The COVID 19 Project tests the hypotheses that citizens, provided with information and tools can be trusted to address the complex problems in their community and nationally.
Get Involved
TAKE PART IN OUR EFFORT
Citizens and civil society organizations interested in supporting and joining the COVID 19 Project are welcome.
Join us for our online event at the occasion of the beginning of the Citizen Commission (Details to come)
The COVID-19 Pandemic Ecosystem
Overview
The challenge of The COVID-19 pandemic requires a well-formulated, coordinated effort that addresses the complexity of the ecosystem* as well as to leverage our understanding of the institutional challenges that must be identified and overcome. We are motivated by and are testing the belief that given the right tools and framework, citizens, patients, consumers, healthcare professionals, public servants and politicians, working together can achieve great results addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and related challenges facing our nation.
Systems thinking is a way to clearly illustrate the complex ecosystem of the COVID-19 pandemic and to highlight the various stakeholders, their roles, and dynamics. We believe that using systems thinking to map the challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and to provide a coherent method to intervene in these systems. Additionally, mapping of complex systems can bring a new understanding of the needed change and provide tools for the various stakeholders especially citizens to target the problems that impact our communities.
Community
The Federal Government
The Executive Branch
The President
Surgeon General
HHS
CDC
FDA
The Military
The Legislative Branch
State Government
Governor
Health Department
Education Department
Attorney General
Legislature
Citizen
Politcal culture
Local Government
Mayor /Commissioner
Public Health Department
Police Department
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Mainstream Media
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Social Media
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Digital Platforms
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Local Media
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Personal Media
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Science Reporting
The Private Sector
Business
Stock market
Employers
The Virus: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 Up Close
Goal: To provide an up-to date overview of the Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and how it causes COVID 19.
The understanding of the virus is increasing rapidly. We hope to update the section as more scientific data becomes available.
Coronavirus is the name for a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as SARS.
The new disease that emerged in China in December has never been seen in humans before the current outbreak.
It's been called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) by the World Health Organization and causes an illness that's been named COVID-19 .
Features of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2
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R0 or “R-naught”—the average number of new infections generated by one infected individual. . The number has since settled around 2.2 (the R0 for the seasonal flu, for comparison, is typically about 1.3).
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Number of droplets
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Lethality
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Course days
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Length to symptoms
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Length to all clear
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Mutations
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Seasonality
Audio Interview: The transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, looking at new evidence from Iceland and from the Diamond Princess cruise ship.
The Host: Features of the human host
Goal: To provide an overview of the role of individual factors that contribute to infection, the outcome for the person, and the infection of others.
Host features
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Medical condition: Respiratory, Cardiac, Immune difficulty
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Are patients with hypertension and diabetes mellitus at increased risk for COVID-19 infection? Lancet March 11th, 2020
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Living situation: Crowded, generational
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Immune function
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Economic and social
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Racial and ethnic
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Smoking: A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that Chinese coronavirus patients who smoked were more than twice as likely as those who didn’t have severe infections from COVID-19. And smoking has been identified as a factor in patients who became ill in 2012 with MERS, another coronavirus.
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Investigating the likely association between genetic ancestry and COVID-19 manifestation
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Symptoms of COVID-19 appear to be partly down to genetic makeup, researchers at King’s College London have discovered.
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The finding is based on data collected through the COVID-19 Symptom Tracker app, launched by the team last month.
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Genome wide Association Study of Severe COVID-19 -19 with Respiratory Failure
43% of U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Are Linked to Nursing Homes
Host -Coronavirus Features: How do social, political and environmental factors impact the COVID-19 pandemic
Goal: Understanding the interaction between the virus and the host in order to create interventions that stop the spread of the virus leading to the disease. To best understand the mechanisms of the interaction in order to limit the severity of the illness.
Background: While it is spreading exponentially without public health informed measures to slow down the spread, the number of people who are exposed, become infected, become symptomatic and experience the severe manifestation of the COVID 19 and require enhanced limited health care resources can overwhelm the system’s capacity. By understanding the interaction between viruses and host we can have a greater likelihood for success.
Environmental features
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Density
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Pollution
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Public Transportation
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Mass Events
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Demographics
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Political leadership
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Political ideology and culture
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Senior Residence
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Temperature and UV
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Jonathan Kay in Quillete COVID-19 Superspreader Events in 28 Countries: Critical Patterns and Lessons
The Media: Informing the public, and public opinion during COVID-19
Goal: The goal of the citizen commission media stakeholder focus is to explore the challenges of and provide a journalistic framework that can enhance the performance of the media. The approach addresses the many challenges facing the media in the digital era.
The Media: Mass communication/ Press/ Journalism
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Mainstream Media
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Social Media
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Digital Platforms
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Local Media
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Personal Media
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Science Reporting
Blog: Setting the stage for the media in the 21st century: The Challenge and Opportunity of Digital Technology and Social Media for Western Democracy
The Government: Federal, state and local governments creating a more perfect union
Goal: The COVID19 Pandemic Federal and State Ecosystem Perspectives provides an overview of the various public and government stakeholders who are tasked with creating legislation, scientific research, law enforcement, treatment, regulatory, monitoring that impact the pandemic.
The International Community
WHO: World Health Organization
The US Federal Government
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The President
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US Surgeon General
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National Institutes of Health (NIH)
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National Institute on Infections and allergy
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Department of Defense
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The Army Corp of Engineers
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The Federal Reserve
National Academy of Medicine: Institute of Medicine
The Military
The Legislative Branch
State Government
Local Government
Learn more about the Government
The Public Health Eco- System
Goal: The public health system is at the front lines of recognizing and combatting pathogens such as the one that caused the COVID19 Pandemic. Operating on multiple levels from local to global, the various agencies should be well positioned to recognize the threat, identify the cause, lead the mitigations, containment, eradication strategies.
The Global Response
The US Federal Government Response
The COVID-19 task force
CDC
The State Government Response
The Local Response
The Medical ECO- System: The COVID-19 Challenge
Take Action
Check list
Goal: The public health system is at the front lines of recognizing and combatting pathogens such as the one that caused the COVID19 Pandemic. Operating on multiple levels from local to global, the various agencies should be well positioned to recognize the threat, identify the cause, lead the mitigations, containment, eradication strategies.
Preparing for the COVID 19 Pandemic
National, state and local regulatory agencies
Business Partners: Supply Chain
Hospital and Heathcare Networks
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Governance
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Leadership
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Beds
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ICU
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PPE
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Ventilators
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Trained staff
Moving Past the Pandemic
Goal:
By November 2020 the major impact of the COVID 19 Pandemic will decrease in the US leaving behind social, economic, educational, health care challenges, unlike Americans, have faced in a century. How shall we respond to the disparities that have disproportionally caused deaths and morbidity in communities of color? How shall we address the economic impact on individuals, businesses, communities and the nation?
Background:
It is well known that work plays an important role in the lives of individuals' families, communities, and the nation. Moving past the Pandemic will require diligence to address the economic, social, and psychological trauma. It can provide an opportunity to explore different social experiments. Address social determinants such as poor housing conditions are often accompanied by neighborhood-level conditions that limit access to health care, risk-reduction information, and treatment alternatives, which are protective resources and can disrupt behaviors that ultimately lead to despair and its pathology.
The Private Sector Ecosystem
Goal: To understand the role of the private sector in the natural course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Take Action
As a fellow citizen, I invite you to take part in the COVID-19 Citizen’s Commission. Based on the framework of the Morbidity and Mortality (M & M) Conference used in the medical setting, this endeavor provides citizen-oriented tools so that people can more effectively collaborate and address complex problems.
The Citizen Commission will examine publicly available information and documents related to the origin, response, and communication of events occurring since the Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) was identified December 2019, in Wuhan, China. When appropriate we will invite relevant stakeholders to participate.
Additionally, we hope to create a framework for dialogue within the public sphere to sustain a conversation for this and other current and future challenges in our national body politic and more generally the global community.
Take part addressing COVID 19 Pandemic
The Citzen Commission