Permafrost covers 20% of the Northern Hemisphere. By definition, it is ground that stays frozen for at least two consecutive years. In the Arctic, Antarctica and alpine areas, permafrost persists.
Some areas of permafrost go through seasonal partial thaws. Much never does until recent years as polar regions and mountainous areas are increasingly impacted by global atmospheric warming.
What’s stored in permafrost is about what we need to be concerned. It contains an enormous amount of biomass, which is a natural carbon sink. That’s a good thing as long as the permafrost doesn’t melt. But biomass also contains what is being referred to as zombie viruses and bacteria.
In 2016, an anthrax outbreak in Siberia killed thousands of reindeer. The cause was traced to thawing permafrost that exposed a 75-year-old infected reindeer. The thaw had revived Bacillus anthracis, the anthrax bacterium that unfortunate reindeer ingested or inhaled.
It could just as well have been:
Here are some recent permafrost discoveries.
Today, scientists are increasingly concerned about the potential pandemic threat coming from the equatorial and polar areas of the planet. We know that mosquitoes, ticks, fleas and other wildlife can be common carriers of many equatorial diseases posing a threat: Malaria, Dengue, Zika, and Chikungunya, to name a few. But now we need to be on guard for viruses and bacteria emerging from the permafrost.
Today, we have a vaccine for smallpox and one for bubonic plague. We annually update influenza vaccines. But the zombie viruses and bacteria that have been buried in permafrost pose a threat because we have no recent exposure to them, meaning we won’t immediately have medical treatments to contain outbreaks. We won’t have built-up immunity either. That’s why there is an emerging Arctic monitoring network of scientists looking for viruses and bacteria that could come from permafrost and meltwater.
Although thawed permafrost contains traces of genomic information from viruses, Dr. Jonathan Stoye, a retrovirus researcher at the Francis Crick Institute in London, UK, notes that the “inherent instability of the viral nucleic acids” makes the likelihood of infection transmission less. He believes the greater threat would come from an awakening bacteria.
COVID-19 may have done humanity a favour. Our rapid response to it including new vaccines, and comprehensive global reporting, has us much better organized to recognize and fight an outbreak. Add permafrost to the list of disease vectors that include mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, rodents, snails, monkeys, bats, and other forms of wildlife posing a pandemic-starting threat.
]]>In this the 16th edition of the Global Risk Report, the World Economic Forum (WEF) describes the consequences of a pandemic that has widened economic inequalities between the Global North and South, impacted societies across the planet, increased geopolitical and environmental risks, played havoc with employment, and further divided society between the haves and the have nots, seniors and youth, and the healthy and those who are health compromised. The existential threat of climate change to the global environment is seen as an accelerator for societal fragmentation.
How the WEF compiles and writes the Global Risk Report comes out of data collected from an annual survey of 650 members plus an additional weighted input from the new Global Future Council on Frontier Risks, a community of Chief Risk Officers within the organization.
The highest risks in the next decade will come from:
What will emerge in the post-pandemic world may be far different as patterns of business disrupted during COVID-19 find conditions to “return to normal” no longer viable. The new normal will be fuelled by a technological transformation that is already causing changes to both workplace and consumer behaviour. The economic fallout to small businesses within advanced economies will widen the gap between not just societal but also company haves and have nots.
Lots of experimentation can best describe 2020 and 2021 as countries and international institutions, healthcare providers, and businesses began an unprecedented period of sharing of information in the fight against COVID-19. Within five domains: government decision-making, public communication, health system capabilities, lockdown management and financial assistance to the vulnerable, many lessons have been learned. And we’re not just talking about policy decision making but also about risk response, capacity, and planning not just within a crisis but in anticipation of future ones.
The Global Risk Report credits the response to COVID-19 for allowing governments to strengthen their countries, business, and the international community’s overall resilience through:
If the COVID-19 pandemic has shown all of humanity one significant consequence it is that “citizens now know the power political leaders can wield when the challenge demands it.” The normal rules no longer need apply. Will we look at debt the same way after witnessing governments expand social assistance programs to keep citizens and businesses afloat? Will governments no longer be able to hide inaction about climate change based on the traditional slow and deliberative processes of governing and legislating? We now know what we know and the actions taken during the current pandemic can equally apply to the existential crisis that is climate change.
]]>Here in Ontario, Canada, where I live, the provincial government is responsible for education. Over the last two years, the government has stopped in-classroom learning, delayed the restart of school years, and moved teachers from in-classroom to virtual classroom teaching. It has done this many times coincident with the emergence of new COVID-19 variants and subsequent spikes in general population infection rates. The assumptions the government continues to make are:
Both of these assumptions are false.
In an opinion piece that appeared in the January 4th, 2022, The Globe and Mail, Wendy Cukier, Kelly Gallagher-MacKay, and Karen Mundy write, “Little has been done to ensure that students do not face lasting educational and social harms from pandemic disruptions – even as we face the next round of challenges associated with the Omicron variant. The pandemic has disproportionately worsened already significant disparities in educational outcomes for racialized and Indigenous students, as well as those living in poverty or with disabilities. This neglect is setting the stage for a generation with depressed lifetime incomes, increased social inequality and national productivity losses estimated at $1.6-trillion.”
The article describes how this can be prevented through timely social and educational interventions including tutoring, both one-on-one, and in small groups. But that strategy has not been incorporated into the government’s educational policy throughout the pandemic beginning with the first lockdown and continuing to today as we open and close in-class learning in schools. The back and forth of learning paradigms is not just a burden for our youth, but also for parents and educators who have to constantly readjust to these changing realities.
Today in Ontario we are relying on in-classroom teachers to be effective virtual-classroom instructors. The environments for them are as much a challenge as they are for the students they instruct. In-classroom teachers have been learning on the go since the pandemic started on how to be effective in a Zoom-built classroom. At the same time, these teachers are parents of children both pre-school and in-school and dealing with the family challenges that creates. When asked, teachers freely admit that many of their students are struggling to learn online.
That’s why the suggestion made by the authors of this Globe and Mail opinion piece should be taken seriously. They report on a study done by the Poverty Action Lab that describes the effectiveness of implementing tutoring programs in support of public education. The study notes that paraprofessionals who are trained educational assistants working with youth can deliver learning better and at a lower cost than in-classroom teachers working with students online. The report notes that tutoring sessions three or more times a week produces better results from Kindergarten to Grade 12. And although tutoring will add costs to public education, during the pandemic its implementation could produce immeasurable benefits as students catch up in terms of the current educational disparities caused by the pandemic.
What the article doesn’t address is the technology gap. Because of the pandemic, tutoring will largely be online. And here’s where a significant problem lies. Economic inequality and geography make for unequal online learning experiences whether it be an in-classroom teacher or qualified tutor on screen.
Online learning remains a challenge for isolated northern communities in Canada, let alone in Ontario. Access to highspeed broadband services in a study done in 2018 showed that 40.8% of rural households had Internet access with speeds of 50 Megabits per second or better. In First Nations’ communities that number was 31.3%. These numbers may have improved over the last three years, but what they don’t tell you is how many households and communities in these two categories have appropriate computing technology to make online learning work. Trying to learn on a smartphone screen is far different from learning using a desktop or laptop computer with a quality display. And although the federal government of Canada has committed $6 billion to make broadband connectivity available to every Canadian home and business, the date for completion of this project is 2030. That’s well into the future and won’t make a difference to students today who during this pandemic are being disadvantaged by inadequate educational opportunities developed by policymakers who continue to present poorly thought out and badly executed programs.
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The current COVID-19 pandemic is forcing millions of people to socially distance and remain at home as much as possible. Governments around the world are calling on their citizens to follow local requirements and recommendations to keep communities safe. While the results of social distancing and home quarantine are essential to keep the disease from spreading unchecked, it is not always easy to follow local health recommendations. Not going to work, not seeing your friends, or not going to your typical businesses is a sacrifice, and staying home most of the time can drive almost anyone stir crazy. Thankfully, modern technology has given us a slew of different gadgets to make social distancing more tolerable and more comfortable to endure so we can all do our part to slow the spread of the virus.
Whether you live alone or with housemates, sometimes it is nice to escape to another world even for a bit. Tune out your housemates or sounds from outside your house and relax with a pair of wireless headphones. Noise-canceling headphones are a nice plus, but any wireless headset will do the job without the hassle of wires. Put on your favorite music or an audio podcast to forget about the world. Listening to music while working or exercising can help you focus and give you an energy boost. Pick the right genre for your task at hand and let music make your life more enjoyable while you are in quarantine at home.
Most homes in North America these days have WiFi connections, but one router may not be enough to broadcast a signal across the entire space. There are many oMany things can disrupt or prevent your WiFi from reaching every corner of your home, but walls and distance are the most common issues. Your WiFi signal can only reach so far, which can leave you with dead zones with no WiFi. To solve this problem, add a WiFi booster or repeater that can extend your signal and eliminate dead zones. Place your WiFi repeater halfway between your router and the dead zone to extend your signal coverage; you have the option of either a desktop repeater just like your router or a wall plug-in for a stealthy WiFi boost.
Music and other audio lets you escape the world for a bit, but there are different ways you can escape. Social distancing has kept friends and family from seeing each other in person, but gaming lets you stay connected in the virtual world. There are a plethora of different online games you can play with your friends to socialize and have fun. Grab a gaming headset for voice chat and jump into your favorite digital world. Don’t be fooled by popular gaming commercials; there are more options than just games with guns. There is a gaming genre for every taste, from role-playing games and educational games to life-like simulations and action games.
You don’t have to buy an exp[ensive new computer or gaming console to game either. Mobile games have come a long way since Candy Crush, and there are full storied games available on mobile. Most laptops can also handle popular games, but you may have to mess with settings to achieve optimal performance, depending on your laptop. The next generation of gaming consoles, namely the PS5 and Xbox Series X, is coming out at the end of 2020, so if you do want to snag a console, now is a great time to get a console for a lower price.
Social distancing generally means not going to the gym, and you will have to find new ways to work out. Working out at home doesn’t have to be boring as there are many workout programs you can view online that don’t require equipment. There are undoubtedly online programs or routines that will make use of it if you have exercise gear at home. Fitness trackers are one of the most informative and straightforward pieces of workout gear. Use a fitness tracker like the famous Fitbit to monitor your heart rate, calories burned, and more depending on the model. Most fitness trackers have accompanying apps that help you track your fitness journey so you can use data to ensure you are moving in the right direction.
Social distancing isn’t ideal for most people. Staying home and not seeing your friends or family can be hard, but you can use technology to make your time at home more bearable. Use audio for escapism, boost your WiFi to eliminate dead zones, embrace gaming as a way to connect with friends or jump into a virtual world, and use online programs with your fitness tracker to stay fit at home.
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Although the current global pandemic spread owes much to 21st-century technology, we can also use some of that wizardry to help track and control the threat in real-time.
Undoubtedly there will be lots of reflection once the COVID-19 pandemic passes. We will be reviewing emergency response plans and cities in the future will be able to apply the lessons learned to prepare themselves for similar threats. City leaders and scientists will look at the best ways to manage social distancing, disease tracking, and other defenses that help flatten the curve.
Smart city technology can play a major role in stopping disease spread in densely populated urban areas, and many are already outfitting themselves with the tools that they will need for the next pandemic.
How smart cities will be able to stop a pandemic in urban areas will depend on:
You’ve probably heard the term contactless delivery a lot over the past few months as social distancing and shelter in place orders have gone into effect. Autonomous delivery represents the best way to execute contactless interaction eliminating the need for a human deliverer to be involved in the transportation of goods.
We are just at the outset of implementing autonomous delivery. Expect to see in the near future self-driving trucks, more autonomous ships, and delivery drones that will make contactless a normative process that will ensure people are not inadvertently exposed to a virus through community spread.
The Internet of Things (IoT) allows software companies to track outbreaks using big data and language processing. BlueDot, a dashboard application that combines public health and medical expertise with AI algorithms, can assess risk and provide notification of infectious disease outbreaks. Developed by a team of epidemiologists, artificial intelligence and natural language processing experts, BlueDot sent out the first known alert of an unusual cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan on December 30th, ten days before the World Health Organization (WHO) issued any public statement on COVID-19. Smart cities can now benefit from the expertise of this type of application to do disease tracking in real-time, allowing citizens to be aware of immediate risks.
Geolocation applications on smartphones allow for the tracking of user locations in real-time. Initially designed to allow people to track where their friends are, and parents to keep a remote eye on their children’s whereabouts, the applications have a much more powerful use when the data can trace the path of a disease spreading through a community and predict what areas are most at risk. Smart cities in the future will use this type of data to predict which urban areas need to be put into lockdown before community spread gets out of control.
Smart cities are wired cities. They don’t just use the Internet to help in decision making and in the dissemination of information to the public, but also implement free WiFi to allow citizens to always be connected, especially in the event of an emergency.
In New York City free public WiFi is available through information kiosks that serve to be effective communication hubs. So although a person may not have a smartphone, tablet, or laptop, information delivered over the Internet is accessible to them in thousands of locations across the city. Imagine during a pandemic how this helps to facilitate paperless and ubiquitous communication.
Some see the arrival of semi and fully autonomous drones as the beginning of a surveillance state. For example, in China, drones have been used not just to survey the population tracking community spread, but also to enforce stay-at-home orders.
Using drone surveillance lets police shelter in place while still doing their jobs. They can monitor citizens’ movements through the onboard cameras. Some even have infrared cameras to detect a person’s body temperature, revealing if a citizen is running a fever, one of the symptoms that has been used to identify COVID-19 infection.
Recently I wrote about a robot dog named Spot that is patroling a park in Singapore to ensure visitors keep social distancing. Spot can operate autonomously or be directed by a remotely-located human attendant who can see through the robot’s eyes and speak to someone in the event of an emergency.
If you’re interested in learning more about smart city technology benefits beyond pandemic response, check out this visual provided by The Zebra below.
In this posting, we take a closer look at how nursing is set to change because of this crisis, and how those currently in the profession and those planning to join it can prepare for the future.
The World Health Organization reports a global shortfall of around six million nurses worldwide. This is expected to grow over for the next few years. The factors contributing to the shortfall include:
Studies suggest that nurses were overstretched before COVID-19. In one survey it showed more than one in three considered leaving the profession. That is on top of the one million RNs who were expected to retire by 2030. Many administrators, however, acknowledge the problem and are seeking solutions. One of these would be to use technology and outside resources to reduce current nursing demand.
Excessive regulation in many countries is another issue. This hurts medical services delivery in a variety of ways. To eliminate some of these impediments, for example, the U.S. federal government has loosened regulations to reduce administrative bloat. The type of regulatory change includes issues like having to have a pathologist on-site to read biopsy slides. Now pathologists can use the power of the Internet and digital technology to work from home. And in addition regulations around Medicare and Medicaid coverage have been altered to include telemedicine consultations. This is allowing nurses to stay at home because of health concerns or to remain in quarantine while continuing to assist patients.
Adding new medical technology can improve patient outcomes, but it is prompting nurses to learn how to use it. This has led to nursing assistants with associate’s degrees or vocational diplomas to be increasingly seen as unqualified to work in their field even in the face of an industry shortage. It is increasing demand, furthermore, for nurses with advanced degrees, whether working in the ICU or in electronic medical records management.
This is where online learning can make a difference. The advent of Internet-based education is set to make a big impact on staffing. Nurses will now be able to get a baccalaureate in nursing science, a BSN, online from some of the most well-respected nursing schools in the United States without even having to leave their home state. Programs like Baylor University’s online accelerated BSN is allowing nurses to earn a degree relatively quickly through a full-time program that combines online courses, interactive courses, and clinical experience.
The benefits of an accelerated BSN program include:
While technology is set to improve education and reduce nursing workloads, it is not making up for the 12% increase in demand expected for RNs by 2030 while supply is in decline. Online classes, however, can play a role in reducing the impact of these shortages.
It is also possible that the COVID-19 crisis will result in higher pay for ICU and emergency nurses for a variety of reasons. The public now realizes that nurses are putting their lives on the line every day during a pandemic. The result is a general increase in pay for hazardous duty, and that has created improving retention rates and new recruits into a number of higher-risk nursing specialties. All of this, however, isn’t making for the lack of training or an inadequate supply of personal protective equipment (PPE). It should be a priority that nurses and other health personnel be be trained on how to use every kind of PPE needed, or face the consequences of losing them to illness or weeks in quarantine.
Hospitals and clinics alike tend to have dedicated, specialized areas. But these have been proven to be insufficient in the face of pandemic when there has been a need for an increase of 30% or more in hospital beds or dozens of more ICU units to accommodate patients. Nor has it been fair to patients to stick them in vacated offices or hallways. We can expect, therefore, hospitals to begin building flexibility into the design of their existing space with some areas switched from triage to ICU, or to storage, as needed.
Healthcare infrastructure will also have to evolve. We can expect future hospitals to have separate air handling units to isolate areas within the hospital, minimizing the spread of airborne pathogens. Advanced air filtration systems will be a certainty and could become the norm in entire facilities, not just in dedicated areas.
We may also see the creation of modular hospitals that can be built faster and more cheaply than existing designs. Modular hospitals have the added benefit of being mobile. For example, a number of field hospitals have been built during the present pandemic that are as good as the brick-and-mortar hospitals allowing for the isolation of COVID-19 patients from facilities that need to treat cancer patients, women in labor, and people having elective surgery.
COVID-19 has shown the profession that healthcare needs to change radically. Some of those solutions we have outlined here and we should see them being moved to the forefront because of the current crisis. Don’t be surprised if most, if not all we have described become mainstream.
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Is our current social isolation proving to be a gateway to discovering inner creativity and invention? Every situation we face has ups and downs. The current global pandemic is easy to see in a negative light. There is, however, a yet-to-appreciate positive that may yield society many new benefits.
It is rare that a single event brings the entire world to a standstill. In fact, I know of no event in recent history to compare with the COVID-19 pandemic and the reaction to it by world governments. Not since the last mass extinction when a very large rock struck our Earth at the end of the Cretaceous, circa 65 million years ago, has the world shuddered to a stop. And all over the tiniest of creatures to ever evolve on our planet.
Today, most of us remain in isolation, and in that isolation we are being given an opportunity for freeing up our creative minds. Our brains are being unlocked from the humdrum routine of our daily work lives and out of this humanity will bear new fruit.
When the plague swept through London in 1592, 1603, and 1606, the theatres where William Shakespeare earned his keep closed. During that downtime Shakespeare turned out some of his most inspiring works including the epic poem Venus and Adonis, and three of his greatest tragedies King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony & Cleopatra. For Shakespeare, the disruption and loss of income was metal for his inspiration. I am sure he wasn’t alone in finding a positive outcome to a series of negative events.
Of course, literature isn’t the route to innovation. The Spanish Flu which began as early as 1915 but wasn’t recognized as a world pandemic until 1918, subsequently lingering through multiple waves into 1920, sparked a new approach to public health that focused on the underlying causes of illness, for example, diet and living conditions, and led to the first concerted global effort to develop an effective vaccine. The flu infected an estimated 500 million people, a third of the world’s population at the time. It killed 10% of them.
The seeds of modern medical research and discovery were planted during the Spanish Flu. Germ theory and treatment rapidly evolved to help us begin to overcome some of the worst diseases inflicted upon us by nature. Today, it is the COVID-19 pandemic, the closest parallel to the Spanish Flu, that is changing human responses in ways we would never have suspected just four months ago. For example, companies making alcohol spirits stopped production to turn to manufacturing hand sanitizers. Universities turned classrooms into experimental manufacturers of ventilators that cost hundreds rather than thousands of dollars. When an Italian hospital ran out of ventilators, a local 3D-printing company, Isinnova, began manufacturing 3D-printed adapters for ventilators for one dollar per unit, 1/10,000th the price if purchased from the manufacturer.
The challenges we face when given lemons is to make lemonade, or something even better. Innovations coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to lead to positive global changes. Whether it be new policies, new medical resources, new art, or literature, something new will come from our present adversity. So what are you spending your social distancing time doing?
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April 22, 2020 – Last year I was given media credentials to attend Collision 2019, a conference held here in Toronto that consisted of hundreds of exhibitors from across the planet, numerous talks and interviews with some of the brightest minds on the planet, all focused on shaping the future. The conference occupied the Enercare Centre at Exhibition Place, a venue that required a good set of walking shoes. I interviewed a number of interesting and innovative people, and visited with a number of startup companies that I wrote about here at Techso Mogro blog. I’ve kept in touch with many of them since.
This year, however, because of COVID-19, Collision 2020 decided to cancel the physical event and replace it with Collision from Home on June 23rd to the 25th, a virtual conference of speakers and new business technology startups which will be broadcast and streamed to digital screens around the world.
The speakers’ list reads like a who’s who of celebrities, political leaders, and high technology honchos. The exhibitors, however, are less familiar to those who will book tickets for the event. These are organizations and companies, many in the startup phase. Some are seeking exposure. Others are looking for funding. All want to become the next “big thing.”
I’ve counted 42 countries so far from the online exhibitors’ list. They cover a wide range of applications, services, and products in six different categories:
Among the exhibitors, you will find artificial intelligence (AI) applications for a wide variety of purposes and including both deep learning and machine learning. There are a number of business-to-business (B2B), supply chain and logistics management startups.
There is software for mining on the Earth and hardware for mining the Moon.
There are cloud computing, blockchain, virtual and augmented reality, computer vision, remote learning, robotics, cybersecurity, VPNs, and social networking applications.
There is technology for the oil and gas sector, for autonomous vehicles, construction, industrial maintenance, genomics, telemedicine, and many other medical technologies.
For companies seeking collective intelligence assistance or crowdfunding, there are new startups providing the necessary tools.
For online presence, there are web developers, helpdesk providers, data analytics companies, dashboard developers, customer relationship management (CRM) tools, and online sales solutions.
Companies focused on agriculture, food management, and the environment will be on virtual display along with developers of energy efficiency technology.
You will find fintech and financial solutions companies, online retail and consumer behaviour applications, and online legal tools.
There is even a pet owner to veterinarian (pet to vet) matching application.
And there will be angel and venture capital investors seeking companies that they believe can be winners in this environment of constant disruptive change.
In many respects, it will resemble last year’s physical show which had an enormous hall filled with new startup vendor exhibits from all around the world, and a number of stages for speakers, interviews, and panel discussions. Now all of the show is to be online reflecting the need for social distancing in the fight to stop the COVID-19 pandemic from spreading further.
Purchase tickets to participate from anywhere on the planet. Pick the speakers you want to hear, revisit those speeches when you want (something you couldn’t do while at the physical event). And be connected to others in attendance as well as exhibitors through the Collision from Home app.
This online version of Collisionfollows the 2019 Toronto conference, where more than 30,000 were in attendance. It will be interesting to see how well the conference works as an online event. If successful, the conference itself may become the next “big thing” as the post-pandemic world looks at ways of delivering events that normally require thousands to fly or drive to a specific site, producing tons of greenhouse gas emissions along the way and taxing our ability to mitigate global warming. When the organizers pull this off, described by The Financial Times as the world’s biggest tech conference, it will create a paradigm shift that could impact other international events and even political party conventions. If in 2021 we are still dealing with the pandemic, will the Consumer Electronic Show go virtual? Or will CEBIT in Germany? Or what about the Republican and Democratic National Conventions slated for the summer. Collision could deliver the realization of the promise of the Internet as never before. You’ve got to love the attempt and cheer the effort. And I will be virtually attending to write about it.
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The article written by Rani Molla points out that the idea of working from home may become institutionalized even after the COVID-19 pandemic has passed. Will working remotely become the norm here in Canada and elsewhere around the world? Will we even need the big overhead of bricks and mortar office space in the near future?
A survey this month by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), reported that more than 34% of workers not yet laid off were commuting virtually by working from home.
Were businesses investing in employees’ remote workplaces? Whether employees were using home computers or company systems such as laptops which they were allowed to bring home, it is clear that “the crisis has forced people to try out new approaches, some of which may be unexpectedly efficient or effective. In either case, lasting changes from the crisis would be expected.”
The implications for the long term are many. The structure of a wide range of industries may permanently be altered. And distancing may no longer be seen as a problem for those who are hired since the tools and technologies to work remotely will become permanent fixtures in business environments.
In Rani Molla’s article he notes that “prior to the pandemic, the number of people regularly working from home remained in the single digits.” That is likely not to be the case in the post-pandemic. Companies that hadn’t invested in remote work because of the pandemic now have out of necessity. To get their return on investment, it is more likely that working from home will become more the norm.
At-home offices will alter work-life at central offices as well as opening up office space. Instead of open concept rooms filled with cubicles, for social distancing purposes alone, workers will enjoy much greater office living space. Distancing will necessitate this for health and safety reasons. Expect private offices to become more common in centralized work environments. Staggered hours will allow for distancing as well.
The Brookings Institution, a U.S. non-profit public policy organization based in Washington, DC, describes the COVID-19 pandemic as an extreme test that will remake all of our assumptions about the workplace environment. They describe a surge in teleworking and ask whether the technologies in place can handle the scale of the teleworking requirement in light of the pandemic. Their research shows that in 2018, about a quarter of the U.S. workforce worked part-time from home. They also note that almost 10% of working-adult Americans lack a home broadband connection which obviously makes telework from such environments impossible. That’s why a commitment to telework requires high-speed Internet connectivity for all who work from home.
Telecommunications and telework strategies go hand-in-hand. And although telework cannot replace all face-to-face business activity, and the need for social interaction in work, the technology answers the needs clearly established by the pandemic.
There is no telling how long the current pandemic crisis will last. Businesses who do not redeploy to working from home strategies may find themselves out of business once the pandemic ends. It becomes critical, therefore, for companies to embrace telework and provide training and resources to accompany the change.
In the policy resolution the reasons for telework go far beyond just answering the pandemic. With a national telework strategy it will:
Very few in high-tech and biopharma would suggest that there could be a cause and effect link. That’s because these industries, as have so many other business sectors, have fixed upon global supply chains for their operating model. To think that in pursuing lower labour costs by going overseas, that businesses could become facilitators for a global pandemic. What a jarring conclusion to reach.
So is it true?
Apple, Cisco, Dell, HP, Intel, Google, Pfizer, GSK, Roche, and Novo Nordisk, to mention a few of the big North American and European high-tech and big-pharma companies, all have invested in China where they do both research and manufacturing. Last year these were some of the many companies pressured by the United States to leave the country because of the trade and tariff war started by Donald Trump. With the war cooling down in recent months, the reshaping of those supply chains has been minimal, hardly putting a dent in the trading of goods and services.
For the most part here in 2020, China’s technology supply chain remains highly integrated with global manufacturers. Even in the face of a tariff war with the United States, the world’s largest trading nation, China, continues to be fueled by globally integrated supply chains. And where trade goes, so go humans and the diseases they carry.
Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak was referred to as a transport and manufacturing hub as significant as Chicago in a Bloomberg News, January 23, 2020 article, which described the role that city played within China. Wuhan was the centre of a series of complex supply chains providing just-in-time manufacturing for high tech and big pharma. Wuhan’s leading industries included optoelectronics, chip fabrication, flash memory technology for smartphones and computers, parts for the automotive industry, and research and manufacturing of pharmaceutical products all tied to 230 of the Fortune Global-500-listed companies.
Along with the flow of manufactured goods, there was an equal amount of human traffic. From business development to engineering staff, this free flow of people to and from China and Wuhan, in particular, did for the COVID-19 virus, what medieval trade between the Orient and Europe did to spread the Black Death.
In an article published in eWeek on April 2, 2020, author Charles King, describes our one advantage over the global pandemics of the past. Those high-tech and big pharma companies represent organizations that can help us fight back by detecting and analyzing COVID-19 at a pace much faster than was possible in the 14th century, or even early in the 20th century with the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. The speed of research and the ability to crowdsource knowledge from a global community focused on both treatment, and a vaccine cure is unprecedented in human history.
King states, “When confronted with extraordinary events, it’s commonplace for people to look to the past for guidance and insights.” Global trade relationships have in the past produced both the good and the bad. In the present day, this continues to be true. Let’s hope we have learned enough to not have a repeat of a COVID-19 event in the future. It is the right time for these businesses to rethink their global supply chain strategies.
