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If we're hemorrhaging healthcare workers, it is because we're not giving them enough support. We're spending $2+T on keeping everyone afloat in the US. We can

by ISL 7y ago

If we're hemorrhaging healthcare workers, it is because we're not giving them enough support. We're spending $2+T on keeping everyone afloat in the US. We can spend a lot of that money encouraging everyone to pitch in to fight Covid. We need ~hundreds of thousands of contact-tracers. If that were our only need, we could offer $1,000,000 to everyone who works as a contact tracer and have money left over. I'm already volunteering ~70% of my time on FindTheMasks.com. I can only imagine how much more work could be done if unemployed people were given the opportunity to work on fixing the root cause of unemployment!

TeMPOraL 7y ago
I'm not sure what contact-tracers do (seriously, I don't know, and I'd love a description of what this job entails), but I assume they'd need PPE and tests, both of which are generally unavailable due to insufficient manufacturing capability, supply chain issues and bureaucratic blunders. > We're spending $2+T on keeping everyone afloat in the US. I think it's best to consider this as less "money to help fight the pandemic", and more as "money to save everyone from starvation", or alternatively "money to have a country to save from the pandemic". > I'm already volunteering ~70% of my time on FindTheMasks.com. My strong and sincere thanks for the hard work you do!
- ISL 7y ago
  I think at least some of contact-tracing is a trained phone-banking system/call-center.
- SyneRyder 7y ago
  Contact tracing is about asking the patient where they have been in the last few weeks, identifying (tracing) every person they've been in contact with during that time, finding out where and how they caught the virus (ie the specific person they caught it from), and also finding and immediately quarantining everyone the patient has had contact with. It's not a process that necessarily needs PPE, more the ability to go through someone's Google Location History data and make lots of phone calls to people. Australia is even introducing an open source app next week (like Singapore has) to automatically collect Bluetooth IDs of nearby devices as a person walks outdoors, so people can be more easily traced & notified / quarantined if they've been in contact with someone who has been infected. Here's one of our Australian state government's explanation of contact tracing, in this case for Tuberculosis: https://www.healthywa.wa.gov.au/Articles/A_E/Contact-tracing-for-tuberculosis-TB https://www.healthywa.wa.gov.au/Articles/A_E/Contact-tracing... (Edit: and here's some info about the Australian and Singaporean contact tracing apps, if you haven't heard of them before) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/australias-coronavirus-contact-tracing-app-what-we-know-so-far https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/australias-cor...
icelancer 7y ago
>> We need ~hundreds of thousands of contact-tracers. If that were our only need, we could offer $1,000,000 to everyone who works as a contact tracer and have money left over. But it isn't. $350 billion in PPP funds ran out in 10 days and only covered maybe 5-7% of businesses. $500 billion was just authorized by Congress and will run out in the same amount of time and maybe cover 10% of businesses. Not even 20% of SMBs who need money due to the economic shutdown have received it - and this money only carries them across the finish line in a few months. We're talking about double digit trillions of dollars to float the economy into Q3, much less the healthcare system. This is either impractical (my opinion) or we lack the political will to do it, but in either case, it is super unlikely to happen.

by ISL 7y ago

TeMPOraL 7y ago

I'm not sure what contact-tracers do (seriously, I don't know, and I'd love a description of what this job entails), but I assume they'd need PPE and tests, both of which are generally unavailable due to insufficient manufacturing capability, supply chain issues and bureaucratic blunders. > We're spending $2+T on keeping everyone afloat in the US. I think it's best to consider this as less "money to help fight the pandemic", and more as "money to save everyone from starvation", or alternatively "money to have a country to save from the pandemic". > I'm already volunteering ~70% of my time on FindTheMasks.com. My strong and sincere thanks for the hard work you do!

ISL 7y ago
I think at least some of contact-tracing is a trained phone-banking system/call-center.
SyneRyder 7y ago
Contact tracing is about asking the patient where they have been in the last few weeks, identifying (tracing) every person they've been in contact with during that time, finding out where and how they caught the virus (ie the specific person they caught it from), and also finding and immediately quarantining everyone the patient has had contact with. It's not a process that necessarily needs PPE, more the ability to go through someone's Google Location History data and make lots of phone calls to people. Australia is even introducing an open source app next week (like Singapore has) to automatically collect Bluetooth IDs of nearby devices as a person walks outdoors, so people can be more easily traced & notified / quarantined if they've been in contact with someone who has been infected. Here's one of our Australian state government's explanation of contact tracing, in this case for Tuberculosis: https://www.healthywa.wa.gov.au/Articles/A_E/Contact-tracing-for-tuberculosis-TB https://www.healthywa.wa.gov.au/Articles/A_E/Contact-tracing... (Edit: and here's some info about the Australian and Singaporean contact tracing apps, if you haven't heard of them before) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/australias-coronavirus-contact-tracing-app-what-we-know-so-far https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/australias-cor...

icelancer 7y ago

>> We need ~hundreds of thousands of contact-tracers. If that were our only need, we could offer $1,000,000 to everyone who works as a contact tracer and have money left over. But it isn't. $350 billion in PPP funds ran out in 10 days and only covered maybe 5-7% of businesses. $500 billion was just authorized by Congress and will run out in the same amount of time and maybe cover 10% of businesses. Not even 20% of SMBs who need money due to the economic shutdown have received it - and this money only carries them across the finish line in a few months. We're talking about double digit trillions of dollars to float the economy into Q3, much less the healthcare system. This is either impractical (my opinion) or we lack the political will to do it, but in either case, it is super unlikely to happen.