I think this is an excellent idea. At which stage is this effort on the side of @markomanka and @simonaferlini?
I am living in the middle of a very interesting data point, seeing that Sweden has the same evidence as anyone else but has decided to swim against the current.
Hopefully something useful can come from this. Looks like the need is there.
they are having a call with Alberto tomorrow so we will know more after
@marina @alberto
I found a fast track funding call that could be a good fit for the work above.
Up to 45K Eur for Covid related projects, evaluation and response on a weekly basis
Super simple appilcation process, you fill in a template that you find here and upload it in the same place:
EOSC site: COVID-19 Fast Track Funding | EOSCSecretariat
Summary:
Some further notes after talking to @simonaferlini:
The epidemics has an epistemic dimension. Phylosophically, the idea of “evidence-based medicine” (or -policy, or -whatever), forgets that evidence, in science, is not dogma. It is the opposite of dogma; it comes in to change, and enrich, our way of thinking. It renegotiates the analysis of the situation with respect to the rest of reality. In an interlocked system, reality has many ways to kill you: if you shut down the economy to fight the epidemics, people might die anyway, because infrastructures fall into disrepair. It does make sense to weigh the health benefits of lockdown against its economic costs. This is not necessarily the same thing as being inhuman, or greedy.
@hugi I see a connection with FHM and more specifically medical practitioners in Sweden, e.G Akademiska? 
One approach I am proposing is to do community building as network weaving, open mobilisation and structuring of info (including storytelling) as outlined here: What can we do to help your work and to help grow a network of mutual aid efforts? - #5 by noemi
Another stakeholder group (that could back the aforementioned lobbying efforts) are small businesses who are hit very hard by all this. Plus technologists that can build privacy enhancing alternatives to bad solutions currently invading our spaces. I’d put all this under democratic healthcare.
Both of those will unfortunately be completely impossible to get in touch with for the foreseeable future, maybe in the fall, but I think they will have plenty of way bigger offers on the table. We can think about it though.
I think I’ll let this topic evolve a bit more and might jump in later again. I won’t have enough time to do the desk research and manual writing, but I could contribute that for a single, compact topic of interest.
On the philosophical side, I have this to say about the current crisis response in Europe:
People are so stuck in old rules, laws and regulations. Still think that there was substance and merit to them, while we only had them in times of peace as a means of liability negotiation between people. Technology can do so much more for us if we’d stop the bickering and lawsuits about tiny details – and a crisis is exactly for that. To throw the old rules out and do what is technically possible.
Illustrative example: In Germany they were running out of ethanol to produce hand sanitizer. At the same time, there are gazillions of liters of bio-ethanol used to make E10 fuel (10% ethanol, 90% petrol). But officials declined to use that 100% ethanol because “it does not adhere to purity standards for substances used in medicine”.
but you don’t have to drink the stuff…
Ok so we would need an additional role/work
Here is a newsletter from Data and Society that are actually calling for partnerships around this issue:
This week we’ve posted new work on [health misinformation ] and shaped broader conversations on how COVID-19 is affecting the intersection of technology and society, from human and AI, to the protection and valuation of human lives* amid accelerated supply chains.
For our community, we gathered better practices for ethical reporting on pandemics, and organized virtual power hours]) to support holistic digital community security while we’re all hyper-online. We’ve also taken pause to take care of each other, and ourselves.
Spot an opportunity for collaboration? Reach out to us at info[at]datasociety.net. The Data & Society team is here to help break down disciplinary silos, illuminate truths, and connect ideas.
AROUND THE INSTITUTE
“A public too fragmented to collectively trust health experts can’t hold an administration accountable for its lies. The grifters and snake oil salesmen are profiting now, but the uncertainty sowed today paves way for an oppressive power to take advantage of a fragmented society much more vulnerable to misinformation in the future.” — Data & Society Affiliate Erin McAweeney , Points
On Wednesday, April 8 at 5 p.m. ET / 2 p.m. PT , we’re teaming up with NEW INC for a virtual discussion about how creative practices evolve during precarious times . NEW INC members will give lightning talks about their projects at NEW INC and attendees will be invited to join the artists in a discussion about work, precarity, and art-making. Featuring members: [Foreign Objects])
, [Heidi Boisvert], [Mark Ramos], and [Ziyang Wu]. [RSVP here]
“The illusion of a contractor’s independence as plausible deniability and the right to be exploited by someone further up the chain needs to be undone. The insistence that dignity and life aren’t as essential as efficiency and market performance needs to be undermined with a social safety net that protects all people, including and especially workers most at risk, whether faced with a pandemic or simply faced with run-of-the-mill cruelties of capitalism.” — Data & Society Affiliate Ingrid Burrington , Points
“This is the moment for combining public health best practice with empirical research on misinformation, and to explore new ways to create public health messaging that is compelling, persuasive, and effective. It is also a moment of unprecedented mismanagement and misinformation being disseminated from the highest levels of government, and the problem requires a radically different approach to save lives and minimize harm.” — Data & Society Newsroom Outreach Lead Smitha Khorana , Points Bonus: Khorana also put together this guide for journalists on ethics and best practices for reporting on COVID-19.
“Race-as-algorithm in the present day is tied to the long history of creating migrant casual workers in colonial and later periods where casual labor was used to replace slave labor on colonial plantations in the British Empire, and as quick labor to reconstruct bombed-out German cities through the guest worker program. Focusing on the historical relationship between casual labor and racialization shows that firms that value race as a source of creative vitality remain complicit in racism against Indian tech workers within and beyond their walls.” — Data & Society Director of Research Sareeta Amrute , Science, Technology, & Human Values
“‘It’s very hard to use automation when you’re in an information environment where the information is always incomplete and changing,’ Robyn Caplan , a researcher at the nonprofit Data & Society, told The Hill, about how shifting to automated content moderation may make the problem of misinformation worse.” — Chris Mills Rodrigo, The Hill
Ping @noemi re the points above on work, do you want us to get in touch with Data & Society? If yes maybe @thornet can connect us? I seem to recall one of the foundation’s fellows has been working with them at some point?
Open letter from a few hundred Belgian health care workers: “all the government does is surveillance”.
I was referred to this discussion by a colleague in the UK, and happy to see the discourse going on here. In the US we are confronting a collapse of our medical and public health infrastructure that would have been unimaginable 5-10 years ago. Our Centers for Disease Control & Prevention have gone so far as to recommend bandanas as being “better than nothing” for protection. The public is left on its own to sift through conflicting pontificating by federal and state level officials or worse yet media outlets that are fanning the flames. A trusted, vetted source of reliable information both for the medical community and the public is greatly needed.
Would you agree with a few reports I have read asserting that the current administration has politicized the CDC in the way it controls its messaging and guidelines?
Most definitely. This politicization has taken mostly the form of taking the CDC out of its usual role of managing a situation like this. However, it has also involved controlling the messaging as you mention. Of course, this was also the case during the Bush II administration.
I read this morning that the Dept of the Interior in 2017 reversed a “bottom up” alarm-sounding policy that allowed National Parks to make local decisions about staying open in a crisis. Now they have to get permission from on high. Several parks asked for permission to close a few weeks ago and were denied. I saw a recent picture taken at Zion NP where a popular trail was loaded with people all rather close to each other as if nothing was wrong. While the President is was saying there was nothing to worry about, they didn’t want to make the parks look like they didn’t agree. This is using public health as a political weapon.
Yes. Sad.
Hello and welcome @FamDocDon! I guess @markomanka is facepalming right now about the bandanas.
Update: we set up a listening post to discuss some of these topics, specifically the bit about “fight the pandemic by repression and curtailing of civil liberties”, which happens exactly under the “better than nothing” banner. More information at the link below.
