During the 1918 influenza pandemic St. Louis was one of the first to shut down many of the places where people gather, and they had lower cases of the virus vs. other places that chose to wait to close places where people gather. Essentially the quicker communities can enforce social distancing the quicker they can contain the spread of the virus.
With this information, why are some communities slow to enforce social distancing? And when some communities do try to enforce social distancing, why is there so much push back from people? What do you think can be done to get people to understand the need for social distancing? How do you think communities can better enforce social distancing?
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I think we need to define what we mean by "communities." The best example may be that young adults could/should be viewed as a "community," and some messaging relating to social distancing should be tailored to them, then posted/sent/whatever to venues that they pay attention to. A similar approach could be developed for other demographic groups as well.
Niam Yaraghi makes a really clear point about the importance of information technology and interoperability in his article "The US lacks health information technologies to stop COVID-19 epidemic"
He clearly states a profound realization that public health is not local, and with the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been made clear that public health is not even national but international.
"...the pandemic has proven that healthcare is not local. In an interconnected world, with more individuals traveling long distances than ever before, it is naïve to look at regions in isolation from each other and try to manage public health independently. To efficiently manage a pandemic like this, the scope of health information exchange efforts should not be limited to small geographical regions and instead should be done at least nationally, if not internationally."
Does the COVID-19 pandemic create a vital opporunity to move forward with efforts in interoperability and information/data sharing?
How can changing the narrative around information/data sharing evolve to prevent future health crisis'?
I think you bring up a good question and I do wonder what this pandemic will mean for interoperability and information/data sharing. The article you shared is very interesting. The idea of being able to share non-medical information with healthcare providers is interesting. To think where we would be during this pandemic if healthcare providers did have the ability to have data around who recently traveled and where they went to help pinpoint those possibly infected. We might have been in a completely different situation.