Coronavirus Community Guidelines
Best Practices in Torah, Avoda and Chesed
We are gearing up to create best practices to support each other during this coming unprecedented period of semi-quarantine. We need everyone's help, energy, and creativity. We are beginning to identify needs, as well as identify what services people can offer. For example, we have had offers of people who can deliver groceries to high risk persons. We have had offers of physicians who can provide virtual medical consultation in the event that hot-lines and PCPs are unavailable. We have members who will be making social contact "phone-trees," so that we can check-in with each other and make sure no-one falls through the cracks. And we will be creating a virtual platform for Torah study, communal conversations, and information sharing.
Some of this, we will provide "top-down," but more importantly, we need to decentralize this and empower our kehillah to take charge and action. We will turn to our committe chairs to figure out how to translate their wonderful work to the virutal and semi-quartine world. I will be reaching out to our committee chairs. We need technical consultants who can help us set up the technology platforms and help manage/maintian them. We need a humor channel to cut the sharpness and severity of this crisis. We need lots of chesed prepration so we have plans and contingencies in palce to help each other. I will begin to advise on Pesach preparations shortly. And we need other ideas and implementers. Please email me if you are willing to take a leadership role.
The Call to Leadership for All of Us and Important Guidelines
Lastly for now, please find below two important articles. The first are guidelines for healthy and safe semi-quarantine living as we all rise to the challenge to save lives and be part of a local, national, global response. The first is guidelines by Dr. Assaf Bitton, Executive Director of Public Health at Harvard and Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is smart and pragmatic. Below are his thoughts on play dates, dinners, and life in general during this temporary social distancing. The second is an article on leadership.
Asaf Bitton MD, MPH | Executive Director | Ariadne Labs
Brigham and Women's Hospital | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Healt
“What I can say as a physician and public health leader, is that what we do, or don't do, over the next week will have a massive impact on the local and perhaps national trajectory of coronavirus. We are only about 11 days behind Italy and generally on track to repeat what is unfortunately happening there, as well as much of the rest of Europe very soon. At this point, containment through contact tracing and testing is only part of the necessary strategy. We must move to pandemic mitigation through widespread, uncomfortable, and comprehensive social distancing. That means not only shutting down schools, work (as much as possible), group gatherings, and public events. It also means making daily choices to stay away from each other as much as possible to Flatten The Curve.
So what does this enhanced form of social distancing mean on a daily basis, when schools are cancelled?
I can suggest the following:
1. No playdates, parties, sleepovers, or families visiting each other's houses. This sounds extreme because it is. We are trying to create distance between family units and between individuals across those family units. It is uncomfortable, especially for families with small children or for kids who love to play with their friends. But even if you choose only one friend to have over, you are creating new links and possibilities for the type of transmission that all of our school/work/public event closures are trying to prevent. The symptoms of coronavirus take 4-5 days to manifest themselves. Someone who comes over looking well can transmit the virus. Sharing food is particularly risky - I definitely do not recommend that people do so outside of their family. We have already taken extreme social measures to address this serious disease - let's not actively co-opt our efforts by having high levels of social interaction at people's houses instead of the schools. Again - the wisdom of early and aggressive social distancing is that it can flatten the curve above, give our health system a chance to not be overwhlemed, and eventually may reduce the length and need for longer periods of extreme social distancing later (see what has transpired in Italy and Wuhan). We need to all do our part during these times, even if it means some discomfort.
2. Take walks/runs outside, but maintain distance (ideally 6 feet between people outside your family). Try not to use public facilities like playground structures as coronavirus can live on plastic and metal for up to 3 days, and these structures aren't getting regularly cleaned. Try not to have physical contact with people outside of your family. Going outside will be important during these strange times, and the weather is improving. Go outside every day if you can but stay physically away from others. Try not to have kids play with each other (even outside) if that means direct physical contact. Even basketball or soccer involve direct contact and cannot be recommended. If people wish to go outside and have a picnic with other families, I strongly recommend keeping distance of at least 6 feet, not sharing any food at all, and not having direct physical contact. Invariably, that is hard with kids, so these shared, "distant" picnics may be tricky. Do not visit nursing homes or other areas where large numbers of the elderly reside, as they are at highest risk for complications and mortality from coronavirus. We need to find alternate ways to reduce social isolation in these communities through virtual means instead of physical in-person visits.
3. Reduce the frequency of going to stores/restaurants/coffee shops for the time being. Of course trips to the grocery store will be necessary, but try to limit them and go at times when less busy. Consider wearing gloves (not medical - but perhaps washable) and of course washing hands before and after really well. Leave the medical masks and gloves for the medical professionals - we need them. Maintain social distance from folks. Take-out meals and food are riskier than making food at home given the links between the people who prepare food, transport the food, and you. It is hard to know how much that risk is, but it is is certainly higher than making it at home.
4. If you are sick, definitely stay home and contact a medical professional. If you are sick, you should try isolate yourself from the rest of your family within your house as best as you can. If you have questions about whether you qualify or should get a coronavirus test, you can call you primary care team and/or consider calling the Partners Health Care hotline staffed 8AM-8PM every day - 617 724 7000, or the Massachusettes department of public health at 617 983 6800. Don't just walk in to an ambulatory clinic - call first. Obviously if it is an emergency call 911.
5. We need to push our local, state, and national leaders to close ALL schools, events, gatherings, and public spaces now. A local, town by town response won't have the needed effect. We need a statewide, nationwide approach in these trying times. Contact your representative and the governor to urge them to enact statewide closures. As of today, 6 states had already done so. We should be one of them. Also urge them to fund emergency preparedness and make increasing coronavirus testing capacity an immediate and top priority.
I realize there is a lot built into these suggestions, and that they represent a real burden for many people, businesses, and communities. Social distancing is hard and may negatively impact others, especially those who face vulnerablities in our society. I recognize that there is structural and social inequity built in and around social distancing recommendations. We can and must take steps to bolster our community response to people who face food insecurity, domestic violence, and housing challenges, along with the many other social inequities.
I also realize that not everyone can do everything. But we have to try our absolute best as a community, starting today. It is a public health imperative. If we don't do this now voluntarily, it will become necessary later involuntarily, when the potential benefits will be much less than doing so right now.”
>>>>> Leadership 201
Covid-19 was a Leadership Test. It Came Back Negative.
wsj.com/articles/great-
By Sam Walker
March 14, 2020
On some glorious day in the future, when the Covid-19 pandemic has been controlled and contained, it will be time to hand out trophies.
The recipients may include scores of medical professionals, business executives, school administrators, shopkeepers and yoga instructors all over the world who acted decisively to prevent the virus from spreading; often at considerable personal cost and well before the people they protected thought it was necessary.
I look forward to that. Dark stories need heroes, too. But if the worst disease outbreak in modern history only teaches us one lesson, let it be this: The global response to this pandemic will never be anything more than a case study in crisis management. It has already failed the fundamental tests of leadership.
Leadership is what prevents a pandemic.
Managers, as a species, embrace a lower degree of difficulty. They operate best in situations where the threats are specific, the goal is clear and the stakes are plainly obvious. In a crisis like this one, managers thrive by making smart, incremental decisions under pressure.
‘We usually define heroes as people who save the day.... But what about all the people who keep the day from needing to be saved?’
— Dan Heath
Great leaders are capable managers, too—the difference is how they approach the tranquil periods. No matter what their role, or how many direct reports they have, or how well things seem to be going, they continue to work relentlessly and resist complacency. They peer around corners to anticipate the next unprecedented challenge, good or bad, and aren’t afraid to push their teams to prepare for these extreme scenarios.
If extraordinary leaders had carried the day, this pandemic wouldn’t produce any heroes. It simply never would have happened.
Last year, before this virus began to spread, I learned about a parable that’s well-known in public-health circles. It goes something like this:
Two friends are sitting by a river when they spot a child drowning in the water. Both friends immediately dive in and pull the child to safety. But as soon as they do, another struggling child drifts into view. Then another. Then another. After completing several rescues, one of them climbs out of the water.
“Where are you going?” the other friend asks.
“I’m going upstream to tackle the guy who’s throwing all these kids in the water.”
I first saw this parable in an advance copy of Dan Heath’s recently published book, “Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen.” (Full disclosure: my wife is Mr. Heath’s agent.) One of the book’s recurring themes is that most leaders, when preparing for disasters, focus their efforts on creating systems to manage the fallout. In other words, they attack the symptoms rather than the problem itself.
If a company is being inundated with customer-service calls, for example, its leadership might mobilize a backup team to handle the overflow. The problem, as Mr. Heath explains, is that once these emergency-response teams exist, they tend to self-perpetuate. If calming irate customers is your job, your primary motive is calming them successfully. You have no incentive to figure out how to stop them from calling.
“We usually define heroes as people who save the day,” Mr. Heath told me. “We talk about firefighters and first responders. But what about all the people who keep the day from needing to be saved? Their work is often invisible and they don’t get the glory.”
The upside of being a manager, as opposed to a leader, is that it’s much easier to be perceived as heroic. The downside, of course, is that you’re confined to a cycle in which every crisis you tackle is followed by a long period of neglect that inevitably worsens the next crisis. In the case of Covid-19, any lack of organizational preparation is unforgivable. The threat of a global pandemic has loomed for years.
Mr. Heath cites several examples of leaders engaging in “upstream thinking.”
He mentions an IBM system that uses artificial intelligence to predict when elevators are likely to break down, so technicians can be dispatched before they do. He describes how Northwell Health, a New York hospital system, cut emergency response times by analyzing 911 call data and deploying its ambulances to “hot spots” where emergencies tend to happen. If calls from a nursing home tend to come in at lunchtime, for example, they might have a ready-to-go ambulance parked at a Wendy’s down the block.
In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina leveled New Orleans, there was one bright spot in the otherwise abysmal response. Officials had been experimenting with “contraflow,” an elaborate process in which interstate traffic is rerouted to flow in one direction. Before Katrina hit, they’d honed the system enough to keep it rolling for 25 hours, allowing thousands to evacuate. While an estimated 1,700 people died, it could have been much worse: Simulations of a Katrina-like storm had predicted 60,000 fatalities.
One problem with upstream leadership is the difficulty of grading it. You can’t assemble a panel of grateful people who didn’t get stuck in an elevator, or would have died if an ambulance arrived 90 seconds later, or will testify that contraflow saved their lives. As Mr. Heath put it: “How do you prove when something did not happen?”
Relentless competence can backfire, too. Some public-health officials have said that if they do their jobs well and nothing bad happens, their departments are sometimes targeted for budget cuts. In business, some upstream thinkers have complained that when a company runs smoothly, some people start to think it’s not assuming enough risk.
When it comes to major catastrophes like Covid-19, genuine leaders often encounter another problem. The plans and protocols they’ve developed for these disasters have been filed away and left to gather dust, right next to a box of expired hand sanitizer. It’s one thing to formulate a brilliant plan. Implementing it under pressure is another story.
The best advice that I’ve heard comes from Dr. Jeffrey Freeman, a disaster response expert from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. In something as serious as a pandemic, he told me, people involved in the response have limited time and resources. “They need to use what they know and trust,” he says. If they’ve never used a new technology or special crisis protocol before, he said, there’s virtually no chance they’ll use it in the fog of war.
The best strategy is to figure out how to incorporate these disaster systems into the regular daily workflow—or as he puts it, to give them “day jobs.”
One example, reported by my colleague Te-Ping Chen, involves Trello, a software company that wanted to make sure its employees were prepared to work remotely. If any person needs to call into a meeting, the company requires everyone in the room to open their laptops and join the video call, too.
If nothing else, I hope this pandemic will help organizations appreciate the difference between leaders and managers and start learning how to identify them.
I understand why managers make comfortable hires. They have saved the day before and people will trust them to do it again. Great leaders, by contrast, can come across as killjoys, nags or neurotics. Frankly, their tenures might seem dull.
These days, dull sounds pretty good to me.
—Mr. Walker, a former reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, is the author of “The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership” (Random House).
Write to Sam Walker at sam.walker@wsj.com
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