MIT COVID19 Challenge – Beat the Pandemic
Friday, April 3 at 6:00pm – Sunday, April 5
Online
RSVP at https://covid19challenge.mit.edu
We invite you to attend the MIT COVID-19 Challenge event, Beat the Pandemic, a series of virtual hackathons. The next event is April 3-5, 2020. In this 48-hour virtual event, we will help tackle the most critical unmet needs caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.
Participants will form teams on Friday, April 3rd to hone down on the problems, generate solutions, including proof of concepts, prototypes, and preliminary vision for execution. On Sunday, April 5th, teams will reconvene to present their work. After the weekend, the best ideas and teams will have the opportunity to co-develop and implement their solution with the support of our partners.
For more information and to apply as a participant, please check out our website: https://covid19challenge.mit.edu
The MIT COVID-19 Challenge is proud to be supported by organizations including the MIT Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship, MIT Hacking Medicine, MIT Innovation Initiative, MIT Sloan Healthcare Club, Digital Medicine Society, US Department of Veterans Affairs, Netherlands Innovation Network, MassBio, and many more.
We hope to see you (virtually) at the event!
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Conserving Supply of Personal Protective Equipment—A Call for Ideas
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2763590
The editors of JAMA recognize the challenges, concerns, and frustration about the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) that is affecting the care of patients and safety of health care workers in the US and around the world. We seek creative immediate solutions for how to maximize the use of PPE, to conserve the supply of PPE, and to identify new sources of PPE. We are interested in suggestions, recommendations, and potential actions from individuals who have relevant experience, especially from physicians, other health care professionals, and administrators in hospitals and other clinical settings. JAMA is inviting immediate suggestions, which can be added as online comments to this article.
Corresponding Author: Howard Bauchner, MD (howard.bauchner@jamanetwork.org).
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I read through the more than 50 entries to the JAMA Call for Ideas on Saturday, March 21. As I write now on Thursday, March 26, there are over 250. You can read what I found at Crowd Sourcing Solutions to COVID19 (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/22/1930022/-Crowd-Sourcing-Solutions-to-COVID19)
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Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies
https://www.facebook.com/groups/670932227050506/
Mask Force: DIY mask production
https://maskforce.org
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There are many, many DIY mask and PPE initiatives now with many, many different designs. Probably one or more in your area and, if not, start one yourself.
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Mutual Aid Networks are springing up all over the place (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/15/1927820/-Mutual-Aid-Networks)
Mutual Aid & Social Capital: The Power of Communities, Networks from Howard Rheingold, based upon the syllabus of a course he used to teach at Stanford on social media and including recent links to mutual aid networks forming to deal with Covid19 (which he will update)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/34918526
Mutual Aid Networks article from NYTimes
Spreadsheet of mutual aid networks
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1HEdNpLB5p-sieHVK-CtS8_N7SIUhlMpY6q1e8Je0ToY/htmlview
Mutual Aid Initiatives to Combat the Coronavirus
https://itsgoingdown.org/autonomous-groups-are-mobilizing-mutual-aid-initiatives-to-combat-the-coronavirus/
Intellihelp Facebook group – only ask and give posts
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1061901284171597/about/
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“You could say that civil society is what unimpaired mutual aid creates; or that civil society is the condition and mutual aid the activity that produces it.” – Rebecca Solnit, from A Paradise Built in Hell (http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2016/07/notes-on-rebecca-solnits-paradise-built.html)
The sooner we organize to help each other the better off we all will be.
Once we start exercising our freedom to build mutual aid networks that support and empower each of us individually and collectively we will have reclaimed some of our own liberty and power (swaraj – self-rule). Mutual aid networks are part of what Gandhi called swadeshi, local production, the heart of satyagraha, nonviolence, and a lifelong daily practice of community (sarvodaya) (http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2014/04/sarvodaya-swaraj-and-swadeshi.html), all who are for the benefit of all, as the ethicist Milt Raymond, author of Social Reason (https://www.amazon.com/Social-Reason-Milton-Raymond/dp/0557086043) would say.
“Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” R Buckminster Fuller
Some good news this morning: I saw on article saying that the first US hospital to be hit hard has seen new cases slow to a trickle.
Learning Circle: COVID-19, Tackling the Novel Coronavirus (Week 1)
Tuesday, March 31
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM Every week on Tuesday until April 14, 2020
Online Meeting
https://meet.jit.si/covid19-learning-circle
THIS MEETING WILL HAPPEN ONLINE AT https://meet.jit.si/covid19-learning-circle
Learning circles are free, facilitated study groups for learners who want to take online courses. More information about learning circles can be found on the P2PU website: https://www.p2pu.org/en/.
Starting on March 31st and for 3 weeks, BosLab will host a learning circle to help participants study the FutureLearn course “COVID-19: Tackling the Novel Coronavirus” from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/covid19-novel-coronavirus/).
AND
Groups making face masks and shields with 3D printers
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2020/03/24/calling-all-makers-with-3d-printers-join-critical-mission-to-make-face-masks-and-shields-for-2020-healthcare-workers/#3873eabd7500