Tag Archives: Infrastructure

Bill Gates in 2015: “We Are Not Prepared”

Blogs, ,

Bill Gates TED Talk

Five years ago Microsoft founder Bill Gates hoped that the Ebola epidemic of 2013 would be the wake-up call that triggered mobilization towards preparedness. In his April 2015 TED Talk Gates said,

If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, but microbes.

Such prediction becomes credible when we compare efforts at preparing for war vs. efforts at preparing to fighting epidemics.

… we’ve invested a huge amount in nuclear deterrents. But we’ve actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic. We’re not ready for the next epidemic.

Preparedness for war entails reserves that can be called into action, mobile units that can be deployed where conflicts arise, and on-going assessments of logistics. Such preparedness does not exist in public health systems.

An effective public health system needs not only trained and flexible boots on the ground, but also coordinated scientific and technological support, as Bill Gates suggested.

But in fact, we can build a really good response system. We have the benefits of all the science and technology that we talk about here. We’ve got cell phones to get information from the public and get information out to them. We have satellite maps where we can see where people are and where they’re moving. We have advances in biology that should dramatically change the turnaround time to look at a pathogen and be able to make drugs and vaccines that fit for that pathogen. So we can have tools, but those tools need to be put into an overall global health system.

In his 2015 talk Bill Gates was speaking from the world’s experience with the Ebola epidemic that started in 2013. Ebola was contained by 2016. Except for isolated cases elsewhere, the Ebola epidemic mostly affected populations in West Africa.

Even more difficult to contain without effective public health systems in place are pandemics, which unlike epidemics spread rapidly globally. Epidemiologists estimated deaths from two recent pandemics: the 1968 Hong Kong Flu caused one million deaths worldwide and 100,000 in the U.S., and the 2009 Swine Flu 575,400 deaths worldwide and 12,469 in the U.S.

Today we are suffering through COVID-19, not a strain of influenza, but a coronavirus in the same family as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, first emerged in 2002, deaths worldwide 813, fatality rate 9.5%), and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, first emerged in 2012, deaths 858, fatality rate 34%).

Preparedness for COVID-19 is minimal in most countries. In the U.S. there is scarcity of tests and protective gear, insufficient hospital beds, inadequate logistics for keeping grocery shelves stocked, no plan to quickly move school aged children from crowded brick and mortar facilities to small groups or on-line instruction. We are left with lockdowns that will result in massive economic and social disruptions.

Effective public health structures that defend populations against disease cost money. However, such public structures are not built by government throwing money at schemes like Medicare for everyone or universal health care. They are built by intelligent research and development, flexible logistics for people and equipment, absence of excessive red tape, and ample market competition that brings costs down.

Also, the costs of effective health structures must be compared to economic upheavals incurred by lockdowns and absences from work as we are seeing with COVID-19.  As Bill Gates said,

I don’t have an exact budget for what this would cost, but I’m quite sure it’s very modest compared to the potential harm.

Today we are seeing the harm brought about by unpreparedness.   Hopefully after COVID-19 is past, we will see determination towards preparedness.

The Keystone Kops Response to Crises

Blogs,

The Keystone Kops

There is nothing humorous about anyone getting sick or dying. Therefore, it is imperative that we all forcefully call attention to societal failings that place people at risk. At present people around the world are dealing in one way or another with the spread of the new virus COVID-19. As is often the case, it takes an emergency such as COVID-19 to reveal how prepared or woefully unprepared our social institutions are in containing major risks. Such revelations go beyond basic preparedness, but point to structural failings that arise from greed, corruption, or just plain lack of common sense and civil discipline.

Popular culture has a symbol for instances where a great deal of uncoordinated and unproductive activity takes place without appreciable positive results: The Keystone Kops.

The name has since been used to criticize any group for its mistakes, particularly if the mistakes happened after a great deal of energy and activity, or for a lack of coordination among the members. For example, in criticizing the Department of Homeland Security’s response to Hurricane Katrina, Senator Joseph Lieberman claimed that emergency workers under DHS chief Michael Chertoff “ran around like Keystone Kops, uncertain about what they were supposed to do or uncertain how to do it.”  Wikipedia

Disciplined Responses

Reports have surfaced comparing the “best” responses to COVID-19 (relatively rapid effective containment) against the “worst” (undisciplined efforts that fail at rapid containment).

Wired published an article illustrating “best” responses. Countries that are exhibiting effective responses are Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. They learned from SARS and H1N1, and used that knowledge to build and maintain permanent public health infrastructures that can be activated in emergencies.

Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea all share the characteristic of using their experiences with prior outbreaks to build a system—and then sustaining it. None of them had to deal with the fear of being a first-mover, of being the first city or country to institute seemingly severe countermeasures. Their countermeasures were already in place, waiting to be reactivated.

In other words, these countries were able to leap into action with effective weapons against COVID-19. Again from the Wired article:

Here’s how those Asian countries are doing it: According to a new article in The Lancet, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore all developed their own tests for Covid-19 as soon as the genetic sequences for the virus were published, and ramped up production of the materials necessary for those tests. (That’s a sharp contrast with the US, which still doesn’t have enough tests for nationwide use, and may actually be running out of the materials necessary to make them.) Each country instituted controls over immigration (a controversial move that the WHO recommended against, but that they did anyway). They rejiggered their national financial systems to make sure people didn’t have to pay for tests or treatment. (Easier in places where most health care is already nationalized, to be sure—and in some more progressive American states like California, Washington, and New York. In fact, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo even ordered paid sick leave for quarantined people and free hand sanitizer.)

Keystone Kops Type of Responses

The article in Wired gives a good picture of effective responses to pandemics (by the way, “pandemics” do not denote severity of an infectious disease, but the disease’s ability to spread globally). However, the last sentence in the paragraph above merits examination.

The “more progressive American states like California, Washington, and New York” excel in Keystone Kops type of activity, in addition to lacking any semblance of effective public health infrastructures.
California, for example, spends countless millions on its ever growing homeless-drug industry. Streets in major cities like Los Angles and San Francisco are home to thousands of drug addicts and mentally disturbed individuals. Diseases like typhus and leprosy have been detected among this vast unsheltered population. Response? Governor Gavin Newsom declared on Sunday March 15 that private hotel and motel rooms will be used as necessary to house homeless individuals at risk of contracting COVID-19.

Additionally, the Governor wants all individuals 65 and older not to leave their home. Good luck, seniors, obtaining your food, water and medicines. Not that the rest of the California population is doing all that well obtaining supplies given that many grocery shelves are empty.

The homeless are not the only “invisible” inhabitants in the U.S. Undocumented immigrants welcomed in sanctuary cities and states might not be too anxious to be identified. They, along with other working poor, might not have the luxury or “working from home” like their “professional” brethren.

Indeed, as the article in Wired says “Don’t tread on me” Americans are not as willing as residents of Singapore or South Korea to abide by a highly disciplined lifestyle when necessary. So our Keystone Kops leadership have no means of containing pandemics other than invading private property to house those at risk, closing schools but ordering libraries and recreational facilities to take in children of parents who need to keep on working to survive (let that sink in), and urging people to stay home.

BART Considers Free Tickets to Remedy Dwindling Ridership

California Blog, ,

News from the San Francisco Bay Area’s rapid transit system is that ridership off-peak hours and weekends is dwindling, which impacts the BART District’s financial bottom line. In response BART is considering targeting that ridership with free and discounted promotional tickets, as well as a means-based ticket program.

Such response from marketing professionals is often routine. However, such response from BART is bizarre.

49% of people who responded to BART’s survey question “Why not ride BART on Weekends?” indicated concern about crime on BART (26%) and homelessness on BART (23%). There appears to be no follow up question whether if tickets were free potential riders would ignore these concerns, even if they could imagine the possibility of more homeless people and more people bent on crime also taking advantage of free rides.

BART ridership 2

BART Board Meeting February 13, 2020: Rebuilding Ridership

35% of respondents to the question “Why not Commute on BART?” indicated stations were too far from where the respondents lived. Would free tickets overcome that concern, even when BART officials eye removing “park & ride” spaces to get commuters out of their private vehicles, and even when there might not be viable ways for BART riders to reach stations other than by personal vehicle?BART survey

BART Board Meeting February 13, 2020:  Rebuilding Ridership

BART is not alone as a transit agency in its loss of revenue, but it serves as example of ravages inflicted by a cluster of intractable problems plaguing California:

* High costs of construction, operations and personnel leave little room for services such as providing sufficient security guards to ensure safety and custodians to ensure cleanliness.

* Astronomical housing costs that force people to move as far into suburbs as California’s stringent urban boundaries rules allow, where principal transit lines do not reach and local transit is scarce or non-existent.

* Large and growing numbers of homeless individuals that seek shelter in transit stations and ride public transit, especially during off-peak hours.

Homelessness is particularly problematic. Numbers are so large that they affect all social and economic sectors. Although BART finances are precarious, the agency can no longer focus on delivering effective transportation riders would be pleased to use. BART is now expected to divert resources away from transportation and toward dealing with homeless – and often mentally and emotionally impaired – individuals in stations and trains.

California officials fondly envision the death of the personal vehicle and the birth of a regional transit network serving Bay Area residents. At present, such vision falls under the category of cognitive dissonance.

Not Just Water Conservation Bills

California Blog, ,

Drought

Western states like Arizona, Nevada and California do suffer from droughts, necessitating at time severe water conservation measures.  However, at present California is the only state that has chosen to deal with its water challenges mostly by imposing draconian and now permanent restrictions on water use.  Meanwhile the state’s water infrastructure, such as reservoirs and canals, is either mostly neglected or on environmentalists’ chopping blocks.

The Just Vote No Blog recommends AB 1668 and SB 606:  Far From Just Water Conservation Bills, published today in California Political News & Views.

The article questions whether California legislators are searching for solutions to the state’s water shortages, or are simply thirsty for control over their constituents.  Why are legislators charging residents the highest taxes in the nation, and then letting the states’ infrastructure go to ruin?

California residents need to challenge AB 1668 and SB 606 before these bills become fully implemented during the next two years.

Transportation Funds Suffer Some Major Bait & Switch

California Blog, ,

Bait and Switch

Central Valley State Assembly Member Jim Patterson made news a few days ago by calling attention to funds being diverted from lane widening on Route 99. Patterson attributed the halting of road work to Gavin Newsom’s Executive Order N-19-19 signed September 20, 2019, which states in part:

The California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA) is directed to invest its annual portfolio of $5 billion toward construction, operations and maintenance to help reverse the trend of increased fuel consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the transportation sector. CalSTA, in consultation with the Department of Finance, is also directed to align transportation spending, programming and mitigation with the state’s climate goals to achieve the objectives of the state’s Climate Change Scoping Plan, where feasible. Specifically the Governor is ordering a focus for transportation investments near housing, and on managing congestion through innovative strategies that encourage alternatives to driving.

With uncharacteristic speed, the State Transportation Agency published on October 4 its 2020 Interregional Transportation Strategic Plan (ITSP), proposing to repurpose “uncommitted funds” from several current projects, including Highway 99 work, and retain “$61,331,000 in uncommitted 2020 ITIP programming capacity to be held in reserve for priority rail projects and other priorities aligned with Executive Order N-19-19.”

Since Assembly Member Jim Patterson’s clarion call, other entities have taken up his warning that California has just witnessed a major case of bait and switch and other cases will soon follow.  For example,

ABC30.com reported Highway 99 expansion funding cuts elicit angry reactions.  This news segment featured Assembly Member Jim Patterson saying,

This is classic bait and switch. We were promised streets, roads and highways and we are getting everything but.

In an Opinion piece in the San Bernardino Sun of October 13, The Gas Tax Bait and Switch, Jon Coupal, President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said,

In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order that has redirected gas tax money to fund railway systems and other projects, rather than repairing and upgrading the state’s broken highways and roads. The governor and Caltrans claim that the diversion of funds is justified by the need to do something about climate change.

Like Assembly Member Jim Patterson, the Just Vote No Blog expects to see a lot more cases of Bait & Switch in the name of climate change.

Observing the Great Blackout of 2003

Blogs,

ottawablackout014.jpg

Photo:  The Atlantic, August 13, 2018

August 14, 2019 marks the 16th anniversary of the Northeastern Blackout of 2003. On that day, over 50 million people in the Northeastern United States and in parts of the Midwest and Canada found themselves without any electric power. Fears of another 9/11 immediately surfaced, especially in New York City.  However, the culprits were over-loaded power lines that brushed against some overgrown trees on northern Ohio.

Alarm software failed to prompt human controllers into action, power was not re-routed among affected regions, resulting in a massive blackout that for some residents lasted three days.

Although sadly there were some deaths and injuries attributed to the blackout, thankfully residents met the challenge with civility and good will, thus avoiding greater harm to people and property.

Why Should We Remember the Great Blackout of 2003

Disasters like the Northeastern Blackout, as well as tragic events such as the 2018 Camp and Paradise wildfires in California, should be reminders of the need for private citizens and legislators to pay attention to the nation’s infrastructure.

Overloaded power lines, overgrown trees adjacent to power lines, neglected equipment, and outdated or poorly deployed software are major causes of blackouts, as well as wildfires. Blaming climate change and pouring tax money into green deals won’t help. Blaming power utilities or clamoring for government-owned suppliers won’t help. Using tragedies to advance agendas won’t help.

Even when there is specific legislation purporting to address power grid challenges, such legislation is often questionable, wasteful or both. The recent return to the U.S. Senate of Senator Angus King’s (I-Maine) proposal to replace digital power nodes with analog ones could serve as example. The Senator’s argument for proposing (in 2017, 2018 and now in 2019) a return to analog power systems is that the U.S. needs to protect its power grid from a cyber attack such as the one Ukraine suffered in 2015. True, no way to digitally attack what is not digital. However, with analog systems, there is no way to deal with massive and immediate movement of power when that is necessary to prevent or curtail regional overloads.

We Need To Focus on Infrastructure Not On Tweets

We have become a nation of Tweets. Why are we Tweeting about some legislator’s racial profile instead of his responsibility to keep his state free of crime and rats? Why are we Tweeting about Pacific Gas & Electric’s profit “greed” instead demanding that inspection crews follow up on aging or neglected equipment? Our infrastructure is crumbling before our eyes, including some of our power systems, but we focus on agenda-driven and/or distracting tactics instead.

Take Action of August 14, 2019

The Just Vote No Blog suggests observance on August 14 of the great Northeastern Blackout of 2003.  This would be a good day for everybody to contact their legislators and suggest they stop squabbling and start working on the increasing demands on our power grids.