May 5, 2020
Notes on Engineering Health, March 2020
Apocalypse Now
In these troubled days, it certainly can feel like we are approaching the end of civilization as we have known it. The Doomsday Clock has never been closer to midnight (currently just 100 seconds away) and the obvious level of unpreparedness of societies facing the ongoing coronavirus crisis has not done anything to reverse the somber ticker.
Some people are preparing (prepping?) for a world after the collapse of society to ensure their own survival. Others are acting for the good of all via such efforts as securing continuity in biodiversity with the Global Seed Vault (located in a cave in Svalbard). Other efforts seek to preserve a large amount of open source code (in another cave in Svalbard) and to create the ability to bootstrap post-collapse technology (Collapse OS, no cave required).
The Doomsday Clock existed before the current pandemic and expresses a long-cycle angst. Some researchers believe that a more useful approach would be to trace arcs in the development and fragility of societies in order to better predict and prepare for disasters of various kinds. Some historians, such as David Runciman in How Democracy Ends, have convincingly described differences (e.g., age of the population, standard of living, etc.) between periods when democracies were under strain or even collapsed and explain why the next crisis will likely follow a different path. Less orthodox methods have also emerged to look at the past and predict the future; ecologist Peter Turchin has published in Nature about using history as a giant data set to calculate the patterns and cycles of the past to avoid a looming crisis. This physical approach to history has received a mixed reception amongst classical historians, with some likening it to the fictional science of “psychohistory” in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation universe which he first wrote about in the early 1940’s.
Whether or not you believe that we can develop accurate methods of computing on the immense complexity of the past, some observers have been ringing the alarms for a number of years about the coming of a crisis identical to the one in which are now mired.
One beneficial outcome of the current crisis should be an effort to foster a stronger interdisciplinary effort to marry sciences, humanities, and policy-making so that these early warnings are better understood and heeded.
What We’re Reading
Vaccines
Vaccine production, distribution, access and uptake
Lancet >
Viruses
Clades of huge phages from across Earth’s ecosystems
Nature >
Obesity
Prevalence of Obesity and Severe Obesity Among Adults: United States, 2017–2018
CDC >
Social Determinants of Health
Socioeconomic Status and Health: Mediating and Moderating Factors
Annual Review of Clinical Psychology >
Aging in Place in America
Fresenius >
Supply Chains
What Coke Contains
Medium >
Computing
Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (AGC) vs USB-C Chargers
Forrest Heller >
Entrepreneurship
Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship
American Economic Review >
Portfolio News
Aunt Bertha
Aunt Bertha recently stood up FindHelp.org so people affected by the coronavirus pandemic can find financial and other assistance programs. It’s nationwide covering every zip code in the country.
If you are involved with or know of programs that are available to help, please go here to register them on FindHelp.org.
You can read about how FindHelp.org came into being here. And you can read stories about people helping people here.
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Why healthcare’s data quality conundrum will stifle SDOH initiatives
Health Data Management >
Local groups organize to help families to provide food and necessities for families affected by the sudden closure of schools and businesses.
WCNC >
Elemental Machines
Biotechs brace for work losses, financing drop-off
Boston Business Journal >
BioTeam, NVIDIA, Globus, And More Offer Free Tools To Support Coronavirus Research
BioIT World >
Rejuvenate Bio
Rejuvenate Bio Launches To Help Dogs Live Longer & Healthier
WorldHealth.net >
Somatix
Somatix launches AI-powered remote patient monitoring
McKnight’s > Yahoo Finance >
Remote Patient Monitoring Solutions Such As SafeBeing From Somatix Can Be Effective Tools To Help Monitor Patients During Epidemics
GlobeNewswire >
The Mighty
8,000 People told The Mighty How They Feel About The Coronavirus
MSN >
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Digitalis Portfolio Companies Are Hiring
See Open Positions >
Digitalis Commons
The Digitalis Commons is a non-profit that partners with groups and individuals striving to address complex health problems by building solutions that are frontier-advancing, open-access, and scalable.
Synthesis/COVID-19
The Commons has stood up a coronavirus-focused instance of its Synthesis.bio data site in order to capture and organize high-quality sources of COVID-19 information in one place.
Dart Grants
Apply for a quick, targeted $3,000 grant to develop a public good for better health. Application details at digitaliscommons.org/dart-grants/
