COVID-19 Data Analytics – CF061
This week on Cyber Frontiers Christian and Jim tackle the technology shaping society amidst the Coronavirus (COVID-19). We dive into the health (and growth) of the internet backbone, working from home, and distance learning to name a few. We then switch gears into discussing how data and analytic capabilities behind the virus tricked into the mainstream and is now widely available to society at large to make well informed decisions. We specifically highlight the importance of accurate data visualizations to not skew good data, and highlight Corona Data Scraper as a model of open-source, scalable, accurate data analytics and visualizations for COVID-19.
Cyber Frontiers is all about Exploring Cyber security, Big Data, and the Technologies Shaping the Future! Christian Johnson will bring fresh and relevant topics to the show based on the current work he does.
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Full show notes and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/cf061
Podcast, Cyber Frontiers, COVID – 19, Global Pandemic, Internet, Coronavirus, Trends
The coronavirus might have just killed ISP data caps
https://www.fastcompany.com/90480069/the-coronavirus-might-have-just-killed-isp-data-caps
Coronavirus transforms peak internet usage into the new normal
https://www.cnet.com/news/coronavirus-has-made-peak-internet-usage-into-the-new-normal/
Netflix, YouTube to slow down streaming so internet won’t overload
Netflix agreed to reduce streaming bit rates across Europe for 30 days later Thursday, according to AFP. “We estimate that this will reduce Netflix traffic on European networks by around 25 percent while also ensuring a good quality service for our members,” Breton reportedly said in response.
Global Internet Usage Trends
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-individuals-using-the-internet
Data, data, data….
Where it all began: JHU APL
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
And by proxy, ESRI: https://coronavirus-disasterresponse.hub.arcgis.com/
Open Data Sources
https://opendatawatch.com/what-is-being-said/data-in-the-time-of-covid-19/
EU dashboard
https://qap.ecdc.europa.eu/public/extensions/COVID-19/COVID-19.html
Corona Data Scraper
https://coronadatascraper.com/#home
Google Dashboard
https://google.org/crisisresponse/covid19-map
Jim Collison [0:00]
This is The Average Guy Network and you have found cyber frontiers show number 61 recorded on March 23 2020.
Jim Collison [0:19]
Here on Cyber Frontiers we explore cybersecurity, big data and the technologies that are shaping the future. If you have questions, comments or contributions, you can always send us an email. I am Jim@theaverageguy.tv, Christian is Christian@theaverageguy.tv no reason you can’t remember that. Find me on twitter @jcollison and you can track Christian on Twitter @borgwhisper.
Jim Collison [0:40]
The Average Guy TV powered by Maple Grove Partners. Get secure, reliable, high speed hosting from people that you know and your trust. Always great service. And plans start as little as 10 bucks. MapleGrovePartners.com Christian we’re back after a couple weeks. Let’s just say it was a few weeks. Welcome back.
Christian Johnson [0:57]
Thanks very generous for you. But where we’ve gone from a relatively quiet normal February to a pandemic, late March, so
Jim Collison [1:10]
we are talking about it in February. It wasn’t even on a radar.
Christian Johnson [1:14]
I mean, it was people were tracking it from a china international perspective, but there is no us impact is Yeah.
Jim Collison [1:21]
Yeah. I mean, it came on fast. Share, Like, wow, like, wow, four weeks maybe.
Christian Johnson [1:27]
Do you think that makes work apparently, right?
Jim Collison [1:29]
Yeah. Did you ever think you’d live the see a day? I mean, he’s happened once every hundred years. Did you think you live to see a day like this? I gotta
Christian Johnson [1:40]
be honest, not not in 2020 really wasn’t on my radar. You know, I I like to think that I spend more time tracking computer virus spreads and I do human virus spreads. So this was definitely unusual, I would say.
Jim Collison [1:55]
Yeah, yeah. It’s, you know, we heard wins of this December, right. And I remember coming back from London, early December and people were just starting to talk about it and a lot of things going on. And man, it is amped up and, and hopefully everyone if you’re listening, hopefully you’re safe and secure and everything. Yeah, you got everything you need. And in for I think, as of this is, you know, March 23 2020 most of the SS in some form of lockdown of some kind the coasts, California, East Coast are more shelter in place, and that’s happening in more places. And so we’re not here in Nebraska yet but but everybody’s encouraged to be smart, be smart as well, in the stuff that you’ve done. It’s it’s had some interesting ramifications. We’re going to talk about some of those tonight. From a tech perspective. We kind of alluded to this a little bit on Home Gadget Geeks last Thursday, but Christian, this could be the end of data caps. I don’t think so But could it
Christian Johnson [2:56]
potentially listed as for the interim So one of the things that, you know, it’s actually been pretty interesting, just as a high level, not even specifics of technology, how every company has taken this as a moment to show their corporate responsibility. I SPS aren’t limited to that. But I mean, you know, it’s something unique when you’re getting emails from, you know, tire stores telling you what they’re coping 19 responses, and they’re like, wow, I’m really appreciative that you’re, you know, disinfecting my car before and after, but I don’t think I’ve done business in your company for over two years. So, you know, exciting. But I, you know, on a more serious note, I think there has, interestingly, been a real concern about like, oh, we’re gonna crash the internet. Well, yeah, this is the folklore of this, so to speak, goes back quite a bit to something we’ve talked about on previous episodes of Ham Radio, believe it or not, where, you know, your hardcore old time hammers are, you know, the doomsday preppers equivalent of the internet believing that when the internet goes down, Man, you get your back to Ham Radio, that’s what you got is analog waves. And so I think the whole covered 19 as it unfolds has been, maybe the closest amateur radio folks have ever felt like they were going to be able to prove this on some like global scale as opposed to, you know, isolated incidents. So that’s interesting and of itself. So there seems to be somewhat of a rift between what policymakers believe and what technologists believe with respect to what the internet can actually handle. So policymakers, both the United States, European Union, etc, have been really concerned about what is the total consumption of bandwidth and what that trend is, as people are increasingly working from home. I gotta be honest, this is kind of an interesting trend to me, because, you know, I work in a digital profession so my internet usage throughout the day doesn’t change whether I’m from home or at work, but for a lot people and a lot of Americans, a lot of Europeans, etc. That is a real world thing where maybe they’re going to a job where they’re not sitting in front of a computer keyboard all day. Families are also facing this reality where now schools are canceled. And so the kids are home at the house throughout the day. And guess what they want to do sit in stream Netflix because classes out folks. So very quickly bytes have compounded. And I think you’ve seen kind of two things policymakers are like, oh, that doesn’t sound good. And technologists are like yeah, our routers, we can do this. And I gotta be honest, I think I fall somewhere in the middle of like, I’m I’m glad there’s people being bullish on what the tech can do. And I’m glad there’s people being bullish on, it’s great. We think we can do this, but let’s not be stupid and have an outage. So there’s kind of been a couple things that have happened in response number one, companies came out with particularly when we talked the ISP, whether that’s your residential ISP, or actually Your cell phone as an ISP, they’ve introduced a lot of kind of temporary plans that typically would be some type of variation on a theme for a low income type plan where you know, you can get on to the internet for like 10 bucks or 20 bucks a month. And there’s no contract, no lock in, etc. Just very like low cost access to Hey, I need to get on the internet. I think that’s a really interesting and Like wise answer, because if you’re someone who’s living paycheck to paycheck, that’s a very realistic and tangible way for you to conserve some of your income during times of uncertainty. So I think of all the things I’ve seen response wise, that I think has the most direct impact with respect to how people can consume technology on the cheap. With respect to the data caps, this one I laugh at a lot, because it’s like, okay, we went through this whole scare about let’s not start consuming all the bytes on the Internet at once. And then what are the ISP is do they go and lift the data caps? So that actually to me says a couple things. It says one ISP needs either believe outright, or want to assuage the policy concerns and considerations that the data usage is going to go up naturally. Which you could arrive at this conclusion? Well, it must mean that ISP is planned for about eight to 10 hours a day when everyone’s at school at work, that their residential networks are quieter, and that it’s the evening where things start to uptick, right. So if you think about the algorithms that these ISPs have, where they’re doing traffic shaping, they’ve got to be all out of whack at this point, right? Like the stuff that naturally shapes that curve really beautifully. It’s now not doing as much shaping as it is like load balancing.
Christian Johnson [7:53]
And so, you know, we lift the data caps, okay. I think you raised an interesting point. Like, what’s the point permanency of lifting data caps? I don’t really know the answer to that. I think it kind of shows though, what a I don’t know
Jim Collison [8:12]
what a call is tiger, the whole notion of data caps are,
Christian Johnson [8:17]
you know, these companies at this point are supposed to be providing, quote, high speed internet, right. And if you look at what I consider, like a first class internet service provider, like Verizon FiOS, they don’t have data caps because they built the infrastructure to handle the load. Like it’s simple as that it’s a fiber optic connection. Their network is very sophisticated. They can offer same or better prices than the equivalent of these parts of the US where you’re locked into like a Cox or a spectrum or some type of, you know, fiber light internet I call which is really just old school cable based internet. So I don’t think The data caps go in the long term because I don’t think those other companies have solved the fundamental problems that companies like xfinity and Verizon have solved, which is how to guarantee on demand provisioning of gigabit internet service without impacting the person next door. So at the end of the day, hey, probably they’re doing some capacity scaling and some other management things to make sure they can not take an outage during these extended times where they’re going over the data caps they plan for but keep in mind, like there’s probably also consubstantial marketing component to this right even if you go back four years ago cocs used to send you kind of like, you know, dear Tom letters of we would like you to stop using the data but they never it wasn’t like they turned off your account or like they had a fear of God moment that their their head end router was going to go down. It was just like, hey, cut the usage, you’re making it slower for others. But you know, at the same token, now, the data caps you No, we’ll charge you $50 a month to go, you know, 100 gigabytes over and it’s like, well, gee, for that cost, I could just buy a second ISP and have two IPS in my house. So, I don’t think the data caps go in the long term, but I do think it’s going to force people to look more at what their options are, potentially. I think the reality is that a lot of people still patronize those companies because they don’t have a better choice. Right? Like in your case, Jim. Like that’s you know, Cox is what you got. What’s
Jim Collison [10:30]
the other one there that we sent century? Well, not CenturyLink and yeah, CenturyLink but they don’t they’re not out here yet. They’re they’re actually laying cable right now to get here. But it’s just it’s just Cox but this point yeah. Other Jim
Christian Johnson [10:44]
says at the best in chat, you know, it’s like the carry on bag fees. Some airlines don’t do it. Some do. And it’s
Jim Collison [10:51]
well, it’s it’s it’s the right incentive. I mean, it’s just it’s them trying to get the right incentive in place and are in a really I used to get those letters all the time of like, Hey, we don’t have a cat, but if we did, you’d be going beyond it. And what’s funny is now that they have a one terabyte limit for me, I never hit it, like licensing ever. Maybe once every two years, something goes on, right? Especially when I was using the Xbox, and there were these big gigantic updates on the Xbox. But for the most part, I’m never hitting it anymore, and I don’t even really even care. I think if this is going to show us and show them I think it’ll be hard to go back to the one terabyte, I’m kind of hoping I’d even take two, you know, I kept they’re like, Hey, I tell you what, we’re gonna go back. We realized we can handle this is a little bit of a money grab, but because for 50 bucks more I can get unlimited with Cox in this area, like it’s so it’s not necessarily a bandwidth problem. They can support it. They just like it that extra 50 bucks keeps everybody in the neighborhood and check. Nope, a lot of people don’t want to pay it probably one in 50 actually take them up on it. Wieger did for a while. I don’t, I’m not going to spend 50 bucks for a minute because I can stay underneath the cap every single time. So it will be interesting to see how this comes back. Right? When when I think Cox said middle of May is when they’re going to be as when they’re going to be showing that or when they’re going to be reviewing it. So we’ll see how it goes. And see. I’d love it if they just I don’t think unlimited good for anybody. I just don’t think that’s a good plan. But five terabytes, two terabytes would be better than one.
Christian Johnson [12:30]
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think it’s oddly not unlike if the data caps have to naturally grow like that until they phase out. It’s almost not unlike the growth of the hard drives. Right. So you know, what you pay for a two terabyte external drive today? Is like 50% of what it was three years ago, right? So you might as well go buy the equivalent four terabytes for the same price of what you would have paid for that two terabyte drive in 2017. Right, right. I was just looking at this the other night, you know for tears, byte external Seagate drive, you can go pick up for 90 bucks. I mean, it’s like okay guys like that, that three years ago would have been $400 right now, it’s just this commonplace thing. So maybe that happens with data caps. You know, even even with services like Cox, you know, Jim and I have laughed on previous episodes about their new Giga blast services, whether or not that’s like true gigabit service or fake gigabit service, but you’d expect if it was true gigabit service, there wouldn’t be a data cap because what what does it end up doing just gives you the ability to run up to your data cap faster. So in that place, I’d rather have slower data.
Jim Collison [13:37]
I actually downgraded my data. So after the last show, I called them back one more time and the guy said actually with your modem, you shouldn’t even be on the faster plans because I have a DOCSIS three, but you need three one on the faster plans. Yeah, that’s right with them. And he’s like, yeah, you shouldn’t go on the plane. I’m just gonna downgrade you and that’ll save you. 10 bucks a month. So Okay, I mean, I don’t I don’t need the 150 down, I need, I need an expansion of the 10 up. And I think that, you know, I’d love to see that change to be 50 up, you know, as it stands, it’s still broken. Like I’m getting two or three up right now. And I, I don’t want to be that that guy that calls Cox in the middle of a pandemic, it says, I you’re not giving me my upload speed. You know, I’m sure they’ve working on bigger problems right now trying to get everybody served. Right. Right. So I don’t know it, you know, we’ll see what happens. Yeah.
Christian Johnson [14:33]
And it’s, uh, you know, in the realm of how helpful is that for customers at home? I don’t know, maybe I think the ultimate takeaway is that it will help them you know, avoid surcharge fees, which again, like if we’re offering these introductory internet plans, then maybe maybe that’s worth it. I don’t know.
Jim Collison [14:53]
My son moved from Cox to CenturyLink. Is liking a service now I just I can’t get it here. And so you know, maybe when it gets here, we’ll have another conversation.
Christian Johnson [15:04]
Yeah. So actually, I think the number one thing that is most helpful because people are saying you have said for a while, you know, the number one source of data on the internet is streaming your 4k cat videos, Netflix kind of stepping in here. I agree that in these circumstances that made a lot of sense for like a fast way for policymakers to say, Hey, we want to reduce load on the internet without like, making people go to draconian measures that no one really understands why we’re doing them. I think that answer was definitely like, let’s Okay, everyone go from 4k by default to HD by default or standard def, right? And like, boom, right away, that’s 25% of traffic, our netflix traffic on European networks, right. So that’s, that’s pretty substantial. Right? Netflix is a huge, huge mover of the bits across the worldwide web. And I don’t think any kid at home is going to be upset whether or not they get their programming in HD or 4k for a few weeks. So I think that was a quick, smart, effective thing. It actually harkens back to the whole, you know, back and forth with I forget the name every single time lately. It’s really embarrassing. You know, we spent like two or three years with the FCC talking about fair use, not fair use. Jim helped me out here that this is embarrassing.
Jim Collison [16:33]
net net neutrality.
Christian Johnson [16:36]
I don’t know why Fair Use the stuff in my head. Yeah, net neutrality. It’s kind of like a, we’re putting a temporary net neutrality in place to, to curb bandwidth for particular service providers. So I thought that was interesting, but it actually made me think from a data perspective, more about like, how have we evolved internet accessibility in the last, you know, 2030 years, and I think it’s especially prevalent because when we talk about a lot of frontier technologies that we do on the show, almost none of them can be made possible without the internet, right? Like at the end of the day, whether it’s IoT, or data analytics, cybersecurity, etc. Like, it all stems from having a well developed infrastructure worldwide. And so, on my screen over here, I have no idea if I’ve done this right, but you know, starting back at the beginning of the world,
Jim Collison [17:27]
right, you’re looking at this.
Christian Johnson [17:29]
Yeah, there we go. Okay. So you know, here we are in 1999, where the average country has less than 1% utilization of the internet so that’s pretty fascinating when you just stop and think about it for a second right? Like our entire digital lives are just unbelievably I think most people who have grown up in this era would be you know, sticker shocked if they had to go back to a no internet world but you know, only about it. 30 years ago, we were at a point where having access to the internet was unbelievably minority, right? I mean, I mean, the United States, a technical leader in the world with 0.78% of the population having their own internet connection. I mean, can you imagine trying to do coronavirus in 2020 with no digital infrastructure? Right? Think about all the people who are receiving digital communications for their governors through a YouTube livestream or through Twitter updates or Reddit or etc, as opposed to like, newspaper, radio, TV, right? Those were the main mediums in the 90s. Right, but almost everyone is now in this, you know, instant response instance data hyper news cycle, we’re actually we’re, we’re now at the point where that has grown so sophisticated. We’re suffering from the fact that it works so well which you know, things like Fake News and deep fakes and other types of mechanisms which allow for disinformation campaigns. Those are very realistic to do because of how fast the feedback cycle is right here in this picture in 1990. That feedback cycle was non existent, right. So now as we progress, I’ll do this in increments of 10. You know, here we are at the year that I do this, right? It doesn’t exactly tell
Jim Collison [19:26]
it. Oh, you’ll see the date change up in the in the top. There we go.
Christian Johnson [19:30]
Yeah. So here we go. The year 2000. Welcome to the 21st century. And what a stark difference in 10 years like look how important the United look at what a role the United States played in in that pivotal time of the internet, right. We’re in the first decade of like growth and expansion of residential internet, the United States in the year 2000 is up to 43%. Canada is up to 51%. This blows my mind at the end of this whole show. I’ll give you a sneak peek Canada, basically has the most internet coverage in their country out of anyone? Not the largest population in the world, but pretty interesting how much of an early adopter they were other early adopters, Norway, which I didn’t know before, looking at this graph in the year 2,052% of the country had internet, which is pretty impressive. You can kind of see the EU blocks adopting internet by the year 2000. But like, not as big as you would think, right? Like the EU, the leaders of GDPR and all these other big ticket items. Here in the year 2000, the United Kingdom, kind of a European equivalent of the United States was hovering at 26% adoption, okay. So pretty different. And I would say, comparatively, Australia slightly edges out the United States at 46%. So like, these were the early adopters of the internet as we know it today. Now, fast forward again to the year 2010. And, you know, the landscape has driven magically changed again, right like at this point, okay, over 70% of the population United States is on board Canada’s hit at Australia’s at 76. And now you see most of these EU countries have led up. South America is now on the board. Russia is now on the board. Interestingly, in 2010, though only a third of the China, Chinese population has access to internet, if we, if we fast forward it to the data that we have available as of when this graph was last done, which was the end of 2017. So it’s three years out of date. The Chinese population has 54%, Internet access United States, 76, Canada, 91, Australia, 86, etc. You get the point. But I think when people think about how they’ve been consuming the response to Cova 19 like this paints a very stark difference of like, Can you imagine how your life would be different right now? If this graph wasn’t what it was, right, like, what was the reason that stay at home as a policy can even work? Right? A, it’s been pretty devastating on the economy. I think everyone can at least agree that there has been, you know, there’s going to be wide spread global economic impacts that we won’t understand for months after we’re through this thing, potentially years. And it’s going to transform the way we think about doing things globally. But imagine what a shelter in place or shutdown order or a work from home mandate would look like. If you tried to have coronavirus in the year 1990. It really would be, you know, what, is everyone gonna get on to their AOL dial up connection like no, he wouldn’t have had video conferencing, you wouldn’t have had, you know, streamlined communications, the speed at which people are getting information would have been much slower and the actual disinflation would potentially be the lack of people getting that real time data because they’re not, you know, you know, cozied up to their radios or otherwise. But, you know, the whole success story here for the internet as a frontier technology that will go on for, you know, many, many more decades is that, my God, everyone’s sitting at home, whether it’s they’re watching Netflix or doing entertainment, consuming news, consuming information from public officials. And then oh, by the way, these huge companies that hire either millions of people or hundreds of thousands of people are working like 90 plus percent from home and the Internet has not fallen over.
Jim Collison [23:42]
Yeah, it’s pretty amazing that that we’ve got that ability to be able to do that today. I was, I was just thinking, you know, for me, the internet came online 9697 right. And then I started Okay, so all the jobs that I’ve had before 9697 thinking about if what, you know, or even early, early 2000, could I have, you know, with the infrastructure, I work for the bank, right? When when, when we cut over to the new century, and I wasn’t working from home. In fact, I remember if I think it was cool, I could take a laptop, you know, with me and do some, you know, do some things at home, I couldn’t connect. But you know, so, yeah, no, right on as you think about it. I’m a little stunned as I look at this map. And I think of China still still right. Well, this was this is 2017 at 54%. Right there. But you think this is internet and cell phones that are included in this data? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you kind of go, wow, there’s a lot that aren’t connected there. And, you know, even the United States here and I guess when I look at this as of 2016, in the United States still being at 76%, I think today most people would think we’re 90 95% connected. No, there’s still one in four.
Christian Johnson [25:14]
Yep. And I think I think a lot of that is the rural urban disconnect, right? Like there’s still just a lot of parts of Middle America that don’t have the same infrastructure access. So there may be sharing a dial up connection or they’re sharing a DSL connection
Jim Collison [25:29]
getting a school or
Christian Johnson [25:31]
Yeah, they’re going to a local library, right. But when big, the big industries around farming and otherwise, right, like that’s not, that’s not where their focuses right. And, and consequently the same infrastructure development just isn’t there. Whereas, you know, for example, if you live in Northern Virginia 90% of the world’s internet traffic runs through fiber that you’re living, you know, miles away from. So, when you the locality of where you are in relation to the infrastructure, plays a obviously a huge role and how quickly or likely you are to adopt it. It will become more interesting to me over time to see, are there other technologies and how we make people get access to the internet? or enable them to weather that increases the adoption rate to close that gap? For example, the concept of the hot air balloon flying over Middle America, right, just throwing Wi Fi signals to the ground. I’m not saying that’s the right answer. I’m just saying, right, it’s going to potentially be something out of the box where it’s not gonna be just, you know, oh, it’s a matter of time of laying more cable and fiber. Right. And well, maybe it’s maybe it’s not. I mean, the equivalent, the equivalent thing to kind of ponder about is the interstate system, right? Like that’s one of the most interconnected things across our entire country. It’s not unlike what happened with railroads. So if you think of Internet cables or fiber cables as being kind of that next, like we’re going to grow this network of stuff that goes coast to coast, I suppose you could reasonably argue that we have not used the same amount of time that we did to build our railroad network or to build our interstate highways. So from that perspective, maybe my analysis is wrong. Maybe cables will naturally grow into middle America in a more pronounced way over time, but I just think that there’s going to be more organic things that come along to maybe shorten that gap sooner. Yeah.
Jim Collison [27:33]
Well, and I think one thing that got exposed in this in this crisis was how it the elementary, middle school and high school level, oh my gosh, how unprepared we are like, yeah, maybe the world like that made. This may not be a US thing, but but we don’t like we have lots of infrastructure at the school. They’re not really set to switch Head over and go. Okay, now teachers, you can’t you got to reach your students. Now the technology is there, like, we could do this. It’s all there. But man, everybody’s looking like, like a you know, and you kind of thinking, Oh, man, we were not ready for this, this kind of cut over in the education system at all.
Christian Johnson [28:24]
Yeah, that’s actually you bring up a great point. And Kevin brings up a great point. So I’ll try and address them both separately. Like, to your point, Jim. We weren’t prepared for this at all. I think that, to me is so fascinating because look, where we were really well prepared. We were prepared overnight to pretty much have an entire country moved to this work from home model. Like there wasn’t like, you know, the trains didn’t crash and cross this, you know, cross streams like stuff worked. And maybe that’s not true for everyone. I don’t know. But you know, I work at a pretty large company that does this for a living and you No, it’s it’s amazing to see just how reliable and and second nature video conferencing, collaborative document editing, you know, integrated software teams all working remotely as if they’re sitting next to each other. I mean, that’s that’s a huge milestone for workforces being able to successfully deployed that level of telework. And we talk about
Christian Johnson [29:29]
when we talk about people who are working in maybe government agencies or private sector, etc. Were there telework policies have been kind of tight for the last few years, and people have still been, you know, somewhat hesitant about things. I think this opens that wide open, right, because what are they going to say now? Oh, we don’t know if we can do it successfully. And not only that, we’ve seen progress. Activity numbers, at least in areas that I’m tracking. People are reporting across multiple different things in my life that their productivity has gone up, like, so let that sink for a minute, their productivity sitting from home, using their own resources, not their company’s resources has gone up. So that in and of itself tells us something about the cost associated with the work environments we’ve created in person where people are being constantly context switched. They’re constantly running in and out of meetings, they’re taking breaks there, there may be getting distracted, having social conversations, etc, etc. Whereas when they’re sitting home, quote, in isolation with their thing with their tools in front of them to be productive, suddenly, it’s like, oh, my goodness, I can get so much work done. I can pop in and out of meetings that I’m required to attend to at a click of a button. I don’t have to Kevin between different work office sites where people are for a meeting, I don’t have to maybe sit on the Beltway for an hour and a half in the morning because there’s a traffic jam. And all that time adds up. And so you start to wonder if we didn’t have national shutdowns of non essential businesses. And we were doing this successful telework work from home in in, you know, more concentrated pockets and slices, with the overall world productivity go up, and therefore GDP go up? And that’s a question that I think when we get to the end of this thing, we’re going to answer it one way or another, because I think there’s going to be a lot of really rich data that tells us like, was this a success? Right? I don’t think anyone was going to sign up for doing a global game day of work from home. But this was a forcing function. And like, we’ve learned a lot just from like, how Successful are companies able to mobilize virtually? And the answer largely is that America was on point
Jim Collison [32:07]
ready to roll.
Christian Johnson [32:10]
That said, You’re absolutely right, which is that there’s this huge contrast between what corporate America was able to do and what the education industry was able to do. And I think this is an area that I hope we really more seriously drill down at the next level, right? Like, I know, schools that were early adopters of iPads or other digital learning assistants with inside the classroom. They were somewhat well prepared to handle this, right. It was like, okay, they’re not here in person anymore, push the assignments to their iPad, hold a WebEx conference. Universities largely, I think, have done a pretty decent job with this, right? Like universities are almost as well equipped, as I would say what the corporate America was when it came to this, right. So if we’re talking college level up, there was a huge proficiency Because why, in college environment e learning is very popular. students submit almost all their assignments digitally now, whether it’s essays or code assignments or lab data, I mean, a lot of that stuff is there. They’re getting their deadlines. They’re getting their updates from their teacher in a digital setting. And I think by the time your college age, you have expectations of hopefully operating and acting like an adult. Your mileage may vary. But, you know, by and large, those institutions have equivalent mechanisms when you’re talking like a large university, like University of Maryland, for example, right, where, you know, this type of digital learning or collaborative learning environment has been a topic of conversation at UMD for years. When you talk about K through 12, though, oh, my goodness, I mean, just a dramatic drop off in preparedness, right. There’s some realistic factors, right? Like how realistic is that You know, your six year old son or daughter is going to get on an iPad and be able to have that same attention or one on one cares when they’re in an in person environment, right? That’s a challenge. I think like people need to start thinking outside of the box about how are you going to create those in person experiences to give someone at that young of an age, the ability to have an attention span with a digital learning device to understand and relate to the learning content in the same way, because your brain just, you know, I think I think kids have the ability to eat up technology. And I think there are the right tools to do it. But I’m not convinced that the K through 12 institutions have pushed really hard into this. And so then you get up to, you know, what does the average family look like at home in America right now where the mom and dad are work from home and they have maybe a, you know, a high school freshman, right? Where they’re right on that, you know, kind of awkward balance between, you know, self study. Efficiency responsibility to do their homework, etc. But at the same token, it you know, does this feel like a day off from them from school? Or does it feel like no, I’m going to school and like I have assignments, responsibilities and obligations. And I think the technology should be able to enable that. But I think by and large teachers in K through 12 have been really underprepared in this area. Like I don’t think they’re getting the tools, the funding and the support to do it. And I don’t think it’s been prioritized because by and large you know, how many middle school students in America right now are getting, you know, the majority of their learning in a digital way? It’s just not happening.
Jim Collison [35:38]
Yeah. Well, Christian hasn’t been practiced in some in a lot of cases. I think the students here in Nebraska, we have a snow day. It’s just a snow day. Like there’s there there’s plenty of ample opportunity to practice this. Like what happens if in you know, we don’t lose if in the school districts, we don’t lose billions of dollars if students don’t go to school for two weeks, right? We don’t, it just doesn’t happen. Now, there’s other ramifications of it, but it doesn’t have this direct dollar effect on the economy. And so it’s just not given. I don’t think it’s given the same priority of like, you know, in so we could have been practicing here in the state of Nebraska, it would be easy for us on a snow day to have said, Hey, you know, we’re going to practice some preparedness and on this snow day, there’s going to be some assignments and we could have been practicing for the last 10 years. Yeah, like, of like, how does this work? What’s the expectation? We kind of here in the in the Nebraska following old model of what’s a snow day? You just you take the day off go sledding, and I think there could have been Now listen, I would not have ever had this opinion. You know, two weeks ago, going back I wouldn’t even have thought about like having a preparedness right having preparedness exercises. For those schools to say, Can we get this done? Maybe this is going to be a permanent change in should be a permanent change going forward where we say, hey, how do we practice learning? And if we can’t do it, how do we get there? And I know schools are terribly funded, but we got to figure out some ways to make that happen.
Christian Johnson [37:19]
Yeah, I mean, I think a couple things. Nathaniel brings up a great point, which is that, you know, unlike big corporate America, which has dedicated budgets that they spend on it every year, that’s not happening and a lot of K through 12 systems or their their existing budgets are just severely limited where it’s not prioritized. The second thing really, though, I think goes back to the world map we just talked about, right? Which is like, what if the center of the pandemic in the United States was in rural America, which I think, you know, mentally doesn’t make sense when you think about how viruses spread like it’s going to go to your population density. So discard that for a second, right? But let’s just make the assumption that a large scale pandemic happens where the internet infrastructure isn’t Or maybe it’s not a pandemic, like maybe it’s like you’re saying like, I don’t know, for two weeks, Nebraska is pummeled with snow and everyone’s paralyzed, and no one can get out of their homes. Okay, fine. Why should that stop the learning experience? Well, one might argue, if I’m the in the middle of a cornfield in Nebraska, I don’t have high speed internet to sit on an iPad and get video web instruction from a middle school teacher. Right? So just a very basic plumbing and infrastructure. Like that’s a big use case, when we talk about how to serve those populations that, you know, aren’t even in the game, so to speak, when it comes to this type of learning. Because the tools aren’t even there, even if you throw a lot of money at the problem.
Jim Collison [38:42]
Yeah, no, I agree. I think if we don’t, if we don’t use this as an opportunity to look and say, Hmm, you know, maybe there’s a better way. I think we’ve missed out on a golden opportunity. You just don’t get a global pandemic every year. You know, and Listen, this may never happen again in our lifetime. But it is one of those situations that presents itself and you kind of start thinking, Oh, we hadn’t really thought about this. And can these kids be worth now? What’s here’s, here’s the interesting part of this as I’m watching all my co workers, like I’m well beyond this, my daughter’s in college, she’s virtual for the rest of the year, she’ll figure something out. By the way, Northwest Missouri State implemented a grade safety net. So they kind of said, where your grade is that today, it cannot go lower than one grade point no matter what no matter what you do, can’t be done. incentive or disincentive to do work. Okay. Like, students will be students. I’m sure they’ll take advantage of it. Right. But that that’s a great program to kind of think like, okay, but so I’m out of the game, but I’m watching all my coworkers you know, we we’ve been calling in every couple days. We have like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, kind Coffee nine o’clock everybody just dials in the the or connects the listen listen to terminology dials and we have nobody’s dialed a phone in 100 years. So we all connect on zoom in and you know get everybody on and it’s funny to watch the struggle is there’s people with their kids behind them. They’re trying to get work to them. They’re trying to figure out like, what are we going to do? Man? There was no there’s no plan. We don’t we don’t plan as, as parents. There’s no plan like what am I? What am I students are home to and what if my husband is home or what if my wife is home with me? Yeah, we we we thought a lot about like, okay, I can work from home. But what happens now when the other spouses here I would have lots of my co workers didn’t even have a dedicated workspace at home. So they’re at the kitchen table. Is that a long term? Like I see people dialing in from their couches. I’m like, is that a long term work life Location Can you can you? Can you I couldn’t, I couldn’t sit on my couch and work productively for two months, you know, type deal. So, yes, we can make the candidate we can make the connections, yes, we can do all those things. But then, you know, you mentioned some can be more productive. Earlier in the chat. Someone had said oftentimes, you know, let me see if I can find that comment. But oftentimes, those are workers who have a lot of incentive to be self directed. What if you’re not that way? You know, what does this look like from home and have you prepared the environment? I am fortunate I work. I’m a podcaster at work and I’m a podcaster here and I have the same exact setup. In fact, my home setups better than what I have or I can be super productive. And I am I’ve got nine monitors down here. I’ve got four computers. Like I can do some stuff down here. So Wow, Christian, I think You know, this has been an interesting discussion and, and we were prepared in some areas in into your point, you know, 20 years ago, we’d have been dead in the water. We weren’t, we weren’t. We’ve got some areas to improve on, like, education, that maybe hopefully this, this opens things up and we start looking at somebody in the chat room and mentioned starlink you know, maybe in 20 years, we do have better coverage and we are even in rural spaces be able to do better. But it’s not just about having internet access. It’s having a mindset that’s different that says, school is not done just one way we have to be ready to do it in in multiple ways. And even if we don’t have the internet we have to we’re gonna have to find some ways to get some things done. You know, what’s the plan we don’t ever prepare for those parents aren’t ready for that. They’re not ready to educate their own kids.
Christian Johnson [42:52]
Well, we’re and how many parents have already been caught off guard by I work from home full time now but I have no daycare from My children right now are in middle ground where they have to go in, but the schools are canceled. I mean, it has been, there’s a lot of those things that are kind of ancillary contingencies to having a successful work from home environment. And I think Kevin, brought another great point out, which I’ve also seen in my work environment where, you know, people are finding that they’ve had to get permission to bring monitors or other resources home from their work environment so that they can set up and be productive correctly. But that ultimately, one of the reasons why they’re able to be more productive at home is because they’re able to, you know, customize their work environment to what’s conducive for them, right, where they might not be able to achieve that level of customization in a corporate environment that’s trying to meet some general baselines, most of the people in the building. So I think that’s a really interesting insight as well.
Jim Collison [43:51]
Well, I’ve listened I’ve switched, like the first week. It took me like, and I’m pretty good at this, but it took me Like working from home one day a week, or even a couple, like when you’re sick, stay home a couple days. That’s one thing when you’re doing this in the long haul, I was like, I gotta get my fat butt up and actually get in like do some things and so, you know, I implemented some on the half hour walking, get out, walk around the block, go do some things, get some push ups do some pull ups, like cuz I could sit here for 18 hours and literally do nothing but work. Right? That’s that’s the that’s the world I’m in I’ve had to overcome some of the well being things to say like, Okay, I need to eat right, I need to eat better. You know, I need to I need to practice some exercise kinds of things to keep otherwise I’m going to get dull and my productivity will dip if I’m not if I’m not ready. You said something really, really interesting. And I think that the triple whammy on all of this for a lot of a lot of couples was oh now my spouse significant other is here with us. That’s one that’s Whammy number one. Typically on a, on a sick day or whatever, it’s just one person at home, you can be productive to my kids are here with me. Right? And I don’t like what do I do with them and there’s no school to take care of them. And then three, I think nobody thinks about this. Everybody’s home. And like, typically you would have 95% of the people in the office, still acting normal, and you’re just dialing in or you’re just calling into the meeting, where you’re the one. Now everybody’s calling into the meeting, we have to learn how to do virtual meeting etiquette. How do we actually get work done this way? Christian, you and I was really interesting. For years, you know, we’ve been working together for a lot of years. And I remember times we’ve gotten together when we’re doing server migrations, or we’re doing big work or you and I get on a call and we’d sit on the call for an hour or two, right? There maybe be 20 words, we’d say to each other Like, Hey, could you check this? Yeah, hold on a second. And you’d hear like, I’d be humming or you’d be saying something or we’d, we’d say funny things to each other. But it was a, it was a way that we work together. We work together. Well, during that I, I broached that idea and we stayed connected that way. I broached that idea to some of my co workers about leaving sleep line open, just call and leave the line open. It’s like being in the office when we’re working together on something. They thought that was the weirdest thing like, what you can hear me like, I’m like, Yeah, we do this in office all the time.
Christian Johnson [46:34]
And that’s interesting, because we’ve actually implemented that across a lot of the teams that I support, and it’s been really successful. We’ve hosted virtual happy hours, believe it or not, where everyone brings their drink, and it’s like a 20 or 30 way video conference. We’ve hosted coffee breaks where you know that 15 minutes in the day where you’re at the watercooler is kinda like a open line conversation. We’ve also even, you know, done exactly what you’re saying where, you know, two or three developers will be sitting working on completely different development tasks, but they’ll just leave the line open so that they end up being bored. And maybe that’s not as weird for people who are like, super embedded in technology every day. But I think it’s absolutely an effective mechanism for a lot of situations.
Jim Collison [47:21]
Well, it just mimics what we do in the office where we have office doors or cubes, so we can hear each other we can hear those conversation, it just mimics that but it takes kind of a mindset change of coming at it like oh, yeah, I just would leave that open. What’s been ironic as we as we get ready to move on to the next topic, is as soon as last week as soon as this went down, podcasters went to YouTube and to Facebook Live. And everybody was hosting evening Hangouts. And they were just it was it was like every people just needed to talk. They just wanted to come on and spend time with people and do some things in it’s settled down this week is kind of settled down. I’m not saying As many I feel like everybody’s kind of settled into their patterns, but I did a virtual happy hour on Thursday with with somebody we you know, 430. We got on, you know, we Monday, Wednesday and Friday with the with the recruiting team. We have a coffee. We have a 9am Coffee moment. You don’t have to be there. It’s just if you want to be it was full today. I’m sure it’ll, it’ll dwindle as time goes on and people get used to it. But we need those kinds of connections. We mentioned a little bit of this on Thursday, but on Home Gadget Geeks, but there are some ways to track what’s going on here. I’m assuming you’re bringing this up to talk a little bit about that how you’ve been tracking it.
Christian Johnson [48:40]
Yeah, so I kind of want to transition a little bit which is like the data science piece of this when we talk about cyber frontiers having its legacy in the data. This is this is kind of a goldmine, right, a completely new data set for a completely new real world problem that people want to analyze. I am kind of walking through this as the The origin point, right the first dashboard to kind of get their stuff together really quickly and get something out that was somewhat authoritative representative reproducible, etc, is the dashboard that’s up on the screen. This is a dashboard offered by the Johns Hopkins University. They’re specifically their center for systems science and engineering. And they were really the first ones to have a dashboard that was tracking the mainland China cases, even before this kind of global spread came up that you see here. Some of the big criticisms of this dashboard in the last week, you’ll actually notice if you’ve been using this software since the beginning is that they have evolved some of their visual representations because when we talk about,
Christian Johnson [49:48]
you know, data science in general, there’s kind of two components. One is obviously the quality of the data. But two, equally as important is how you visualize that data. And that can be very interactive. Accurate or misleading ways to visualize data that makes the human brain think that it’s something that’s not. The big concern with this dashboard that has now really been corrected is that you would see these huge like, here’s here’s the remnants of China, right? You would see these huge red circles that looked like oh my god 80% of China’s like under the water when in reality, that’s not what it was saying at all. But when your brain looked at it, it was like, Oh my gosh, China’s like, you know, underwater with this virus. So they fixed the graphical representation of like population density with relation to cases, they’ve done a better job of splitting out the death count from the number of cases from the number of recovered cases. And you know, if you if you’ve been watching the daily task force briefings for coronavirus, or any type of CDC or who data sources everyone talks about the curve Right, and this notion that we want to flatten the curve, so that we don’t overwhelm the healthcare system. And so what you can actually see in this data visualization very clearly, in kind of what I call the v1 dashboard of the Johns Hopkins implementation, you can see that so this first localized curve here, this is the timeframe of the mainland, Mainland China cases, right, the ramp up and the ramp down. What you’re seeing here now in March, is kind of think of it as like an aggregated world scale curve, right. So, you know, China and I believe South Korea are the only two that are really considered kind of past their peak curve at this point, whereas everyone else is still ramping up to their peak. So you’re kind of seeing this aggregated ramp up to the peak here right now. And we’re not done yet, according to folks who are more medically astute on this than I am, but I’m looking at it from a data perspective, right? And so I’m looking at like are the data visualizations And the access to data matching the narrative that we’re hearing about. And so you can switch this from cumulative confirmed cases, which is kind of an aggregate over, you know, worldwide total confirmed cases, this visualization does not take into consideration people who have recovered. And so again, one of the criticisms was, you would first see these giant red circles. That didn’t make sense. And then you wouldn’t really know like, Wait a second, are these confirmed cases, recovered cases like it makes it seem like that’s the current state. So you know, now there’s this tab active cases that shows you, here’s what it currently stands at today. And you can notice, okay, you know, here’s China, it looks much quieter than when you look at the cumulative confirmed cases graph. A lot more red bear, and even this is much more cleaned up and what it was before because again, the fidelity of the data is much better. And so what you actually see in the active cases is that You’ll see, now the United States really looks much more lit up, which makes sense because this is where the peak is. And you can again, see kind of the largest Epicenter here up in New York like, okay, these are correct and comparative circles for the size of the issue in New York City. So this was, I would say, a fair version one implementation, I give them a lot of credit for getting out the door quickly. I think that it was a respectable first stab, but I think a lot better visualizations. I’ve come out since then, by proxy, this is really enabled by software from our friends at ArcGIS that build the essary product. And so you’ll notice actually, as other state, local, federal and other countries implement their own dashboards, a lot of them are implementing dashboards on their website that you see, have this eerily familiar user interface. that I just showed you. And so, you know, here’s the covert equivalent that is on the S ri template website itself. And you’ll notice how the graph looks kind of similar. The widgets look kind of similar. And this one’s a bit of a consolidated down view, mind you, but there are absolutely dashboards like this, you can go and find for different areas and regions where they look the exact same, but they’re scoped to whatever the specific region is that that that, you know, local area, government or data resources collecting and aggregating the data. But I think this is a really interesting data science opportunity. Because there are a lot, a lot a lot a lot of now vetted, confirmed open source datasets, where you can go and build either your own visualizations or your own statistical analysis or kind of your own data trends around this kind of come to your own conclusions or your own line of research if that’s something you’re interested in doing. And one of the ones that I think is kind of leading the charge in doing this is a website called Corona data scraper calm. And so the corona data scraper project is like they have done this 100%, right, which is make the data open, aggregate the open source data, show how you validated the data source that you’re pulling it from, make your data sets available in different export formats, make all of your metadata available and your layers available, make your source code open source and available and make it super easy for other people to contribute to the project by either providing their own data scrapers to help augment the general data source. Or join the developer chat where you can actually go and contribute on it. And they even provide some example visualization tools for how you You could go and take this data for example. Any data scientist is familiar with using Python right to build Jupiter notebooks and do quick kind of data analysis and plots Well, here’s a quick start guide for how to basically pull down the corona data set cases and pop it into Python, Jupiter notebooks and create whatever types of charts that you want. So I just want to quickly show kind of the the Compare and contrast of what I think is a much higher quality version of a VA geographical dashboard representation. This is using the open features provided in this data source and I mean, look at immediately, how much more clear and how much more accurate it is when we talk about how your brain perceives data. One of the things I really like about this, it’s a very simple data visualization technique is that they are not using circles. circles are arbitrary. Viruses don’t cross state lines or county lines, you know non discriminately right? So like to put it into That human representation and form a circle makes no sense. Because there’s no counties that are a circle in the USA map, right? They’re arbitrary rectangles or weird shapes with, you know, arbitrary number of edges. So why not just represent it that way? Right. So as I zoom in, very quickly, I can see exactly where the hotspots are right. And like, let’s, let’s take this hotspot here. in Westchester County, which is just outside New York City, I can see with a hover over tooltip exactly the number of cases exactly the percentage of infection, the ratio of infected to total population and a given population count. Like just this very simple tooltip now allows me to quantitatively assess and validate the visualization that I’m seeing, which is really powerful. If you go back to the Jq or an equivalent dashboard, you’re not gonna have a tooltip hovering over and show you what that circle represents. You just have to guess so I think This very simple visualization really quickly shows a lot more data in the same pane of glass, which I think is a very successful example of data science gone, right. And, you know, we can zoom this out at the kind of global scale. But you can see countries where, you know, okay, no confirmed cases, but that’s probably due to a lack of testing more than anything else. But you know, you can, you can quickly kind of run this gamut, and we can zoom in. Okay, let’s zoom in to Italy, which is one of the leading hotspots in the world right now. Right? Like, wow, it is just the data screams out at you to exactly what it is that you’re looking at. This is a classic example of a success story and data visualization. And the cool thing is, if you don’t like it, if you’re not happy with it, if you want to analyze something that’s not provided in the startup materials, like you have open source code, open data sources, and an open source community willing to help you With your project. So this is a huge, huge, huge success story on both governments providing open source data sets for people to work with open source developers getting involved, and then building just clear, concise things. The fact that this came together so quickly, just shows how rapidly available data science tooling is available for the average person today. Christian, do you think this will stay around after,
Jim Collison [59:28]
you know, the excitement? You know, settles down next year? You know, we think about in the maybe next summer, because this could be I mean, this Think of all the different things that can be used for to track stuff around the globe?
Christian Johnson [59:39]
Absolutely. I mean, I think at the very least the source code and the data model for how they’re doing this should be saved for posterity use case for anyone who wants to do a case study on Corona. But I think you’re absolutely right, like the techniques and the mechanisms here that were exercised is just a brilliant example for things that could be reused elsewhere. And again, the open source Access here like this is a dream for any kind of, you know, developer that likes doing quick, scrappy things like this. This is rock solid.
Jim Collison [1:00:09]
Cool. Cool. We’re at our hour. Anything else you want to you want to cover while we we got folks?
Christian Johnson [1:00:16]
No, I mean, I think that’s kind of a wrap. There’ll be a couple of extra data sources from the EU and from the Google dashboard and other folks who have been responding kind of in similar ways and doing their own spin on it, which I think is great. I encourage it. But I wanted to show the corona data example just because it’s a crystallizing message on how to do things correctly. And it obviously shows some quality improvements on what the get it out fast approach was, which I also think is worth applauding because data is timely data. In order for data to be actionable. It has to be within the correct timeline horizon for to be actionable. So I think something like what Jay achieved Even if it had some things not as desirable is still to be commended for the fact that we can pull together and start doing stuff like that so quickly and then iterate on it. So this was a success story as well.
Jim Collison [1:01:11]
Yeah, well, hopefully it gets people out making the right decisions, whatever those decisions are. Like, it’s such this, this has been an interesting one, because it’s, you know, it’s had the tendency to display it along the, you know, the, the the political lines, at least here in the United States of like, yeah, this isn’t that big of a deal. And then, you know, no, this is a huge deal. And, and we’re still kind of in the midst of that, even with all this data, Christian, I’m always surprised at how we, how people land on different sites, right or wrong, how they land on different sites, even with all this data, you know, you think like, Oh, this would make total sense. I was chatting with somebody this morning. Who will never listen to this show. Who said to me, you know, hey, What about weighing the economical cost in this? Like, do we, you know, this is the first time I’ve heard somebody say this typically in social, it’s all been about, why aren’t we listening to the experts? You know, the the doctors and the horse who really know this stuff. And today I heard the argument, like, maybe they’ve gone a little too far at our own economical doom. And I hadn’t really heard that. I had heard that this is getting blown out of proportion. But I hadn’t I hadn’t heard it tie to, like, we can’t let the medical community drive us to financial ruin. Like they’ll the you know, they’ll have us not even breathing at some point. I’m making that part up. Right.
Christian Johnson [1:02:44]
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s gonna be a balance right. At some point. There’s, I think the initial very strong response is exactly what we needed to kind of stem the tide. Right. I think that is incredibly, you know, soundstage guidance that you know, everyone followed around Round the globe, right. So I think there’s some pretty common consensus there. Now, where you’re bringing up is that? Well, because we rushed to do that, and because there was so much new unknown things that we hadn’t learned, like we’ve learned a lot in this period of time. And I think now as we adapt, like, you can’t shut down the world’s engine and expect that you’re going to keep on trickling forward. And to that extent, I think it means that it’s not I think some people see it as either or right. Like, either you’re shut down and you’re safe, or you’re running and you’re at risk. And I think that mentality is going to evolve and adapt from a couple different stressors. Number one, people are going to go stir crazy at some point being cooped up,
Christian Johnson [1:03:44]
for lack of a better word, right. Like this is not normal for how most people think and operate for their lifespan. I think Secondly, you know, when you compare, we have a lot more data now than we did at the beginning of this These shutdown periods about well, what are the lethality rates? And what are the at risk populations and we, we had suspicions, but we didn’t have the data. And so I think now that the data is out, we’ll be able to adapt the policymaking piece to make informed decisions about Okay, we can safely open these things back up, because now we understand what the virus is moving. We understand where populations are or are not as impacted. So I think you’re gonna start to see that type of evolution where people are starting to ask those questions. And I think that the natural questions humans should be asking, and I think we’re going to be able to make informed decisions as a society because the data is now there to have that discussion, whereas before, it really just wasn’t. So we took a drastic measure to be safe and overly cautious and try and you know, stem the tide. And now we’re getting to a point where we’re gonna start making calibrations. I think pretty soon you’ll see.
Jim Collison [1:04:58]
Yeah, no, I agree. Based to hopefully based on the data and what we know, you know, I just hope when we go to restart the economy, it doesn’t go awry.
Christian Johnson [1:05:07]
Well, I just got it, you know, this is my opinion worth the price you paid for it, like always, which is free. But I think the volatility is going to be there for quite a while. And I think no one really knows yet what the total economic impact of this is. Is it worse than the Oh, eight financial crisis? I think we’re, I think there’s probably a pretty good probability that it could be. Is it going to trend into Great Depression territory? I certainly hope not. Is it still statistically probable, potentially, but it all is really gonna I mean, this is a very fluid situation. So by the time this show is published, and on the audio stream, it could be completely different. But what I can say is that no one truly knows what the total sum impact is of this whole thing, whether it’s economically, socially. You know how people operate. In a global culture and, you know, interface globally, travel, leisure, I mean, there’s just the impacts are way longer than anyone cast is going to cover. Yeah,
Jim Collison [1:06:13]
yeah, no, it’s it’s gonna have it’s, it’s gonna have its ramifications. And we’ll never be able to know, like, if we hadn’t done these things, we can’t go back and say we overreacted. You don’t you can’t you can’t know. Like, you can’t rerun those simulations. Right. You know, and so we’ve made some decisions. And, and, you know, to your point, we’re following the data. And so I think for for Christian, for a guy like you and for a community like this, we should, we should be interested in the data and interest in what it says I watch. I watch the market data all the time, just to kind of see what’s going on, you know, with it, what’s happening, where are we going? How is this affecting the market and then of course, you know, we’re dealing with people so that’s always chaos theory. You never know. You just cannot predict what humans are going to do especially the wisdom of the crowd is not always wisdom. So we got some things going on there as well would that Christian or remind everyone that the average guy that TV powered by Maple Grove partners get secure, reliable, high speed consistent, and you can count on it hosting that you can count on and trust. head out to Maple Grove partners comm if you’re looking for some kind of hosting, Christian can do that for you. Maple Grove partners.com if you got questions for Christian, we may do this. We may pick up the pace a little bit on this just because well, we have a little bit more time although Christian you may not have as much time in the next couple weeks busy, busy things going on for you. Although this summer you’ve got a busy summer off. We’ll see how that all pans out. Also rolls. Yeah, we’ll see how it rolls. We’ll be hanging around if you got if you have questions for Christians send them an email Christian at the average guy.tv you can send me an email Jim at the average guy.tv Collison, Adam Borg whisper for him. Stay around if you’re listening live or coming outside if you’re listening on the podcast thanks for listening there as well without say goodbye goodnight
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