The more seriously we take it,
the less serious it will be.
Dear Alliance community,
COVID-19 is a pandemic that is in our lives now. It is important for us to be humble, calm and respectful of the magnitude of the situation. Gathering our capacity to access our wisdom and courage, we are able to be still, listen deeply, and take intelligent action - step by step.
For me, I began to feel the urgency of the situation last Thursday, March 12th, when my wife spoke to a good friend about the need to be prepared - go get groceries, etc. - and my email inbox flooded with newsletters and updates from almost every list that I’m on.
Change flows through relationship at the speed of trust…
Trust being one of the core principles of the Alliance, I wanted to share the newsletter that I trust the most - from Stephen Dinan, CEO of The Shift Network. I have been involved in The Shift Network since it was first founded over ten years ago. They do great work, I have the greatest respect for them and I feel that Stephen and his team walks their talk, with integrity.
So, I wanted to share his email below - because it opened my eyes to the severity of this situation.
Also, Asher Landes, a good friend of mine, who is in my weekly men’s group as well as the Alliance Founder’s Circle, recommended that I listen to podcasts #190 & #191 from Sam Harris, so I am sharing the links here as well.
It’s easier to adapt when you…Think, Connect & Take Intelligent Action
THINK: Listen to this special podcast episode, Coronavirus / COVID-19: What can it teach us?
CONNECT: I will be facilitating a community dialogue next Tuesday, March 24th at 12pm ET, to support our Alliance for a Viable Future network in integrating this information in an empowering way and developing a game plan for yourself and your teams - personally, professionally and in your family and community. Click here to register on Facebook.
TAKE INTELLIGENT ACTION: Align with your integrity and express your values. Learn more below from these resources from people that I trust:
Emailed to me, from my dear friend and author of the Maeve Chronicles, Elizabeth Cunningham:
“And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.
And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed."
~Kitty O'Meara'~
“For the Interim Time”
When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,
No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.
In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.
You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.
The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.
“The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born.”
You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk, Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.
Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.
As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.
What is being transfigured here in your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.
John O’Donohue, from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, 2008
Article sent from my mother, who received it in a newsletter from Hazon:
I am struck by the wisdom of Anne Frank at this time - here are a few of her wise words:
“It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
“No one has ever become poor by giving.”
“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”
“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
Stephen Dinan, CEO of The Shift Network, in a newsletter on March 12th, 2020:
Dear Lev Natan,
I believe crises carry the seeds of opportunity if we approach them in the right way, which means clearly understanding the facts and strategizing a response that helps us emerge stronger and wiser on the other side.
Extensive research into the coronavirus pandemic leads me to conclude that the time is NOW to implement strong social distancing and protective measures to minimize the pandemic. Not tomorrow. Today.
It’s time to stop public gatherings everywhere we can so that we can slow the spread and gear up our emergency preparedness, as well as identify the large number of already infected. Every day we wait will cost lives.
For a sophisticated analysis of why immediate action is required, read “Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now” from a Silicon Valley exec who crunched a lot of numbers, concluding we need to implement measures like the Chinese did without delay. Or read “Cancel Everything” for a less technical assessment that leads to the same conclusions.
Below is more of a layman’s guide to understand and navigate what is upon us, with a focus on positive actions you can take.
The Big Picture
The first thing to address is why such apparently extreme measures are happening so quickly for what seems to be a relatively small number of infected people so far.
Basically, Covid-19 is a novel, highly contagious virus that spreads 2–4 times as rapidly as the flu, has a long incubation period of up to 14 days and can be transmitted by people with mild or perhaps no symptoms. It can survive an average of 4–5 days and perhaps up to 9 on contaminated surfaces as well. All of which make it very, very tough to contain.
It’s also more deadly than a regular flu by a long shot, particularly for the elderly and the health-impaired. It is currently killing 3.4% of those we know are infected but that could be an overestimate based upon the low testing frequency. South Korea has a death rate of .6% currently and has the highest rate of testing but has a lot of patients who are not out of the woods, as well as a younger population. So the death rate could end up in the .5–1% range, at least in situations where there is excellent testing and advanced medical care, which is not a given as this pandemic progresses.
Thomas Pueyo’s article offers a well-grounded analysis that shows that in places where the medical system becomes overwhelmed, the death rate trends towards 3–5%, or up to 10x what happens when things are kept more contained. In Italy, which has an excellent medical system, we’re already seeing triage situations where they have to choose who they let die because of lack of equipment (source). Their death rate is closer to 6% and it is clear they have not peaked.
Even the highly optimistic end of the mortality range would be 5-10x an average flu death rate, and the bad end is more like 30–100x.
The one piece of good news is that it seems to be mostly sparing children. Data from China show a death rate of only one in 10,000 children vs. one in seven elders over 80. The death rate is still only one in 200 for people 40–49. Here’s a chart by age. So it is mostly for the sake of our elders and those who are health compromised that we need to take immediate and smart actions, not based on fear but on a reasoned assessment of what is coming.
The current rate of growth in infections outside of China is around 2x every six days — some estimate that could grow to 10x every 16 days. It is varying some by country and availability of testing. Either one of these rates puts us on the trajectory for at least millions of global cases by April, at least tens of millions by May. This chart shows the trajectory outside of China, which tells the story visually.
Some epidemiologists are estimating 40–70% of the world’s population is likely to get it before we are done, which is echoed by Chancellor Merkel’s statement that up to 70% of Germans would get it. Run those numbers and even at 40% of 7.7B people at an optimistic .8% mortality rate, we end up with 25M deaths worldwide. If you boost the mortality rate to 2% or more, which many believe is more accurate, deaths more than double, with some estimates for total mortality globally as high as 100M. For comparison, total deaths attributed to World War II are 70–85M and that is over multiple years.
If things progress as rapidly as they are right now (80% of hospital beds in Lombardy, the hardest-hit province in Italy, are taken by coronavirus patients, for example), we will likely overwhelm most of the medical systems on the planet by May if not much earlier, and the death rate will increase not only from running out of equipment for coronavirus treatment but compromised treatment for other diseases. Around 10% of known cases so far in places like Italy are requiring hospitalization, and in China the average stay has been 28 days, which means an enormous hospital load in an already stretched system, not even counting the healthcare workers who will have to stay at home to take care of kids out of school.
Our main, urgent focus as a civilization thus HAS to be to immediately take actions to slow the spread so that the peak of the pandemic hits far enough out that we minimize the overwhelm of medical services. The slower the build to the peak, the better we can hope to weather this and the fewer who will die. That is what people mean by “flatten the curve,” which is depicted visually here. Regardless of our personal risk of death or hospitalization, we need to participate in slowing the spread for the good of our entire community.
It’s our civic duty to our community and our moral duty to our elders and the sick among us to delay the spread as long as we can.
Read this article from an Italian doctor if you doubt this or feel that if you are young, you will be fine.
Right now, we have 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people in the United States, of which perhaps 1/3 are currently unused. Even with temporary tents and conversions of other rooms, we’ll be hard-pressed to more than double that, particularly given the limitations of equipment like ventilators (160K in the U.S.) and trained staff. As the size of the outbreak grows, the quality of medical care available will diminish along with the staff available to handle the load. Supplies will run short quickly on everything from masks (only 12 million N95 masks right now for 8 million health workers, about 1% of what is needed in a full-blown pandemic) to protective gowns. With global supply chains disrupted, medical supply shortages will become even more acute.
In the United States, by my estimates, we’ll need to aim for a maximum peak of infections somewhere in the range of 2–10 million (depending on whether we can lower the percent requiring hospitalization and create more bed space fast enough, as they had to do in China) or the medical system will overload. We are currently headed for those numbers sooner than you might imagine based on Pueyo’s analysis.
If we are able to stretch out the peak closer to a year, which would be an almost miraculous success, the United States medical system might be able to just barely handle the load. The longer we stretch out the time before the peak, the more time we have to manufacture medical supplies, build temporary structures, convert buildings for bed space, etc. Assuming a vaccine arrives in Q1 of 2021, which is the best case scenario, we could just barely weather the worst.
To get to that “rosy” scenario, we’re going to have extreme containment measures resembling what China did (read this NY Times article about their innovations that led to success). And it’s going to happen ASAP because the more the virus spreads without testing and detection, the quicker we’re going to hit the peak and face massive health system overwhelm. There’s really no choice but for governments around the world, who are tasked with protecting their population, to enact measures such as Italy has now done with its lockdown of the country. Universities are shuttering their doors and going online in the United States, and businesses are following. Hungary just effectively locked down the country despite only having 13 cases because they see what is coming. The United States canceled air travel from Europe, etc.
These are not overreactions but necessary given the risks of delay. Every day will see more.
Expect all the social distancing practices to come to every town fast, from quarantines to bans on public meetings, all virtual work for companies, cancellation of schools, universities, and more. Basically, we’re going to have to grind much of our social interaction to a halt almost immediately in order to slow the spread enough to prevent catastrophic overwhelm of the medical system in particular. That will also help us catch up with the urgent needs for testing.
To be part of the solution, the time for you to do this is NOW.
Without massive, rapid intervention, we will escalate to a very high pandemic peak that might be 5–10x or more of medical patients our system can handle, leading to a much higher percentage who will die. Globally, that could mean 50M additional deaths if we peak fast vs. peak slower.
Practically, it means we’ll mostly be spending the vast majority of our time at home for the next few months and perhaps as much as a year and need to be very, very cautious in public settings to minimize transmission. This will have huge repercussions on families, businesses, and social and community life.
The challenges with much of the rest of the world emulating China is that they are a more centralized, monitored, and organized society that can move fast. They had a singular outbreak location that could be quarantined with an all-out mobilization of the rest of the country. South Korea was similar, with one primary location and rapid intervention combined with widespread testing. We can attempt to replicate this strategy but the virus is already widespread around the world as well as America (44 states and counting). Governments vary widely in their size, control, and ability to do what worked in China — and in many places, it’s too late to be 100% effective. So that even if one country is successful, there will likely be waves of reintroduction, unless every nation guards its border completely with total travel bans, which are hard to enact in places such as Europe or across the United States; plus, such moves will also paralyze the global supply chain.
It’s likely that all the countries of the world will move to shut their borders and halt plane travel. But unless one is an island, a boundaried peninsula (like South Korea), or a tightly guarded nation (like China), it will be very difficult to avoid reintroduction of the virus as different nations fail to contain it within their borders.
One piece of good news is that if China and South Korea can maintain their success and go into social isolation from the rest of the world with protected borders and no air travel, they are insulated enough geographically that they may be able to serve as the world’s factory for the essential goods and medical supplies necessary for the rest of the planet, which could be transported via ship safely, using the time at sea to reduce the risk of contamination.
What To Do
While the above facts are very grim and daunting at first, it’s important not to panic or go into overwhelm for the simple reason that fear leads us to behave irrationally, increase stress, and depress our overall system health.
The first priority is to immediately start social-distancing practices:
Greet with fist bumps, bows, or namastes.Avoid all small, medium, or larger groups and areas where many congregate.Stay home if you have any symptoms of anything.Apply the hygiene and social-isolation principles recommended by the CDC.
Second, prepare yourself on a logistical level with:
A 14-day minimum supply of non-perishable foods.Bulk medicines for anything you will need over the next six months if possible.Make sure you are stocked with everything from propane canisters to critical supplies.Be conservative with your finances and maintain as much cash reserve as possible for the likely economic shocks. If you don’t have any reserves, see if you have allies who might backstop you in a pinch. Get on Venmo or Paypal so you can pay people virtually for services vs. cash.NOTE: it’s imperative you do not hoard medical supplies that will be needed by the system such as N95 masks. Most of the interventions we need individually are low-tech.
Third, prepare your emotional and community support network:
Talk with your family and get everyone on the same page, discuss roles, opportunities, and needs as this scenario unfoldsGet to know your neighbors and convene small gatherings (with adequate social distance) to discuss where there are resources that can be shared or optimized, especially if critical pieces of your own infrastructure breaks. Make sure to have phone and email contacts for people.Families with children will likely need to isolate or create shared clusters of a few families that share the load of parenting and homeschooling for when schools are closed. Small clusters of 2–3 families will be easier to minimize the viral exposure and collaborate on self-protection protocols.Elderly or sick people will need to identify people, ideally young adults, who can shop for them, run errands, and handle things that might bring them into contact with sick people. Think of this as a kind of buddy system that can also provide some social exchange and some employment for the youth who are likely going to face financial hardship.Determine who is going to feel the most isolated in your network and make a plan for regular Skype or Facetime calls to check up on them.Identify people who are most likely to be vulnerable to the economic impacts and see what you can do to help them weather what is coming.Get on social platforms that connect you with neighbors, allies, and good information and resource-sharing (Zoom, Facebook, Time Banking, etc.)
The fourth imperative for a positive outlook moving forward is that you need to optimize your own psychological and physical health to boost your immunity and your resilience. You want to enter this window as strong as possible. The most basic recommendations for self-care:
Sleep at least eight hours every night.Get regular exercise, preferably outdoors.Eat a balanced and healthy diet.Meditate or pray daily to focus your mind and uplift your consciousness. Double down on your spiritual practices.Work with fears as they arise but don’t let them overwhelm you.Focus on opportunities, not doomsday scenarios: how can this situation cause positive changes that we and the world need anyway? This keeps us out of a hopeless victim mentality, which is bad for our health.
The basic principle here is that for you to be a positive example and support to others, you need to double down on practices of self-care so that you can uplift people who are going to be experiencing fear, anxiety, and scarcity.
Fifth, start looking for the opportunities of what you can do at home, which helps so you don’t feel bored and anxious:
Take up a hobby you have long wanted to do, or projects around the houseGardening has the benefit of providing fresh vegetables for the family and creating more local resilience the deeper into this we get.Have you long wanted to write a book? Start a blog? A podcast? This will be a good time to express your creativity.Take your cooking abilities to the next level.Take more online courses. Work on a virtual degree.Think of ways to monetize your skills, like coaching others on Zoom or Skype. Get entrepreneurial as there will be new opportunities to serve needs in a way that generates money for your family as well.Learn new computer programs and skills, from video editing to website design.Create a book club online with friends and do a video call every week to share what you’re reading. Create a reading list that will grow you in the months ahead — and you’ll actually have time to do it.Get recommendations from all the friends you trust for the “hidden gem” movies that you might have missed.Take time in retreat if your commitments allow.Have deeper, longer conversations with people you have let drop away in your life. Renew your social connections virtually.
Sixth, get involved in improve-the-world opportunities that this extended break from business-as-usual will provide. The more you focus on the opportunities, the more you unleash your creativity and focus on the positives. Some things that the pandemic may push us into that will help us in the long haul:
Creation of stronger and more resilient local networks, which prepare us for other disasters as well as giving us more connections in our community.Virtualization of work. Telecommuting will force more people to get creative in how we engage our work and spend less of our time commuting in the future. This will help to reduce our carbon footprint, which is important to address climate change.Source more food locally, and energy too.Reduce dependency on the global supply chain so we don’t buy nearly as many goods that are made on the other side of the planet.Shift from over-consumption to a more experiential and relational life.Deepen your personal growth practices and your ability to be calm in a tempest. This cultivates your capacity for more conscious leadershipIdentify emerging leaders in the community who can be nominated or recruited into future political roles, raising the caliber of our political leadership on the other side of this.Focus on what unites us rather than what divides us, even in a contentious election season (which will move mostly online). The pandemic can help us cross political divides as we work on shared solutions to community challenges.Cross-generational collaboration: since this will strike elderly populations hardest and the youth the least, it can activate more cross-generational relationships, which can help us in addressing other societal issues as well.New kinds of entrepreneurial ideas and visionary solutions will emerge. New businesses will be born. Necessity is the Mother of Invention and crises force innovative thinking. What could you incubate in this time of crisis that will demonstrate real value in the time after?This can lead more people to the recognition that we truly are one interconnected human family now and that we can only solve our challenges when we work together. In essence, this crisis can propel us into more of a sense of global solidarity and citizenship, which is the hallmark of the next stage of evolution. Our collective grief for those we lose will also bind us together.
The best-case scenario is ultimately for us to approach this global pandemic as something that calls us into a higher level of collaboration, creativity, and conscious living. We can emerge living more sustainably, peacefully, and enjoyably with our local communities. We can develop more skills for independent lifestyles. We can cultivate a higher-quality, less-expensive lifestyle with less stuff.
We can remember who we are and our true purpose, which is to ultimately leave our planet better for the next generation. Sometimes it takes an apparent tragedy to wake us up. The coronavirus pandemic can be a wake-up call if we face the facts soberly and move into immediate right action to mitigate the damage and optimize the upside.
Let’s write the story of 2020 as a year not solely as a global tragedy but as a difficult birth of a new way of being. Just as the toughest life experiences can catalyze our greatest personal growth, so can this planetary emergency lead to a real evolution of our species.
Other Resource Sites:
WorldoMeters.info to track cases and locations
With love,
Stephen Dinan