Understanding a false dichotomy: We have been presented with a dilemma that doesn't exist.

I first became aware of middle management's favorite rote cliche when I was around 23 or 24, when my boss Miguel would often throw out this phrase: "A failure to plan is a plan to fail." This quote, and all its derivatives, are often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, because why not give Benjamin Franklin even more credit? It's not like he totally over-achieved already. He was a President, and he invented the telephone. That's wild, man.

I have been told we're "not supposed to be political" on LinkedIn, but a pandemic impacts every single business in some way, so I feel like understanding this pandemic from the perspective of business planning is worthwhile. I don't think any manager or business owner wants their employees sick and/or dying, as it's bad for morale, hurts productivity, and also is... you know, literally death. I have been told death is bad.

For the purposes of this narrative, I'm not going to use CDC guidelines, as I feel they're a bit confusing, and they also miss the point of how we plan around a pandemic. Lately, I have been reading more of the ECDC guidelines (think CDC, but with funny European accents), which give us a better picture of what our temporary outlook should be.

Initially, the US response behind COVID-19 was to "flatten the curve" because we knew our hospitals and medical infrastructure would be overwhelmed by a massive influx of patients. I don't think any medical professional disputes that their ability to treat the virus is very much limited to the equipment available to them. Thus far, aside from a few hot spots, the United States was spared from a wholesale outbreak that overwhelmed every state. For that, we should be thankful.

The second part of "flattening the curve" was missed, and I believe that's probably because for the past several weeks, we have all been inundated by the media with so many opinions, that it's difficult to parse the bigger picture. The bigger picture was always going to be the next step.

Okay, we have halted the immediate spread of a global pandemic. Now what do we do?

In my line of work, I get to measure nationwide hot spots, and I manage ad budgets accordingly. One of my clients is the largest wholesale supplier of bagels in North America, and I manage their entire ad spend, along with their marketing team. I'm not going to show you the exact heat map for their click through prediction rates (because that'd get me in trouble), but it probably wouldn't surprise you that people from New York and New Jersey like bagels, and don't need much coaxing to purchase bagels. In fact, compared to the rest of America, people from the Northeast purchase disproportionately more bagels than any other region. (Y'all like bagels. My people like cornbread. Get your carbs however you love them.) If I follow the trend line in customer purchasing behaviors, I can almost precisely predict when the Snowbirds will leave their West Side condos, and head down to Boca Raton for the winter.

On a related note, information security professionals will tell you that they're not in the business of prevention, but rather mitigation. Hackers are determined to breach your company, and play-toys like Bugbounty will only do so much to help tame what drives hackers to cause chaos. There will never be a way to secure your company from all threats, which is why infosec is one of the most thankless jobs in technology: When you're doing it right, no one notices or even thanks you. When you're doing it wrong, everyone notices and wants you fired. (My apologies to everyone at US Airways, Major League Baseball, Cadillac, and Jeep. I thought it was funny at the time.)

The secondary goal of "flattening the curve" was measurement, management, and buying time to plan a response.

Reading the ECDC guidelines for responding to a pandemic, it goes a bit like this...

Step 1: Halt everyone and everything. People are stupid variables that like touching everything, sneezing on things, and otherwise making things hard to control. Wash your damn hands.

Step 2: Measure. That means measuring who is infected, hopefully understanding when and where they got infected, and then making educated guesses about how to manage population centers.

Step 3: Prevent transmission as much as possible. This is the most difficult step, because it's the most granular. However, this planning step is something that will be familiar to anyone in infosec. You know where your weak points are in your infrastructure, and your goal is to make sure those weak points are accessed by a limited number of people. You also want to make sure that anyone accessing those weak points has proper clearances, and is doing so from a computer you control, with access that can be cut, if needed.

Step 4: Innovate. This is the most difficult part of the equation, because we are facing something that society hasn't seen in a century. (And the last time we faced a pandemic of this scale, we were also busy fighting WWI, so we weren't as focused as we should have been.) We are going to need new ways of testing people, faster, at lower costs. Those types of innovations can come from anywhere, and anyone. Sure, it helps to have a background in manufacturing medical technology, but some of the solutions we need may be cheaper than we understand.

Bioengineers at Stanford were able to create a malaria test in 2017 that costs only 20 cents to manufacture, using only paper and string. Today, each test may cost a hundred dollars, but that doesn't mean we can't flip that assumption on its head, and find a different way to perform tests.

The false dichotomy that has been perpetuated by the media, not just right-leaning media, is that we face a choice between keeping things shut down, or re-opening the economy.

The goal was always to re-open the economy, but to do so under an entirely different set of rules, with testing, tracing, and measurement plans in place. Our "new normal" until a vaccine is in place -- well, it means we're often subjected to random testing, and it is my understanding that nasal swabs are uncomfortable.

The answer all along has actually been a meme we all known and love: Why don't we have both?

The past two months for us, and three months for Europe, Southeast Asia, etc -- they have been the planning period, where governments have put their heads together, and scrambled all the resources they have, so when things do re-open, we keep people safe.

European governments have been heavily focused on contact tracing, because Europe is like the United States in one key way: Everyone can move between (most) European countries freely. If your home country is part of the Schengen Area, you're free to live and work just about anywhere in Europe. (Yes, it's much more complicated than that, but let me live, because I'm trying to make a bigger point.) If you're in Germany, and you need to travel to Austria for work, you can. The same goes for Arkansas and Florida. If you work for Wal-Mart in Northwest Arkansas, nothing is stopping you from flying to Seattle for a meeting. The same goes for South Korea and Japan. Usually, it's fairly easy to travel between South Korea and Japan, but for the past few months, a temporary halt on travel was put into place. This doesn't mean these restrictions will last forever. The point was to understand where outbreaks were happening, so their respective governments could effectively manage a bad situation.

Our extreme social distancing measures were never going to be permanent, and they were never designed to be long-lasting. Limiting our contact and activity was simply the pause button we used -- a management tool. The long game was always going to be opening the economy slowly, in a measured way, with checkpoints along the way to make sure our healthcare system would never become overwhelmed.

You don't have to know much about me to know about my personal politics, but in this case, my personal politics barely come into play. A virus is unique because everyone can get sick, and it's not a situation where your political inclinations make you more or less safe.

Right now, many states have made the decision to go back to normal, but are doing so without the dramatic changes they needed to make. We know what happens when we go about our lives without proper protection in place. Ask any New Yorker how they feel about "going back to normal" -- they'll probably tell you, loudly, with swear words.

If we want to re-open our businesses, what we need isn't available at a state level. What we need is a federal mandate and subsidy of regular, random testing. We need mobile testing. We need simple solutions, like South Korea's "testing phone booth". (It's not a phone booth. It just looks like one.) We need subsidies for people who can't return to work, simply because the nature of their work is impossible during a pandemic. (I'm looking at you, owners of professional sports teams. Don't think for a second putting 20,000 people in an arena is going to happen until a vaccine is available.) Operating our economy at 80% may be the new normal, and sure -- 80% might suck, but it's a hell of a lot better than 50%.

In closing, I'd like to take you back to sex education, the same way you learned about it in middle school.

For a small percentage of the population, abstinence works. For everyone else, there is a variety of risk mitigation available to you. Condoms, birth control pills, shots, rings and IUD's -- they all accomplish different things, with varying degrees of efficacy. Used in conjunction, they're highly effective at preventing disease and pregnancy.

Abstinence, in this analogy, is your 75 year old grandmother. For the time being, it's wise for her to stay at home, avoid people, interaction, and remove herself from social interaction entirely. Why? Because we know she's at higher risk, and the risk mitigation available won't protect her.

For the rest of us, it's going to be masks, gloves, hand-washing, drive-through testing clinics, and (hopefully) innovation in at-home tests. Using a variety of prevention and measurement tools, it's likely most of us will avoid contracting COVID-19.

There's a reason you can't buy fishnet condoms, or Tic Tac birth control pills: Because prevention isn't an aesthetic choice we make, and lying about what is effective prevention will only result in undesirable outcomes. Ask Shawn Kemp how he managed to have 11 children with nine different women, and I guarantee you his answer won't be, "Effective use of condoms and always making sure the women I'm dating are using birth control."

Maybe you disagree with me. Maybe you think I'm totally wrong. If that's the case...

I am currently seeking an A-Round for my new startup, "Crotchet Condoms" -- it's exactly what it sounds like. They're manufactured from high quality wool yarn, handmade in America, and use a workforce that typically is forgotten. Rather than grandma crocheting you a sweater, we have grandmas from all over America, taking your orders, and customizing your Crotchet Condoms to fit your exact size. You wouldn't buy a suit right off the rack, would you? So why use a one-size-fits-all latex condom? Unlike latex, wool is hypo-allergenic, and breathable. When you're all done, simply rinse in warm water, and lay flat to dry.

Then, there's the Crotchet Condom Guarantee ?: Our condoms work at preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases 99% of the time, on 7% of the occasions you use Crotchet Condoms.