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1. Amid many discussions about comments about the need for more testing, a few thoughts.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/503758-trump-quips-that-he-told-aides-to-slow-the-testing-down-for-coronavirus
2. Many biotech, pharma groups are racing to develop a much needed vaccine to protect us against covid19. Vaccines are the long-term solution to covid19.
But, to date vaccines have had no impact on our fight against covid19 except to give hope.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
3. Incidentally, recent studies are indicating that immunity might be short-lived from natural infection which if true for vaccination derived immunity, then seasonal vaccination campaigns, like those for influenza, might be necessary.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0965-6
4. Without a vaccine, our main tools for fighting covid19 are public health measures - social distancing, hand hygiene, masks, cough etiquette, etc.
5. Data are fundamental to public health. Refining public health measures are driven by data. If we are to shift effectively from population wide mandates to targeted, precise measures, data will be critical.
6. Unfortunately, we are fighting covid19 with excel spreadsheets and fax machines.
https://www.theonion.com/report-fax-machines-still-pretty-impressive-if-you-thi-1819572922.
7. Thank goodness for groups like @covidTracking, @USDR, @linuxphFoundation, and many others that are volunteering their time, stepping up to help, and providing data services during the pandemic.
https://covidtracking.com
8. It should be noted that @CSTE, @himss, @aphl and others have called for data modernization for months prior to the pandemic.
https://www.himss.org/resource-news/himss-co-leads-campaign-modernize-public-health-surveillance
9. CDC realizes that data modernization is mission critical too. Dr. Anne Schuchat has compared the CDC data capabilities to a model T on the information super highway.
https://www.debeaumont.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/DSI-White-Paper_v15-Spreads.pdf
10. Funding for public health is needed, and its been under-resourced for >20 years. Former Secretary Mike Leavitt makes a compelling plea for sustained funding for data modernization to fight covid19 to develop data systems to guide responses.
https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Leavitt5.pdf
11. Thankfully the Congress has provided an initial down payment on needed resources to modernize data technologies, personnel, and science in public health.
But we need to do more and we need sustained funding.
https://www.himss.org/news/cares-act-modernize-public-health-data-infrastructure
12. In addition to data modernization, public health needs modernization of data ANALYTICS. @cmyeaton, @johndrake, and many others have called developing robust advanced analytics for outbreaks
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6629683/
We live in the country that has lead the data revolution and built companies like @facebook, @apple, @google, @netflix but you wouldn’t know that by looking at public health and healthcare data systems. We can do better, we must do better.
