PierredeFermat

I don't think we should just give up to the fact that it's normal to have errors coming from these big Orgs operating at such a sensitive front. Look what some small errors and delays are doing.

If an organisation gets too big to keep its act together, perhaps it's time to make it more decentralized and dynamic (the original proposition).

I also honestly don't think working as a volunteer would really get you to understand how something like the WHO is being actually run.

I'm not an expert (would never say otherwise). But the world is full of experts locked in dogmas and lacks those couragious enough to break free, look stupid and try new things.

> What WHO does is intergovernmental public health coordination

I'm afraid that's a normative and oversimplistic statement.

Have you seen, at least, the WHO Twitter/FB feeds? It's acting as a teacher for the global public. So "intergovernmental public health coordination" is definitely not its only job, which it doesn't seem to be doing well. There's no disagreement that it's inherently political but in any case, that wasn't a function I proposed to replace in the first place.

> The decentralized version is just local public health authorities acting without the WHO.

That actually goes with the original proposition and that's the way to go. But the early warning system for these authorities is broken - they got their intel too late.

I totally agree that startups aren't the solution to every single problem we have on the planet but I'm not sure you've tackled the original proposition, rather you expressed a general concern/dissatisfaction and that's understandable.

Software-powered != Software-only. Nonprofit != Startups. Propositions != Complete, bulletproof solutions

I don't think it's an ignorant opinion. How do you imagine it being solved?

It's a bit disappointing that all the discussion's momentum/energy here got wasted on the letter of the proposition and not the spirit.

Clearly and pragmatically, anyone certified to work directly with patients at a hospital, clinic, etc. is "medical staff" regardless of where they are.

I think you already pushed the scenario too far. The best measure to the example you gave is clearly the one we arrived at now. Complete lockdown. Worldwide. There's no discussion about its subjectivity. But the original point/motivation was to avoid getting here in the first place: identify and report potential breakouts early enough. The WHO was too late on this because of the way it's set up and that contributed to getting us to the extreme example you mentioned.

As for subjectivity per se, that's a separate philosophical discussion to me and doesn't have to do much with epidemics. The initital proposition was simple but the discussion drifted (as expected); let's find a better and faster way to prevent outbreaks altogether. There can be no subjectivity/relativity about this - it's a universal imperative.

Data/reporting scope could be made anonymous and more local; on a city/town level (e.g. "Dec 22, 2019 | Severe flu case reported in X district of Wuhan (30°34'21.2"N 114°12'30.0"E) - potential for outbreak").

At high level of exposure, as you said, the Chinese gov may track down anyone behind such report, despite the anonymity. It may even block investigative entry/inquiry to the entire city. How do we solve that? I don't know but I suppose that, in the grand order of things and following this pandemic, we shouldn't be living in a world where any government is allowed to work against such public health efforts and get us into another quagmire that we could have simply avoided, which again rolls back to international relations, politics and trade and is tricky to solve but shouldn't stand in the way of trying these things out. We can't simply give up to the way the world is set up at any point in time.

I don't see the problem with taking stances. The very act of thinking about such thing is a stance by itself.

You can simply take stances that would reduce harm, avoid collapse and (optionally) maximize benefit for everyone. The current stance of WHO doesn't seem to be in that realm and something could/should be done about it.

There's no action without a stance.

You simply report/label on a very local level (city/town level) because that's what will really matter for further action. If necessary, report coordinates.

In the broad definition of what makes something "political", that is definitely the case. No disagreement.

However, to not drift this discussion into definitions, I'll agree on your definition of "politics", which - correct me if I'm wrong - is any activity that involves decision making.

Let's assume, in that or any case, every decision and action to be political. Then the important question here becomes: how do we make political decisions that would ensure the most transparent, decentralised, instant and honest reporting? Would that mean trusting all medical facilities/staff of any kind or excluding some?

Point is: if every decision is political, then let's make the good ones with the best possible outcome, regardless of their nature/definition.

Close coordination with the Chinese government :)

No, there would (almost) be no policy. That's the point. It's one planet - one health. Which country it is shouldn't matter much.

If a severe case was reported by medical staff in Taiwan, North Korea or where ever it would/should instantly show as potential breakout warning signal on some webpage or dashboard, without having to travel weeks through broken bureaucracies and press.

True. How do you think this could be overcome? Crowdfunding? Donations?

Not entirely sure yet. However, that's exactly why verified, anonymous data reporting would be a good starting point. But I assume your concerns are more about [the difficulty of] neutral funding?

I very much agree here. Have recently ran part of the data through some NLP (incl. AWS Comprehend) and nothing signficant came out. Ended up doing simple free-text or keyword search and only landed on one interesting finding so far: https://twitter.com/yazijys/status/1240465780715683841

Been compiling this list à la patrickcollison.com. The core goal of this is to consolidate good practical and scientific knowledge on the topic in one easy-to-access place/repo, especially that there seems to be a lot of noise currently. Would love to get [critical] feedback from HN and/or connect with anyone who's interested in helping out.

The project is also open source; https://github.com/nukleosome with strong focus on encryption/security, in case anyone is interested in contributing

You'd be asked for a consent that includes the research description & details.

That's quite inspiring. Do you mind connecting via email? (Not a media request; just to learn and exchange some ideas)

Is it possible to reach out to you by email?

Thanks for the thorough comment!

It's definitely a hefty undertaking and that's why I was keen to know what HN thinks. Is there anyway we can get in touch (i.e. Email)?

Why do you think so?

Nope. It's clarified in later tweets how the graph was built.

How come? It's quite clear. Did you try downloading the image? It's a relatively big one

Not sure if it's a direct causal relationship. dang can better tell.

The graph in this case ended up being just a base layer for some interesting internet stories, while paying some tribute to HN for the great place it is.

But also HN is clearly not a startup and probably hasn't spent a cent on marketing.

In fact, as far as I've learned, a lot of the work here involves stopping bad actors/users rather than finding ways to get users.

Here's one on G Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NJ9bio4gz8AJ7RTmYGDKXiWJLCm...

Let me know if this works for you

You'll need to save the image in order to get it in full size. Sorry there's no other way around this.

Perhaps it's worth noting that this is from 2018

It's amazing that a similar concern is raised/discussed here just couple hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19788088

Any chance we could connect over email or something?

I don't think the problem should be approached from a "great market" perspective. The market for Hacker News is quite niche. Yet, it has become a great community for the curious of us. Almost hardly replaceable by any of the communities/websites who have great market potential and wider audience. So niche is probably a good thing here.

Driving a critical discourse (on something like Health or Hacker News) between scientists, journalists and the general public can potentially create more appreciation for scientific progress (which might often be dull and slow indeed) and provide a feedback loop for how science is/should be communicated or even done.