Covid

A coalition of 250 CEOs and leaders (and growing by the hour) are asking our fellow business and civic leaders around America to #LeadBoldly and #StoptheSpread of COVID-19 . We as leaders are doing the following, and asking other leaders to join us: Immediately change our organization’s policies to “work from home” for all employees where possible, including leaders. Do everything we can to support our frontline workforce, our first responders and our healthcare workers, as they show up for work and fight this on the frontlines. ...

By this point, I expect everyone who reads this blog is extremely familiar with the phrases “flatten the curve” and “social distancing.” If not, read Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now right now. In the US, many schools are having spring break for a week sometime in the next two weeks. Ironically, it’s convenient timing for taking action that could dramatically flatten the curve. What if we decided, as a nation, to take Spring Break at Home for the next two weeks. If you haven’t canceled your spring break trip, cancel it. Stay home with your family. Spend time together. If you’ve already taken spring break, extend the concept of it through the end of the month. ...

I’ve been involved with a number of leaders in the Colorado tech community since Wednesday morning as we’ve aggressively mobilized to address the Covid-19 crisis. Following is a joint statement that a bunch of us have signed on to. A group of us are working quickly to create more mechanisms for a coordinated response, collective action, funding for critical resources, and ideas for things to do that will have a positive impact. ...

The following from C. S. Lewis. was on my fraternity email list this morning. It was written in 1948 after the dawn of the atomic age. In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.” ...

In the midst of a crisis like the Covid-19 one that is unfolding around the world, it’s very hard to separate the signal from the noise. In the US, we are now in the thick of the aggressive expansion of infection from the virus, and we can look to a number of other countries for what they’ve done, how things have played out, and what has been effective. While it’s easy to find experts everywhere, and Twitter allows even those most unexpert authority figure to be an expert, I’m continuously searching for signal and trying to discard or ignore the noise. ...

Most people don’t understand exponential growth. It can be counterintuitive and is easily misinterpreted. Understanding it is particularly important right now around Covid-19. The following eight-minute video is extremely well done and uses the historical Covid-19 data to help understand exponential growth. There’s a magic number in this that we should be focusing on, but gets lost in the fog of hysteria. The math lesson starts at about 3:45. ...

I was at a dinner event last night in Denver where, predictably, coronavirus (which I’ve been trying to call Covid-19, but everyone seems to default back to coronavirus) came up. I’ve tried to avoid being “that person” who has a strong opinion because so much is changing so quickly. Instead, I’ve tried to have a “clear opinion” based on what I currently know and how it’s impacting my world. I was particularly sensitized to this since, at a board meeting earlier in the day where it came up, someone asked me directly, “How do you think coronavirus will impact things?” A few minutes later I realized I was stuck in exactly the kind of rant that I was trying to avoid. ...

Apparently everyone in the US is now talking about the threat of the coronavirus, which really should be referred to as Covid-19 since there are hundreds of different types of coronaviruses. My guess is the 10% drop in the Dow woke people up. Or maybe it is because of the first known cases in the US. As I was going through my random Sunday morning reading, I came across several good articles. ...