Covid-19 or Corona: diagnosis, (conscious) solutions and systemic implications for us all

Pandemics. Scary, disruptive, fascinating, predicted, fast (exponential) and furious. 

In the last 25 years I was triggered by two particular pandemic movies Outbreak and Contagion. Actually, I saw the movie Contagion just in December 2019 for the second time. It prepared my mindset a bit with hindsight. Fast forward 4 months and we are all basically experiencing it, albeit to a lesser degree. 

Let us start at the beginning, at least for me. After following the global pandemic since mid January daily I have noticed a lot of fascinating phenomena. On January 27th I (@vangeest) tweeted this:

“I pray for the world and especially China for the containment of the virus. I am very concerned now due to incubation time, death ratio increasing and virality. Will impact the whole world in my view. I don’t understand why WHO is so hesitant, all signals are deeply red.”

The Dutch government back then did not say anything about this, at least publicly. The Dutch authority on pandemics called RIVM was tweeting soothing messages (“it will not impact Holland”, “we are fully prepared”, “lockdown is not needed, we go for herd immunity strategy” (without any significant testing done), “school can still be open as kids are not spreading the virus”, “democratic leadership is sufficient in a crisis”, “the average time in intensive care in hospitals is 10 days” (instead of the real 23 days), "masks are not useful to be used by citizens" (debunked by Nature magazine this week), “the virus is not asymptomatic” (it is for two to four weeks sometimes) etc.). They continued doing this until early to mid March. Mistake after mistake after mistake, at least 10 in a row. After that, all reversed. Similar dynamics happened in most -if not all- Western countries in different degrees (e.g. USA, Italy, UK, Spain, France). More importantly, even the WHO -the key (alleged) expert on this- was not as sharp as they should have been as it is their key responsibility to alert in time without false positives and false negatives. 

So a few critical questions popped up in my mind:

• How is it possible that our (political and medical) leadership seems to be so in denial, reactive, linear and passive?
• What does this crisis tell us about human nature, our institutions and our thinking and mindsets?
• What are possible solutions for the next pandemic or the next wave in the current pandemic starting in Q4 2020?
• What are the implications of Covid-19? Will we move to a different world? For how long if any?

The worst pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu of 1918 which killed tens of millions of people. Today, with how interconnected the world is, it spreads faster. But there is also the flip side: our global connectedness also allows us to diagnose the virus faster and create and distribute a vaccine faster. So which side is winning? Right now it seems the latter seems to lose but for how long? We can do much much better if we act as a Group Mind.

Diagnostics

So what happened in the last three months? A quick (and probably incomplete) diagnostics:

• Lack of awareness of the (unique) nature of the problem in most leaders (in other words, simple linear extrapolation of the past into the future)
• Complacency underlying an emerging systemic crisis (in healthcare in this case)
• Short-termism (leading to a worms eye view instead of a birds eye view)
• Fragmented (non-holistic) measures (first, washing hands was advised, followed later by social distancing, then sequential lockdowns etc.)
• Democratic leadership instead of top down leadership needed for a crisis
• Lack of knowledge of exponential phenomena, technologies and solutions 
• Lack of expertise in complex adaptive systems and system dynamics 
• Lack of secondary and tertiary effects analysis
• Lack of knowledge related to antifragile systems (decentralization, slack, simplicity, pull over push, long term thinking, automation etc.)
• Lack of statistical expertise related to a new fat tailed virus / problems (beyond a normal distribution; White and Black Swans)
• Lack of expertise of superforecasting to forecast the growth of the pandemic accurately (prediction heuristics applied scientifically by the CIA and others)
• Experts are sometimes non-experts due to their outdated models (healthcare capacity models and pandemic models who are at least six years old) 
• A governance structure (the highest level advisory board) which is dominated by a lot of vertically siloed experts like virologists, epidemiologists while ignoring the above mentioned horizontal integrative perspectives (complexity, exponentials, antifragility, superforecasting etc.)

The combination of the above more fundamental problems related to Covid-19 led to the following results:

• Herd immunity strategy above a (intelligent or full) lockdown
• Slow lockdown (instead of the required fast and decisive (intelligent) lockdowns) 
• Lack of testing at scale (virus, immunity) 
• Lack of inbound checks and quarantines (airports, borders)
• Scarcity of healthcare resources across the board 

Most experts now acknowledge the importance of dealing with all four results in parallel (quicker lockdowns, maximum testing as well as inbound checks) to have a solid answer to virus. This is probably the best approach medically, economically and ethically, even though you still have to be very wary of additional outbreaks of the virus after an initial lockdown. 

Solutions

Below I will share my perspective on possible effective solutions of the above stated fundamental problems related to Covid-19 and upcoming pandemics / health risks. 

• All emergent and current leaders should follow courses on complex adaptive systems, antifragile systems, system dynamics, systemic leadership, superforecasting and exponential phenomena, technologies, organizational models, thinking and exponential doing. Should be embedded in curricula of all higher education institutions going forward.
• Central national direction necessary, not at the hospital level (IC beds, masks, nurses, doctors, test kits etc.) 
• Create slack in healthcare system (redundancy at different levels)
• Avoid fragmented solutions or measure by applying systemic thinking from day 1 
• Create core team with not just vertical silos but also horizontal integrative expertise
• Mix the Chinese, Taiwanese, Singaporean and South Korean pandemic models > maximum testing, earlier (intelligent) lockdowns and inbound traffic screening (airports, borders). If you eliminate one of the three, it will not contain the pandemic effectively. You need to implement all three, at once. 
• Use new exponential technologies to prevent, diagnose and treat Covid-19 like China but in a more privacy friendly way (drones, computational biology, face ID, algorithms, robots, DNA sequencing, CRISPR, nanocoatings, satellites, thermal imaging cameras, audio sensors for dry coughing, GPS tracking & social graphs, WeChat for alerting services, QR code for health state/access etc.)
• Acknowledge that we don’t what don’t know, especially in a new phenomena like new viruses like Covid-19 (with a small HIV component combined with SARS). This necessitates we apply the Precautionary Principle maximally to prepare for the worst. Quick and bold. 
• No more JIT supply chains in critical healthcare or medical offerings (too much dependency right now with China and India for example)
• More decentralization of production via 3D/4D printings (of masks for example)
• Increase automation in healthcare systems as humans are vulnerable due to virus
• Simplify the healthcare system (way less bureaucracy)
• Better pandemic alerting system (IoT and people as sensors combined with AI alerts)
• Simulations of pandemics for better crisis management (see Bill Gates TED talk in 2015)
• Faster FDA approvals and testing (like is happening today with a new J&J vaccine for Covid-19)
• Testing vaccines virtually (computational biology and quantum AI combined )

In sum, a new mindset, perspective and level of consciousness resulting in a more holistic/systemic approach to the problem. On top, a new governance and organizational structure is needed. Finally, new exponential technologies should be used quicker and at scale. 

This also explains why I could have detected the huge impact of the virus / pandemic faster than the WHO and the Dutch government (see the quote above). I was prepared in thinking exponentially since 2008 (due to my background within Singularity Summit and Singularity University), knew about antifragile systems and Black Swans due to Nassim Talebs books, knew about pandemics in the last 20 years as key threat to humanity due to posts by Martin Rees and Bill Joy and my mindset was agile enough to see the interconnectedness of the world and China (supply chains, airlines) due to my personal and professional experiences in China. I was in a state of curiosity and not-knowing, of ambiguity, of looking for the progression of data points in China related to incubation period, lethality and infection rate R0. In short, I was prepared and woke which allowed me to interpret the same data in a different way relative to the mentioned institutions.

Implications

Yes, there will be massive economic, social, political and medical dislocations and impact due to Covid-19. I highly recommend you to follow the posts and videos by experts and deep thinkers like Nassim Taleb, Lex Fridman, Ray Dalio and Nouriel Roubini on the pandemic. Medically, it is likely this will take at least another 9-12 months based on the average vaccine production and distribution timelines in the past.. Economically, it will probably have considerable domino effects on unemployment, JIT supply chains, overleveraged companies, the housing market, banks, Euro crisis and more. Expect 2-4 years of sequential economic crises. Politically, we might see a (temporary) surge in more nationalism and populism due to economic recession / depression. 

This might look depressing at first glance but the upside in my view is that it will be the key catalyst to move to a better and more modern world and economy with significant benefits as shown below. At least, this seems to be the opportunity, for now. 

So how does our world look like after this crisis (as can already be seen today in some cases)?

• Back to the essence of life > skip the superficial. From form to substance. Less is more
• More family life (kids, partner, parents)
• More time, stability and focus due to less travel and less paradox of choice and FOMO feelings
• More (necessary) introspection, walks (alone) and meditation > more wisdom, purpose and Ikigai > will impact expectations towards work and workplaces > purpose driven organizations will accelerate after this crisis
• Better for climate and health due to travel shutdown (In India, Delhi -the worst air polluted city in the whole world- has lowered its air pollution index from 302 to 65 year over year in March this year)
• Reappreciation of peace, freedom, dancing, festivals, art (scarcity is value)
• Reappreciation of human interactions and intimacy (scarcity is value) 
• Reappreciation of nature, universe and silence (scarcity is value)
• Sustainability and climate change / crisis become even more urgent topics for all organizations and institutions
• Globally entangled (see the live global meditation sessions with hundreds of thousands of people attending organized by High Vibe and Love Out Loud)
• More 3D/4D printing and decentralized, circular production systems > more ownership, better for social and ecological inclusiveness and more antifragility 
• More self sufficiency > increasingly becoming the CEO of your own life incl. food, finance, education, health, goods, etc.
• More digitization (eCommerce, digital festivals, digital conferences, videoconferencing, digital education, digital health, digital government etc.), not just for the pandemic but also for climate change
• More fluid laws and regulation 
• More real creativity, less status (see also the shift away from Snapchat and Instagram to TikTok which is more about mastery and doing amazing things)
• Different relationship towards consumption (more conscious, less conspicuous; less ownership, more access due to home working)

In sum, the Covid-19 allows us to reconnect to our inner and outer nature and appreciate all that makes us uniquely human and self reliant as well as all experiences that elevate our lives. 

However, yesterday I saw both a powerful antidote and complement to my optimistic thinking above. It was written in Medium by Umair Haque, one of the better independent thinkers of our time in my view. Here is his counterargument:

“Forget social distancing. It’s treating the symptom, not the cause. The lesson of this pandemic? We need global systems, and we need them now. Healthcare for every life on the planet, decent food, sanitation, drinkable water. For every single person. And that’s just to prevent pandemics. In short, a radically reimagined global economy, made of genuinely life-expanding institutions, based on new paradigms. What about climate change and ecological collapse? For those, we need to build a whole new global economy. Yes, really. Not one where Amazon, Inc is worth a trillion dollars, while the Amazon itself is worth literally…nothing. Not one where Facebook and Google are worth trillions, while the planet’s rivers and reefs and oceans and trees have literally no worth. But one where nature has incalculable value, so it’s literally priceless, and therefore, no one can pillage it. Then there’s mass extinction. We’re killing off our very own food and resource chains, from the bottom up. The most vulnerable things are being killed off by an industrial-capitalist way of life. Insects, bees, birds, fish. What happens when the whole chain collapses, having had it’s foundations eaten away? Those sudden collapses of everything from our food supply to our medical supplies to our water supplies are going to make Coronavirus look like a happy memory.

Here’s what that really means. The rich world is going to have to give a lot of money back. Back to whom? All the parties it’s been exploiting for centuries. The poor world. The middling world. Nature, as in forests and oceans and rivers. Animals of every kind. Let me give you an example. The only real way to save the Amazon is for the rich world is give very a large sum of money to create the institutions and resources to protect and nourish it. Indigenous tribes could staff them — an Amazon Protection Agency, an Amazon River Bank, and so on — as rangers, bankers, tour guides, and so forth. But without that money to create those resources and institutions, the Amazon will continue going up in flames. Because the poor world doesn’t have the money — and it doesn’t have the money because the rich world left it poor, having exploited and enslaved and colonized it, for resources like the Amazon’s, for centuries. 

Capitalism has literally eaten through the planet, nature, and life on it. Now it’s beginning to eat away at the human race itself — it’s health, happiness, longevity. That is what Coronavirus really is. Why did Coronavirus happen? It’s predecessors, SARS and MERS? Because poor people in poor countries eat unsafe things they shouldn’t in unsanitary conditions, and then have no healthcare. A dude in Wuhan has contact with a bat, and a few months later, the whole world is locked down. Why is he poor in the first place. “The thing about today,” I continue, pushing my luck, “is that our problems are now different. They can’t be solved with more of history’s same: more capitalism, more supremacy, more abuse, more exploitation, more violence by a tiny portion of humankind to everyone and everything else.

Our problems are global. They exist at a species level. That dude in Wuhan didn’t have healthcare and decent food — and the bat didn’t have protection or rights — and the whole world crashed down around us. Every single one of our problems is like that. There’s no local solution to climate change. To ecological collapse. To mass extinction. To skyrocketing inequality. To stagnant economies. To societies being divided into ultra rich and new poor. To fascists and authoritarians blaming it all on the nearest powerless minority. Pandemics are just an example of that. 

Our first task this century is therefore building a global consciousness. Teaching the world, especially the rich West, to care about the world. Why does that hedge funder live a better life than that poor Chinese dude, by sheer privilege of birth, because of a long history of violence and exploitation by one’s side against the other? Equality, freedom, justice, truth, selfhood — these notions have no meaning whatsoever at the global level yet in human history.”

Amen! Amazingly powerful and nailing it. Thanks Umair….He is less optimistic about the lasting changes after the Covid-19 crisis. But he is also referring to the systemic transformation phase we are in, to the old and the new world, to power and incumbents and the emergent. His critique on capitalism is right but the good news today is there are now alternatives emerging like the Long Term Stock Exchange (LTSE) founded by Eric Ries as alternative to Wall Street. Similar initiatives are popping up in Europe and Asia driving a more socially and ecologically inclusive financial markets and KPI systems.

Bill Gates estimated in his now famous TED talk in 2015 about a possible global pandemic that it would costs us three trillion dollars. Now we all know the costs are significantly higher with the USA alone spending at least two trillion dollars. It is not imaginable that long term it will cost us globally around 16 trillion dollars as Ray Dalio predicted a week ago. That is 16.000.000.000.000 US dollars. I would call that a valuable lesson learned. Or lessons learned as shown above. Perhaps we should invest some of this huge amount of money in new global systems as Umair Haque is writing about? Might be worth the effort.

So what is the link of this whole post with conscious learning? 

Well, conscious learning is about systemic analysis and reflection. Let us all advocate a fundamental change in the decision making processes of our political and medical leaders. Furthermore, the crisis might be a trigger to end / change the Age of Decadence (link to previous post with that name on this site). It is the ultimate Wake Up Call, also taking into account the other challenges we have to deal with like climate change and how we deal with ourselves, each other and nature. As Umair Haque wrote powerfully.

Finally, the crisis is a catalyst for our personal conscious learning process. To cut the wood, live from our essence inside out and appreciate the outside in in a fundamentally new way, at least for a short period and hopefully forever.

Did you enjoy this long read? I invite to look at The Unconference to attend our upcoming free Online event this Sunday at 2 PM CET on the topic above with 12 world class speakers like Sunny Bates, Loic Le Meur, Gerd Leonhard and more. It is about Covid-19 and the Future of Humanity, Work and Nature. Hope to see you there.