Tag Archives: Coronavirus

It’s about saving lives

Chances are that you will know someone who contracts Covid-19. If you are unlucky, you will know someone that this Coronavirus kills. That’s already the case for me. My dad’s cousin, my second cousin, was just a year older than me. She went on holiday from England to Bali, arrived without symptoms, and was diagnosed 4 days later. Six days after that she passed away. She had some significant health conditions which contributed to the affects of the virus. There are many people who do.

You probably keep hearing that we need to “flatten the curve”, what this really means is that we need to save lives.

Here is an excellent, detailed article that goes over the numbers. The reality is that no country will escape the effects of this virus, but some will have significantly higher or lower mortality rates… and we can all do our part to decrease that number by helping slow the virus down. We can’t increase the capacity of our hospitals in a significant way. We can help them not reach that capacity in an overwhelming way.

In this article by NPR, Drew Harris, the population health researcher at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia who created the widely shared graphic below, compares the concern about overburdening our hospitals to rush hour on a subway. We need to get everyone on the subway trains/in our hospitals when they need to be there. However, missing a train is different than not getting a respirator when you need one. Italian doctors are already doing wartime-like triage in hospitals, deciding who lives or dies because there isn’t enough equipment to save everyone.

Do your part to flatten the curve and you will be doing your part to save lives!

*UPDATE – These simulations show how to flatten the coronavirus growth curve – From the Washington Post

Good people

While you wouldn’t know it from watching the news, our world is filled with many amazing people. Some gestures are big, others small, but so many people are inherently good.

In the last 24 hours:

  • I watched a video of a senator in the US demanding that testing for Coronavirus be free regardless of a person’s medical coverage.
  • I saw a news clip of exhausted doctors and nurses working tirelessly in hospitals in Italy, where the Coronavirus cases are growing exponentially.
  • My wife received an adorable thank you letter from a student, thanking her for ‘pushing me to my limits and above’ and for being ‘a teacher I will always remember and love’.
  • I received an update from a former student who is going into family medicine because she ‘loves the idea of getting to know patients over a long period of time… and being the ‘first line’ of care’, and thanking me for my influence.
  • A subscription-based podcaster emailed to say that if the pandemic puts anyone into financial need, they can email for a free subscription.

We are heading into a time of uncertainty, when our social and medical services will be stretched. Some people will be scared, others desperate. I hope that the good in people shines through, and that people will come together to support those in their community who are in need.

Novel ideas can spread from a novel virus

I travelled to China during the early H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic in 2009. Concerns were low in Canada and there wasn’t a travel warning at the time. On my flight to Japan there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. However after leaving Japan, when we landed in Chana we were asked to stay on the plane and remain seated.

A team of people masked and dressed in white came on board and used an infrared thermometer to take our temperatures. Two rows in front of me a person that was coughing and unwell, and her husband, were escorted off the plane first. I remember thinking, ‘Oh man, sucks to be you!’

I thought that was it, but after leaving the plane I guess that we passed a heat sensor camera because I was tapped on the shoulder and pulled aside. A lady in a mask, shining a red light on my forehead, took my temperature and said, “Too hot.”

To say that I was freaked out is an understatement. I was visiting for 1 week to learn about my future job as a school Principal, and visions of quarantine in a foreign country, where I don’t speak the language, swirled through my head. Fortunately, a second reading was done and I was fine. I think a coffee right before landing, plus the fact that I run a little hot anyway, might have been the initial trigger.

Still, that shook me a little. I wondered about why these measures were not happening elsewhere? The response in China seemed preventative, while in other countries it seemed merely reactive. I’m not sure too many lessons were learned and the novel Coronavirus currently spreading across the world will likely have a significant impact on our globe before things get better. Yet I don’t mean that to sound like foreboding, and ominous foreshadowing. This virus will run its course, then some valuable lessons will be learned that were not learned by viruses like this in the past. Lessons that will hopefully help prevent the severity of a future pandemic.

—

I read in interesting article, “How the coronavirus will shape the future” and want to expand on one section as it relates to schools and education:

If the growing novel coronavirus outbreak becomes a lasting pandemic, it could accelerate fundamental changes in the economy, politics and the workplace...

Going remote: Videoconferencing and remote work have exploded as the virus has spread.

  • According to Kentik, a global provider of network analytics, videoconferencing traffic in North America and Asia has doubled since the outbreak began.

  • Led by tech firms like Twitter and Facebook, companies are encouraging and even requiring their employees to work from home, both to slow the spread of the disease now and prepare for the worst should offices be closed in a quarantine.

  • Many experts believe business leaders will come to see that central offices and face-to-face meetings are less vital than they thought. “We’re going to see that work can be tied to productivity anywhere rather than putting time in an office,” said Peter Jackson, CEO of the digital collaboration company Bluescape.

At Inquiry Hub Secondary every assignment is already available online. Students have access to Moodle, Microsoft OneNote, and Microsoft Teams from any connected computer or mobile device. The Microsoft tools also have immersive readers and dictation tools to support students no matters where they are learning from.

Using Teams, I can invite colleagues or students into a virtual classroom, sharing video including either my or a student’s screen, and we can all link to resources in the Chat. Students could collaborate and do presentations, submit work, and get feedback without entering a school. That creates a lot of opportunities that weren’t previously available. I have no idea if this is something that will become necessary in the coming months, but in some parts of the world schools have already been closed, and so the idea that this is possible becomes a topic of discussion.

Discussion about the possibility of remote learning invites questions about blended learning where some of the work, both asynchronous and synchronous, is done remotely. It also invites conversations and questions about what we should be spending our time on when we do get together?

We might not have to change anything to deal with the Coronavirus, but the fact that this virus is impacting the world the way it is might impact how we think about operating our schools and businesses in the future. What excites me isn’t the idea that more work might be done remotely, but rather the ideas behind what we do when we connect face-to-face, and how we use that time? Will we focus more on collaboration, team building, social skills, construction and creation of projects, and more personalized support? How will we engage students in learning when they might not be coming to school every day?