#like we could have avoided this uncertainty if we just agreed to postpone the gathering another week

[madmaryholiday]

so the plans for my brother's birthday are currently to get together tomorrow and go out to eat.

i am silently pulling my hair out, because while my mother is theoretically no longer contagious, she IS still coughing and sniffling like mad, and i just feel like. that is. RUDE??? to go out to eat in a public place when you are actively COUGHING???

also, my dad still has a sore throat and hasn't been to the doctor, and who knows how i'll be feeling tomorrow.

i'm just so goddamn tired, man. i know it's a bummer to not be able to get together on your birthday but it just seems obvious to me that displaying signs of illness should make you reluctant to be around other people. especially when one of those people is PREGNANT lmao i feel like i'm going fucking crazy.

and idk. maybe my head is just hurting a lot and making me less sympathetic to the need to mark one's birthday, but i would really rather wait until we're all no longer actively hacking and coughing all over the place. even if a doctor says you're not very contagious anymore.

ugh. okay, i'm gonna go do other stuff now before i work myself up too much over this.

[memes-in-a-half-shell]

Business AU - Working Late, Part 5

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3 || Part 4

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Sorry for the wait, I had a nightmarish week.... I won’t let this little fic die 💜 I can’t wait to write more about it, even though the chapters are hella short xD

She couldn’t deny the butterflies in her stomach. That evening with Donnie have had that je-ne-sais-quoi that made her smile mindlessly whenever she’d think about it. It’s been a while since she last felt like that...

On Thursday they barely had time to have any conversation, only to have their next interaction postponed to Friday - a single day without talking to him almost feeling like an entire week... Vee was going on and about from one corner of the office to the other, handing a pile of documents to various departments, until she passed before Donnie’s office. The door was wide open, giving him a chance to see her walk by. His reaction had been almost immediate, jumping on his feet and going straight to the door frame.

“Vee!”

The woman stopped in her tracks, looking in his direction with a surprised look. They were both frozen for a moment, speech a meaningless thing right at that moment... Donnie tried to redeem himself, quickly clearing his throat and straightening his posture.

“Need help?” he asked, gesturing the documents Vee was holding.

Her lips parted in a small “o”, glancing at her burden and then back at the mutant.

“... Are you sure you want to help me with that? Don’t you have important boss things to do?”

“I’m already done for the day,” he answered instantly.

He approached Vee, lowering his voice.

“Please, I need to look busy, or else Leo will drop more work on me. I don’t want to get something dumped on me that might interfere with my other plans.”

“Which are?” asked Vee, her voice a whisper as well, entering the game.

“As soon as he’s out of here, I’m jumping back to the Lowline drawing board. He considers it low priority for now, so he doesn’t really like when I get some work done on it while we have other more urgent projects in the works.”

Vee parted her pile in two, dumping some files in his hands.

“Follow me then, boss,” she smiled with a quick wink.

As both were on the move, Donnie couldn’t help looking at the woman once more, amused as he noticed:

“Looks like we broke the curse,” he started. “We’re not wearing the same colored clothes anymore!”

Vee was wearing a black shirt that had a pattern of colorful, jungle type leaves, the bottom of it tucked in her jeans. Her relaxed look was completed by her teal hair tied up in a messy bun. Meanwhile Donnie rather simple with a white shirt, an unevenly striped black and white tie, and beige pants.

“Huh! Beige suits you,” noted Vee, observing him as well.

“Wearing those clothes can be a challenge sometimes. Pale clothes are a nightmare whenever you do anything. I’m always so scared that I’ll spill anything on them.”

“Right?!” agreed the woman. “It can be such a nightmare. Imagine white pants! I’d be so scared to sit anywhere anytime!”

Small laughters were exchanged, the duo still walking. Their task was easily embellished with small talk of various subjects, Vee’s day suddenly brigthened by Donnie’s presence. All was good and she couldn’t be ever more grateful for any seconds spent with him...

***

As the rest of the day passed, Donnie thankfully avoiding any tasks from his older brother, people were starting to leave the office, this being the duo’s cue for their project. As Vee had a better understanding of the Lowline’s needs, she was able to provide better feedback about how to approach the plans and drawings, actively pointing whenever Donnie was doing something wrong and the woman simply grabbing a pencil, adding her touch here and there. She didn’t give a second thought about standing close to the mutant, her focus primarly on the drawing. She could sense Donnie’s gaze on her though, the turtle enamored with her work. He was truly open to her comments and loved to get the conversation going about how to proceed, appreciating her knowledge. They worked well together. ... So well that they didn’t see time pass and soon it was almost past eight in the evening. Exiting the small room in which the drawing board was in, they noticed rain starting to fall outside, the mutant then offering to drive the woman back home - to Vee’s greatest relief.

New York was restless. Even in the late hours of the night, it was still booming with life in certain areas, never a dull moment to be had. Vee loved looking at all the lights coloring the streets, the slight start of rain amplifying their shimmering on the pavement like an ephemeral oil painting. The vehicle's motion was creating a kaleidoscope of colors inside the SUV, slowly fading as the pair was rolling away from the busy streets to a somewhat calmer part of town. As Donnie parked near a sidewalk, the rain amplified, the drops drumming against the car's body. He wasn't close to Vee's apartment building, so the woman knew that if she were to step outside, she'd be soaking wet in no time.

“If you don't mind,” she started, looking over to the terrapin. “Can I wait in here for little while? I'm guessing this strong pour will stop at some point, they always do....”

Donnie gently smiled.

“They do indeed, and I don't mind at all,” he answered.

They paused, listening to the rain. This comfortable silence allowed Donnie to gather his thoughts, finally speaking up after a while:

“… It's rather nice, don't you think?”

“The ambient sound?” questionned Vee.

Donnie conceeded, while also adding: “Sure, it's calming. … But I just kept thinking; it's also nice to be here with you. It's nice that we seem to get along so well...”

Vee was suddenly speechless, her heart thundering in her ears. She tried to boot her thoughts back to her brain, tucking some strands of hair away.

“I- … yeah. It's nice.”

She felt his hand hold her left one, his touch soft as he brushed his thumb on her skin. “… I'm sorry, I'm making you uncomfortable,” he said.

“No!” reassured Vee. “No please, I... I simply wonder if this is right?”

She had said that last part with uncertainty, afraid she'd say something wrong.

"And what is 'this'?” questionned the terrapin, remaining calm.

Vee threw him an unimpressed look, getting a chuckle out of the male in return.

“Don't play this game with me, Donnie,” she said. “We're adults. I know flirting when I see it. … I just don't want it to be ill-intentioned on your part.”

His eyes grew wide, a slight distress felt in the air.

“I would never!” he added. “… To be frank, I'm not really used to flirting, so I'm sorry if I'm giving weird vibes.”

“Are you kidding?” lightly laughed Vee. “You make me blush so often, it might become permanent at some point.”

She brought her other hand to his, now properly holding him, simply to bring weight to her words:

“You've made me feel alive ever since we properly met... I simply feel happy, but considering our positions at work, that's why I'm asking if this is right? … I wouldn't want to dive too deep into this simply to drown...”

“People may say what they want, but I think as long as we remain professional, there's no harm?”

Their eyes met, trying to guess the right answer through unspoken words. As the rain was still gaining in strength, the loud pitter-patter seemed to break any barriers, Donnie gaining further courage to speak again:

“You're a beautiful and interesting woman, Vee. Just thinking about you makes me feel warm and I can't stop smiling... I realize that's a bit bold to lay out, but just as you said: we're adults. And I don't see why I should hide the fact that you're bringing me joy lately.”

Vee felt her heart melt, her hands slightly squeezing his. A faint sigh left her as she attempted to cling to reason:

“Let us see where things go from now on. … I think we need to rest our heads on this before anything else. … I appreciate you a lot, Donnie, I do. But right now we need to learn how to walk together before we sprint to any outcome.”

“I agree,” smiled the turtle. ‘’There’s no rush indeed. ... I like any moments spent with you.”

This moment felt so surreal all of a sudden. To openly express such feelings out in the open indeed was bold, from both of them, but it just felt so right. As a sign of fate, the rain was calming down, thus being the cue for Vee to head out and get home.  She wanted to stay here. She wanted to feel his presence and hear more about how he felt, but at the same time she wanted to stay true to her words.

“Well ... I guess this is time for me to go,” she said.

“Are you busy tomorrow night?”

That question surprised her at first.

“What now, I have to lay out my entire schedule to you?” she joked.

“Not really,” grinned Donnie. “But how about a date? That way we shall see how things unfold from now on.”

That caught her slightly off guard, but knowing she had thrown somehow the idea on their last evening out, she knew it was bound to happen.

“How could I ever decline?” she said, smiling. “... I’d like that very much.”

Donnie brought one of her hands up, leaving a soft kiss on top of it.

“Then you make me a very happy man.”

((Part 6))

[itsyourturnblog]

Making decisions is one of the most complex responsibility we take every day. It can be difficult. Especially when we do not have all the data.

In a case where we do not have all data, it would be tempting to postpone our decision. Unfortunately, this is not possible. Because deciding to postpone a decision IS a decision by itself.

To cut a long story short, we cannot avoid making decisions even when data are lacking.

The good thing is that making decision is partly a skill and it can be learned.

The first job of the decision maker: to gather trusted data and build an holistic picture of the problematic

To make a good decision, even when some data are not available, we have to collect all data that ARE available. It’s not because we cannot access the whole information that the available one doesn’t have to be considered.

At this stage, it’s important to make a difference between the information that we do not have and that is available, and the information that is not known yet.

It’s not the last who spoke who is right. Not all opinions and assertions have the same value. We have to look for trusted and reliable sources on the long term; individuals, communities or organizations who have a real legitimacy in the field in which the decision has to be made.

Defining who are the trusted sources is not easy. Because we are biased. Because we tend to focus on the information that confirm our beliefs instead of looking for the absolute trusted sources.

To make the situation even more difficult, we tend to focus on “the tip of the iceberg”. The iceberg is the whole situation, the holistic perspective. The tip of the iceberg is where all eyes are focused. Usually it’s the falsely easily understandable part of the problematic. By making a mistake on defining the frame of the decision and considering the tip of the iceberg instead of the whole iceberg, we usually make decisions that are not very robust on a long term basis. Because the place where our eyes are focused can change very fast. And once it does, there is a high chance that the decision we made does not make so much sense.

Let’s take the Covid-19 situation as an example.

It seems that a part of us is only considering (and reacting to) the tip of the iceberg which are the Covid-19 direct effects and impacts on physical health. We do not consider the immerged part of this same iceberg which are the Covid-19 indirect effects and impacts (the ones induced by the decisions and measures that are taken) and the consequences at a global level including all the elements of our society (economy, societal aspects, social aspects, mental health,…).

The different layers (health, economy, social) are not successive but interconnected and interpenetrated. We cannot think in silos and care about health only first, then decide to swith to economy and finally consider the social aspects. The multiple components of the problem are indivisible; they have to be considered as a whole.

And I am not even speaking about the long term effects and opportunities, this is not the scope of this post and it’s potentially another iceberg.

Once we consider having gathered all data available, the goal is to define a model. A model is not the reality, but it helps us structure and organize our thinking. Take a look at this post on models written by Seth Godin. And take another look at this post I wrote two years ago about a book on models and iterative thinking (Creating Great Choices).

The first job of the decision maker is to gain an holistic and long term view of the situation to build a model, by identifying which trusted information/data is available and which is not.

To consider the whole iceberg and not only the tip is very hard. And this directly brings us on the human side of the decision making process. This is the second job of the decision maker.

The second job of the decision maker: to kill darlings and neutralize ego

Making good decisions requires that we kill at the same time our darlings and neutralize our egos, which are two very strong filters that prevent us seeing the reality as (close as) it is.

We all have beliefs that help us framing our worldview. Our worldview is subjective and does not reflect the reality (another short post written by Seth Godin on the different realities that co-exist around us is available here). Knowing it is a great first step. The second one being to consider the other possible worldviews. Those that are close and complementary and even those that are opposite. In fact, we cannot get totally rid of our worldview. What we can do is putting it in a context and consider additional ones. This will clearly increase our objectivity and help us considering all the possibilities before making a decision. By doing this, we kill our darlings.

Our ego is the second obstacle toward making good decision. When we let our ego lead the decision making process, we put our own interests on the top. When the frame of the decision to be taken is only involving ourself, this can be okay. However, in this post I am considering decisions that involve and impact multiple parties. When we have to make a decision about something that will impact a country, an organization, a group of people or even a family, we are biased if we do not neutralize our ego. Neutralizing our ego will avoid us to be judge and jury and increase the legitimacy of our decisions.

The third job of the decision maker: to make the decision and set a feedback loop

It’s totally possible to make decision without having the full information. The only condition is to respect some principles like going step by step toward an ambitious goal, monitoring the effects of the decision closely and regularly and building a B plan before taking the decision, in case the effects and impacts of the decision would negatively diverge from expectations.

In order to feel comfortable making a decision, it’s essential to put in place a feedback loop that will allow us to characterize the outcomes (impacts, effects) of the decision and learn from them.

It’s also important to be able to evaluate if the outcomes are likely to challenge the hypothesis that led to the decision we have made. Take a look at this post I wrote two years ago about a book on decision making process, learning loops and the quality of decisions (Thinking in Bets).

The fourth job of the decision maker: to communicate and explain the decision in a transparent way (sharing the hypothesis and the process)

Sharing the decision we made is not enough. Parties impacted by the decision not only need to hear it, but to understand it too.

“Understanding” is different than “agreeing”. When making decisions we cannot please everyone. That’s it.

However it is our duty to provide reading keys to those who will be affected by the decision. It’s showing transparency.

These reading keys are mainly the hypothesis that have been considered and the reasoning that has been done based on the hypothesis. These two factors form the decison process.

When we understand why (the hypothesis) and how (the reasoning) a decision has been taken, it makes it understandable and it will avoid many non-constructive and unnecessary discussions.

The fifth job of the decision maker: to continuously reassess the hypothesis and adapt the decision when it makes sense.

Part of the third job was to set a feedback loop that will help assessing the evolution and validity of the hypothesis that led to the decision. Now it’s time to activate the loop and the process that will tell us if the decision has to be re-assessed and a “pivot” has to be done, considering the new information and insights available. Closing the loop through this last job shows at least two benefits.

The first one is that we keep control over the decision. We “pilot” the decision.

The second one is that we learn and improve our model for the next time we will have to make another decision.

As a conclusion

Uncertainty is here. We have to deal with it and still make decisions. And there is a process for it.

We can decide. We know how to do it.

It will temporarily bring us out of our comfort zone, but on on the long term, it will show great benefits.

For us , as individuals, because we take the lead on our lives.

And for the whole society that will benefit from us taking ownership and framing the future.

We, as citizens and we, as individuals, have to take more ownership and count less on others to tell us what we should do. Most of us would like others to decide for us and back us. But that’s not the way it works. We are the decision makers for our lives.

We for sure need some data and guidance, but at the end, we make the decisions for ourselves.

And to those spectators who are just watching at others taking the lead and making decisions, sometimes even criticizing the decisions and the people who made it, ask yourself a simple question:

How could I become a Man in the Arena ?

This question is referring to a speech Theodore Roosevelt delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 1910 and from which here is a short excerpt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Let’s go in the arena and make good decisions together. That’s the best way for us to contribute.

The 5 Jobs of the Decision Makers (A Manifesto on Decision Making) was originally published in It's Your Turn on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Jean-Marie Buchilly via It's Your Turn - Medium #itsyourturn #altMBA #SethGodin #quotes #inspiration #stories #change #transformation #writers #writing #self #shipping #personaldevelopment #growth #education #marketing #entrepreneurship #leadership #personaldev #wellness #medium #blogging #quoteoftheday #inspirationoftheday

[kristablogs]

Will it be safe to hold the Olympics in 2021?

Fixing a date for the Olympics is really one piece of a much larger question: When will things get back to normal? (Pixabay /)

Follow all of PopSci’s COVID-19 coverage here, including travel advice, pregnancy concerns, and the latest findings on the virus itself. For global updates, see here.

On March 24, the prime minister of Japan and the president of the International Olympic Committee announced that the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which were supposed to begin on July 24, must be postponed until 2021.

"The leaders agreed that the Olympic Games in Tokyo could stand as a beacon of hope to the world during these troubled times and that the Olympic flame could become the light at the end of the tunnel in which the world finds itself at present," the IOC and the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee said in a joint statement.

It’s hard to imagine what our society will look like more than a year in the future, when right now each day seems to bring new, unpredictable challenges. Eventually, the COVID-19 pandemic will loosen its grip—but will it do so in time for the newly scheduled massive international event?

“Nobody really knows the answer to that right now,” says Wesley Pegden, a mathematician at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “Right now the focus is on keeping the number of infections and deaths as low as possible.”

The disquieting reality is that it’s not yet clear what will happen over the next few months. Our knowledge of COVID-19 and projections are changing rapidly as scientists discover new information about the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, at the root of the pandemic. How risky it will be to light the Olympic torch depends on what strategies we use to combat COVID-19 and how successful they are.

“By then one of two things will likely have happened,” says Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “We’ll have either had the pandemic rage through and hence there would be widespread immunity and it would be reasonable to hold such an event, or we’ll have figured out ways to control it without doing the same sorts of extreme social distancing measures we’re having to do now.”

Under the first scenario, a large chunk of the population would have already been infected by next summer—which also means that a truly staggering number of people would be killed by COVID-19. The Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team recently estimated that if we’d taken no actions to slow the spread of COVID-19, it might have infected up to 90 percent of the world’s population and killed more than 40 million people.

However, communities around the world have reacted to COVID-19 by closing schools and workplaces, discouraging or banning travel, and urging everybody to stay home as much as possible. These social distancing steps will help flatten the curve of COVID-19 infections, spreading them out over time instead of frontloading them like a tsunami, which inundates hospitals and clinics with far more critically ill people than they have the space, supplies, or staff to care for.

“It’s a little too early to say how everything will evolve,” says Sara Del Valle, a mathematical and computational epidemiologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. But slowing transmission could also mean that many people are still susceptible to COVID-19 next year. “If that’s the case, then we’re not going to be able to have international events next year because it would still be spreading.”

Del Valle and her colleagues have studied how past crises—including the 2009 swine flu pandemic and the 1918 influenza pandemic—have played out. Usually, these pandemics cause an enormous first wave of infections, followed by a somewhat smaller second wave the following year.

“Based on all the modeling and the simulations and previous pandemics, we suspect that there is going to be a significantly large wave next year,” Del Valle says. However, she adds, many of the historic pandemics she has studied were caused by strains of influenza, which is not a coronavirus. “It’s possible that this pandemic will be very different.”

The Olympics gathers hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world and sandwiches them very closely together, which aids in transmission of any virus, but is of particular concern for one as contagious as the novel coronavirus. And visitors exposed to the virus could bring it back home with them. “It would probably help to spread the infection widely around the world because so many people are there,” Lessler says.

To avoid a situation like this, we’ll have to devise more effective ways to rein in SARS-CoV-2. One possibility is that scientists will develop an effective treatment for COVID-19. A vaccine would also make a huge difference. “That would potentially allow for large events to continue,” Del Valle says. That said, while scientists are working at unprecedented speed to create a vaccine, experts say it will be at least 12 to 18 months at the very least before one can be ready for public distribution.

Advances in testing for the novel coronavirus could also have a major impact on how we respond to new cases of COVID-19. Currently, many cases are going unreported because tests are in short supply and many people experience relatively mild symptoms or remain asymptomatic. However, scientists are developing serological tests, which detect antibodies in the blood of people who have recovered from COVID-19. Figuring out how many people have already caught the disease could tell us the true scale of the pandemic and help identify people who are no longer at risk for becoming sickened. And having rapid and plentiful diagnostic tests could also make it easier for us to track the disease by quickly identifying when somebody is sick and tracing all their contacts.

These developments could allow us to tailor our responses for different areas. “We would be able to quickly respond around particular cases and take the types of measures we’re taking at this global, broad scale now and potentially take them at a very precise level, hitting exactly those individuals who are most at risk,” Lessler says. “It can have a substantial effect in allowing us to ease back on these broad-scale interventions that we have now.”

All of these innovations could impact the likelihood of whether we’ll be watching feats of athleticism next summer, although each approach comes with its own challenges. But fixing a date for the Olympics is really one piece of a much larger question: when will things get back to normal?

“It’s not so much a question of when we’re going to have enough of this extreme social distancing. It’s a question of, when are we going to have a plan for what comes next?” Lessler says. “What the social distancing measures are doing is buying us time; if we just...go right back to business as usual, all we’ve done is delayed the epidemic.”

Social distancing steps are crucial and have the potential to save many lives over the next several months. However, our forecasts shouldn’t stop there, Pegden and his colleague Maria Chikina, a computational systems biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, argued in a recent post on Medium.

“The future is coming whether we like it or not and eventually we’ll have to have a plan,” Pegden says. “Even though there is a lot of uncertainty about the possible scenarios in the future, it might be preferable to model specific examples of these futures rather than just model the next four months.”

These scenarios, he says, could test many different outcomes—for example, what could happen if a treatment is developed in six months that slices that fatality rate of COVID-19 by 50 percent? What if a vaccine is introduced in two years? What if the capacity of hospitals in certain cities is increased by 60 percent?

Del Valle and her colleagues are examining some of these questions. “We’re trying to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the healthcare system—so, which hospitals will be hit the most and which hospitals might need to come up with mobile facilities so that they can hopefully help more people, and stuff like that,” she says.

The team is also developing forecasts for how COVID-19 will spread in different countries and states that will be updated regularly, as well as investigating how best to relax social distancing measures. They’ve previously simulated a hypothetical influenza pandemic and predicted that schools and workplaces would have to be reopened and stay-at-home orders lifted slowly over a period of months.

“It's going to have to be gradual and it's going to have to be implemented in different ways geographically,” Del Valle says. “Areas like New York…or Seattle, once they go through the first wave, then they’re probably going to be able to start relaxing interventions earlier than other areas that are just starting to experience cases.”

But it’s also important to have a strategy for what happens after the COVID-19 pandemic so that once our society does begin to return to stability it can stay that way. Del Valle envisions a global disease forecasting center that would allow researchers to more quickly identify emerging disease and predict how they will spread.

“We would all be better prepared to respond to new pandemics and newly emerging outbreaks around the globe,” she says. “We need to be more proactive instead of reactive.”

[scootoaster]

Will it be safe to hold the Olympics in 2021?

Fixing a date for the Olympics is really one piece of a much larger question: When will things get back to normal? (Pixabay /)

Follow all of PopSci’s COVID-19 coverage here, including travel advice, pregnancy concerns, and the latest findings on the virus itself. For global updates, see here.

On March 24, the prime minister of Japan and the president of the International Olympic Committee announced that the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which were supposed to begin on July 24, must be postponed until 2021.

"The leaders agreed that the Olympic Games in Tokyo could stand as a beacon of hope to the world during these troubled times and that the Olympic flame could become the light at the end of the tunnel in which the world finds itself at present," the IOC and the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee said in a joint statement.

It’s hard to imagine what our society will look like more than a year in the future, when right now each day seems to bring new, unpredictable challenges. Eventually, the COVID-19 pandemic will loosen its grip—but will it do so in time for the newly scheduled massive international event?

“Nobody really knows the answer to that right now,” says Wesley Pegden, a mathematician at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “Right now the focus is on keeping the number of infections and deaths as low as possible.”

The disquieting reality is that it’s not yet clear what will happen over the next few months. Our knowledge of COVID-19 and projections are changing rapidly as scientists discover new information about the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, at the root of the pandemic. How risky it will be to light the Olympic torch depends on what strategies we use to combat COVID-19 and how successful they are.

“By then one of two things will likely have happened,” says Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “We’ll have either had the pandemic rage through and hence there would be widespread immunity and it would be reasonable to hold such an event, or we’ll have figured out ways to control it without doing the same sorts of extreme social distancing measures we’re having to do now.”

Under the first scenario, a large chunk of the population would have already been infected by next summer—which also means that a truly staggering number of people would be killed by COVID-19. The Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team recently estimated that if we’d taken no actions to slow the spread of COVID-19, it might have infected up to 90 percent of the world’s population and killed more than 40 million people.

However, communities around the world have reacted to COVID-19 by closing schools and workplaces, discouraging or banning travel, and urging everybody to stay home as much as possible. These social distancing steps will help flatten the curve of COVID-19 infections, spreading them out over time instead of frontloading them like a tsunami, which inundates hospitals and clinics with far more critically ill people than they have the space, supplies, or staff to care for.

“It’s a little too early to say how everything will evolve,” says Sara Del Valle, a mathematical and computational epidemiologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. But slowing transmission could also mean that many people are still susceptible to COVID-19 next year. “If that’s the case, then we’re not going to be able to have international events next year because it would still be spreading.”

Del Valle and her colleagues have studied how past crises—including the 2009 swine flu pandemic and the 1918 influenza pandemic—have played out. Usually, these pandemics cause an enormous first wave of infections, followed by a somewhat smaller second wave the following year.

“Based on all the modeling and the simulations and previous pandemics, we suspect that there is going to be a significantly large wave next year,” Del Valle says. However, she adds, many of the historic pandemics she has studied were caused by strains of influenza, which is not a coronavirus. “It’s possible that this pandemic will be very different.”

The Olympics gathers hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world and sandwiches them very closely together, which aids in transmission of any virus, but is of particular concern for one as contagious as the novel coronavirus. And visitors exposed to the virus could bring it back home with them. “It would probably help to spread the infection widely around the world because so many people are there,” Lessler says.

To avoid a situation like this, we’ll have to devise more effective ways to rein in SARS-CoV-2. One possibility is that scientists will develop an effective treatment for COVID-19. A vaccine would also make a huge difference. “That would potentially allow for large events to continue,” Del Valle says. That said, while scientists are working at unprecedented speed to create a vaccine, experts say it will be at least 12 to 18 months at the very least before one can be ready for public distribution.

Advances in testing for the novel coronavirus could also have a major impact on how we respond to new cases of COVID-19. Currently, many cases are going unreported because tests are in short supply and many people experience relatively mild symptoms or remain asymptomatic. However, scientists are developing serological tests, which detect antibodies in the blood of people who have recovered from COVID-19. Figuring out how many people have already caught the disease could tell us the true scale of the pandemic and help identify people who are no longer at risk for becoming sickened. And having rapid and plentiful diagnostic tests could also make it easier for us to track the disease by quickly identifying when somebody is sick and tracing all their contacts.

These developments could allow us to tailor our responses for different areas. “We would be able to quickly respond around particular cases and take the types of measures we’re taking at this global, broad scale now and potentially take them at a very precise level, hitting exactly those individuals who are most at risk,” Lessler says. “It can have a substantial effect in allowing us to ease back on these broad-scale interventions that we have now.”

All of these innovations could impact the likelihood of whether we’ll be watching feats of athleticism next summer, although each approach comes with its own challenges. But fixing a date for the Olympics is really one piece of a much larger question: when will things get back to normal?

“It’s not so much a question of when we’re going to have enough of this extreme social distancing. It’s a question of, when are we going to have a plan for what comes next?” Lessler says. “What the social distancing measures are doing is buying us time; if we just...go right back to business as usual, all we’ve done is delayed the epidemic.”

Social distancing steps are crucial and have the potential to save many lives over the next several months. However, our forecasts shouldn’t stop there, Pegden and his colleague Maria Chikina, a computational systems biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, argued in a recent post on Medium.

“The future is coming whether we like it or not and eventually we’ll have to have a plan,” Pegden says. “Even though there is a lot of uncertainty about the possible scenarios in the future, it might be preferable to model specific examples of these futures rather than just model the next four months.”

These scenarios, he says, could test many different outcomes—for example, what could happen if a treatment is developed in six months that slices that fatality rate of COVID-19 by 50 percent? What if a vaccine is introduced in two years? What if the capacity of hospitals in certain cities is increased by 60 percent?

Del Valle and her colleagues are examining some of these questions. “We’re trying to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the healthcare system—so, which hospitals will be hit the most and which hospitals might need to come up with mobile facilities so that they can hopefully help more people, and stuff like that,” she says.

The team is also developing forecasts for how COVID-19 will spread in different countries and states that will be updated regularly, as well as investigating how best to relax social distancing measures. They’ve previously simulated a hypothetical influenza pandemic and predicted that schools and workplaces would have to be reopened and stay-at-home orders lifted slowly over a period of months.

“It's going to have to be gradual and it's going to have to be implemented in different ways geographically,” Del Valle says. “Areas like New York…or Seattle, once they go through the first wave, then they’re probably going to be able to start relaxing interventions earlier than other areas that are just starting to experience cases.”

But it’s also important to have a strategy for what happens after the COVID-19 pandemic so that once our society does begin to return to stability it can stay that way. Del Valle envisions a global disease forecasting center that would allow researchers to more quickly identify emerging disease and predict how they will spread.

“We would all be better prepared to respond to new pandemics and newly emerging outbreaks around the globe,” she says. “We need to be more proactive instead of reactive.”