Back up

Well I’m back.  It’s been a hell of a year, and it’s even getting more interesting.  I haven’t posted in the last year, because things were just too depressing.  But the world is changing, and I’ve gotten back in stride.  I don’t feel good, but the old world has fallen apart, and I’m moving into the new one..  And then new one doesn’t seem that bad.

So I’ve reconnected with the MIT alumni network, and I’ve gotten into brokering medical supplies.  One thing that has happened is that when I look at the world, I’m not longer depressed.  I’m angry, but the good thing about anger is that it gets you motivated to do stuff.  I’m looking at the complete mess that exists in the world, and the fact that people are dying because they can’t get basic medical supplies, and the sheer magnitude of institutional incompetence just causes me to go crazy.

The thing about makes me angry is that there is absolutely no freaking reason, we should be low on supplies.  We aren’t talking about diamonds or plutonium, we are talking about equipment that shouldn’t be that hard to manufacture.  So what I’ve been doing is to develop some networks to get supplies from point A to point B.  And in order to organize this, I’ve come up with a set of forms that I’m beta testing.  The idea is that someone that needs supplies or has supplies should be able to fill out a one page form that gets passed around.

There is some deep theory behind all of this.  I’ve started with the forms and systems used by FEMA in the Incident Command System.  However, the issue with FEMA is that it assumes that supplies are prepurchased and stockpiled.  We are in a situation, where the stockpiles are empty so you have to order supplies direct from the factory, and that means that you have to include not just the supplies but the funding mechanism. So you need to put in not only the FEMA request but also something that looks like an ISDA term sheet.

I’ve got about five or six suppliers of medical equipment, and so part of the reason I’m creating a bureaucratic system is so that I can organize this effort. Right now I’m doing a quick beta test of the forms, and will publish them in two or three days, once I get some feedback.

There’s also some deep history.  China has had a bad century, but one thing about history is that you have stories about how people organize in response to crisis.  So I’ve been reading a lot of Mao Zedong to understand how to conduct a people’s guerilla war against the virus.

But what makes me angry is that we are in deep crap if I’m having to organize this.   I’ve got a ton of very inflamatory thoughts and feelings about the COVID situation, but I’ll save some of that, since it can get pretty ugly and nasty if I let it all out.