| I outlined a way to find out here but we can be more ant-like about it, and move forward with this.
This has a lot to do with Crawford Kilian's "60-foot rope hanging from the top of a 100-foot cliff" image. Folks on the ground may be, horizontally, quite far from the spot where the rope is hanging. Just where are they?
So, why don't we ask them to ask?
FIRST, we could give people minimal input on:
- what has happened in the past (pandemics are multi-local epidemics all over the world, they have happened without rhythm but on average 3-4 each century, each with their location on the "CAR x CFR" chart, and once they start in one place then the rest of the world can only "mitigate"),
- what is happening at present (H5N1 in many birds and some mammals, with different clades evolving),
- what might happen in the future (a low-medium-high CFR pandemic in a JIT/no-stock world), and
- the tools we have and how useful we think they are (NPI: isolation and quarantine and social distance and covering our mouths with things; Antivirals for some prophylaxis and some treatment; Vaccines which will be late and scarce at least with present technology and this may mean a couple of years at least).
We could use a 30 minute presentation, maybe based on part of this summary if you like.
Then 15 minutes for Q&A just to make sure they understood the presentation (at least intelectually; taking it in emotionally is another matter). And the slides of the presentation would be left on a lateral wall which we now reveal.
SECOND, we'd ask them to ask 10, 20, 100 questions. We tell them where the slides are posted on the wall, and we give them 15 minutes, suggesting they do the first 2 minutes individually, and the rest of the time in small groups. They should write their questions, each on a separate piece of paper, in BIG letters.
THIRD, we offer tea (UK, remember?) and some of us place all the questions on the wall. We (the big "we", or a subset if we're too many) try and find groups of questions, remove obvious duplicates, try and synthesise a bit without losing meaning, and if some questions are similar we just put them together. If more questions come up that are felt to be important, we just add them.
FOURTH, we give each person 20 points (red round stickers) and tell them to "spend" their points in the questions they feel most important. They may give all 20 points to one question or 1 to each or anything in between.
FIFTH, we take one big picture of the wall, and several detailed ones, and produce a listing with scores.
FINALLY, we could place our powerpoint presentation (the "seed" of the conversation), the methodology, number and ages and jobs of people involved, and the results - all of that, in the open somehow. Preferably on the internet, please. Maybe here on this thread/diary/conversation? No need to give too many details of location etc, unless you want to. But the demographics and the methodology would be nice to see (essential, I'd say).
It's Sunday as I write this.
We could have results of 10 locations by next Sunday.
Anyone wants help with creating the "seed" presentation? For the UK it would be best to use their assumptions and complement them with comments by world experts on the open-endedness of CFR etc: "this is what UK plans assume, others say we really don't know".
We may be curious: "What will the questions be?"
My guess, but it's just a guess, is there would be "we need to know how bad it will be" questions. If that's the case, then there's need to address that with "we don't know, history shows this range, experts say they don't know, we're trying to think of it in terms of scenarios".
But that's the reply phase, which you can of course do locally, but by all means get the questions first! This is a bit like taking a blood sample before giving the antivirals: you want the science and you also want the local effect. But if you're not ready to deal with replying, by all means collect the questions!
Thanks! |
