Lockdown Life with a Purpose
The news blasts coming in from Viber, Telegram, and Facebook news feeds show dismal numbers of increasing casualties from #covid19, formerly known as the novel coronavirus. What started as a tiny cluster of cases in China last December became a full blown global pandemic.
Our capital region in the Philippines, like in other countries, was placed on “enhanced community quarantine,” basically tantamount to a lockdown. Lives that used to be hustling and bustling with movement and activity are now restricted at home. The most extroverted of my friends are now experiencing the toll on their mental health of this forced social isolation. The terms “social distancing” and “flattening the curve” fill our feeds. Doctors and nurses are now in the front-lines, battling out each potential covid19 case that comes up in the public and private hospitals. Some patients even lie about their symptoms and put these medical heroes at greater risk because they can’t triage properly. Some people are found covid19 positive postmortem.
The numbers keep rising and there seems to be no end in sight. The stuff of beginning story arcs of dystopian novels is now becoming the main content of global news and current affairs. If you had a personal crisis before, there’s an even bigger crisis now that’s claiming lives and not choosing across education level, location, or socioeconomic status.
Stock markets are plummeting, work in most non-essential industries have gone to a standstill or adapted to a remote working contingency scenario, and families wait on updates from press conferences from the Department of Health and the government. There is much uncertainty and little by way of assurance. Hands go dry from frequently washing hands, each surface is filled with disinfectant, and people refrain from embracing and kissing for the time being.
I needed to do something. But what? I asked myself: What can I possibly do beyond the four corners of my suburban home that can potentially make a difference? I am just a housewife who just gave birth and is in between jobs. What could I possibly offer the world at this point in time that can help in this global monster of a health problem and can fit in between toddler care and newborn diaper changes?
It is under this pseudo-apocalyptic circumstance that I found myself checking out the dashboard at Coronatracker. On Twitter, I saw their call for volunteers from all over the world. I found myself installing Telegram app on my phone in between diaper changes to coordinate with volunteers realtime. I chatted with the core Malaysian and Filipino volunteers on Slack and finally I found something to do in the midst of this crazy time.
I figured that even if it’s just updating numbers on a spreadsheet or typing up words on a Google Document, at least I am doing something valuable. We are conserving the data of covid19 cases globally as it happens using official data sources. The team is powered by 460+ active volunteers who lose sleep and chug up caffeine while shipping out code updates to improve the Coronatracker platform.
We are all so far apart physically but I hardly feel that I am talking to someone in another part of the world; as far as I am concerned, we are together in this important work of preserving the data as it happens and doing meaningful research out of it with the help of our data scientists and medical practitioner volunteers. It may not make too much sense now or be as dangerous as the healthcare front-liners in the hospitals, but it’s the type of crowdsourced work that future generations can benefit from.
There is still so much work that needs to be done and this is far from over. If you have time on your hands and a willingness to help change the world one data point at a time, join us and be a volunteer for Coronatracker.
Now I am writing content on social media to help spread the word about data integrity in the time of covid-19, because the quicker spread of fake news is another form of pandemic that’s killing people’s common sense and sense of calm.
