i have more to say about right now is that i feel like im writing like that kid from catcher in the rye, that kid was a real case, i cant say i disliked the kid, but i wouldnt hang out with him, i mean in general i wouldnt be hanging out with high schoolers, but i might hang out with him after he grows up, i think we were all like that kid at some point, and the ones that arent, are soul dead and just go to work and drink craft beer and probably become those engineers without savoir faire that figure out the code to finish my email sentences

but i also feel that i am writing likes james joyce in ulysses, those are two books that i read from cover to cover ulysses and catcher in the rye, all it takes is a good fucked up guy to write something honest and you can get me to finish it, james joyce was all about stream of consciousness, crazy to think that ulysses is regularly named the best book of the century, and it wasnt even that bad of a century for books, it was a crazy book, and it was daring and new to just expose how he felt a person thought, and i mean it was pretty smart, because that is how we think, we jump around and we get nervous and self conscious and horny and we think in simple letters, and our memories associate things weirdly, i mean dante was the best writer of all the time, but i dont know anyone that thinks inside their brain in metered stanzas, if there was such a person, i dont know if id like to meet him, it would be a lot to handle good novels have taught me a lot, they've confused me too, but overall taught me things, see life is a grey thing, like there arent absolute values, 

for us human beings, its easy to think of things as black and white, good and bad, yes or no, but thats not how it goes, there is a lot of grey area, and thats why i guess i liked ulysses, see the whole book is about this guy that is roaming around dublin, while he knows his wife is cheating on him, the last chapter is a stream of consciousness from his wifes mind, in which she just goes through her mind thinking about her past lovers and this guy she is cheating on her husband with, and ultimately she feels bad and when her husband climbs back into bed with her, shes like thinking oh there he is again, old leopold, but hes my leopold and she i guess kinda does admit to loving him, life hurts like that sometimes, a woman can still love you but cheat on you, a man can do it too, anyone can cheat on you, but still love you, anyone can hurt you and still love you, its a rough reality, remember i wrote an essay on this book, and the teacher said that i should save it and give it to the woman i marry it was so good, i didnt save it so i guess that wont ever happen, i cant even remember what i said, probably something about forgiveness and the abstract beauty of love, i was only twenty, i could have said anything

i wish i could remember what i wrote though, nowadays a lot of people are walking around with fear of intimacy issues, they are scared to open up to people, you know a lot of people are saying that they have intimacy issues, so i wanted to figure out more,  i looked it up on wikipedia and it said there were four types of people, normal people that love themselves and can share intimacy with others, people that think themselves unworthy of intimacy but seek it, people that are scared of being intimate with others out of fear of rejection, and people that have self worth but think others are undeserving of intimacy, i think the whole thing probably comes from parental stuff, that's always the freudian way of looking at things, its kind of a shame because i think people really do like laying in bed and talking comfortably with someone after a wild fuck, when i wrote the essay i didnt have intimacy issues, but i might now, i dont know, and even if  i did i dont know what type of of person i am,  i guess sometimes people do say some stupid things, and stupid things out of  a naked person are the worst kind of stupid things, whatever its wikipedia, anyone could have written, just like the original science study it supposedly based on,

ok this all getting too gooey and it lost its sharp vibe, i think that we were on a roll, when we were on the coronavirus landing places part, but then i get too serious and stuff, i do still want to talk about books i like, you know like thats one of the favorite things english teachers like to do, they like to analyze all the references that an authour made to other books, normally its the bible or the odyssey or some other greek or roman classic, like ulysses was modeled after the odyssey, i remember the teacher always talked about that, ive never read the odyssey or the iliad, ive heard they are great books, but i try not to say it myself, i do say that homer was a great poet though, but i never read his stuff, i mean ive read the first line, but i dont know the whole story or anything, i guess we are all hypocrites at some point or another, i do know however that ulysses was in one of dantes circles of hell, because he was advisor to deceit, the deceit of having that big horse full of soldiers go into to troy, so he ended up in hell, talking about hell that was another book they loved to reference, the bible, the bible doesnt see things grey, they see it black or white, this morning i woke up at four in the morning, and i couldnt get back to bed, so i pulled to a random spot and started reading proverbs, they make it seem so simple, this is good, that is is bad, i wish it were that simple, it used to be that simple like that when i was little kid, maybe it still is but,  i just refuse to see it that way

[pierrehardy]

COVID-19 x Poor Countries

This is a short post on the effects of the Covid-19 on poor countries. This is an essential focus because even though richer countries are being ravaged, historically, it is the poorest that gets the worst of it. Poor countries cannot whip out $2 trillion [1] like what the US did. As John Nkengasong said, the director of Africa CDC,  for poor countries, this is a “national security crisis first, an economic crisis second, and a health crisis third.”

I’ll keep it short and concise so you can get a clear picture quickly, but I’ll include sources at the end to serve as a reading list if you want.

First, I will enumerate the problems that the pandemic is causing in poor countries. Second, I will TRY to look at the “bright side” of things. Third, the possible solutions. And lastly, I’ll end with two examples of doing their part in taking this seriously. 

Problems

Poor people cannot social distance. It’s simply impossible if you live in the slums. [2]

Hand washing is a difficult habit to form if you live in a place with no running water. [3]

The poor cannot isolate themselves at home. These are people who live day to day, and without going out to work, they will not have food to eat. If the government forces them to stay at home, a riot is bound to happen. What the virus can’t kill, hunger will. [4]

Some countries, usually the better off, are becoming nationalists and shutting down their exports. The last thing a global pandemic needs is for global trade to get gummed up. [5][6]

The spread of fake news. Most notably, the two kinds: religious fake news and quack cures. For example, Tanzania’s president refuses to close down churches because he believes the virus is Satanic and cannot survive in a place of worship. [7] He is not alone in thinking this way. Another is the false information that garlic, ginger, and lemon can cure the virus. This is false and does nothing but drive up the prices for these goods. [8]

There has been a rise in xenophobia among countries as they start to attack foreigners and immigrants. [9]

There have been opportunistic autocratic wannabees that are taking advantage of this mess. They will use the virus as an excuse to ban political rallies, postpone elections, and increase the surveillance of its citizens. [10]

Several companies and businesses cannot survive this and would need credit to stay alive. [11] This can mean a lot of lost jobs. 

Lastly, which is the worst problem, is the fact that poor countries are, well, poor. The healthcare system of poor countries can barely function without a crisis, the pandemic makes it worse [12]. And for a quarantine to work in a poor country with a population that needs to work every day to feed their families, they require social safety nets in the form of food or allowance from the government. Similarly to businesses affected by this, they need a lifeline of credit from the government to stay alive.  In short, it is expensive, and poor countries can’t afford it. [13]

To make it worse, the sources of income of poor countries are taking a hit too. Many of these countries rely on tourism [14], which is obviously dwindling [15]. They count on commodities like raw materials and oil, whose prices are fallings. [16] (To clarify, the low price of oil is not primarily caused by the virus but by the price war that Saudi Arabia and Russia are having. [17] It is likely that this will last beyond this pandemic). Remittances can also get affected, as overseas workers can’t work too [18]. To top it off, foreign investors are fleeing from developing countries and into safer investments, aka richer countries [19]. This caused a depressing outcome of making credit cheaper in wealthier countries and more expensive to poorer countries. This pandemic is shaping up to be worse than the 2008 financial crisis.

Bright Sides (there is none, really)

Most poor countries have younger populations (only 5% of Africa is old while in Europe, it’s 24%). So if you’re morbid, you may find comfort in this. But not too much since most of the youth in poor countries are malnourished and don’t have a robust immune system. 

Most people in poor countries are in rural areas, where it is less dense and is better for social distancing. But again, a caveat is that it’s only a matter of time before the virus arrives in rural areas.  

Most poor countries are hot, and the infection spreads slower in warm countries. Then again, findings for this are inconclusive at worst, and the effects are modest at best. [20]

Nations hit with a health crisis tend to keep the excellent hygiene habits they were forced to form. 

Possible Solutions

The simplest one that is absolutely necessary is transparent information. That means no cover-ups, no downplaying, no arresting of people exposing unsavory news. [21]

There’s no going around it. The richer countries must help the poorer countries, either through credit or forgiving debt. [22] Three main motivations for rich countries: (1) Compassion, (2) if you leave the poor to deteriorate, the poor will inevitably reinfect you, and (3) whoever helps the poor now will dictate their allegiance in the future. The poor will remember who helped them. 

Positively, the rich world is doing just that. The IMF readied $1 trillion in aid. [23] The G20 pledged to inject $5 trillion to the world economy. [24] China has been active in giving assistance [25], and so is its richest man, Jack Ma, in donating testing kits, protective suits, and masks. [26] 

Positive Examples: Brazil and Africa

The president of Brazil does not take the Covid-19 seriously. Nonetheless, congressmen ignored the president’s downplaying of the virus and declared a state of calamity anyways. LGUs have locked down several cities and turned football stadiums into hospitals. Universities and private labs have dedicated their efforts to producing testing kits with private companies supplying the required materials for free. A brewery in Brazil has also started manufacturing hand sanitizer. Activists have been roving around with loudspeakers, telling people to stay in their homes. They have also proposed turning empty schools into quarantine centers and with renting mansions to house the elderly in a far off district. Even the gangs of organized criminals have imposed curfews in their territories and stopped selling drugs in open-air markets. They’re doing all of this while being heckled by their president, whose approval ratings have tanked as a result. [27]

In Africa, the governments’ actions were much swifter compared to Europe. Sierra Leone declared a state of emergency for the whole year, even before confirming a single infection. Uganda locked down schools even before being infected. South Africa locked the country down earlier than most European countries. They also immediately beefed up testing facilities. They now have 40 countries capable of testing, from only 2. This can all be attributed to Africa’s experience with epidemics (like Ebola). [28]

To summarize: basically, poor countries are especially vulnerable to the pandemic. They would likely require the assistance of wealthier nations to survive this and still have a livelihood afterward. Keep in mind the nine main problems we face so that we can form a more informed solution. Thanks for reading, I hope you learned something new today.

References

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/world/coronavirus-news-live.html 

[2]https://www.rediff.com/news/special/how-can-there-be-social-distancing-in-slums/20200324.htm 

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51929598 

[4] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/28/social-distancing-is-a-privilege/ 

[5]https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-eu-limit-exports-medical-equipment/ 

[6] http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-03/25/c_138913230.htm 

[7]https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/tanzanian-president-criticized-refusing-close-places-worship 

[8]https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/04/who-pushes-back-on-coronavirus-misinformation-and-bogus-cure-claims.html 

[9]https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-covid19-xenophobia-racism/607816/ 

[10]https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-and-autocrats-never-let-pandemic-go-to-waste-11585400400 

[11]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/business/economy/coronavirus-business-credit-access.html 

[12] Personally visited the Philippine General Hospital in the past. 

[13]https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-is-advancing-on-poor-nations-and-the-prognosis-is-troubling-11585149183 

[14]http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20130320-how-tourism-can-alleviate-poverty 

[15] https://www.unwto.org/tourism-covid-19-coronavirus 

[16] https://www.fastmarkets.com/commodities/coronavirus 

[17]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/the-saudi-crown-prince-s-plan-to-win-the-global-oil-war 

[18]https://think.ing.com/snaps/philippines-remittance-growth-hits-4.1-in-2019/ 

[19]https://www.wsj.com/articles/emerging-markets-take-hit-as-investors-flee-for-safety-11584529200 

[20]https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/12/asia/coronavirus-flu-weather-temperature-intl-hnk/index.html 

[21]https://www.euractiv.com/section/coronavirus/news/commitment-transparency-pay-off-as-south-korea-limits-covid-19-spread/ 

[22]https://www.ipsnews.net/2020/03/rich-countries-must-protect-developing-nations-coronavirus-pandemic/ 

[23]https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/16/imf-says-its-ready-to-mobilize-its-1-trillion-lending-capacity-to-fight-coronavirus.html 

[24]https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/g20-leaders-pledge-usd-5-trillion-united-response-to-coronavirus-crisis/articleshow/74835666.cms 

[25] https://time.com/5812015/china-medical-aid-pakistan/ 

[26]https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/16/africa/jack-ma-donate-masks-coronavirus-africa/index.html 

[27]https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2020/03/26/brazils-president-fiddles-as-a-pandemic-looms 

[28]

https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/03/26/africa-is-woefully-ill-equipped-to-cope-with-covid-19

[raysofgaia]

Bus Drivers and Corona

Note: This heartbreaking story was shared by a bus driver working in the Portland, Oregon area via the main Portland reddit page. No edits have been made by me.

“The last couple of days have been eye opening.

I was sent home after being exposed (in close proximity)to a woman who matched the description of a recent victim of covid19 in Clackamas county.

She was having trouble breathing. Trying to be pleasant, kept saying she felt dizzy and that her head and stomach hurt. Coughing sporadically. She was looking to get to Providence. I suggested she grab some fresh air at my time point since we had two minutes to kill before we could leave, and so I could distance myself from her since she refused to sit farther back. She could only stand 30 seconds of the wind before running inside saying it was too cold.

Sweating and swaying I kept asking if she was okay. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore and asked if I could call medical for her, she complied. I parked my bus at 50th and Caruthers right in front of the Maverick apartment building.

The emt shows up wearing an N95 mask while I sat there completely unprotected and unprepared for this pandemic. He asked her symptoms and she coughed the whole time, red eyes, said she wanted Providence. Initially I thought she said she was 59 but when he asked she said 69. Reading this morning’s announcement of a woman who passed away at Providence hospital being 69 gave me chills.

When they sent me home I was instructed not to enter the garage under any circumstance, “Just leave your pouch in the seat and exit the bus at the spotter shack” I was also told to make sure I was clear for work (from my pcp) for the next day.

I walked back to my car because I was so scared to infect anyone. I knew I had just been in very close proximity with a woman on her way out of this carnation for 20+ minutes.

The advice nurse instructed me to take a shower and immediately strip my clothes off when entering into my home, as well as sanitize anything I touch between my car and the shower.

I continually think of every single action I made that day with tears running down my face absolutely terrified of infecting my kids.

So when my doctor asked me if I had any symptoms outside of this stubborn cough I can’t shake, and cleared me for work, I immediately doubted the safety measures put into place to protect our society.

When my boss had no problems with me returning to work, and in fact asking me to work extra on my day off(because my doctor said I was good to go) I really sat back and watched the whole thing play out.

The longer we stay in service, the longer we refuse to look at this pandemic sweeping through our nation and the entire planet, the more people that will die.

Yesterday a friend of mine passed away. Dan Wilson served the city of Portland for 30+ years. Solid man. Good human. They said he had a heart attack and it wasn’t covid19 related.

I’d be interested to see what the results would be if they tested him in an autopsy. To tell the full truth of why we have been robbed of his beautiful life energy. To tell the full truth of the risks that every single one of the “essential employee” fleet will be taking to continually provide services.

Shut down your restaurants for takeout and delivery please?

We don’t need convenient stores if it’s life or death, I wanna know the employees are safe, Dutch Bro’s, Starbucks, Taco Bell and Wendy’s.

Shut it down!

I may very well be the last non-emergency personal that woman ever saw before she died and she walked onto my bus and said to me, “Honey I’m home!” She was trying to make light of her dark circumstance, and I didn’t hesitate to support her and make her feel valued. I didn’t shout at her to back up, I suggested she sit, I could tell she was ill and I asked her to create space so she could breath easier, I tried my best but I’m not heartless and if I can tell someone next to me is dying I’m not able to clearly measure 3-6 feet. Now my cough is getting worse, I woke up with a headache, my chest hurts, and I’m cold but hot. I was gonna wait until Saturday but I can’t, calling my doctor today.

I’m so sad that we are all here as a society, that we can’t prioritize the safety of the people who are forced to work over the financial implications of shutting down.

I’ll tell you what, when everyone is dead, there won’t be anyone to drive the God damn bus.

[deltamusings]

I posted about the study that finds patients tend to be immune after having Covid19.  While I was reposted by quite a few that found this article interesting, I did get a few snarky remarks.  I’m having another bad day thanks to some tests not Covid related and they kinda got under my skin.  So:

No one is saying Covid is just another seasonal flu.  What we are saying is that at a 99.8% chance of survival, all these “preventative measures” are egregiously extreme.  After FIVE MONTHS of this, if you are still able to cry about being afraid of infection, you may be among the high risk people.  Those I understand.  For example, a teacher having to go back to school with a child who has cancer has every reason to be concerned and take precautions.  

On the other hand, most people are going to be those who are either a) wealthy, and/or still employed with little interruption to their ability to pay bills or b) someone who treats the D party as a religion and will believe anything they say or c) both.

I am aware that there are the so-called long-haulers who are still having complications months from initial infection.  I would not wish that on anyone.  I do not wish that on anyone.  But they are alive.  Are we really going to keep the country hobbled for that?  We don’t hobble the country for anyone else with complications from disease.  I know.  I have one of those other diseases.  It sucks.  We can’t stop the healthy from living over that.  We can’t keep so many out of work because of that.

Each state shut down hospitals in anticipation of cases that never came.  Now we have untold thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of sick and dying out there because they could not or were afraid to seek help.  Kids are killing themselves out of depression from being unable to vent there frustrations.   One quarter of college age kids have thought of killing themselves.  People are falling out of sobriety.  There is no where for them to go.  People, the young in particular, need human interaction.  And NO that does not include snap chat or whatever.  Parts of the country aren’t too bad, but as a whole, particularly big cities, it is bad.

Our country is on the verge of destruction because of fear.  And guess what?  Your precious Ds don’t care.  THey came back from recess for some imaginary problem in the postal service, NOT to get another stimulus out.  They won’t even talk to Rs unless they are guaranteed a blank check for 2T.  That’s not negotiating.  That’s attempted blackmail.  They refuse to acknowledge the other problems from this method of handling the virus.  All they do is come up with another orange man bad story that everyone swallows without research.  I do think HCQ with zinc should be used, as do many, many doctors.  But because Fauci has a large stake in the company that produces that other stuff, he has made sure it’s not offered freely.  Yeah, he cares as he sits stylishly by the pool for his magazine cover.

I could go on about how the math doesn’t add up in way too many ways, but I”m tired of typing.  I’m tired of the politicizing of our country’s health.  Our country’s survival.  Our country in general.  I am tired of the Republicans for being cowardly for so many years and I can’t stand the Democrats for taking advantage for their own gain.  I can’t stand Hollywood for enabling the Democrats and all their atrocities.  This country is going to hell in a handbasket unless people start thinking for themselves and start taking it back.  It’s a political party, not a religion and they are not gods.  Stop treating them as such.

[lawrencetrainor-blog]

Your Covid-19 Risk Based on CDC and Other Reputable Data

Lawrence Trainor   7/10/20

In order for individuals to determine the risks of covid-19 for themselves, they need information. It has been stated by leaders and experts that we should follow the science. In science data is analyzed to gain greater understanding of a situation. Yet when we are getting our daily fill of news on covid-19, the news is focused on one or two pieces of information, apparently to alarm the whole population.

Without providing detailed full information regarding age, underlying conditions and location for cases, hospitalizations and deaths, the reporting agencies are doing a disservice to the American public.

Should People under 65 Years Old Fear Covid-19?

This lack of information led me to have certain questions. Perhaps other people may have had these questions, so I thought I should make this available.

Following are some of the statistics I found very interesting. Anyone can find the information. The sources of my information are the CDC, Statistica.com and other known sources.

Locational statistics  

Per the CDC, as posted on 7/8/2020, for the period from 2/1/2020 to 7/4/2020, the six states of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois had 67,997 listed as covid-19 deaths out of the 114,741 total covid-19 deaths for the United States. That means the other 44 states have a total of 46,744 of the country’s deaths. 

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm

The population of those 6 states above is about 21.4% of the U.S. population, yet they had 59.3% of the deaths for the U.S. While the population of the other 44 states is estimated at 78.6% of the country’s population, they had 40.7% of the U.S. deaths. There are additional differences for locations within each state. The county a person lives in should be able to provide that data.

These are large variations. So, when they give only the total number of cases and deaths, they are painting a uniform picture for the country when people need to consider the actual Location they live in as part of the factors in assessing their risk.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm

Age statistics

Per the data posted by the CDC on 7/1/2020, the total number of people below the age of 65 whose deaths were listed as covid-19 from Feb 1, 2020 to June 27, 2020 was 21,866 people out of 112,226 total covid-19 deaths for the entire United States. So, only 19.4% of the deaths listed as covid-19 are for people under the age of 65. That is good news for people in that Age group.

https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku/datahttps://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm                 https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku/data

For people below the age of 55 during that time period, the number of deaths listed as covid-19 is 8,401 in the United States. If we then consider location, it is interesting to see how many people died of this age group in the 44 states other than the ones mentioned above. Applying the 41.6% of the deaths that occurred in these 44 states, then for people younger than 55, there are a total of 3,495 deaths in all of those 44 states. That is 3,495 deaths under 55 years old out of a population of approximately 259,500,000 people living in those states. That is a lot lower than other diseases.

Underlying Conditions

“According to a CDC report in USA Today, nearly 90% of adult patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in the US had one or more underlying diseases.” This indicates that underlying conditions may be more a factor than age. That is good news for any age group, but also encouraging news for those over 65 who are in good health.                                                               https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2020/04/15/coronavirus-risk-90-patients-had-underlying-conditions/2962721001/                           https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6915e3.htm

That means in 5 months since 2/1/2020, there have been 2.187 covid-19 listed deaths for the whole country that were under 65 and did not have an underlying condition. And for people living in the 44 states mentioned above, we can estimate that 909 covid-19 listed deaths under 65 that did not have an underlying condition out a population of 259 million people in those 44 states.

People not at Nursing Homes

There is additional good news for people over 65 in the six hardest hit states noted above who are not staying in nursing homes. In New Jersey, almost 50% of the covid-19 deaths occurred in nursing homes. In Pennsylvania as of 7/10/20, 4,669 of the 6,880 (68%) covid-19 deaths have occurred in nursing homes.  So, the risk for people over 65 years old who are not staying in nursing homes is greatly reduced.                               https://www.aarp.org/caregiving/health/info-2020/coronavirus-nursing-home-cases-deaths.html                                                                                                                         https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/disease/coronavirus/Pages/LTCF-Data.aspx

It is good policy to protect people in nursing homes. People with underlying conditions should consider staying at home, depending on their condition and their doctor’s advice. Those people also living with people who have underlying conditions should also take additional precautions. The relatively healthy people of our country should be able to get back to the business of living, while practicing good hygiene.

Decline in deaths

As reported by the CDC on 7/8/20, the number of people dying per week in the country has gone from 16,886 for the week of 4/18/20 to 8,917 for the week of 5/16/20 to 2,532 for the week of 6/20/20. Despite some changes in the trend, most people should find this great news and that we are going in the right direction.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm                                                                             https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm (interesting graph showing decline)

Originally, we were told we needed to lockdown in order to bend the curve of deaths. The press is now more concerned about the number of cases because deaths are down, but cases are not deaths. People get sick all the time and we do not shut down the states.

Here is a couple examples of states. From 2/1/20 to 7/4/2020, South Dakota had 86 covid-19 listed deaths and did not lockdown their state. Maine which has a little larger population had 109 covid-19 listed deaths. When you compare the experience of South Dakota, was it necessary for Maine to have that strict of a lockdown?

Based on the above data on age and underlying conditions, you could estimate that of the 109 deaths in Maine, there would be an estimated 4 covid-19 listed deaths for people under 65 with no underlying conditions.  On a cost/benefit analysis of the lockdown, the Maine lockdown came at a high cost to the vast majority of people and businesses in that state. Cost/benefit analyses are done all the time to determine policy.                                                                                 https://www.cdc.gov/policy/polaris/economics/cost-benefit-analysis.html

There should be real concerns by citizens of states still imposing lockdowns. By all means, people can practice hand washing and have people stay home who are sick. And, as mentioned, keep the vulnerable safe.

Other Countries

Japan has a population of 126 million and several densely populated cities. Tokyo has a population of about 13.3 million and has had 325 covid-19 deaths. New York city has 8.4 million people and 20,328 deaths. NYC City has over 95 times the deaths per capita compared to Tokyo.  Yet Japan has done this without lockdowns. This is shocking information and yet it is rarely mentioned in the news reports.

Sweden as of 7/10/20, has covid-19 5500 deaths. Sweden has a population of 10.1 million which is higher than New Jersey’s 8.9 million. The number of listed covid-19 deaths in New Jersey as of 7/4/20 is 13,484. New Jersey locked down its state. But Sweden has done 2.8 times better per capita than New Jersey. Sweden has been criticized for not fully locking down. It is not always mentioned, but Sweden did have some early restrictions that helped them keep businesses open.

However, Sweden did not do enough to protect the nursing homes, so they could have improved that and saved lives. In Sweden as of 7/8/20 for people under 70 years old, there were a total of 604 deaths. That means only 11% of the covid-19 deaths in Sweden were under 65 years old. So, they were not successful in the nursing homes, but they were successful for the working age people in Sweden.                                                                           https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/                                 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1107913/number-of-coronavirus-deaths-in-sweden-by-age-groups/                                                   https://english.alarabiya.net/en/coronavirus/2020/06/29/Coronavirus-World-still-doesn-t-understand-Sweden-s-COVID-19-expert-says        

New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois have 1% of the world’s population, but 15% of the world’s covid-19 deaths. Something does not make sense. Are we being given bad information? Are the strategies in those states that incompetent? Should this be investigated?  

Current increases information

Earlier in the pandemic, the news outlets were pushing the number of deaths and lowering that curve to reopen states, but now that that is on a decline, they are pushing cases. Of course, if you re-open a state where people are active again and at the same time you increase testing, there will be an increase in the number of cases diagnosed. The media has failed to provide any information that there is any change in the fact that most covid-19 listed deaths occur for elderly people with poor health.  

Let’s look at some actual numbers posted as of July 10. Florida’s cases per day have gone from 1214 cases on April 8 to 757 on May 31 to 9,255 on July 4. That is a spike, but there needs to be more information to assess the situation. Florida covid-19 listed deaths went from 51 deaths on April 8 to 31 deaths on May 31 to 48 deaths on July 8. So, while the cases have increased, deaths have remained relatively low compared to the experience of the hardest hit states.                                    

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/state-timeline/new-deaths/florida/0 (other states can be found on this site by changing the state in the drop-down box)

It seems better to be open now during the healthier, sunny summer months when people will fight the virus better. Florida reported recently that the average age of people testing positive has gone from 56 years old earlier in the pandemic to 36 years old recently. Many of these positive tests are asymptomatic or mild cases.

Working Age People

Working age people are mostly under 65 years old. On a cost/benefit calculation, considering the information above, it seems we are destroying small businesses and people’s jobs with the current lockdowns.

So, knowing this information one can go to the website links above and see where they fit in, as far as their age and location, to determine their risk. Of course, one can still take the precautions that are advised or required. And they also should take into account whether they have an underlying condition or if someone they live with is in an at-risk group.

Remaining questions

There are questions I still have that the experts do not have answers or have not attempted to answer on this pandemic. In fact, I still have a lot of questions. Following is one question that should be addressed immediately for the sake of our culture.

How many people have died from covid-19 by going to restaurants, hair salons, fitness centers, the beaches or houses of worship?

I hope someday, we get the answers to the questions I have rather than the fear mongering that the media seems obsessed with. I plan to continue to look into these questions.

So, should people under 65 fear covid-19? I hope the above information can help assess your risk and if you really need to fear covid-19. Remember to take into account the location you live, your age and if you have an underlying condition. You can visit the sites above to continue to understand your situation.

I wish all of you well and that we can get back to living full and free lives.

Lawrence Trainor

© Copyright 2020

[megacircuit9universe]

Civil  Unrest

SAT MAY 30 2020

Last Monday, a cop in Minneapolis brutally extinguished the life of an unarmed black man, in extreme cold blooded fashion, in broad daylight.  The man, George Floyd, was accused by a cashier of trying to pass a counterfeit twenty dollar bill.  He was slowly asphyxiated, over the course of eight agonizing minutes, by one of the arresting officers, who had a knee over his neck, as Floyd lay, hands cuffed behind his back, in the street by the police car, with other officers on the scene doing nothing to intervene as he repeatedly gasped for help saying he could not breathe.

The whole thing was caught by a bystander on video, which went viral, and sparked protests in Minneapolis the next night, Tuesday the 26th.  The protests began peacefully, but devolved into riots, vandalism, looting, and arson later that night.

This lead to four more nights (and counting) of ongoing protests and civil unrest, not just in Minneapolis, but across the entire country... with similar protests in  every major city... turning into riots after curfew each night so far.

Prior to Tuesday, nobody imagined any story would come along to get Covid19 out of the headlines, but the George Floyd protests have done exactly this, and the protests sparked by this act of police brutality have absolutely dwarfed the AstroTurf anti-mask wearing protests by right wingers in weeks previous.

All these things, however are related.

Covid19 lead to stay at home orders, and a massive economic shutdown, which left people out of work, and stuck at home, with nothing better to do than watch the news... which told them first, of an incompetent President who didn’t give a shit... a vindictive Senate who refused to help anybody financially... followed by cynical Astro Turf protests against the shut downs by armed idiots at courthouses demanding the right to get hair cuts and not wear masks in public... followed by this unconscionable act of police brutality which resulted in an innocent man’s death... in cold blood... in broad daylight.

And so yes, of course we have a real, grassroots protest movement of angry as hell working class people, representing all races, out there raising holy hell across the country... burning down police precincts, and cars, and looting big box stores, smashing up police cars and spray painting them, defying curfews, and... for the first three nights at least... forcing law enforcement and firefighters both to retreat.

It’s too early to say where this is all going.  I can’t remember another time where we saw civil unrest on this scale, for so many nights in a row, with no sign of tapering off.

This could all be history by next week, with law and order restored and justice served to the police officer who has already been charged with murder... or... this could be the beginning of a years long civil war.

All I know right now is... 4th of July is a little over a month away.  With all official fireworks displays cancelled thanks to the pandemic... it could wind up being the loudest, most explosive.... most potentially violent 4th of July since the National holiday has been celebrated.

This also does not look good for Donald Trump’s reelection resume’.  He’s been impeached.  The economy’s been destroyed.  The pandemic death toll in America has now far exceeded that of any other country, per capita, with little sign of slowing, and now riots are breaking out around the nation on such a scale that law enforcement can’t deal with them.

“He is rich.  He is strong.  And he is going to crash the stock market. Sidewalks crack, and streets go dark. Ten Thousand bankers shake and scream for Dalton’s pyramid.“ - Pronunciation Book

Meanwhile, looking at Allan Lichtman’s 13 Keys to the White House, in which, for an incumbent to lose reelection six or more keys must be false... for the first time ever, it appears that Trump now scores false on eight keys, with two still nether true nor false, but open.

[F]  Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections. (lost house in a landslide.)

[T] Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.

[T]  Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.

[T]  Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.

[F]  Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. (it’s in the toilet.)

[F]  Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. (not anymore!)

[F]  Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. (unless you count a tax cut for the rich and babies in cages, no.)

[F]  Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. (not anymore!)

[F]  Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. (impeachment anybody?)

[F]  Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. (countless foreign affairs failures, as well as military failures, such as almost starting WW3, and backing a now dead dictator, in Kim Jong Un.)

[F]  Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. (none.)

[O]  Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. (he’s not a national hero, and his charisma is pretty questionable now that even Fox News and Twitter have been turning on him... and he can’t hold rallies anymore.)

[O]  Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. (there’s a possibility that by November, Joe Biden could be seen as more charismatic, relative to Trump.)

I have been checking back with these keys a couple times a year since he was elected in 2016, and it’s only now, in 2020, that Trump has finally crossed that threshold of six or more false keys. He had the two economy keys in the bag for a long time, and others remained open, such as third party challenger, scandal, and social unrest, but here on the eve of June... he’s got eight false, with the potential to go false on two more before November.

Not that Lichtman’s keys are a foolproof guide to the outcome of a presidential election, but... they’ve predicted some unexpected upsets in the past, most notably Trumps victory over Clinton in 2016... in that case mainly because there was no incumbent.

Though the keys were worked out by Lichtman by researching the history of presidential elections, it’s fairly self evident that they are simply measures of how competent a president is... while also giving any incumbent a huge edge for the win, even if he/she is only doing the bare minimum.

It does seem now, with the clock counting down to election day, that there is little Trump can do to win reelection.

He could even try to postpone or cancel the elections, but that doesn’t save him from the fact that, constitutionally, his presidency still ends on January 2nd 2021. And in the current climate, it would be extremely difficult for him to try and defy that by going full dictator.

He and his junta have already had ample opportunity to go full dictator this year, first with the pandemic, and now with the riots.  And in both cases, they’ve shied away from overt, top-down authoritarian measures... opting instead to back away, keep hands off, and dog whistle for... governors, corporations, white trash with guns... to do... something?  Anything?  Please?

Their plan (Trump, McConnel, and their junta) was not to take over by force... at least not on such a short deadline.  It was to slowly dismantle the three branches of democracy over eight years... packing the courts, undercutting the free press, sowing confusion, taking credit for the self driving economy, voter suppression, etc... until they had it all under control, and only THEN... phasing in the monarchy.

Of course, there were scenarios where a top-down overnight crackdown would’ve worked... like a Y2K, or a WW3... a global scale catastrophe that called for some kind of emergency suspension of democracy altogether. 

But, as I’ve said in earlier entries, global pandemic doesn’t lend itself to that... it’s rather the Achilles heel of such a junta, because the only enemy is a primitive, microscopic virus, and while it disrupts the economy and life around the world, competent, compassionate leadership is good enough to mitigate the worst effects... and expose states or nations who cannot mitigate the effects for their incompetency and/or cold neglect.

Also, a pandemic has a time window which is short enough for most to see a light at the end of the tunnel... but far too long for any election schedule, and impossible to get out of the headlines using distractions, in the mean time.

To give in and do the right thing... provide universal basic income and free health care for the duration, while striving to keep a frazzled nation of home bound citizens united with inspirational speeches and reassurances that if we all work together, we can prevail... runs entirely counter to the playbook, and core beliefs of the junta.

Their playbook calls only for sowing division, demonizing the jobless and homeless, and funneling money up the chain, from the poor to the rich... increasing the wealth divide ever further until the working class are indentured servants who live hard scrap lives in perpetual debt, sacrificing everything for the sake of the monarch and the elites.

This is why, all they can do right now is try to bait GOP governors into ending shut downs, and corporations into ending furloughs too early... while dog whistling for ground level supporters to rally against wearing masks... and calling for old people to sacrifice their lives.

It’s a losing strategy, and the riots that are currently breaking out nightly around the nation are proof of that.

What sparked these riots off?  Some low level police officer, with deeply racist, and authoritarian leanings, who was emboldened by such dog whistles to think it was okay to slowly asphyxiate a helpless citizen in broad daylight, against the protest of many bystanders, knowing he was being filmed by multiple smart phones.

The junta created a climate in which this officer, and even his police companions on the scene felt this type of obscene public execution, without judge or jury, for a man who purportedly passed a counterfeit twenty, was fully sanctioned by those at the top... because he was black.

But that’s happened too many times already in the country over the past four years for anybody right now... living through the pandemic and the crashed economy, after everything else... to just sit back and take it... or do a peaceful protest that lasted an afternoon.

And now we are looking at the nightmare of every powerful politician, and every rich man... the dreaded uprising of the people!  

So, we’ll see where things go from here.

For tonight, that’s all I’ve got to record and observe.

Time for bed.

Justice for George Floyd!

[cfijerusalem]

AS THEY WENT TO PRAYER

“Once when we were going to the place where the minyan gathered...” (Acts 16:16).

During times of the day when prayer was being offered to God, in the Jewish world, the minimum number of males (10) were required to constitute a “Community of Israel” (or public prayer) for liturgical purposes in the synagogues or wherever they were praying. When there was not enough men for a minyan those who were gathering recited their prayers as individuals, and still do today.

Minyan Ma’ariv prayer in a Jaffa Tel Aviv flea-market shop (by Etan J. Tal, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia)

Most Christians do not realize the intensity in which many Jewish people pray to God. It is often thought “they just pray from a prayer book” while we “pray from our hearts”. If anyone has ever picked up a Jewish prayer book and taken a look inside, you might be extremely surprised to experience the depth and profoundly spirit formed words given to the Jewish hearts who love the God of Heaven, the Highest Heavens and the entire Planet. The heartfelt and extremely sincere fear of the Lord God, the majestic description of His Holiness and their desire to know Him through His Word is anything but shallow. Shame on us if we think this because I’ve heard some pretty shallow Christian prayers at times, and often there is no looking down on a Jewish soul crying out to God! Let us not in any way form a negative opinion nor judge how the Jewish people pray because I know they pray from the heart! It is common to go to prayer three times a day. Does the average Christian do this? We must think about this and internalize this fact and never belittle the Jewish people. And now, it is “our” turn: our time to go to prayer! Do we have a least a “minyan”?

Let’s Pray With All Of Our Hearts

Fervently intercede for those who need healing here in Israel and are sick, mainly the elderly. “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases. Who redeems your life from destruction...” (Psalm 103:2-3).

Thank God for the evaluation that Israel is the safest place in the world to be. Studies show Israel is also handling the COVID19 be and that Israelis are better protected than any other people in the world. “And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of the Lord your God...” (Deuteronomy 28:13).

Praise His Name that Bibi Netanyahu is still leading the nation, although his days may be numbered as talks turn to possibly going to another vote (which would be the fourth) for Israel. Although not perfect, he has given his whole life for leading Israel, he does study God’s Word and even says he lives by it (publically declared). May every public leader allow their egos to be put down for the good of the nation. “you shall surely set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses; one from among your brethren, you shall set as king over you, you may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother” (Deuteronomy 17:15).

Proclaim His Word that the current lockdown might help control and rid the country completely of the coronavirus outbreak. “Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourself, as it were for a little moment, until the indignation is past” (Isaiah 26:20).

Seek His Face that repentance and change will come in order to lift the plague. One doctor in Israel proclaimed that the vaccine for the current crisis is repentance. Many rabbis say we are witnessing the signs of the coming of the Messiah. Repentance must be made for disobeying and following after the nations. Israel is appointed to serve God in holiness. “When you come into the Land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations” (Deuteronomy 18:9).

Ask God to bring the souls of leaders of Hamas out of the deception they are trapped in to see Jesus. These leaders have done virtually nothing to provide even basic healthcare in the Gaza Strip, and are now trying to hold Israel responsible for the shortage of ventilators in Palestinian hospitals. Claim John 3:16 over them that their eyes may be opened.

Ask God to put it in the hearts of His People still abroad to “come home”, as it is still the safest place to be. A great shaking may put fear in many a heart to come from the west. “They will follow the LORD; he will roar like a lion. When he roars, his children will come trembling from the west” (Hosea 11:10).

Praise the Lord that the Sea of Galilee is almost full. Even while the virus is in the Land, the Kinneret continues to rise in an unprecedented way. The heavy winter rainfull has been a double blessing. It replenished the country’s natural water sources and kept people in during the virus crisis. “The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none” (Deuteronomy 28:12).

An old song was written years ago entitled “Keep on Praying”, a beautiful and yet stirring melody with words. It is our calling to continue in prayer and the word on behalf of the Jewish people and the chosen nation: Israel. God Almighty has chosen to put His Name on the City of Jerusalem.. God has chosen to build and resettle His People in His Land. It is God who will rule and reign from Jerusalem as Jesus, the Messiah, carries out His Duties as King of the Jewish people and all the nations “coming up to Zion” in the latter days. Keep praying; in other words, “pray through” until the Spirit of the Lord says to stop. Let’s be more than a “minyan” in our prayer groups, let’s once again form Prayer for Israel/Watchmen on the Walls who pray for a majestic God to continue to fulfill His Word and carry out His Promises for Israel and the Nations.

In His Service Together, Sharon Sanders Christian Friends of Israel - Jerusalem

[onenettvchannel]

Justice for Chloe Bourgeois went viral to the Bashers on Twitter by Making Her Bully in Public to Marinette Dupain-Cheng. YouTuber was Slammed to Her Rant with Thomas Astruc for an Insult.

PARIS, FRANCE -- Around the 4th week of March in 2020, some of these bashers are petitioning & boycotting the fictional character to Justice at the College Francoise Dupont in Paris City. She's on rival to Marinette by simply to bully her on the spot in class.

The actual basher reactions of #JusticeForChloeB, was spreaded like wildfires in viral (for a different languages):

a chloe ainda tinha bastante atitudes erradas até cagarem ela dnv na batalha dos miraculous acho que ela "voltar a ser totalmente má" só vai melhorar a redenção dela, ela eh uma personagem que merece ter uma virada mais bem planejada #JusticeForChloeB

— 𝙗𝙚𝙡𝙖៹⁷ 🦊 (@agustdattebayo)

24 de março de 2020

MDS a Chloe tem inúmeros traumas de infância e o desenvolvimento dela foi péssimo, Thomas simplesmente esqueceu que ela é só uma menina de 14 anos e não sabe não dá vida ainda, ela merece um amadurecimento e não ser sentenciada como alguém ruim#JusticeforChloeB

— 𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑢⁷ | 𝐵𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑆𝑤𝑎𝑛𓍯↬🦢🌵 (@emanublue)

24 de março de 2020

#JusticeForChloeB #MiraculousLadybug My opinions on this: (please be respectful, don't insult Astruc!) DISCLAIMER Astruc is THE author. If he says Chloé's irredeemable, fine. As a mere viewer & fan though, I feel there're inconsistencies. He wanted to show us A, he showed us B.

— Orkprof 🇪🇺🇮🇹🗡️☣ (@OrkprofTV)

March 25, 2020

I've never seen an episode of Miraculous, but can you shut the fuck up about Chloe? #JusticeForChloeB

— 🔅robin🔅witch of light🔅aquapio🔅 (@RedChestedBird)

March 25, 2020

#JusticeForChloeB Okay, to the people insulting Thomas, you are taking this way too far. Yes, Chloe deserved better (I don’t care what anyone else says, ladybug should feel bad for what she did to chloe), but attacking Thomas isn’t going to get you anywhere.

— Austin Holden (@AustinHolden15)

March 25, 2020

#JusticeForChloeB it's sad to see all these people on this tag attacking everyone and being like "lmao fuck ya'll" to even the reasonable Chloe fans. You're no better than the people who attack Thomas for how he writes his characters if you go on to attack people in the tag.

— Kay (@GuaranteedBad)

March 25, 2020

What the fuck is this #JusticeForChloeB ??! Guys, tell me, is that your story? Is that YOUR cartoon? Are you scriptwriter? No. You are toxic people. You are the bad side of this community. You make us shame. You are kid. You know nothing Jean-Michel snow.

— Aure pas dehors (@Aure_Magik)

March 25, 2020

And the opinions about the same hashtag, was totally disagree from the netizens of Ladybug:

@Thomas_Astruc#JusticeForChloeB Guys,Waik up your fresh mind Chloe had stole a miraculous Akumatize the whole class because of his caprice and his evilness Taking the miraculous by putting Paris in a hole danger Join Hawkoth and reveal the identity of every miraculous holders!

— Miraculous Fan Officiel (@MiraculousFan6)

March 25, 2020

you want her to have a good developpement and put Paris in a high danger. This is Chloé and anyone can change those kind of people so Chloé is a vilain and always stay a vilain ! Why acharning yourself on Thomas like that ! And what are expecting from her having good side..Never!

— Miraculous Fan Officiel (@MiraculousFan6)

March 25, 2020

Thomas all u do is justifying your decisions by downgrading anyone who tries to question anything u do. There was room for Chloe's development to go either way, towards positive change or remaining stuck in her old ways. Making her unredeemable was a choice #JusticeForChloeB

— 𝑡𝘩𝑒 𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡𝘩𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑑𝑦𝑏𝑢𝑔⁷ #⃝ 🐞 (@jooluvshye)

March 24, 2020

U say we're just too used to cliches when MLB entire plot and characters are also build on cliche tropes and formulas. Also, making an unpopular decision when it comes to character development doesn't mean your writing is good, unexpected or surprising #JusticeForChloeB

— 𝑡𝘩𝑒 𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡𝘩𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑑𝑦𝑏𝑢𝑔⁷ #⃝ 🐞 (@jooluvshye)

March 24, 2020

You're only sacrificing a female character development (something common with this show) as a poorly attempt of subverting expectations. There was a famous example recently of a popular show that went down that same route and we all know how that turned out... #JusticeForChloeB

— 𝑡𝘩𝑒 𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡𝘩𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑑𝑦𝑏𝑢𝑔⁷ #⃝ 🐞 (@jooluvshye)

March 24, 2020

Again, it was a choice and we're not happy about it. Just so you know. You're not going to see this since you blocked me for some reason but I'm giving you (and anyone who cares enough to read) a piece of my mind anyway. Stay at home, everyone lol #JusticeForChloeB

— 𝑡𝘩𝑒 𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡𝘩𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑑𝑦𝑏𝑢𝑔⁷ #⃝ 🐞 (@jooluvshye)

March 24, 2020

#justiceforchloeb here's why we don't stan this hashtag :) pic.twitter.com/NRSNefsR43

— Dawn (@jayjaykindacray)

April 9, 2020

In his statement to Thomas Astruc (Creator & Director himself of Miraculous Ladybug), during the pandemic event of CoViD19:

Currently under spam attack from fans with hashtag #JusticeForChloeB, involving a lot of insults, while I'm working myself to death in order for the show not to suffer from quarantine. They don't even realize they're displaying the same toxic behavior as Chloé's. Oh, the irony.

— Thomas Astruc (@Thomas_Astruc)

March 24, 2020

We didn't rewrite anything. That's part of her arc. The disappointment you felt is the same Ladybug felt. Mission accomplished from a writing point of view. I fail to see how that this makes me similar to Chloé, whereas bullying someone online is clearly something Chloé would do.

— Thomas Astruc (@Thomas_Astruc)

March 24, 2020

If Thomas was planning to it's Redemption Arc to Chloe, when the Bashers wanted:

The more I'm spammed about Chloé, the more it proves we were accurate with this character. Some fans' inability to see the toxicity in her behavior, or excuse it, is the best reason to keep on developing Chloé as we did.

— Thomas Astruc (@Thomas_Astruc)

March 24, 2020

Chloe's arc is about someone who refuses to change and acknowledge her mistakes, and thinks she's right to behave as if she was superior to others. She disappoints those who wants to see the best in people, and believe that people can change if given the oportunity.

— Thomas Astruc (@Thomas_Astruc)

March 31, 2020

Redemption is something that is shown by all other characters through akumatization experience. Chloe's purpose of the show is to warn about the people who willingly refuse it. Chloe redemption is a fan trope.

— Thomas Astruc (@Thomas_Astruc)

March 31, 2020

Justifying Chloé's behavior by behaving the same way IRL proves that we were right to build it this way. In the show, there will never be what I call in french, "une prime aux salauds". It saddens me you're unable to see it.

— Thomas Astruc (@Thomas_Astruc)

March 31, 2020

The Virtual Celebrity speaks out on our sister YouTube affiliate, she did a rant very badly for insulting to Thomas and boycotting to her suspect on Chloe together. She insisted to take action by forcing everyone to block and report on both (even filing to the FBI), for the message of it's Twitter Bashers to themselves. Bashers & 4chan's /co/ doesn't care about Chloe Bourgeois, but not the Voice Actor herself (known as Marie Chevalot).

Some multiple reports was sent anonymously to the Principal upon bullying with Marinette in this school. While the Creator himself (Thomas Astruc), possibly goes for the death threats and insultance. Thomas was possibly planned to resign at the end of the latest season for this year of Miraculous Ladybug, when these negative bashers replies himself by taking his chances to comply for a change with a protest, petition and anger situations of troll in public.

The French Court was spoken between Chloe Bourgeois & Thomas Astruc, as violated by the school law with indefinitely expelled at the College Francoise Dupont. Individually, she will be sentenced to 2 years in prison as amended by the Republic Act #10627 & Senate Bill #2793: Section 2c on Both or Anti-Bullying Act of 2013; with the fine charges of EUD900.

And Thomas was also sentenced for a Libel to 12 years in prison, under the Republic Act #10175 or Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012: Section 4-4. The fines can be charged to EUD9,000 for a Reclusion Temporal. Optionally on both suspects, expect on both for the Republic Act #7659 or An Act to Impose the Death Penalty on Certain Heinous Crimes: Section 4 as a bonus punishment.

Parole will be officially denied permanently, during and after it's released from bail and the court with or without the fines when they corrected the fault on both. It's best to both of them... will be hero-less.

SEVERE HONEST DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed from this news report, are not those from the Zagtoon, Method Animation & Toei Animation. It does not imitate this suspect in any matter. Furthermore, the assumptions from this news report will NOT state, intervene or reflect those of our affiliated reporters... The station, management, interwebs and the network. Thanks for reading!

-- OneNETnews Team

[lauramalchowblog]

Announcing The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge

By FARZAD MOSTASHARI

In Partnership with Resolve to Save Lives, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of Maryland, Catalyst @ Health 2.0 is excited to announce the launch of The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge. The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge is looking for novel analytic approaches that use COVID-19 Symptom Survey data to enable earlier detection and improved situational awareness of the outbreak by public health and the public. 

How the Challenge Works:

In Phase I, innovators submit a white paper (“digital poster”) summarizing the approach, methods, analysis, findings, relevant figures and graphs of their analytic approach using Symptom Survey public data (see challenge submission criteria for more). Judges will evaluate the entries based on Validity, Scientific Rigor, Impact, and User Experience and award five semi-finalists $5,000 each. Semi-finalists will present their analytic approaches to a judging panel and three semi-finalists will be selected to advance to Phase II. The semi-finalists will develop a prototype (simulation or visualization) using their analytic approach and present their prototype at a virtual unveiling event. Judges will select a grand prize winner and the runner up (2nd place). The grand prize winner will be awarded $50,000 and the runner up will be awarded $25,000.The winning analytic design will be featured on the Facebook Data For Good website and the winning team will have the opportunity to participate in a discussion forum with representatives from public health agencies. 

Phase I applications for the challenge are due Tuesday, September 29th, 2020 11:59:59 PM ET.

Learn more about the COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge HERE.

Challenge participants will leverage aggregated data from the COVID-19 symptom surveys conducted by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland, in partnership with Facebook Data for Good. Approaches can integrate publicly available anonymized datasets to validate and extend predictive utility of symptom data and should assess the impact of the integration of symptom data on identifying inflection points in state, local, or regional COVID outbreaks as well guiding individual and policy decision-making. 

These are the largest and most detailed surveys ever conducted during a public health emergency, with over 25M responses recorded to date, across 200+ countries and territories and 55+ languages. Challenge partners look forward to seeing participant’s proposed approaches leveraging this data, as well as welcome feedback on the data’s usefulness in modeling efforts. 

Indu Subaiya, co-founder of Catalyst @ Health 2.0 (“Catalyst”) met with Farzad Mostashari, Challenge Chair, to discuss the launch of the COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge. Indu and Farzad walked through the movement around open data as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the challenge goals, partners, evaluation criteria, and prizes.

Transcript: Farzad Mostashari on the Covid19 Symptom Data Challenge

Indu Subaiya: I’m delighted to be talking today with Farzad Mostashari about the COVID-19 symptom data challenge, in partnership with Facebook Data For Good, the Delphi Group at Carnegie Mellon University, and the joint program on survey methodology at the University of Maryland. So thank you for being here as we launch this challenge. Help us set the stage, because on March 7th of this year, you noticed something unusual going on in New York City. Tell us about that.

Farzad Mostashari: I was part of the first group of researchers 20 years ago to say “There’s all this data that is part of the universe floating around that we’re not using for public health purposes. What if we did?” The urgency at that time was around pandemics and bio terrorism both.

And we developed this whole field of what became known as “syndromic surveillance”, public health surveillance, real time epidemiology, where we were like, “What if you tap into what’s going on and apply these new statistical methods?” So at that time, the stone that we polished was emergency room visits and saying, “Can we receive all these data about emergency room visits happening in New York City?” And now it’s national. And be able to track, not diagnosed cases of anything, but syndromes. Is there a respiratory syndrome? Is there difficulty breathing? Is there influenza-like illness going on in the community?” And we set up these systems. And one of the other things we did in New York City, which a lot of other jurisdictions didn’t do, was we created a public facing transparency tool view of that.

So 10 years later, I was sitting in my basement like so many other people worrying about what’s going on with COVID. And now at that time in New York City, there were two diagnosed cases of COVID. But there was a lot of concern. And I went on that website, and it’s a public website, but people just didn’t know about it. And I clicked through, and I saw that cases of people going to the emergency room with respiratory distress, with difficulty breathing, with cough and fever had doubled and tripled just in the past few days. And what that told me was there are not two cases of COVID in New York City. There are tens of thousands of cases and they’re doubling every three days.

It took two weeks between that realization and when the schools were shut down, when the city was shut down. The promise and the premise here is that if we trust those signals, if those are trusted signals, we don’t have to have hundreds of thousands of people infected and tens of thousands of people die. We can intervene sooner. The public and policy makers can both make decisions based on data that is more timely.

Indu Subaiya: It seems almost there are three requisite factors that play into this vision that you’ve really set up beautifully. And one is that you need open data. You need access to data that you’ve always evangelized for and built in New York City and other places. You need to have mechanisms for early detection and early warning. But there’s something else you’ve always advocated for, which is the engagement of citizen scientists. So speak to how those underpinnings of the vision came together to design this challenge specifically.

Farzad Mostashari: So I got to hear about this incredible effort that’s underway that no one knows about (to a first order of approximation) which is that there are millions of surveys a week being done all over the globe, 70 plus countries, and in every state and territory in the US where millions of people every day, they go on Facebook, they see that there’s an opportunity to take a survey about COVID from an outside university, Carnegie Mellon, or University of Maryland for the global data. They click on that and they leave Facebook and they go to this other webpage and they fill out a survey that asks questions around, “Have you had symptoms in the past 24 hours? Has anyone in your household? Do you know people [who have]? Do you wear masks? Have you been careful when you go outside?” And they’re answering these questions and they’re actually being statistically weighed so that it’s not a convenient sample, it’s not whoever happens to have a thermometer at home or whatever. It’s like real time, reliable information. But it’s not being used!

Tom Frieden, my former boss and now leading Resolve To Save Lives (a wonderful global public health organization) and I were brought in to give our thoughts about this effort. And we were both like, “This is amazing. You should push it out.” And they pushed out the data in an open API. Anyone can go to the Delphi CMU. And three months later, it’s still not part of the Pantheon of data that we’re using to assess what’s happening with the COVID. Despite all the shortcomings in all the other data systems, people aren’t using it.

And I think to your point, the data is there, but the engagement on polishing the stone hasn’t occurred. The validation of it hasn’t occurred because we don’t have enough eyes on it. And it is not integrated into people’s understanding of what they should do. “Should I send my kid to school? Should I go to the store? Do I wear a mask this week?” These are real decisions that real people have to make every day, and we’re not giving them the benefit of what might be something that could be a real game changer.

Indu Subaiya: Well, we’ve seen firsthand in some of the early analyses with this data. Speak a little bit to just some of the insights that you’ve seen where symptom data can tell us something differently and earlier than case rates, death rates, the kinds of data inputs that we’re currently used to seeing, for the ways that this can do better.

Farzad Mostashari: Yeah. So theoretically, let’s think about the advantages. Over the three major sources of data, if I said to you, a citizen scientist, “How do we know what’s going on with COVID in our community? How do we know if an outbreak is occurring? How do we know if the outbreak is peaking? How do we know if it’s coming down?” There’s three sources of data that we are trying to look at. And all three are flawed. The first is obviously how many diagnosed cases we have. Case numbers, case positivity, lab tests. Well, the problem with that is we had a huge dearth of lab capacity early on. There are still parts of the country and parts of the world where there is not great lab capacity. And that lab capacity is changing. And even when we do the tests, they’re delayed now by seven to 10 days.

And the positivity can’t necessarily be relied on either, because it depends on what population you’re testing. If you turn on testing of a bunch of young people, you might have a different rate. If you start testing asymptomatic people, you might have a different rate. If the people follow the CDC’s recommendation and they stopped testing asymptomatics, you can have an increase … So it’s very much dependent on testing behavior. You’re seeing it through this lens of testing behavior and that lens can distort.

The second source of data could be deaths. Deaths are highly reliable. They’re still underdiagnosed. One of our scientific committee members, Dan Weinberger, and a group of other researchers and I published an article looking at excess deaths compared to COVID deaths. And there’s actual discrepancies between those two, but death is a pretty hard data point. The problem is it’s weeks delayed. If we waited until we saw deaths to say that we have a problem, the outbreak would have run wild through a city before we can even address it.

And then the third source of now traditional surveillance are the syndromic surveillance, emergency room, hospitalization, syndromic data that we pioneered 20 years ago. And the problem with those is that the lens you’re seeing those through is health seeking behavior. And if people change their likelihood of going to the emergency room, going to doctor’s offices, it obscures that lens.

So with all three of these, the symptom survey data presents unique advantages. Compared to deaths, it’s much more timely. In fact, compared to any of the other data sources, you would expect it to be the first indicator. It’s completely unrelated to health seeking behavior or testing availability. And if you think about, and particularly in the global context, there are many countries where the lab capacity is really challenged, and even death surveillance, mortality surveillance is really challenged. This could be a major tool.

That all having been said, what we have now are very preliminary evidence that this could be useful. And what we’re looking for are many, many more people to put eyes on the data and find ways to polish those stones, to have the highest-value ways, for society, of using this information.

Indu Subaiya: So available to all the citizen scientists in the world as of today will be access to these datasets through APIs, through aggregate CSVs. And Farzad, what will be the primary challenge questions that they’ll be able to engage with and tackle?

Farzad Mostashari: The main question that we’re asking is can you find a way to validate whether adding in the symptom data into all the other existing data sources we have can improve the sensitivity, the specificity, the timeliness of our ability to detect what’s going on with the outbreak. What are the inflection points? When is it taking off? When is it flattening? When is it coming down? And to be able to provide useful information for policy makers and the public in guiding their decisions.

So we’re leaving it pretty wide open, right? Come with your methods, come with your visualization. Do you want to look at it on an age stratified basis? Do you want to combine it with lab data? Do you want to incorporate the mask wearing information? Do you want to think about the granularity of it in space? Do you want to look county level, HR level, state level? Do you want to look at it in terms of time? Do you want to look at it by week or by day? All of those, do you want to apply statistical methods, clustering methods? You figure it out.  But answer the question: “what is the best case to be made for how one would incorporate this data into the Pantheon of public health surveillance tools?”

Indu Subaiya: And even though we have the academics, if you will, working on this, we’re really looking for all comers.

Farzad Mostashari: All comers.

Indu Subaiya: Even if you’re not a trained epidemiologist, but you have an interest in this data, we are making it available as of today. And contestants will have four weeks to come up with their analyses. And then we’ll have some semifinalists that will present to the scientific committee. And at that point, up to five teams will be chosen to advance to a second round where they’ll build visualizations and simulations, prototypes of this analysis in action. So as the contestants submit their analyses after the first four weeks, the scientific committee will be looking at certain criteria. What can people expect their submissions to be judged on?

Farzad Mostashari: Well, I think it’s kind of like having a special issue of a journal. We won’t be as tough on the formatting and references as we would a real journal article, but we’re basically doing the evaluation of the validity of the results.

How convincing is the evidence that’s being presented in terms of the additional utility of adding the symptom data and how? What are the methods that are being used? The second is the rigor with which these analyses are done. Have they considered biases confounding, some of the other potential causes for false associations? What are the limitations of that? The third is impact.

If there’s a method that’s so complicated that it takes 20 days to run on every day’s worth of data, well, that’s not going to have as much impact. But what is the real likelihood of impact?

And related to that, but distinct, is the user experience. How easy is it to explain? How easy is it to visualize? How easy is it to make actionable those results from the analysis? These four criteria are going to be used in the first phase. And then when we do the presentations and then with the final result, when we select the grand winner of … What is it, $50,000? That’s huge!

Indu Subaiya: That’s right. And the second place gets $25,000.

Farzad Mostashari: $25,000! Those are the same criteria are going to be used for each of those levels.

Indu Subaiya: Fantastic. I also want to remind folks that outside data can be brought in as long as it’s made publicly available so that we can continue to feed this repository of access to data, and hopefully really combat this epidemic together.

So Farzad, one of the ways that we can help contestants understand the data sets being made available is there’s so many partners here. Where did these data sets come from, and how does privacy work given that people have taken these surveys?

Farzad Mostashari: The surveys are suggested to folks who are on Facebook. But then when someone clicks on that banner ad that says ‘do you want to take a COVID survey,’ they leave the Facebook environment entirely, and they go off to the University of Maryland or Carnegie Mellon’s website.

I think it’s important for people to understand where the data comes from is from those anonymous surveys that are done by the universities. There is no access to the line-level data for the folks at Facebook. They don’t want it, they don’t have it.

But that micro data is actually available to university researchers. But there are extracts made from that, which are anonymized, minimum cell size at the various levels of granularity that are currently being made public through APIs and we will make a CSV download available as well.

Those are fully anonymized, fully aggregated. No one’s identity is obviously going to be impacted, just says “in this county this week, there were these many cases of people who complained of having recent cough symptoms” and so forth.

This is part of the Facebook Data for Good project, and I certainly believe that this is data for good.

Indu Subaiya: And Farzad, what is your hope as these teams come forward with these ideas? Where can these findings be deployed? And what is your vision for where it goes from here outside of the challenge?

Farzad Mostashari: Our hope is that these become just a part of the, alongside deaths and cases and hospitalizations, it’s just part of what people look at. So when you go to COVID tracking or COVID Exit Strategy or the Hopkins site or the CDC, or when states or cities or governors are looking at their data, this is one of the factors that they also consider. But also the public. As Tom Frieden likes to say, “When you check the weather to see if you should take an umbrella, you should be checking a website that tells you what’s going on with COVID activity in your community”-  that can help guide many of the decisions that we have to make, unfortunately on a daily basis, until we have herd immunity or a vaccine, or both.”

Indu Subaiya: Absolutely. So some real, very impactful outcomes expected from this challenge. It’s not just an academic exercise. Folks evaluating the finalists will be looking for how to adopt these algorithms and these visualizations into their public health dashboards, into their decision making processes. So it’s a really incredibly exciting opportunity.

One of the things this challenge will be doing is inviting people to join a Slack channel so that they can communicate with each other. We don’t see this as a one-time submission and then off you go, but really as a means to engage the community. That’s always been at the forefront of what you’ve evangelized with the health technology community.

Farzad Mostashari: None of us are as smart as all of us.

Indu Subaiya: We’ll go live today. And I just wanted to have a chance for you, Farzad, to share the vision behind it and what good looks like. So we’re really excited to be helping support the challenge mechanism itself here at Catalyst. So thank you so much.

Farzad Mostashari: And thank you and the team for helping sponsor this. And I hope the contestants will have a wonderful experience.

Farzad Mostashari is CEO of Aledade, former National Coordinator for Health Information technology, and former Deputy Commissioner at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

Fine print: Participation subject to Official Rules NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER/WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. Entry deadline September 29th, 2020 at 11:59:59 pm EDT. Open to legal residents US and worldwide who are at least the age of majority in their jurisdiction of residence, excluding Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, or other countries or regions subject to U.S. export controls or sanctions. Void where prohibited by law. Participation subject to Official Rules. See Official Rules for entry requirements, judging criteria and full details. Administrator: Health 2.0 LLC. Sponsor: Facebook, Inc. Partners: Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Maryland, and Resolve to Save Lives.

Announcing The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

[kristinsimmons]

Announcing The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge

By FARZAD MOSTASHARI

In Partnership with Resolve to Save Lives, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of Maryland, Catalyst @ Health 2.0 is excited to announce the launch of The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge. The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge is looking for novel analytic approaches that use COVID-19 Symptom Survey data to enable earlier detection and improved situational awareness of the outbreak by public health and the public. 

How the Challenge Works:

In Phase I, innovators submit a white paper (“digital poster”) summarizing the approach, methods, analysis, findings, relevant figures and graphs of their analytic approach using Symptom Survey public data (see challenge submission criteria for more). Judges will evaluate the entries based on Validity, Scientific Rigor, Impact, and User Experience and award five semi-finalists $5,000 each. Semi-finalists will present their analytic approaches to a judging panel and three semi-finalists will be selected to advance to Phase II. The semi-finalists will develop a prototype (simulation or visualization) using their analytic approach and present their prototype at a virtual unveiling event. Judges will select a grand prize winner and the runner up (2nd place). The grand prize winner will be awarded $50,000 and the runner up will be awarded $25,000.The winning analytic design will be featured on the Facebook Data For Good website and the winning team will have the opportunity to participate in a discussion forum with representatives from public health agencies. 

Phase I applications for the challenge are due Tuesday, September 29th, 2020 11:59:59 PM ET.

Learn more about the COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge HERE.

Challenge participants will leverage aggregated data from the COVID-19 symptom surveys conducted by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland, in partnership with Facebook Data for Good. Approaches can integrate publicly available anonymized datasets to validate and extend predictive utility of symptom data and should assess the impact of the integration of symptom data on identifying inflection points in state, local, or regional COVID outbreaks as well guiding individual and policy decision-making. 

These are the largest and most detailed surveys ever conducted during a public health emergency, with over 25M responses recorded to date, across 200+ countries and territories and 55+ languages. Challenge partners look forward to seeing participant’s proposed approaches leveraging this data, as well as welcome feedback on the data’s usefulness in modeling efforts. 

Indu Subaiya, co-founder of Catalyst @ Health 2.0 (“Catalyst”) met with Farzad Mostashari, Challenge Chair, to discuss the launch of the COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge. Indu and Farzad walked through the movement around open data as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the challenge goals, partners, evaluation criteria, and prizes.

Transcript: Farzad Mostashari on the Covid19 Symptom Data Challenge

Indu Subaiya: I’m delighted to be talking today with Farzad Mostashari about the COVID-19 symptom data challenge, in partnership with Facebook Data For Good, the Delphi Group at Carnegie Mellon University, and the joint program on survey methodology at the University of Maryland. So thank you for being here as we launch this challenge. Help us set the stage, because on March 7th of this year, you noticed something unusual going on in New York City. Tell us about that.

Farzad Mostashari: I was part of the first group of researchers 20 years ago to say “There’s all this data that is part of the universe floating around that we’re not using for public health purposes. What if we did?” The urgency at that time was around pandemics and bio terrorism both.

And we developed this whole field of what became known as “syndromic surveillance”, public health surveillance, real time epidemiology, where we were like, “What if you tap into what’s going on and apply these new statistical methods?” So at that time, the stone that we polished was emergency room visits and saying, “Can we receive all these data about emergency room visits happening in New York City?” And now it’s national. And be able to track, not diagnosed cases of anything, but syndromes. Is there a respiratory syndrome? Is there difficulty breathing? Is there influenza-like illness going on in the community?” And we set up these systems. And one of the other things we did in New York City, which a lot of other jurisdictions didn’t do, was we created a public facing transparency tool view of that.

So 10 years later, I was sitting in my basement like so many other people worrying about what’s going on with COVID. And now at that time in New York City, there were two diagnosed cases of COVID. But there was a lot of concern. And I went on that website, and it’s a public website, but people just didn’t know about it. And I clicked through, and I saw that cases of people going to the emergency room with respiratory distress, with difficulty breathing, with cough and fever had doubled and tripled just in the past few days. And what that told me was there are not two cases of COVID in New York City. There are tens of thousands of cases and they’re doubling every three days.

It took two weeks between that realization and when the schools were shut down, when the city was shut down. The promise and the premise here is that if we trust those signals, if those are trusted signals, we don’t have to have hundreds of thousands of people infected and tens of thousands of people die. We can intervene sooner. The public and policy makers can both make decisions based on data that is more timely.

Indu Subaiya: It seems almost there are three requisite factors that play into this vision that you’ve really set up beautifully. And one is that you need open data. You need access to data that you’ve always evangelized for and built in New York City and other places. You need to have mechanisms for early detection and early warning. But there’s something else you’ve always advocated for, which is the engagement of citizen scientists. So speak to how those underpinnings of the vision came together to design this challenge specifically.

Farzad Mostashari: So I got to hear about this incredible effort that’s underway that no one knows about (to a first order of approximation) which is that there are millions of surveys a week being done all over the globe, 70 plus countries, and in every state and territory in the US where millions of people every day, they go on Facebook, they see that there’s an opportunity to take a survey about COVID from an outside university, Carnegie Mellon, or University of Maryland for the global data. They click on that and they leave Facebook and they go to this other webpage and they fill out a survey that asks questions around, “Have you had symptoms in the past 24 hours? Has anyone in your household? Do you know people [who have]? Do you wear masks? Have you been careful when you go outside?” And they’re answering these questions and they’re actually being statistically weighed so that it’s not a convenient sample, it’s not whoever happens to have a thermometer at home or whatever. It’s like real time, reliable information. But it’s not being used!

Tom Frieden, my former boss and now leading Resolve To Save Lives (a wonderful global public health organization) and I were brought in to give our thoughts about this effort. And we were both like, “This is amazing. You should push it out.” And they pushed out the data in an open API. Anyone can go to the Delphi CMU. And three months later, it’s still not part of the Pantheon of data that we’re using to assess what’s happening with the COVID. Despite all the shortcomings in all the other data systems, people aren’t using it.

And I think to your point, the data is there, but the engagement on polishing the stone hasn’t occurred. The validation of it hasn’t occurred because we don’t have enough eyes on it. And it is not integrated into people’s understanding of what they should do. “Should I send my kid to school? Should I go to the store? Do I wear a mask this week?” These are real decisions that real people have to make every day, and we’re not giving them the benefit of what might be something that could be a real game changer.

Indu Subaiya: Well, we’ve seen firsthand in some of the early analyses with this data. Speak a little bit to just some of the insights that you’ve seen where symptom data can tell us something differently and earlier than case rates, death rates, the kinds of data inputs that we’re currently used to seeing, for the ways that this can do better.

Farzad Mostashari: Yeah. So theoretically, let’s think about the advantages. Over the three major sources of data, if I said to you, a citizen scientist, “How do we know what’s going on with COVID in our community? How do we know if an outbreak is occurring? How do we know if the outbreak is peaking? How do we know if it’s coming down?” There’s three sources of data that we are trying to look at. And all three are flawed. The first is obviously how many diagnosed cases we have. Case numbers, case positivity, lab tests. Well, the problem with that is we had a huge dearth of lab capacity early on. There are still parts of the country and parts of the world where there is not great lab capacity. And that lab capacity is changing. And even when we do the tests, they’re delayed now by seven to 10 days.

And the positivity can’t necessarily be relied on either, because it depends on what population you’re testing. If you turn on testing of a bunch of young people, you might have a different rate. If you start testing asymptomatic people, you might have a different rate. If the people follow the CDC’s recommendation and they stopped testing asymptomatics, you can have an increase … So it’s very much dependent on testing behavior. You’re seeing it through this lens of testing behavior and that lens can distort.

The second source of data could be deaths. Deaths are highly reliable. They’re still underdiagnosed. One of our scientific committee members, Dan Weinberger, and a group of other researchers and I published an article looking at excess deaths compared to COVID deaths. And there’s actual discrepancies between those two, but death is a pretty hard data point. The problem is it’s weeks delayed. If we waited until we saw deaths to say that we have a problem, the outbreak would have run wild through a city before we can even address it.

And then the third source of now traditional surveillance are the syndromic surveillance, emergency room, hospitalization, syndromic data that we pioneered 20 years ago. And the problem with those is that the lens you’re seeing those through is health seeking behavior. And if people change their likelihood of going to the emergency room, going to doctor’s offices, it obscures that lens.

So with all three of these, the symptom survey data presents unique advantages. Compared to deaths, it’s much more timely. In fact, compared to any of the other data sources, you would expect it to be the first indicator. It’s completely unrelated to health seeking behavior or testing availability. And if you think about, and particularly in the global context, there are many countries where the lab capacity is really challenged, and even death surveillance, mortality surveillance is really challenged. This could be a major tool.

That all having been said, what we have now are very preliminary evidence that this could be useful. And what we’re looking for are many, many more people to put eyes on the data and find ways to polish those stones, to have the highest-value ways, for society, of using this information.

Indu Subaiya: So available to all the citizen scientists in the world as of today will be access to these datasets through APIs, through aggregate CSVs. And Farzad, what will be the primary challenge questions that they’ll be able to engage with and tackle?

Farzad Mostashari: The main question that we’re asking is can you find a way to validate whether adding in the symptom data into all the other existing data sources we have can improve the sensitivity, the specificity, the timeliness of our ability to detect what’s going on with the outbreak. What are the inflection points? When is it taking off? When is it flattening? When is it coming down? And to be able to provide useful information for policy makers and the public in guiding their decisions.

So we’re leaving it pretty wide open, right? Come with your methods, come with your visualization. Do you want to look at it on an age stratified basis? Do you want to combine it with lab data? Do you want to incorporate the mask wearing information? Do you want to think about the granularity of it in space? Do you want to look county level, HR level, state level? Do you want to look at it in terms of time? Do you want to look at it by week or by day? All of those, do you want to apply statistical methods, clustering methods? You figure it out.  But answer the question: “what is the best case to be made for how one would incorporate this data into the Pantheon of public health surveillance tools?”

Indu Subaiya: And even though we have the academics, if you will, working on this, we’re really looking for all comers.

Farzad Mostashari: All comers.

Indu Subaiya: Even if you’re not a trained epidemiologist, but you have an interest in this data, we are making it available as of today. And contestants will have four weeks to come up with their analyses. And then we’ll have some semifinalists that will present to the scientific committee. And at that point, up to five teams will be chosen to advance to a second round where they’ll build visualizations and simulations, prototypes of this analysis in action. So as the contestants submit their analyses after the first four weeks, the scientific committee will be looking at certain criteria. What can people expect their submissions to be judged on?

Farzad Mostashari: Well, I think it’s kind of like having a special issue of a journal. We won’t be as tough on the formatting and references as we would a real journal article, but we’re basically doing the evaluation of the validity of the results.

How convincing is the evidence that’s being presented in terms of the additional utility of adding the symptom data and how? What are the methods that are being used? The second is the rigor with which these analyses are done. Have they considered biases confounding, some of the other potential causes for false associations? What are the limitations of that? The third is impact.

If there’s a method that’s so complicated that it takes 20 days to run on every day’s worth of data, well, that’s not going to have as much impact. But what is the real likelihood of impact?

And related to that, but distinct, is the user experience. How easy is it to explain? How easy is it to visualize? How easy is it to make actionable those results from the analysis? These four criteria are going to be used in the first phase. And then when we do the presentations and then with the final result, when we select the grand winner of … What is it, $50,000? That’s huge!

Indu Subaiya: That’s right. And the second place gets $25,000.

Farzad Mostashari: $25,000! Those are the same criteria are going to be used for each of those levels.

Indu Subaiya: Fantastic. I also want to remind folks that outside data can be brought in as long as it’s made publicly available so that we can continue to feed this repository of access to data, and hopefully really combat this epidemic together.

So Farzad, one of the ways that we can help contestants understand the data sets being made available is there’s so many partners here. Where did these data sets come from, and how does privacy work given that people have taken these surveys?

Farzad Mostashari: The surveys are suggested to folks who are on Facebook. But then when someone clicks on that banner ad that says ‘do you want to take a COVID survey,’ they leave the Facebook environment entirely, and they go off to the University of Maryland or Carnegie Mellon’s website.

I think it’s important for people to understand where the data comes from is from those anonymous surveys that are done by the universities. There is no access to the line-level data for the folks at Facebook. They don’t want it, they don’t have it.

But that micro data is actually available to university researchers. But there are extracts made from that, which are anonymized, minimum cell size at the various levels of granularity that are currently being made public through APIs and we will make a CSV download available as well.

Those are fully anonymized, fully aggregated. No one’s identity is obviously going to be impacted, just says “in this county this week, there were these many cases of people who complained of having recent cough symptoms” and so forth.

This is part of the Facebook Data for Good project, and I certainly believe that this is data for good.

Indu Subaiya: And Farzad, what is your hope as these teams come forward with these ideas? Where can these findings be deployed? And what is your vision for where it goes from here outside of the challenge?

Farzad Mostashari: Our hope is that these become just a part of the, alongside deaths and cases and hospitalizations, it’s just part of what people look at. So when you go to COVID tracking or COVID Exit Strategy or the Hopkins site or the CDC, or when states or cities or governors are looking at their data, this is one of the factors that they also consider. But also the public. As Tom Frieden likes to say, “When you check the weather to see if you should take an umbrella, you should be checking a website that tells you what’s going on with COVID activity in your community”-  that can help guide many of the decisions that we have to make, unfortunately on a daily basis, until we have herd immunity or a vaccine, or both.”

Indu Subaiya: Absolutely. So some real, very impactful outcomes expected from this challenge. It’s not just an academic exercise. Folks evaluating the finalists will be looking for how to adopt these algorithms and these visualizations into their public health dashboards, into their decision making processes. So it’s a really incredibly exciting opportunity.

One of the things this challenge will be doing is inviting people to join a Slack channel so that they can communicate with each other. We don’t see this as a one-time submission and then off you go, but really as a means to engage the community. That’s always been at the forefront of what you’ve evangelized with the health technology community.

Farzad Mostashari: None of us are as smart as all of us.

Indu Subaiya: We’ll go live today. And I just wanted to have a chance for you, Farzad, to share the vision behind it and what good looks like. So we’re really excited to be helping support the challenge mechanism itself here at Catalyst. So thank you so much.

Farzad Mostashari: And thank you and the team for helping sponsor this. And I hope the contestants will have a wonderful experience.

Farzad Mostashari is CEO of Aledade, former National Coordinator for Health Information technology, and former Deputy Commissioner at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

Fine print: Participation subject to Official Rules NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER/WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. Entry deadline September 29th, 2020 at 11:59:59 pm EDT. Open to legal residents US and worldwide who are at least the age of majority in their jurisdiction of residence, excluding Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, or other countries or regions subject to U.S. export controls or sanctions. Void where prohibited by law. Participation subject to Official Rules. See Official Rules for entry requirements, judging criteria and full details. Administrator: Health 2.0 LLC. Sponsor: Facebook, Inc. Partners: Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Maryland, and Resolve to Save Lives.

Announcing The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/

[calle8cat]

Military distain from a self proclaimed "wartime president"

Found these links in the comments of an article pointing out the only govt person who's been fired during this pandemic is a captain trying to protect his ship of soldiers with an outbreak on his ship

List not prepared by me.

• ⁠Trump fired the captain of the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt after he warned superiors that COVID19 was spreading among his crew

• ⁠After Iran's retaliatory strike, 109 US troops suffered brain injuries. Trump dismissed these as "headaches"

• ⁠On July 20, 2017, in room 2E924 of the Pentagon, Trump told a room full of Generals, "You’re a bunch of dopes and babies"

• ⁠Pardoned multiple war criminals, which stomped on long standing military values, discipline, and command. Trump has no military experience (May&Nov, 2019)

• ⁠Trump mocked Lt. Col. Vindman for his rank and uniform. He threatened said purple heart officer, resulting in the Army providing him protection

• ⁠Trump’s Chief of Staff worked—in secret—to deny comprehensive health coverage to Vietnam Vets who suffered from Agent Orange.

• ⁠There is a facility in Tijuana for US veterans that Trump deported. Wounded war vet, Sen Duckworth (D) marked Veterans Day 2019 by visiting this facility

• ⁠Russia took control of the main U.S. military facility in Syria abandoned on Trump’s orders. Russia now owns the airstrip we built

• ⁠On Oct 7, 2019, Trump abruptly withdrew support from America's allies in Syria after a phone call with Turkey's president (Erdogan). Turkey subsequently bombed US Special Forces.

• ⁠Trump sent thousands of American troops to defend the oil assets of the country that perpetrated 9/11

• ⁠In Sept 2019, he made an Air Force cargo crew, flying from the U.S. to Kuwait stop in Scotland (where there's no U.S. base) to refuel at a commercial airport (where it costs more), so they could stay overnight at a Trump property (which isn't close to the airport). Trump’s golf courses are losing money, so he's forcing the military to pay for 5-star nights there.

• ⁠In Sept, 2019, Pentagon pulled funds for military schools, military housing funds, and daycare to pay for Trump's border wall.

• ⁠In Aug, 2019, emails revealed that three of Trump's Mar-a-Lago pals, who are now running Veterans Affairs, are rampant with meddling. "They had no experience in veterans affairs (none of them even served in the military) nor underwent any kind of approval process to serve as de facto managers. Yet, with Trump’s approval, they directed actions and criticized operations without any oversight. They wasted valuable staff time in hundreds of pages of communications and meetings, emails show. Emails reveal disdainful attitudes within the department to the trio’s meddling."

• ⁠Veterans graves will be "dug up" for the border wall, after Trump instructed aides to seize private property. Trump told officials he would pardon them if they break the law by illegally seizing property

• ⁠Children of deployed US troops are no longer guaranteed citizenship. This includes US troops posted abroad for years at a time (August 28, 2019)

• ⁠On August 2, 2019, Trump requisitioned military retirement funds towards border wall

• ⁠On July 31, 2019, Trump ordered the Navy rescind medals to prosecutors who were prosecuted war criminals

• ⁠Trump denied a U.S. Marine of 6 years entry into the United States for his citizenship interview (Reported July 17, 2019)

• ⁠Trump made the U.S. Navy Blue Angels violate ethics rules by having them fly at his July 4th political campaign event (July 4, 2019)

• ⁠Trump demanded US military chiefs stand next to him at 4th of July parade (reported July 2, 2019)

• ⁠In June, 2019, Trump sent troops to the border to paint the fence for a better "aesthetic appearance"

• ⁠Trump used his D-Day interview at a cemetery commemorating fallen US soldiers to attack a Vietnam veteran (June 6, 2019)

• ⁠Trump started his D-Day commemoration speech by attacking a private citizen (Bette Midler, of all people) (reported on June 4th, 2019)

• ⁠Trump made his 2nd wife, Marla Maples, sign a prenup that would have cut off all child support if Tiffany joined the military (reported June 4th, 2019)

• ⁠On May 27, 2019, Trump turned away US military from his Memorial Day speech because they were from the destroyer USS John S. McCain

• ⁠Trump ordered the USS John McCain out of sight during his visit to Japan (May 15, 2019). The ship's name was subsequently covered. (May 27, 2019)

• ⁠Trump purged 200,000 veterans healthcare applications (due to known administrative errors within VA’s enrollment system) (reported on May 13, 2019)

• ⁠Trump deported a spouse of fallen Army soldier killed in Afghanistan, leaving their daughter parentless (April 16, 2019)

• ⁠On March 20, 2019, Trump complained that a deceased war hero didn't thank him for his funeral

• ⁠Between 12/22/2018, and 1/25/2019, Trump refused to sign his party's funding bill, which shut down the government, forcing the Coast Guard to go without pay, which made service members rely on food pantries. However, his appointees got a $10,000 pay raise

• ⁠He banned service members from serving based on gender identity (1/22/2019)

• ⁠He denied female troops access to birth control to limit sexual activity (on-going. Published Jan 18, 2019)

• ⁠He tried to deport a marine vet who is a U.S.-born citizen (Jan 16, 2019)

• ⁠When a man was caught swindling veterans pensions for high-interest “cash advances," Trump's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined him $1 (Jan 26, 2019)

• ⁠He called a retired general a 'dog' with a 'big, dumb mouth' (Jan 1, 2019)

• ⁠He increased privatization of the VA, leading to longer waits and higher taxpayer cost (2018)

• ⁠He finally visited troops 2 years after taking office, but only after 154 vacation days at his properties (Dec 26, 2018)

• ⁠He revealed a covert Seal Team 5 deployment, including names and faces, on Twitter during his visit to Iraq (Dec 26, 2018)

• ⁠Trump lied to deployed troops that he gave them a 10% raise (12/26/2018). He tried giving the military a raise that was lower than the standard living adjustment. Congress told him that idea wasn't going to work. Then after giving them the raise that Congress made him, he lied about it pretending that it was larger than Obama's. It wasn't.

• ⁠He fired service members living with HIV just before the 2018 holidays

• ⁠He tried to slash disability and unemployment benefits for Veterans to $0, and eliminate the unemployability extrascheduler rating (Dec 17, 2018)

• ⁠He called troops on Thanksgiving and told them he's most thankful for himself (Thanksgiving, 2018)

• ⁠He urged Florida to not count deployed military votes (Nov 12, 2018)

• ⁠He canceled an Arlington Cemetery visit on Veterans Day due to light rain (Nov 12, 2018)

• ⁠While in Europe commemorating the end of WWI, he didn't attend the ceremony at a US cemetery due to the rain -- other world leaders went anyway (Nov 10, 2018)

• ⁠He used troops as a political prop by sending them on a phantom mission to the border and made them miss Thanksgiving with their families (Oct-Dec, 2018)

• ⁠He stopped using troops as a political prop immediately after the election. However, the troops remained in muddy camps on the border (Nov 7, 2018)

• ⁠Trump changed the GI Bill through his Forever GI Act, causing the VA to miss veteran benefits, including housing allowances. This caused many veterans to run out of food and rent. (reported October 7, 2018)

• ⁠Trump doubled the rejection rate for veterans requesting family deportation protections (July 5, 2018)

• ⁠Trump deported active-duty spouses (11,800 military families face this problem as of April 2018)

• ⁠He forgot a fallen soldier's name (below) during a call to his pregnant widow, then attacked her the next day (Oct 23-24, 2017)

• ⁠He sent commandos into an ambush due to a lack of intel, and sends contractors to pick them up, resulting in a commando being left behind, tortured, and executed. (Trump approved the mission because Bannon told him Obama didn't have the guts to do it) (Oct 4, 2017)

• ⁠He blocked a veteran group on Twitter (June 2017)

• ⁠He ordered the discharge of active-duty immigrant troops with good records (2017-present)

• ⁠He deported veterans (2017-present)

• ⁠He said he knows more about ISIS than American generals (Oct 2016)

• ⁠On October 3, 2016, Trump said vets get PTSD because they aren't strong (note: yes, he said it's 'because they aren't strong.' He didn't say it's 'because they're weak.' This distinction is important because of Snopes)

• ⁠Trump accepted a Purple Heart from a fan at one of his rallies and said: “I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.” (Aug 2, 2016)

• ⁠Trump attacks Gold Star families - Myeshia Johnson--gold star widow, Khan family--gold star parents, etc. (2016-present)

• ⁠Trump sent funds raised from a January 2016 veterans benefit to the Donald J Trump Foundation instead of veterans charities (the foundation has since been ordered shut because of fraud) (Jan, 2016)

• ⁠Trump said he has "more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military" because he went to a military-style academy (2015 biography)

• ⁠Trump said he doesn't consider POWs heroes because they were caught. He said he prefers people who were not caught (July 18, 2015)

• ⁠Trump said having unprotected sex was his own personal Vietnam (1998)

• ⁠For a decade, Trump sought to kick veterans off of Fifth Avenue because he found them unsightly nuisances outside of Trump Tower. “While disabled veterans should be given every opportunity to earn a living, is it fair to do so to the detriment of the city as a whole or its tax paying citizens and businesses?” - 1991

• ⁠Trump dodged the draft 5 times by having a doctor diagnose him with bone spurs.

• ⁠No Trump in America has ever served in the military; this spans 5 generations, and every branch of the family tree. In fact, the reason his grandfather immigrated to America was to avoid military service

I stopped last October. Here’s my list with some links if you need some references.

Trump's record on military and vets

• ⁠October 8th, 2019, Trump plans to withdraw from Open Skies treaty giving Russia the ability to target our military aircraft.

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-open-skies-withdrawal/

• ⁠Children of deployed US troops will no longer get automatic American citizenship if born overseas during deployment. This includes US troops posted abroad for years at a time (August 28, 2019)

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/08/28/children-us-troops-born-overseas-will-no-longer-get-automatic-american-citizenship.html

• ⁠On August 2, 2019, Trump requisitioned military retirement funds towards border wall

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-green-light-on-the-border-wall-as-trumps-supreme-court-victories-mount

• ⁠On July 31, 2019, Trump ordered the Navy rescind medals to prosecutors who were prosecuting war criminals

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/trump-orders-navy-to-rescind-medals-given-to-prosecutors-who-failed-to-convict-seal-eddie-gallagher

• ⁠In July 2019, Trump denied a United States Marine of 6 years entry into the United States for his scheduled citizenship interview (Reported July 17, 2019)

https://fox5sandiego.com/2019/07/17/marine-veteran-not-allowed-into-us-for-citizenship-interview/

• ⁠Trump made the U.S. Navy Blue Angels violate ethics rules by having them fly at his July 4th political campaign (July 4, 2019)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/trump-july-fourth-rally-hatch-act-violation.html

• ⁠Trump demanded US military chiefs stand next to him at 4th of July parade (reported July 2, 2019)

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-demands-us-military-chiefs-072002784.html

• ⁠In June, 2019, Trump sent troops to the border to paint the fence for a better "aesthetic appearance" (June 7, 2019)

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/06/06/some-troops-to-spend-the-next-month-painting-border-fence-with-mexico/

• ⁠Trump used his D-Day interview at a cemetery commemorating fallen US soldiers to attack a Vietnam veteran (June 6, 2019)

https://qz.com/1637160/trump-slams-veteran-mueller-in-d-day-interview-at-normandy-cemetery/

• ⁠Trump started his D-Day commemoration speech by attacking a private citizen (Bette Midler, of all people) (reported on June 4th, 2019)

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-trashes-bette-midler-wwii-dday-memorial-event-844515/

• ⁠Trump made his 2nd wife, Marla Maples, sign a prenup that would have cut off all child support if Tiffany joined the military (reported on June 4th, 2019)

https://www.newsweek.com/tiffany-trump-child-support-payments-would-have-been-stopped-donald-if-she-joined-military-prenup-1442203

• ⁠On May 27, 2019, Trump turned away US military from his Memorial Day speech because they were from the destroyer USS John S. McCain

• ⁠Trump ordered the USS John McCain out of sight during his visit to Japan (May 15, 2019). The ship's name was subsequently covered. (May 27, 2019)

• ⁠Trump pardoned war criminals (May, 2019)

• ⁠Trump purged 200,000 veterans healthcare applications (due to known administrative errors within VA’s enrollment process and enrollment system) (reported on May 13, 2019)

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/trump-administration-breaks-campaign-promise-purges-200-000-va-healthcare-applications

• ⁠Trump deported a spouse of fallen Army soldier killed in Afghanistan, leaving their daughter parentless (April 16, 2019)

• ⁠On March 20, 2019, Trump complained that a deceased war hero didn't thank him for his funeral

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/20/politics/john-mccain-thank-you-funeral-donald-trump/index.html

• ⁠He diverted military housing funds to pay for border wall (Feb 15, 2019). A judge subsequently denied this. In July 2019, SCOTUS ruled that Trump could in fact divert military housing funds to pay for his wall.

• ⁠He refused to sign his party's funding bill, which shut down the government, and forced a branch of the military to go without pay. This branch of military was forced to work without pay, otherwise they would be AWOL. However, his appointees got a $10,000 pay raise (Dec 22, 2018 – Jan 25, 2019)

• ⁠He didn't pay the Coast Guard, forcing service members to rely on food pantries (Jan 23, 2019)

• ⁠He banned service members from serving based on gender identity (Jan 22, 2019)

• ⁠He denied female troops access to birth control to limit sexual activity (on-going. Published Jan 18, 2019)

• ⁠He tried to deport a marine vet who is a U.S.-born citizen (Jan 16, 2019)

• ⁠When a man was caught swindling veterans pensions for high-interest “cash advances," Trump's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined him $1. As a reminder, the Trump administration's goal was to dismantle the CFPB, installing Mick Mulvaney as the director, who publicly stated the bureau should be disbanded. (Jan 26, 2019)

• ⁠He called a retired general a 'dog' with a 'big, dumb mouth' (Jan 1, 2019)

• ⁠He increased privatization of the VA, leading to longer waits and higher taxpayer cost (2018)

• ⁠He finally visited troops 2 years after taking office, but only after 154 vacation days at his properties (Dec 26, 2018)

• ⁠He revealed a covert Seal Team 5 deployment, including names and faces, on Twitter during his visit to Iraq (Dec 26, 2018)

• ⁠Trump lied to deployed troops that he gave them a 10% raise. He didn't give them a 10% raise (Dec 26, 2018). He initially tried to give the military a raise that was lower than the standard living adjustment. This was before Congress told him that idea wasn't going to work. Then after giving them the raise that Congress made him, he lied about it pretending that it was larger than Obama's. It wasn't.

• ⁠He fired service members living with HIV just before the 2018 holidays (Dec 19, 2018-present)

• ⁠He tried to slash disability and unemployment benefits for Veterans to $0, and eliminate the unemployability extrascheduler rating (Dec 17, 2018)

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/12/17/vet-group-demands-white-house-va-reject-benefits-cuts-disabled-unemployed-vets.html

• ⁠He got three Mar-a-Lago guests to run the VA (unknown start - present, made well-known in 2018)

• ⁠He called troops on Thanksgiving and told them he's most thankful for himself (Thanksgiving, 2018)

• ⁠He urged Florida to not count deployed military votes (Nov 12, 2018)

• ⁠He canceled an Arlington Cemetery visit on Veterans Day due to light rain (Nov 12, 2018)

• ⁠While in Europe commemorating the end of WWI, he didn't attend the ceremony at a US cemetery due to the rain - but other world leaders went anyway (Nov 10, 2018)

• ⁠He used troops as a political prop by sending them on a phantom mission to the border and maked them miss Thanksgiving with their families (Oct-Dec, 2018)

• ⁠He stopped using troops as a political prop immediately after the election. However, the troops remained in muddy camps on the border (Nov 7, 2018)

• ⁠Trump changed the GI Bill through his Forever GI Act, causing the VA to miss veteran benefits, including housing allowances. This caused many veterans to run out of food and rent. “You can count on us to serve, but we can’t count on the VA to make a deadline,” one veteran said. (reported October 7, 2018)

• ⁠Trump doubled the rejection rate for veterans requesting family deportation protections (July 5, 2018)

• ⁠Trump deported active-duty spouses (11,800 military families face this problem as of April 2018)

• ⁠He forgot a fallen soldier's name (below) during a call to his pregnant widow, then attacked her the next day (Oct 23-24, 2017)

• ⁠He sent commandos into an ambush due to a lack of intel, and sends contractors to pick them up, resulting in a commando being left behind, tortured, and executed. (Trump approved the mission because Bannon told him Obama didn't have the guts to do it) (Oct 4, 2017)

• ⁠He blocked a veteran group on Twitter (June 2017)

• ⁠He ordered the discharge of active-duty immigrant troops with good records (2017-present)

• ⁠He deported veterans (2017-present)

• ⁠He said he knows more about ISIS than American generals (Oct 2016)

• ⁠He said vets get PTSD because they aren't strong (Oct 3, 2016) (note: yes, he said it's 'because they aren't strong.' He didn't say it's 'because they're weak.' This distinction is important because of Snopes)

• ⁠Trump accepted a Purple Heart from a fan at one of his rallies and said: “I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.” (Aug 2, 2016)

• ⁠Trump attacks Gold Star families - Myeshia Johnson--gold star widow, Khan family--gold star parents, etc. (2016-present)

• ⁠Trump sent funds raised from a January 2016 veterans benefit to the Donald J Trump Foundation instead of veterans charities (the foundation has since been ordered shut because of fraud) (Jan, 2016)

• ⁠Trump said "I felt that I was in the military in the true sense because I dealt with those people" because he went to a military-style academy and that he has "more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military". (2015 biography)

• ⁠Trump said he doesn't consider POWs heroes because they were caught. He said he prefers people who were not caught (July 18, 2015)

• ⁠Trump said having unprotected sex was his own personal Vietnam (1998)

• ⁠For a decade, Trump sought to kick veterans off of Fifth Avenue because he found them unsightly nuisances outside of Trump Tower. “While disabled veterans should be given every opportunity to earn a living, is it fair to do so to the detriment of the city as a whole or its tax paying citizens and businesses?” - 1991

• ⁠Trump dodged the draft 5 times by having a doctor diagnose him with bone spurs.

• ⁠No Trump in America has ever served in the military; this spans 5 generations, and every branch of the family tree. In fact, the reason his grandfather immigrated to America was to avoid military service

[kristinsimmons]

Announcing The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge

By FARZAD MOSTASHARI

In Partnership with Resolve to Save Lives, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of Maryland, Catalyst @ Health 2.0 is excited to announce the launch of The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge. The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge is looking for novel analytic approaches that use COVID-19 Symptom Survey data to enable earlier detection and improved situational awareness of the outbreak by public health and the public. 

How the Challenge Works:

In Phase I, innovators submit a white paper (“digital poster”) summarizing the approach, methods, analysis, findings, relevant figures and graphs of their analytic approach using Symptom Survey public data (see challenge submission criteria for more). Judges will evaluate the entries based on Validity, Scientific Rigor, Impact, and User Experience and award five semi-finalists $5,000 each. Semi-finalists will present their analytic approaches to a judging panel and three semi-finalists will be selected to advance to Phase II. The semi-finalists will develop a prototype (simulation or visualization) using their analytic approach and present their prototype at a virtual unveiling event. Judges will select a grand prize winner and the runner up (2nd place). The grand prize winner will be awarded $50,000 and the runner up will be awarded $25,000.The winning analytic design will be featured on the Facebook Data For Good website and the winning team will have the opportunity to participate in a discussion forum with representatives from public health agencies. 

Phase I applications for the challenge are due Tuesday, September 29th, 2020 11:59:59 PM ET.

Learn more about the COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge HERE.

Challenge participants will leverage aggregated data from the COVID-19 symptom surveys conducted by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland, in partnership with Facebook Data for Good. Approaches can integrate publicly available anonymized datasets to validate and extend predictive utility of symptom data and should assess the impact of the integration of symptom data on identifying inflection points in state, local, or regional COVID outbreaks as well guiding individual and policy decision-making. 

These are the largest and most detailed surveys ever conducted during a public health emergency, with over 25M responses recorded to date, across 200+ countries and territories and 55+ languages. Challenge partners look forward to seeing participant’s proposed approaches leveraging this data, as well as welcome feedback on the data’s usefulness in modeling efforts. 

Indu Subaiya, co-founder of Catalyst @ Health 2.0 (“Catalyst”) met with Farzad Mostashari, Challenge Chair, to discuss the launch of the COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge. Indu and Farzad walked through the movement around open data as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the challenge goals, partners, evaluation criteria, and prizes.

Transcript: Farzad Mostashari on the Covid19 Symptom Data Challenge

Indu Subaiya: I’m delighted to be talking today with Farzad Mostashari about the COVID-19 symptom data challenge, in partnership with Facebook Data For Good, the Delphi Group at Carnegie Mellon University, and the joint program on survey methodology at the University of Maryland. So thank you for being here as we launch this challenge. Help us set the stage, because on March 7th of this year, you noticed something unusual going on in New York City. Tell us about that.

Farzad Mostashari: I was part of the first group of researchers 20 years ago to say “There’s all this data that is part of the universe floating around that we’re not using for public health purposes. What if we did?” The urgency at that time was around pandemics and bio terrorism both.

And we developed this whole field of what became known as “syndromic surveillance”, public health surveillance, real time epidemiology, where we were like, “What if you tap into what’s going on and apply these new statistical methods?” So at that time, the stone that we polished was emergency room visits and saying, “Can we receive all these data about emergency room visits happening in New York City?” And now it’s national. And be able to track, not diagnosed cases of anything, but syndromes. Is there a respiratory syndrome? Is there difficulty breathing? Is there influenza-like illness going on in the community?” And we set up these systems. And one of the other things we did in New York City, which a lot of other jurisdictions didn’t do, was we created a public facing transparency tool view of that.

So 10 years later, I was sitting in my basement like so many other people worrying about what’s going on with COVID. And now at that time in New York City, there were two diagnosed cases of COVID. But there was a lot of concern. And I went on that website, and it’s a public website, but people just didn’t know about it. And I clicked through, and I saw that cases of people going to the emergency room with respiratory distress, with difficulty breathing, with cough and fever had doubled and tripled just in the past few days. And what that told me was there are not two cases of COVID in New York City. There are tens of thousands of cases and they’re doubling every three days.

It took two weeks between that realization and when the schools were shut down, when the city was shut down. The promise and the premise here is that if we trust those signals, if those are trusted signals, we don’t have to have hundreds of thousands of people infected and tens of thousands of people die. We can intervene sooner. The public and policy makers can both make decisions based on data that is more timely.

Indu Subaiya: It seems almost there are three requisite factors that play into this vision that you’ve really set up beautifully. And one is that you need open data. You need access to data that you’ve always evangelized for and built in New York City and other places. You need to have mechanisms for early detection and early warning. But there’s something else you’ve always advocated for, which is the engagement of citizen scientists. So speak to how those underpinnings of the vision came together to design this challenge specifically.

Farzad Mostashari: So I got to hear about this incredible effort that’s underway that no one knows about (to a first order of approximation) which is that there are millions of surveys a week being done all over the globe, 70 plus countries, and in every state and territory in the US where millions of people every day, they go on Facebook, they see that there’s an opportunity to take a survey about COVID from an outside university, Carnegie Mellon, or University of Maryland for the global data. They click on that and they leave Facebook and they go to this other webpage and they fill out a survey that asks questions around, “Have you had symptoms in the past 24 hours? Has anyone in your household? Do you know people [who have]? Do you wear masks? Have you been careful when you go outside?” And they’re answering these questions and they’re actually being statistically weighed so that it’s not a convenient sample, it’s not whoever happens to have a thermometer at home or whatever. It’s like real time, reliable information. But it’s not being used!

Tom Frieden, my former boss and now leading Resolve To Save Lives (a wonderful global public health organization) and I were brought in to give our thoughts about this effort. And we were both like, “This is amazing. You should push it out.” And they pushed out the data in an open API. Anyone can go to the Delphi CMU. And three months later, it’s still not part of the Pantheon of data that we’re using to assess what’s happening with the COVID. Despite all the shortcomings in all the other data systems, people aren’t using it.

And I think to your point, the data is there, but the engagement on polishing the stone hasn’t occurred. The validation of it hasn’t occurred because we don’t have enough eyes on it. And it is not integrated into people’s understanding of what they should do. “Should I send my kid to school? Should I go to the store? Do I wear a mask this week?” These are real decisions that real people have to make every day, and we’re not giving them the benefit of what might be something that could be a real game changer.

Indu Subaiya: Well, we’ve seen firsthand in some of the early analyses with this data. Speak a little bit to just some of the insights that you’ve seen where symptom data can tell us something differently and earlier than case rates, death rates, the kinds of data inputs that we’re currently used to seeing, for the ways that this can do better.

Farzad Mostashari: Yeah. So theoretically, let’s think about the advantages. Over the three major sources of data, if I said to you, a citizen scientist, “How do we know what’s going on with COVID in our community? How do we know if an outbreak is occurring? How do we know if the outbreak is peaking? How do we know if it’s coming down?” There’s three sources of data that we are trying to look at. And all three are flawed. The first is obviously how many diagnosed cases we have. Case numbers, case positivity, lab tests. Well, the problem with that is we had a huge dearth of lab capacity early on. There are still parts of the country and parts of the world where there is not great lab capacity. And that lab capacity is changing. And even when we do the tests, they’re delayed now by seven to 10 days.

And the positivity can’t necessarily be relied on either, because it depends on what population you’re testing. If you turn on testing of a bunch of young people, you might have a different rate. If you start testing asymptomatic people, you might have a different rate. If the people follow the CDC’s recommendation and they stopped testing asymptomatics, you can have an increase … So it’s very much dependent on testing behavior. You’re seeing it through this lens of testing behavior and that lens can distort.

The second source of data could be deaths. Deaths are highly reliable. They’re still underdiagnosed. One of our scientific committee members, Dan Weinberger, and a group of other researchers and I published an article looking at excess deaths compared to COVID deaths. And there’s actual discrepancies between those two, but death is a pretty hard data point. The problem is it’s weeks delayed. If we waited until we saw deaths to say that we have a problem, the outbreak would have run wild through a city before we can even address it.

And then the third source of now traditional surveillance are the syndromic surveillance, emergency room, hospitalization, syndromic data that we pioneered 20 years ago. And the problem with those is that the lens you’re seeing those through is health seeking behavior. And if people change their likelihood of going to the emergency room, going to doctor’s offices, it obscures that lens.

So with all three of these, the symptom survey data presents unique advantages. Compared to deaths, it’s much more timely. In fact, compared to any of the other data sources, you would expect it to be the first indicator. It’s completely unrelated to health seeking behavior or testing availability. And if you think about, and particularly in the global context, there are many countries where the lab capacity is really challenged, and even death surveillance, mortality surveillance is really challenged. This could be a major tool.

That all having been said, what we have now are very preliminary evidence that this could be useful. And what we’re looking for are many, many more people to put eyes on the data and find ways to polish those stones, to have the highest-value ways, for society, of using this information.

Indu Subaiya: So available to all the citizen scientists in the world as of today will be access to these datasets through APIs, through aggregate CSVs. And Farzad, what will be the primary challenge questions that they’ll be able to engage with and tackle?

Farzad Mostashari: The main question that we’re asking is can you find a way to validate whether adding in the symptom data into all the other existing data sources we have can improve the sensitivity, the specificity, the timeliness of our ability to detect what’s going on with the outbreak. What are the inflection points? When is it taking off? When is it flattening? When is it coming down? And to be able to provide useful information for policy makers and the public in guiding their decisions.

So we’re leaving it pretty wide open, right? Come with your methods, come with your visualization. Do you want to look at it on an age stratified basis? Do you want to combine it with lab data? Do you want to incorporate the mask wearing information? Do you want to think about the granularity of it in space? Do you want to look county level, HR level, state level? Do you want to look at it in terms of time? Do you want to look at it by week or by day? All of those, do you want to apply statistical methods, clustering methods? You figure it out.  But answer the question: “what is the best case to be made for how one would incorporate this data into the Pantheon of public health surveillance tools?”

Indu Subaiya: And even though we have the academics, if you will, working on this, we’re really looking for all comers.

Farzad Mostashari: All comers.

Indu Subaiya: Even if you’re not a trained epidemiologist, but you have an interest in this data, we are making it available as of today. And contestants will have four weeks to come up with their analyses. And then we’ll have some semifinalists that will present to the scientific committee. And at that point, up to five teams will be chosen to advance to a second round where they’ll build visualizations and simulations, prototypes of this analysis in action. So as the contestants submit their analyses after the first four weeks, the scientific committee will be looking at certain criteria. What can people expect their submissions to be judged on?

Farzad Mostashari: Well, I think it’s kind of like having a special issue of a journal. We won’t be as tough on the formatting and references as we would a real journal article, but we’re basically doing the evaluation of the validity of the results.

How convincing is the evidence that’s being presented in terms of the additional utility of adding the symptom data and how? What are the methods that are being used? The second is the rigor with which these analyses are done. Have they considered biases confounding, some of the other potential causes for false associations? What are the limitations of that? The third is impact.

If there’s a method that’s so complicated that it takes 20 days to run on every day’s worth of data, well, that’s not going to have as much impact. But what is the real likelihood of impact?

And related to that, but distinct, is the user experience. How easy is it to explain? How easy is it to visualize? How easy is it to make actionable those results from the analysis? These four criteria are going to be used in the first phase. And then when we do the presentations and then with the final result, when we select the grand winner of … What is it, $50,000? That’s huge!

Indu Subaiya: That’s right. And the second place gets $25,000.

Farzad Mostashari: $25,000! Those are the same criteria are going to be used for each of those levels.

Indu Subaiya: Fantastic. I also want to remind folks that outside data can be brought in as long as it’s made publicly available so that we can continue to feed this repository of access to data, and hopefully really combat this epidemic together.

So Farzad, one of the ways that we can help contestants understand the data sets being made available is there’s so many partners here. Where did these data sets come from, and how does privacy work given that people have taken these surveys?

Farzad Mostashari: The surveys are suggested to folks who are on Facebook. But then when someone clicks on that banner ad that says ‘do you want to take a COVID survey,’ they leave the Facebook environment entirely, and they go off to the University of Maryland or Carnegie Mellon’s website.

I think it’s important for people to understand where the data comes from is from those anonymous surveys that are done by the universities. There is no access to the line-level data for the folks at Facebook. They don’t want it, they don’t have it.

But that micro data is actually available to university researchers. But there are extracts made from that, which are anonymized, minimum cell size at the various levels of granularity that are currently being made public through APIs and we will make a CSV download available as well.

Those are fully anonymized, fully aggregated. No one’s identity is obviously going to be impacted, just says “in this county this week, there were these many cases of people who complained of having recent cough symptoms” and so forth.

This is part of the Facebook Data for Good project, and I certainly believe that this is data for good.

Indu Subaiya: And Farzad, what is your hope as these teams come forward with these ideas? Where can these findings be deployed? And what is your vision for where it goes from here outside of the challenge?

Farzad Mostashari: Our hope is that these become just a part of the, alongside deaths and cases and hospitalizations, it’s just part of what people look at. So when you go to COVID tracking or COVID Exit Strategy or the Hopkins site or the CDC, or when states or cities or governors are looking at their data, this is one of the factors that they also consider. But also the public. As Tom Frieden likes to say, “When you check the weather to see if you should take an umbrella, you should be checking a website that tells you what’s going on with COVID activity in your community”-  that can help guide many of the decisions that we have to make, unfortunately on a daily basis, until we have herd immunity or a vaccine, or both.”

Indu Subaiya: Absolutely. So some real, very impactful outcomes expected from this challenge. It’s not just an academic exercise. Folks evaluating the finalists will be looking for how to adopt these algorithms and these visualizations into their public health dashboards, into their decision making processes. So it’s a really incredibly exciting opportunity.

One of the things this challenge will be doing is inviting people to join a Slack channel so that they can communicate with each other. We don’t see this as a one-time submission and then off you go, but really as a means to engage the community. That’s always been at the forefront of what you’ve evangelized with the health technology community.

Farzad Mostashari: None of us are as smart as all of us.

Indu Subaiya: We’ll go live today. And I just wanted to have a chance for you, Farzad, to share the vision behind it and what good looks like. So we’re really excited to be helping support the challenge mechanism itself here at Catalyst. So thank you so much.

Farzad Mostashari: And thank you and the team for helping sponsor this. And I hope the contestants will have a wonderful experience.

Farzad Mostashari is CEO of Aledade, former National Coordinator for Health Information technology, and former Deputy Commissioner at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

Fine print: Participation subject to Official Rules NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER/WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. Entry deadline September 29th, 2020 at 11:59:59 pm EDT. Open to legal residents US and worldwide who are at least the age of majority in their jurisdiction of residence, excluding Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, or other countries or regions subject to U.S. export controls or sanctions. Void where prohibited by law. Participation subject to Official Rules. See Official Rules for entry requirements, judging criteria and full details. Administrator: Health 2.0 LLC. Sponsor: Facebook, Inc. Partners: Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Maryland, and Resolve to Save Lives.

Announcing The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/