We are thinking and talking about the COVID-19 models all wrong, writes Kevin Schulman on The Agitator, a normally smart blog on non-profit fundraising. “Most believe these models represent attempts at prediction rather than as a managerial, scenario planning tool for which they are intended,” he argues — as if believing a model is a “managerial, scenario planning tool” would make it any more accessible.…
Here’s a condensed version of what I’m telling all my clients — all researchers who run their own teams and organizations, large and small — right now:
There is only one story for the foreseeable future.
If you can’t be hyper-relevant to it, hold off on almost all your communications for now.…
Politico reports this morning that Morgan Stanley economists are now predicting a 30.1% annualized decline in US GDP for Q2 — which would be the worst quarterly performance in 74 years. That’s the good news. The bad news: lots of other economists think that prediction might be optimistic.…
Humanity is conducting some gigantic experiments right now — and the biggest might be in how we’re communicating the science of this virus and how to stop it. #Flattenthecurve is the meme, the brand, the call-to-action rolled into one. The universal visual (CDC version, as published in WIRED):
The meme seems to be working, for a lot of people and leaders; we can’t really measure its effectiveness.…
It’s a boom time — thank God — for explanatory, research-based and research-expertise content about the novel coronavirus and COVID-19. Here are 12 informational resources from the last week that I’ve found very valuable and/or very interesting:
3Blue1Brown: “Exponential Growth and Epidemics” (YouTube): Send this nine-minute explainer video to all the virus-complacent in your life; it patiently walks through why COVID-19’s threat is about its exponential growth path, not the small-seeming number of cases being reported today in your city, state or country.…