| | | Trusted by over 100,000 blockchain investors. |
|
Data courtesy ncov2019.live as of 20 March 2020.
If you contract Coronavirus, what are your odds of surviving?
This is the question on everyone’s mind, yet we don’t have a consistent answer. In this column, I will briefly explain why Coronavirus fatality rate is tricky, how blockchain technology can help solve the problem, and finally how we’ll save the world.
Here’s the problem illustrated in a simple spreadsheet: |
|
These are COVID-19 fatality rates from several leading websites, as of this writing. Each source has different numbers, sometimes wildly so. This has massive implications for how we plan for the disease—both physically and mentally. Even a percentage point difference could mean millions of human lives.
Here are the conflicting numbers as infographics: |
|
Here’s why reliable Coronavirus data is critical:
Better tracking. Better data can let researchers, statisticians, news media, and the healthcare community see Coronavirus fatality in real-time, not three months after the fact. Better details. Better data can let us break out case fatality by age group, region, incubation period, pre-existing conditions, and many other variables. Better communication. Better data can clarify our “odds of survival” in the public’s mind (humans can take bad news; it’s the uncertainty that is so stressful).
Think of this like a global open source database – like GitHub or Wikipedia --where anyone can contribute data, everything is freely accessible, yet the information is trusted and secure.
This is the project the blockchain community has been waiting for.
Why it’s Tricky to Calculate Coronavirus Fatality Rate
In one sentence: fatality rate is easier to see AFTER a pandemic.
DURING a pandemic, it is a shapeshifting hydra, a giant mudball of incomplete data reported by healthcare professionals in the thick of things. You’re trying to get data from troops on the ground, during a battle.
Even the spitball numbers above may be wildly inaccurate. As Battegay Manual wisely said in Swiss Medical Weekly, “It is tempting to estimate the case fatality rate by dividing the number of known deaths by the number of confirmed cases.” (Note: This is what we did.) “The resulting number, however … may be off by orders of magnitude.” (An order of magnitude means moving the decimal point.)
Also, the data is also unfolding in real time. Think of all the people who are currently sick. Have they been tested for COVID-19, or are they unreported? Think of all the people who died: did they die from COVID-19, or something unrelated? New data is coming in, fast and furious—and it’s growing every day.
So after things die down -- and there will be a lot of dying down – we can all step back and survey the damage. But we need data now, in real time.
This is a golden opportunity for blockchain. |
|
Courtesy Johns Hopkins University(note: BLACK might not be the best color choice)
How Blockchain Can Help
One of the best descriptions I’ve heard of blockchain technology was from Matt Hougan at Bitwise. He likened a blockchain to a giant shared database.
“The world is full of disconnected databases,” he said at a CFA Society event last week. “Your bank has a database, the bank across the street has a database, the Federal Reserve has another database. Blockchain is like pulling all those databases together, into one shared global database.”
Isn’t this exactly what we need in the fight against Coronavirus?
Let me be clear that the World Health Organization is doing a terrific job pulling this together in their COVID-19 global dashboard. But the WHO only receives information through “official government channels as mandated by IHR 2005.” In other words, a central authority reporting to a central authority. (Read a sample researcher complaint.) |
|
Courtesy World Health Organization
Same with The New York Times, which is doing an incredible job with tracking COVID-19 in the United States. They’re “collecting information from federal, state and local officials around the clock,” which is a little more decentralized, but still compiled by a central organization (the Times).
Why can’t we get one shared database of Coronavirus fatalities, to which anyone can contribute? |
|
Courtesy The New York Times
What This Might Look Like
If we were pitching a Hollywood movie, we’d say, “Imagine Wikipedia crossed with the World Health Organization.”
In other words, a shared database of Coronavirus case data, recorded on the blockchain. Nothing fancy. Think Minimum Viable Product. It will have something like:
Simple, colorful public dashboards that show real-time stats, something like the excellent nCoV2019.live, which is being run by a high school student. A user-friendly web interface, something like the genetic research website GISAID. Users can upload their Coronavirus data by case, or upload Excel or CSV sheets in bulk. A simple blockchain that verifies, deduplicates, and replicates that information across all nodes. A sequence of public nodes that will replicate this data worldwide, and maintain it in case of true global emergency (if the WHO goes down, for example). Good communication about what this project is, who’s behind it, and how people can help. (We’ll assist with the communication if needed.)
Who’s going to build this important blockchain? The global health organizations? (We just went through that.) Our governments? (They’re kind of busy right now.) Some teenager sitting in his bedroom? (I remind you again, that is literally happening.)
Keep it simple. To start, I would be happy with a blockchain that just aggregates the data from these other sources. Build it ERC-20. We could have that prototype done by the weekend.
Then you can add the ability for people to upload their own data later. Think agile. Do the best you can with what you have. Plan, but don’t overplan. Triage. Get it done.
As any developer knows, “the devil’s in the details.” I’ve made it sound simple, but execution is hard. But in the blockchain community, we have the most brilliant developers, engineers, and data visualizers in the world. We live and breathe decentralization. What more important work could there be?
If we band together to decentralize this data, to get it into the hands of the people who need it, that literally saves lives.
What better project to galvanize the blockchain community than saving the world?
C’mon, blockchain community. This is our time to shine.
Health, wealth, and happiness, |
|
| John Hargrave Publisher Bitcoin Market Journal |
|
"Like gold, US Dollars hold value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply."
Benjamin Bernanke Former Fed Chair November 21, 2002
Less than seven years later Helicopter Ben, as he's since been nicknamed, became the father of quantitative easing and set the world down a path of unfathomable money printing.
Today, it seems like what's giving the Dollar it's value is simply the perception that it will hold its value better than anything else through the current crisis. However, it's not clear where that perception is coming from.
At the moment, governments and central banks are creating money faster than they ever have in history. So it would seem to me unreasonable to assume that fiat currencies will hold their value for very long.
Very soon, once this mass-liquidation process is over, be it a day, a week, or a month, people are going to be holding on to a lot of fiat. That includes asset managers, businesses, and every day people. The good folks at r/wallstreetbets are already salivating thinking about how they will invest their upcoming stimulus checks. After all, one thing that most people don't realize is that inflation is good for the stock market.
As long as companies have a solid business model then holding a piece of the company is certainly preferable to holding a piece of paper. For reference, here's the main stock index of Venezuela over the last few years, priced in Bolivars of course. |
|
| So, as long as social distancing doesn't deteriorate into social disorder and chaos, it would seem to me far more prudent to be holding assets, especially limited supply assets, then paper... but that's just me. |
|
Is it the End?
All the above is purely speculation though. A simple hypothesis of how the world might look in a few weeks or months. Last night, the Governor of California has put the entire state on lockdown. |
|
What's essentially happening here is that the entire global economy is seeing intermittent shut-downs and travel bans in order to combat the virus. The inevitable question arises... can the global economy be turned off and on like a light?
Even with ample helicopter money flowing, it simply doesn't seem very likely. According to a smart Doctor who I've been following on YouTube for a few weeks already, to think that we'll have a widely circulated vaccine within the next year would be hugely optimistic.
So even if the lockdowns can somehow get coordinated enough to be effective, we could be looking at April of 2021 before we can all sit in restaurants and attend concerts and sports events again. So how does that work, the government just supports everyone until then and expects them to sit at home and wait?
So, the theory that things are at some point soon going to return to the way they were before doesn't really seem likely to me. Really hope I'm wrong, but the more people I speak to, the more I'm hearing theories about a coming apocalypse. How do you even invest for that?
On the other hand, as an investor it always pays to be an optimist and indeed, many have theorized that just because things have forever changed doesn't mean it's for the worst and whatever is coming next might put us in a better situation than before. I much prefer this way of thinking. |
|
Decoupling? Many articles have already been written in the crypto media pointing out how bitcoin has risen nicely over the last few days while the stock markets have been flat to negative. People are calling it the decoupling.
Well, it certainly would be nice to think that way because it would indicate that the peak of the panic might finally be coming to an end. However, a quick look at the charts shows that those calls may be a bit premature.
Here we can see bitcoin in orange and the S&P 500 in blue, since the beginning of the current crisis. I don't know, they still seem quite intertwined to me. |
|
The big drop on March 12th came at a time when the stock market had reached it's limit down. Limits have have very much helped to stave off some of the selling action. At this point, bitcoin is simply catching back up on some of the lost ground but overall the losses are almost exactly in line.
Wishing you a peaceful weekend ahead. Many thanks for sharing and if you're new, please subscribe.
Don't forget to wash your hands!
Best regards, |
|
Mati Greenspan Analysis, Advisory Money Management |
|
|
|
|
|
|
