There has been few events that have captured our attention like COVID19 has. Bill Gates said it best when he said:
We're in a -- it's a scary time. Every morning, you get up, you see that number has increased. So, you know, learning to cope is -- you know, we're completely in uncharted territory.
And while we marshal the resources and more importantly the will to fight this pandemic it’s clear that to many this was inevitable
In recent years, hundreds of health experts have written books, white papers, and op-eds warning of the possibility. Bill Gates has been telling anyone who would listen, including the 18 million viewers of his TED Talk…In October, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security war-gamed what might happen if a new coronavirus swept the globe. And then one did. Hypotheticals became reality. “What if?” became “Now what?”
A quick primer
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 was first identified in 2019, in Wuhan, the capital of the Chin’s Hubei province. It has since spread globally resulting as of March 27 in more than 664,000 cases.
the first confirmed case was traced back to November 17 2019 in China
the virus is mainly spread during close contact and via respiratory droplets produces when a person speaks, coughs or sneezes.
Recommended measures to prevent infection include frequent hand washing, social distancing and covering coughs, sneezes with a tissue or elbow
For more you can look at the CDC owns guidelines.
Pandemic in the real-time world
An interesting characteristic of this pandemic beyond the fact it has been front and center for more than a month in the US, is the near real-time information available on its “progress”
John Hopkins University’s dashboard provides a single view for global confirmed COVID19 cases, deaths and recoveries.
If cases aren’t your thing, you can keep track in real-time of the effort to identify all of the various strains of the virus via NextStrain.org
Anonymized cellphone data is also being leverage to show how truly connected (and infectious) we are. Tectonics and Xmode Social partnering to show where 5,000 went in the US after congregating in a single beach in Ft. Lauderdale
Beyond lives, the economic damage
And while a 2 trillion bailout package was signed on March 26, 2020, the damage had already been done.
Earnin, a Fintech platform that offers real-time earning and overdraft protection, saw first hand how the crisis has impacted both salaried and hourly workers
And for folks on welfare (now called SNAP) its even more dire as the SNAP benefits management app Fresh EBT, saw with over 88% of their users who work having lost income because of the pandemic
Good deeds & innovation have followed
But there are glimpses of good news, of corporate citizens stepping up for their employees and Fintechs thinking out of the box
Apple and Goldman Sachs were some of the first financial institution to act allowing its customers to waive the March payment with no penalty
Online lender, Kabbage, leverage its payment infrastructure to create a platform where business could create gift certificates that could be purchased by shoppers to be redeemed later
Morgan Stanley has said that it won’t layoffs any of its 60K employees because of the pandemic.
Additional reading, listening and viewing:
A great article focusing on what is next
Bill Gates 2015 TED talk on pandemic and our lack of preparedness
Google spreadsheet on corporate America’s response