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2008-11-18
Comments
AndriusKulikauskas November 18, 2008 17:45 CET Lucas, Wow! Great to see your support of MarcinJakubowski and FactorEFarm.
2008-07-24
Comments
AndriusKulikauskas Lucas, the comic book and health map are excellent news! Thank you also for alerting me to InStedd. I got to meet EricRasmussen and others there for almost two hours in June at their office, that was great. They were really impressed by our work in Kenya with our PyramidOfPeace.
SashaMrkailo July 26, 2008 14:31 CET We could translate it in at least ten more languages, in our lab, if it only was some kind of open source or similar resource... Maybe even so.
Serbian, Lithuanian, Italian, Ugandan, Kenyan, Tanzanian, Indian ...
LucasGonzalez July 27, 2008 11:08 CET If it's US govt text, it should be public domain, or not? It doesn't hurt to ask.
SashaMrkailo That would be a doable task for us. Lets ask them and translate and distribute the material.
AndriusKulikauskas August 20, 2008 2:07 CET Lucas, this looks like good news, yes? that perhaps the 1918 pandemic was  caused by pneumonia in conjunction with a flu virus.
LucasGonzalez September 3, 2008 16:38 CET Andrius, hi. Like in other public health situations, "cause" is too simplistic a word. Bacterial infections contributed to something triggered by the pandemic virus, cooperatively causing deaths. Now, are antibiotics available today? In the quantities needed and in all countries? I don't think so at all. Supply will likely be insufficient, and we'd be wise to slow down the need (community mitigation) and speed up the learning (cooperation around good practical science). Among other things.
2008-04-11
Comments
AndriusKulikauskas April 11, 2008 23:56 CET Lucas, I saw the demo. It's good to know about, to see the progress being made!
AndriusKulikauskas April 11, 2008 23:59 CET Lucas, I think you are aware of how we worked to avert genocide in Kenya with our Pyramid of Peace, with about 100 peacemakers and 1,000 volunteers on-the-ground, and about 100 helpers online. I am looking for clients who might be interested in our capability and might give us work to prepare in advance of a catastropher like PandemicFlu. Can you think of any potential clients?
LucasGonzalez April 12, 2008 10:43 CET Andrius, If I understand it correctly, Pyramid of Peace is a scheme for sending money in the form of phone credit, from-to people who trust people who trust people who trust people; there is multichannel communication (email, voice, wiki) around what the money is needed and used for; the network of people each act locally about one broad issue of general interest, each doing what they feel they must, and being somehow accountable to the group through their immediate contact in the network. Do I get the broad picture right? Please confirm that this is the case, and then let us explore what would be some ways for such a network to help in pandemic flu preparedness, and what would be the profile of prospective clients.
Speaking generally, I feel the work in money-poor countries would fall in three main categories:
- surveillance and information. These would be the activities that let a community become aware of the existence of a problem and its features as it evolves along time. It's a two-way path, because it also lets the world learn that outbreaks are happening in some specific places, and also that some strategies (containment, resilience, treatment) work better than others. The whole world can learn in real time.
- NPI. These would be ways to have less contacts per person while keeping essential functions being done, and also (secondarily, but we don't know how importantly) about making simplemasks (and getting people to wear them) before the infection comes to town. (Humidity has been suggested as a way to bring down the number of infections. We really don't know how this would work. Reducing the number of different people contacted by each person is the most important piece. Staying at a distance, the second. Masks the third. At least this is my current assessment, and the "information" part from the "surveillance and information" item would become handy to change said assessment.) This network would be a network of observers (data gatherers, both qualitatively and quantitatively) and thinkers (imaginers, inventors, lateral thinkers).
- home care. These would be giving a hard look at whatever healthcare looks like and more importantly how could it be done, for panflu, in whatever the location is. Aims are: rehydration, fever, respiratory difficulty, secondary infections, and other similar issues. How to deal safely with the dead would fall under this title too.
Now, who would be interested to pay for this kind of work, that's another matter. I know http://www.instedd.org is into "fast detection, fast response" so that would be a way to look into the first item in my list. I don't know who would be interested in the second issue, and that's really troubling because NPI will save millions of lives and buys us time for all the other interventions (work is being done on unexpensive treatment and fast and high-yield vaccines). Partners for the third issue would be current health-care networks, even if they are working on other issues.
I hope this helps, and thanks for asking. I'm working on other things and the work you're doing is important but I must use my time for other things right now. So your question has really helped me make the most of maybe half an hour of thinking. If this is useful, I'll be glad. If not, please tell me and I'll try and give it some more time. Thanks, Andrius!
AndriusKulikauskas April 12, 2008 11:51 CET Lucas, yes, this is very useful, Thank you! I can take your points and, I feel, speak intelligently about the impact we can have. Pyramid of Peace is, more generally, a leadership structure that allows for voluntary coordination of large groups of people for sophisticated operations and making best use of minimal resources to reach out and include the most relevant people in our effort to "love our enemy". In the case of pandemic flu, our enemy might be those people who might most contribute to spread of the disease, perhaps those who are sick or may be carriers but are behaving recklessly. What we can do now is to invest in this leadership structure with small projects of any kind so that when emergency strikes we are ready to act as leaders and encourage constructive behavior. Such investment makes sense for pandemic flu, but can have many other applications as well, current and future.
AndriusKulikauskas April 12, 2008 12:14 CET Lucas, special thank you for alerting me to InSTEDD. I will write them and hope to meet them when I go to the Bay Area. May or should I use your name LucasGonzalez in any way as the person who has impressed upon us the severity of the need to prepare for a flu pandemic?
LucasGonzalez April 12, 2008 12:28 CET If it's true that I've done that "impression" work, I can't see why not!  OTOH, I see no real need to mix my work in other venues (such as my day job) unless that comes up further in the conversation. Some things are best kept separate, and that's just how it is.
Talking about "pyramid of peace", if there's that leadership structure in existence already, then I think the most useful way to move forward might be to ask them (those currently participating in the Pyramid of Peace, or in any other relevant venue) to maybe go through the list and see what fits in with their current goals.
Or maybe they will want a summary of what the pandemic threat is all about, so that they may take it into consideration just because it's relevant to them by itself (I strongly believe it is, but it's not useful to push that into people). You know I'm always ready to write such summaries, and better still if I know who I'm writing for!
Thanks for all you do, btw! 
2008-04-06
 Influenza Pandemic Preparedness in Developing Countries (electronic pre-publication). Some quotes:
- a list of feasible interventions to mitigate the impact of a pandemic without available pharmaceutical interventions, and planning guidelines for hospitals with limited resources
- healthcare personnel should be trained for infection control measures. Even surgical masks are not commonly used in many developing countries, and hand hygiene practices are not always followed. Basic training on infection control should be provided to improve pandemic preparedness in healthcare settings
- Non pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) are mentioned as in need of more evidence. I think more thinking about how to implement them is what's needed (IMHO).
2008-03-10
2008-02-16
2008-01-24
2008-01-18
2008-01-16
- Fighting backlog of work and projects.
- http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=116 will need help, and I can't see why it's not doable in 2008 (first half, heh!).
- Idea for helping translators: use one of the many available "unique word count" utilities to turn a hundred-thousand word document into a few thousand, and look up in a dictionary only those you don't know. It helps those learning a new language too, by packing look-up time in condensed unix-tool way.
- Read this backwords: http://dominieschronicle.blogspot.com/ It gets too personal at times, but death is too personal.
- Readymoms have created an Alliance, and new preparedness tools (documents to help local activists) are emerging or about to emerge.
- Re "a useful research project that somebody in Kenya or elsewhere might do to investigate FluPandemic NPI" ... I haven't been able to do any useful thinking on that one, which is frustrating. I don't even understand what's going on in Kenya. Thinking out loud ... NPI means quick implementation of social distance, which needs:
- fast communication of the pandemic situation (when it emerges), and of updates on what works and doesn't work (a bit later but as soon as possible)
- a set of strategies for distance (and some protection, tho' no-one is quite sure how well that would work, and experts tend to talk of such protection as "just one extra layer")
- fast implementation of said strategies
- The first two items are researchable, I think. I don't think communication will be too much of a problem cable-wise, but culture-wise it may be a problem (as in Who do we trust?).
- http://www.ecdc.europa.eu/Health_topics/Pandemic_influenza/phm.html is a good set of documents on evidence and lack of it, but there's no clear "worse case" as far as I see. As in "I'd want any mask if it's very deadly".
- So no, I don't know how to reply to Andrius, but I'll keep thinking on it. Comments here would help.
Comments
AndriusKulikauskas January 16, 2008 21:32 CET Lucas, one project might be to ask people in such a chaotic situation, Who do you look to for leadership? in various ways. Or what kind of leadership are you taking? What kind of leadership do you yearn for?
LucasGonzalez January 17, 2008 15:45 CET Andrius, please go ahead with it. I'm not aware of any already existing information about that. Would people be asked about leadership in general, or about "how to care for ourselves" leadership? Sometimes leaders ask followers not to do certain things, as in "don't drink this water", etc. And sometimes leaders emerge unexpectedly; are "moms" leaders? What are the areas for leadership? Thank you!
Also, this may be interesting regarding How things work (some would say self-organise) when they apparently break down.
SashaMrkailo January 17, 2008 17:31 CET I definitlely would not listen to "leaders " in some disastrous kind of situation. I prefer self help and self organizing. Have seen numerous times how "leaders": act- anti rational , self serving, and worse.
Actually I don't believe in leaders. Lucas I need help if you have time. I need some short but descriptive article on nonviolence and also what was the link for translations, I remember you talked about some decentralised translation website?
Sasha:
2008-01-08
- Catching up: This I want to respond to. Glad to have seen Samwel writing; reading local newspapers talk about scarcity there sends shivers down my spine. The very local, temporary feeling here is "i need to expand myself to help"; I've seen it phrased as "my heart goes out to you" or "you're in my prayers" - whatever works. I'm glad this Lab-and-allies is working on how to help.
- I'll copy the old content of this blog to a new old page (if that makes sense).
- SashaMrkailo January 8, 2008 17:33 CET Happy New Year Lucas! And yes this is very serious situation and most of us feel the same I think. I was quite upset for a few days, but I hope it is calming down a little. Also it shows how it is appropriate to have a little food storage for such emergencies, it can be the diference between life and death to have a sack of fluor and potatoes and such things.
- Thanks, Sasha! And Happy New Year to you too!
- http://www.celsias.com/2008/01/05/two-years-to-turn-rock-hard-land-into-food-forest/ We want to find ways to link people to people, including this. I've been reading "Gaia's garden" by Toby Hemenway and there's a lot of what plants do that we can simply learn to apply - it's amazing how those green colleagues-in-life do to fix nitrogen, break down rocks to mine them for the exact amount of minerals needed, and do all sorts of other tasks. So yes, we need to put aside a little for emergencies, and also learn to accelerate the desert-to-edible-forest conversion all over the world ... or more interestingly where-ever people are willing to do just that. There's a list of links at the end of the book, and one of the links is about what different plants do - it would be great to have that in an Includer or in a Sneakernet pendrive: people design what they need or want, ask for the knowledge, get it, apply it, rinse and repeat!
- AndriusKulikauskas January 11, 2008 5:28 CET Lucas, Happy New Year! Please, think what would be a useful research project that somebody in Kenya or elsewhere might do to investigate FluPandemic NPI ? The situation in Kenya opens up interesting opportunities, yes? I could dedicate $100 for a nice project.
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