problem solution essay about covid 19

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Covid 19 Essay in English

Essay on Covid -19: In a very short amount of time, coronavirus has spread globally. It has had an enormous impact on people's lives, economy, and societies all around the world, affecting every country. Governments have had to take severe measures to try and contain the pandemic. The virus has altered our way of life in many ways, including its effects on our health and our economy. Here are a few sample essays on ‘CoronaVirus’.

100 Words Essay on Covid 19

200 words essay on covid 19, 500 words essay on covid 19.

COVID-19 or Corona Virus is a novel coronavirus that was first identified in 2019. It is similar to other coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, but it is more contagious and has caused more severe respiratory illness in people who have been infected. The novel coronavirus became a global pandemic in a very short period of time. It has affected lives, economies and societies across the world, leaving no country untouched. The virus has caused governments to take drastic measures to try and contain it. From health implications to economic and social ramifications, COVID-19 impacted every part of our lives. It has been more than 2 years since the pandemic hit and the world is still recovering from its effects.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the world has been impacted in a number of ways. For one, the global economy has taken a hit as businesses have been forced to close their doors. This has led to widespread job losses and an increase in poverty levels around the world. Additionally, countries have had to impose strict travel restrictions in an attempt to contain the virus, which has resulted in a decrease in tourism and international trade. Furthermore, the pandemic has put immense pressure on healthcare systems globally, as hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients suffering from the virus. Lastly, the outbreak has led to a general feeling of anxiety and uncertainty, as people are fearful of contracting the disease.

My Experience of COVID-19

I still remember how abruptly colleges and schools shut down in March 2020. I was a college student at that time and I was under the impression that everything would go back to normal in a few weeks. I could not have been more wrong. The situation only got worse every week and the government had to impose a lockdown. There were so many restrictions in place. For example, we had to wear face masks whenever we left the house, and we could only go out for essential errands. Restaurants and shops were only allowed to operate at take-out capacity, and many businesses were shut down.

In the current scenario, coronavirus is dominating all aspects of our lives. The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc upon people’s lives, altering the way we live and work in a very short amount of time. It has revolutionised how we think about health care, education, and even social interaction. This virus has had long-term implications on our society, including its impact on mental health, economic stability, and global politics. But we as individuals can help to mitigate these effects by taking personal responsibility to protect themselves and those around them from infection.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Education

The outbreak of coronavirus has had a significant impact on education systems around the world. In China, where the virus originated, all schools and universities were closed for several weeks in an effort to contain the spread of the disease. Many other countries have followed suit, either closing schools altogether or suspending classes for a period of time.

This has resulted in a major disruption to the education of millions of students. Some have been able to continue their studies online, but many have not had access to the internet or have not been able to afford the costs associated with it. This has led to a widening of the digital divide between those who can afford to continue their education online and those who cannot.

The closure of schools has also had a negative impact on the mental health of many students. With no face-to-face contact with friends and teachers, some students have felt isolated and anxious. This has been compounded by the worry and uncertainty surrounding the virus itself.

The situation with coronavirus has improved and schools have been reopened but students are still catching up with the gap of 2 years that the pandemic created. In the meantime, governments and educational institutions are working together to find ways to support students and ensure that they are able to continue their education despite these difficult circumstances.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Economy

The outbreak of the coronavirus has had a significant impact on the global economy. The virus, which originated in China, has spread to over two hundred countries, resulting in widespread panic and a decrease in global trade. As a result of the outbreak, many businesses have been forced to close their doors, leading to a rise in unemployment. In addition, the stock market has taken a severe hit.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Health

The effects that coronavirus has on one's health are still being studied and researched as the virus continues to spread throughout the world. However, some of the potential effects on health that have been observed thus far include respiratory problems, fever, and coughing. In severe cases, pneumonia, kidney failure, and death can occur. It is important for people who think they may have been exposed to the virus to seek medical attention immediately so that they can be treated properly and avoid any serious complications. There is no specific cure or treatment for coronavirus at this time, but there are ways to help ease symptoms and prevent the virus from spreading.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

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Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary.

Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive.

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Geotechnical engineer

The role of geotechnical engineer starts with reviewing the projects needed to define the required material properties. The work responsibilities are followed by a site investigation of rock, soil, fault distribution and bedrock properties on and below an area of interest. The investigation is aimed to improve the ground engineering design and determine their engineering properties that include how they will interact with, on or in a proposed construction.

The role of geotechnical engineer in mining includes designing and determining the type of foundations, earthworks, and or pavement subgrades required for the intended man-made structures to be made. Geotechnical engineering jobs are involved in earthen and concrete dam construction projects, working under a range of normal and extreme loading conditions.

Cartographer

How fascinating it is to represent the whole world on just a piece of paper or a sphere. With the help of maps, we are able to represent the real world on a much smaller scale. Individuals who opt for a career as a cartographer are those who make maps. But, cartography is not just limited to maps, it is about a mixture of art , science , and technology. As a cartographer, not only you will create maps but use various geodetic surveys and remote sensing systems to measure, analyse, and create different maps for political, cultural or educational purposes.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Product Manager

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Operations manager.

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Bank Probationary Officer (PO)

Investment director.

An investment director is a person who helps corporations and individuals manage their finances. They can help them develop a strategy to achieve their goals, including paying off debts and investing in the future. In addition, he or she can help individuals make informed decisions.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues.

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

An expert in plumbing is aware of building regulations and safety standards and works to make sure these standards are upheld. Testing pipes for leakage using air pressure and other gauges, and also the ability to construct new pipe systems by cutting, fitting, measuring and threading pipes are some of the other more involved aspects of plumbing. Individuals in the plumber career path are self-employed or work for a small business employing less than ten people, though some might find working for larger entities or the government more desirable.

Construction Manager

Individuals who opt for a career as construction managers have a senior-level management role offered in construction firms. Responsibilities in the construction management career path are assigning tasks to workers, inspecting their work, and coordinating with other professionals including architects, subcontractors, and building services engineers.

Urban Planner

Urban Planning careers revolve around the idea of developing a plan to use the land optimally, without affecting the environment. Urban planning jobs are offered to those candidates who are skilled in making the right use of land to distribute the growing population, to create various communities.

Urban planning careers come with the opportunity to make changes to the existing cities and towns. They identify various community needs and make short and long-term plans accordingly.

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description: A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems.

Naval Architect

A Naval Architect is a professional who designs, produces and repairs safe and sea-worthy surfaces or underwater structures. A Naval Architect stays involved in creating and designing ships, ferries, submarines and yachts with implementation of various principles such as gravity, ideal hull form, buoyancy and stability.

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Veterinary Doctor

Pathologist.

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Speech Therapist

Gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

Hospital Administrator

The hospital Administrator is in charge of organising and supervising the daily operations of medical services and facilities. This organising includes managing of organisation’s staff and its members in service, budgets, service reports, departmental reporting and taking reminders of patient care and services.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs.

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Videographer

Multimedia specialist.

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion.

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Linguistic meaning is related to language or Linguistics which is the study of languages. A career as a linguistic meaning, a profession that is based on the scientific study of language, and it's a very broad field with many specialities. Famous linguists work in academia, researching and teaching different areas of language, such as phonetics (sounds), syntax (word order) and semantics (meaning).

Other researchers focus on specialities like computational linguistics, which seeks to better match human and computer language capacities, or applied linguistics, which is concerned with improving language education. Still, others work as language experts for the government, advertising companies, dictionary publishers and various other private enterprises. Some might work from home as freelance linguists. Philologist, phonologist, and dialectician are some of Linguist synonym. Linguists can study French , German , Italian .

Public Relation Executive

Travel journalist.

The career of a travel journalist is full of passion, excitement and responsibility. Journalism as a career could be challenging at times, but if you're someone who has been genuinely enthusiastic about all this, then it is the best decision for you. Travel journalism jobs are all about insightful, artfully written, informative narratives designed to cover the travel industry. Travel Journalist is someone who explores, gathers and presents information as a news article.

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product.

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

Merchandiser.

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans.

Metallurgical Engineer

A metallurgical engineer is a professional who studies and produces materials that bring power to our world. He or she extracts metals from ores and rocks and transforms them into alloys, high-purity metals and other materials used in developing infrastructure, transportation and healthcare equipment.

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems.

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party.

Computer Programmer

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How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

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Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

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Students’ Essays on Infectious Disease Prevention, COVID-19 Published Nationwide

As part of the BIO 173: Global Change and Infectious Disease course, Professor Fred Cohan assigns students to write an essay persuading others to prevent future and mitigate present infectious diseases. If students submit their essay to a news outlet—and it’s published—Cohan awards them with extra credit.

As a result of this assignment, more than 25 students have had their work published in newspapers across the United States. Many of these essays cite and applaud the University’s Keep Wes Safe campaign and its COVID-19 testing protocols.

Cohan, professor of biology and Huffington Foundation Professor in the College of the Environment (COE), began teaching the Global Change and Infectious Disease course in 2009, when the COE was established. “I wanted very much to contribute a course to what I saw as a real game-changer in Wesleyan’s interest in the environment. The course is about all the ways that human demands on the environment have brought us infectious diseases, over past millennia and in the present, and why our environmental disturbances will continue to bring us infections into the future.”

Over the years, Cohan learned that he can sustainably teach about 170 students every year without running out of interested students. This fall, he had 207. Although he didn’t change the overall structure of his course to accommodate COVID-19 topics, he did add material on the current pandemic to various sections of the course.

“I wouldn’t say that the population of the class increased tremendously as a result of COVID-19, but I think the enthusiasm of the students for the material has increased substantially,” he said.

To accommodate online learning, Cohan shaved off 15 minutes from his normal 80-minute lectures to allow for discussion sections, led by Cohan and teaching assistants. “While the lectures mostly dealt with biology, the discussions focused on how changes in behavior and policy can solve the infectious disease problems brought by human disturbance of the environment,” he said.

Based on student responses to an introspective exam question, Cohan learned that many students enjoyed a new hope that we could each contribute to fighting infectious disease. “They discovered that the solution to infectious disease is not entirely a waiting game for the right technologies to come along,” he said. “Many enjoyed learning about fighting infectious disease from a moral and social perspective. And especially, the students enjoyed learning about the ‘socialism of the microbe,’ how preventing and curing others’ infections will prevent others’ infections from becoming our own. The students enjoyed seeing how this idea can drive both domestic and international health policies.”

A sampling of the published student essays are below:

Alexander Giummo ’22 and Mike Dunderdale’s ’23 op-ed titled “ A National Testing Proposal: Let’s Fight Back Against COVID-19 ” was published in the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.

They wrote: “With an expansive and increased testing plan for U.S. citizens, those who are COVID-positive could limit the number of contacts they have, and this would also help to enable more effective contact tracing. Testing could also allow for the return of some ‘normal’ events, such as small social gatherings, sports, and in-person class and work schedules.

“We propose a national testing strategy in line with the one that has kept Wesleyan students safe this year. The plan would require a strong push by the federal government to fund the initiative, but it is vital to successful containment of the virus.

“Twice a week, all people living in the U.S. should report to a local testing site staffed with professionals where the anterior nasal swab Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test, used by Wesleyan and supported by the Broad Institute, would be implemented.”

Kalyani Mohan ’22 and Kalli Jackson ’22 penned an essay titled “ Where Public Health Meets Politics: COVID-19 in the United States ,” which was published in Wesleyan’s Arcadia Political Review .

They wrote: “While the U.S. would certainly benefit from a strengthened pandemic response team and structural changes to public health systems, that alone isn’t enough, as American society is immensely stratified, socially and culturally. The politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that individualism, libertarianism and capitalism are deeply ingrained in American culture, to the extent that Americans often blind to the fact community welfare can be equivalent to personal welfare. Pandemics are multifaceted, and preventing them requires not just a cultural shift but an emotional one amongst the American people, one guided by empathy—towards other people, different communities and the planet. Politics should be a tool, not a weapon against its people.”

Sydnee Goyer ’21 and Marcel Thompson’s ’22 essay “ This Flu Season Will Be Decisive in the Fight Against COVID-19 ” also was published in Arcadia Political Review .

“With winter approaching all around the Northern Hemisphere, people are preparing for what has already been named a “twindemic,” meaning the joint threat of the coronavirus and the seasonal flu,” they wrote. “While it is known that seasonal vaccinations reduce the risk of getting the flu by up to 60% and also reduce the severity of the illness after the contamination, additional research has been conducted in order to know whether or not flu shots could reduce the risk of people getting COVID-19. In addition to the flu shot, it is essential that people remain vigilant in maintaining proper social distancing, washing your hands thoroughly, and continuing to wear masks in public spaces.”

An op-ed titled “ The Pandemic Has Shown Us How Workplace Culture Needs to Change ,” written by Adam Hickey ’22 and George Fuss ’21, was published in Park City, Utah’s The Park Record .

They wrote: “One review of academic surveys (most of which were conducted in the United States) conducted in 2019 found that between 35% and 97% of respondents in those surveys reported having attended work while they were ill, often because of workplace culture or policy which generated pressure to do so. Choosing to ignore sickness and return to the workplace while one is ill puts colleagues at risk, regardless of the perceived severity of your own illness; COVID-19 is an overbearing reminder that a disease that may cause mild, even cold-like symptoms for some can still carry fatal consequences for others.

“A mandatory paid sick leave policy for every worker, ideally across the globe, would allow essential workers to return to work when necessary while still providing enough wiggle room for economically impoverished employees to take time off without going broke if they believe they’ve contracted an illness so as not to infect the rest of their workplace and the public at large.”

Women’s cross country team members and classmates Jane Hollander ’23 and Sara Greene ’23 wrote a sports-themed essay titled “ This Season, High School Winter Sports Aren’t Worth the Risk ,” which was published in Tap into Scotch Plains/Fanwood , based in Scotch Plains, N.J. Their essay focused on the risks high school sports pose on student-athletes, their families, and the greater community.

“We don’t propose cutting off sports entirely— rather, we need to be realistic about the levels at which athletes should be participating. There are ways to make practices safer,” they wrote. “At [Wesleyan], we began the season in ‘cohorts,’ so the amount of people exposed to one another would be smaller. For non-contact sports, social distancing can be easily implemented, and for others, teams can focus on drills, strength and conditioning workouts, and skill-building exercises. Racing sports such as swim and track can compete virtually, comparing times with other schools, and team sports can focus their competition on intra-team scrimmages. These changes can allow for the continuation of a sense of normalcy and team camaraderie without the exposure to students from different geographic areas in confined, indoor spaces.”

Brook Guiffre ’23 and Maddie Clarke’s ’22 op-ed titled “ On the Pandemic ” was published in Hometown Weekly, based in Medfield, Mass.

“The first case of COVID-19 in the United States was recorded on January 20th, 2020. For the next month and a half, the U.S. continued operating normally, while many other countries began their lockdown,” they wrote. “One month later, on February 29th, 2020, the federal government approved a national testing program, but it was too little too late. The U.S. was already in pandemic mode, and completely unprepared. Frontline workers lacked access to N-95 masks, infected patients struggled to get tested, and national leaders informed the public that COVID-19 was nothing more than the common flu. Ultimately, this unpreparedness led to thousands of avoidable deaths and long-term changes to daily life. With the risk of novel infectious diseases emerging in the future being high, it is imperative that the U.S. learn from its failure and better prepare for future pandemics now. By strengthening our public health response and re-establishing government organizations specialized in disease control, we have the ability to prevent more years spent masked and six feet apart.”

In addition, their other essay, “ On Mass Extinction ,” was also published by Hometown Weekly .

“The sixth mass extinction—which scientists have coined as the Holocene Extinction—is upon us. According to the United Nations, around one million plant and animal species are currently in danger of extinction, and many more within the next decade. While other extinctions have occurred in Earth’s history, none have occurred at such a rapid rate,” they wrote. “For the sake of both biodiversity and infectious diseases, it is in our best interest to stop pushing this Holocene Extinction further.”

An essay titled “ Learning from Our Mistakes: How to Protect Ourselves and Our Communities from Diseases ,” written by Nicole Veru ’21 and Zoe Darmon ’21, was published in My Hometown Bronxville, based in Bronxville, N.Y.

“We can protect ourselves and others from future infectious diseases by ensuring that we are vaccinated,” they wrote. “Vaccines have high levels of success if enough people get them. Due to vaccines, society is no longer ravaged by childhood diseases such as mumps, rubella, measles, and smallpox. We have been able to eradicate diseases through vaccines; smallpox, one of the world’s most consequential diseases, was eradicated from the world in the 1970s.

“In 2000, the U.S. was nearly free of measles, yet, due to hesitations by anti-vaxxers, there continues to be cases. From 2000–2015 there were over 18 measles outbreaks in the U.S. This is because unless a disease is completely eradicated, there will be a new generation susceptible.

“Although vaccines are not 100% effective at preventing infection, if we continue to get vaccinated, we protect ourselves and those around us. If enough people are vaccinated, societies can develop herd immunity. The amount of people vaccinated to obtain herd immunity depends on the disease, but if this fraction is obtained, the spread of disease is contained. Through herd immunity, we protect those who may not be able to get vaccinated, such as people who are immunocompromised and the tiny portion of people for whom the vaccine is not effective.”

Dhruvi Rana ’22 and Bryce Gillis ’22 co-authored an op-ed titled “ We Must Educate Those Who Remain Skeptical of the Dangers of COVID-19 ,” which was published in Rhode Island Central .

“As Rhode Island enters the winter season, temperatures are beginning to drop and many studies have demonstrated that colder weather and lower humidity are correlated with higher transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,” they wrote. “By simply talking or breathing, we release respiratory droplets and aerosols (tiny fluid particles which could carry the coronavirus pathogen), which can remain in the air for minutes to hours.

“In order to establish herd immunity in the US, we must educate those who remain skeptical of the dangers of COVID-19. Whether community-driven or state-funded, educational campaigns are needed to ensure that everyone fully comprehends how severe COVID-19 is and the significance of airborne transmission. While we await a vaccine, it is necessary now more than ever that we social distance, avoid crowds, and wear masks, given that colder temperatures will likely yield increased transmission of the virus.”

Danielle Rinaldi ’21 and Verónica Matos Socorro ’21 published their op-ed titled “ Community Forum: How Mask-Wearing Demands a Cultural Reset ” in the Ewing Observer , based in Lawrence, N.J.

“In their own attempt to change personal behavior during the pandemic, Wesleyan University has mandated mask-wearing in almost every facet of campus life,” they wrote. “As members of our community, we must recognize that mask-wearing is something we are all responsible and accountable for, not only because it is a form of protection for us, but just as important for others as well. However, it seems as though both Covid fatigue and complacency are dominating the mindsets of Americans, leading to even more unwillingness to mask up. Ultimately, it is inevitable that this pandemic will not be the last in our lifespan due to global warming creating irreversible losses in biodiversity. As a result, it is imperative that we adopt the norm of mask-wearing now and undergo a culture shift of the abandonment of an individualistic mindset, and instead, create a society that prioritizes taking care of others for the benefit of all.”

Shayna Dollinger ’22 and Hayley Lipson ’21 wrote an essay titled “ My Pandemic Year in College Has Brought Pride and Purpose. ” Dollinger submitted the piece, rewritten in first person, to Jewish News of Northern California . Read more about Dollinger’s publication in this News @ Wesleyan article .

“I lay in the dead grass, a 6-by-6-foot square all to myself. I cheer for my best friend, who is on the stage constructed at the bottom of Foss hill, dancing with her Bollywood dance group. Masks cover their ordinarily smiling faces as their bodies move in sync. Looking around at friends and classmates, each in their own 6-by-6 world, I feel an overwhelming sense of normalcy.

“One of the ways in which Wesleyan has prevented outbreaks on campus is by holding safe, socially distanced events that students want to attend. By giving us places to be and things to do on the weekends, we are discouraged from breaking rules and causing outbreaks at ‘super-spreader’ events.”

An op-ed written by Luna Mac-Williams ’22 and Daëlle Coriolan ’24 titled “ Collectivist Practices to Combat COVID-19 ” was published in the Wesleyan Argus .

“We are embroiled in a global pandemic that disproportionately affects poor communities of color, and in the midst of a higher cultural consciousness of systemic inequities,” they wrote. “A cultural shift to center collectivist thought and action not only would prove helpful in disease prevention, but also belongs in conversation with the Black Lives Matter movement. Collectivist models of thinking effectively target the needs of vulnerable populations including the sick, the disenfranchised, the systematically marginalized. Collectivist systems provide care, decentering the capitalist, individualist system, and focusing on how communities can work to be self-sufficient and uplift our own neighbors.”

An essay written by Maria Noto ’21 , titled “ U.S. Individualism Has Deadly Consequences ,” is published in the Oneonta Daily Star , based in Oneonta, N.Y.

She wrote, “When analyzing the cultures of certain East Asian countries, several differences stand out. For instance, when people are sick and during the cold and flu season, many East Asian cultures, including South Korea, use mask-wearing. What is considered a threat to freedom by some Americans is a preventive action and community obligation in this example. This, along with many other cultural differences, is insightful in understanding their ability to contain the virus.

“These differences are deeply seeded in the values of a culture. However, there is hope for the U.S. and other individualistic cultures in recognizing and adopting these community-centered approaches. Our mindset needs to be revolutionized with the help of federal and local assistance: mandating masks, passing another stimulus package, contact tracing, etc… However, these measures will be unsuccessful unless everyone participates for the good of a community.”

A published op-ed by Madison Szabo ’23 , Caitlyn Ferrante ’23 ran in the Two Rivers Times . The piece is titled “ Anxiety and Aspiration: Analyzing the Politicization of the Pandemic .”

John Lee ’21 and Taylor Goodman-Leong ’21 have published their op-ed titled “ Reassessing the media’s approach to COVID-19 ” in Weekly Monday Cafe 24 (Page 2).

An essay by Eleanor Raab ’21 and Elizabeth Nefferdorf ’22 titled “ Preventing the Next Epidemic ” was published in The Almanac .

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COVID-19 Is a Global Problem That Needs a Global Solution

April 01, 2020
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The medical crisis created by COVID-19 is creating pressure for countries to move toward isolationism, including restricting the export of medical supplies and other materials. But Chicago Booth’s Raghuram G. Rajan points out that the novel coronavirus is a global problem, and that solving it will require international cooperation.

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What have policy makers gotten right this time?

As they’ve become aware of the size of the problem, they certainly have reacted on the medical side by trying to bring more resources to bear; on the financial side, by flooding the markets with liquidity; and on the fiscal side, by making direct transfers to households in many countries, postponing tax payments, and also trying to make loans to small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as some large enterprises, to make sure that they can survive.

So, all this, with varying degrees of competence, has been achieved by governments across the world. That’s good.

What they haven’t gotten right, of course, is seeing the magnitude of the problem early enough. Western democracies perhaps were a little complacent that it wouldn’t reach their shores and took time to react.

But also, one of the things that’s really missing this time is any sense of international cooperation. Countries are putting bans on medical supplies and medical equipment leaving their countries, which is sort of natural, but is also self-defeating at the global level, because really, to kill this virus internationally, you have to kill it everywhere. Otherwise, it comes back to infect you in the second and third waves—unless you can completely shut your borders, which is really impossible in this world.

I think the question that we will have to address is, in this integrated world, are we going to go at it alone?

There is going to be a lot more pressure within countries to bring more resources into the country. When countries put bans on medicines going out, obviously every country then wants to make sure that the basic medicines it needs are produced internally. When countries put bans on ventilators being exported or even food being exported at times like this, it’s every country for itself. So there is going to be pressure for more isolationism, and more pressure on trade for that reason.

At the same time, one can’t help but think that this is a global crisis, and we must be aware that we live on this one planet, where this crisis can come back to hit us from anywhere, and it isn’t resolved until it’s resolved everywhere, which then means that we have to work together.

There is an impetus for global cooperation to make sure that the poor countries in Africa have a way of dealing with the problem even as the rich countries deal with it themselves.

So I do believe that we will see some impetus for stronger global institutions, especially to deal with this kind of problem—and also, incidentally, to start the process of dealing with climate change, because I think this will increase the awareness of globally sized problems that we may have to deal with, certainly in the next few decades.

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The Problem With COVID-19 Artificial Intelligence Solutions and How to Fix Them

How nonprofit and business leaders can equitably and responsibly use AI systems in the fight against COVID-19.

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By Genevieve Smith & Ishita Rustagi Jun. 5, 2020

Private and public entities around the world, particularly in the health care and governance sectors, are developing and deploying a range of artificial intelligence (AI) systems in emergency response to COVID-19. Some of these systems work to track and predict its spread; others support medical response or help maintain social control. Indeed, AI systems can reduce strain on overwhelmed health care systems; help save lives by quickly diagnosing patients, and assessing health declines or progress ; and limit the virus’s spread.

But there’s a problem: The algorithms driving these systems are human creations, and as such, they are subject to biases that can deepen societal inequities and pose risks to businesses and society more broadly. In this article, we look at data on the pandemic, share two recent applications of AI, and suggest a number of ways nonprofit and business leaders can help ensure that they develop, manage, and use transformative AI equitably and responsibly.

Rethinking Social Change in the Face of Coronavirus

The Problem With COVID-19 Data

Using techinical frameworks, such as machine learning, AI systems use algorithms to make inferences from data about people. This includes demographic attributes, preferences, and likely future behaviors. To effectively serve a range of populations, AI systems must learn to make associations based on massive amounts of data that accurately reflect information across identities. However, the data they rely on is often rife with social and cultural biases. Data might not exist for certain populations, may exist but be poor quality for certain groups, and/or reflect inequities in society. As a result, algorithms can make inaccurate predictions and perpetuate social stereotypes and biases.

Unfortunately, much of the data about COVID-19 that the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and others are collecting and tracking is incomplete and biased. COVID-19 infection rates, for example, have been subject to a “ vast undercount ,” by a factor of 50 or more. Medical data is reflecting only a subset of the population—in many cases, the affluent, white communities who have ready access to limited tests and expensive medical procedures. But there are other important data gaps too:

Data on risk and mortality is not sufficiently disaggregated by sex, race, or ethnicity. The CDC didn’t release a race and sex breakdown of COVID-19 cases and deaths until early April, and even then, it only pulled from parts of 14 states. Today, many states have data that shares cases and mortality by race, but gender is still limited , and there is no available sex-disaggregated mortality data.
Data for racial and ethnic groups is incomplete, and terms and labels are inconsistent. Infection and mortality data released by the CDC, while still infrequent and incomplete, paints a bleak picture around how COVID-19 disproportionately kills certain racial and ethnic groups. Alarming rates among black Americans are rooted in longstanding economic and health care inequalities, and the ambiguous racial/ethnic categorization of existing data further obscures disparities.
COVID-19 data tracking systems aren’t capturing data on immigrants and other marginalized populations. Immigrants are one of many communities of color hard-hit by COVID-19. Many are filling service positions in essential businesses that require them to interact with a large number of people daily, and are already at increased risk of complications or death from COVID-19 due to high rates of underlying chronic illnesses. Despite this, many are not getting tested for fear of getting deported . Sufficient data for transgender and non-binary individuals does not exist either— most state health officials are not collecting data on whether patients identify as LGBTQ—and transgender individuals are at greater risk given economic and social vulnerabilities. This lack of data on the most vulnerable isn’t just a problem in the United States—it’s often even greater in poorer countries .

AI for COVID-19 Medical Response

Some of the AI systems created to support COVID-19 medical response help diagnose and detect COVID-19 through basic online screening or analyzing chest images . Others, such as the forthcoming version of eCART, can help predict COVID-specific outcomes and inform clinical decisions. This is particularly useful for medical volunteers without pulmonary training, who must assess patients’ conditions and decide who needs help first. AI tech may also prove helpful in the search for a COVID-19 vaccine and other therapies.

However, the data gaps we mentioned earlier have major implications for medical AI systems and AI-enhanced vaccine trials. People react differently to viruses, vaccines, and treatments, as previous outbreaks like SARS and Ebola have illustrated. Data available on COVID-19 outside the United States, for example, shows that men and women face different fatality rates , and a recent research paper found that women patients admitted to the Wuhan Union Hospital had higher levels of COVID-19 antibodies than men. Given systemic inequities that worsen health outcomes for certain racial and ethnic groups, it’s equally important to understand COVID-19 health outcomes for different identities, as well as the intersectional implications .

Algorithms that don’t account for existing inequities risk making inaccurate predictions—or worse. In 2019, a study found that the widely used Optum algorithm , which used health-care spending as a proxy to measure need , was biased against black Americans. It didn’t account for discrimination or lack of access, both of which lead to lower spending on health care by black Americans. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, AI systems that inform limited-resource allocations (such as who to put on a ventilator) must be careful not to inadvertently prioritize certain identities over others. While developers aim to make algorithms race-blind by excluding race as a metric, this can ignore or hide— rather than prevent—discrimination. For example, algorithms that inform clinical decisions may use proxies such as preexisting conditions. Diabetes is a preexisting condition linked to higher rates of COVID-19, and it has a higher incidence for black Americans . If an algorithm uses preexisting conditions but is blind to race, it can result in disproportionately prioritizing white Americans over black Americans.

While some firms adhere to rigorous testing—conducting large validation studies prior to releasing products, for example— not all firms are thorough . Further, the decision-making processes of most AI algorithms are not transparent. This opens the door to inaccurate or discriminatory predictions for certain demographics, and thus poses immense risks to the individuals and practitioners using them.

AI for COVID-19 Social Control

Another recent application of AI is contact tracing, or tracking people who have come into contact with the virus to help contain it. By tracking user information such as health and location, and using AI-powered facial recognition, these tools can enforce social distancing and inform citizens of contact with positive cases. In China, users are assigned a coronavirus score , which impacts their access to public transportation, work, and school. And US government officials have begun raising the possibility of mass surveilla nce , collecting “anonymized, aggregate” user location data from tech giants like Facebook and Google to map the spread of COVID-19.

But surveillance tools have ethical implications—again, particularly for marginalized populations. Using AI to decide who leaves their home could lead to a form of COVID-19 redlining , subjecting certain communities to greater enforcements. This calls to mind another AI model that results in higher surveillance of poor communities of color: predictive policing. In the United States, risk-assessment algorithms use criminal history information, but don’t take into account deep-rooted racial bias in the policing system, that black Americans are arrested more often for smaller crimes and that neighborhoods with high concentration of black Americans are more heavily patrolled. Black Americans end up overrepresented in the data , which then links to racially biased policing outcomes. Similarly, communities impacted by proposed surveillance systems would likely be poorer communities of color harder hit by COVID-19 for a variety of reasons linked to historical inequities and discrimination.

It is not clear how or how long government agencies or other entities will use these types of AI tools. In China, tracking could stick around after the crisis , allowing Beijing authorities to monitor religious minorities, political dissidents, and other marginalized communities with a history of being over-surveilled. And although data collection in the United States will initially be anonymized and aggregated, there’s potential for misuse and de-anonymiza tion in the future.

Five Things Nonprofit and Business Leaders Can Do

Various AI systems are proving incredibly valuable to tackling the pandemic, and others hold immense promise. But leaders must take care to develop, manage, and use this technology responsibly and equitably; the risks of discrimination and deepening inequality are simply unacceptable. Here are five actions to take now:

1. Demand transparency and explanation of the AI system. First and foremost, leaders need to hold themselves accountable. Particularly with AI systems targeting medical response, it’s important that decision makers understand which groups are represented in the datasets and what the quality of that data is across different groups. Tools such as Datasheets for Datasets are useful for tracking information on dataset creators; the composition, sampling, and labeling process; and intended uses. Leaders whose organizations develop AI systems should also ask questions like: Whose opinions, priorities, and expertise are included in development, and whose are left out?

2. Join and promote multidisciplinary ethics working groups or councils to inform response to COVID-19. This is already happening in Germany and can provide useful insights into how to respond to COVID-19, including using AI. Working groups are a way to bring together social scientists, philosophers, community leaders, and technical teams to discuss potential bias concerns and fairness tradeoffs, as well as solutions.

3. Build partnerships to fill health-data gaps in ways that protect and empower local communities. Nonprofits and universities are especially well-positioned to work with disenfranchised communities and form community research partnerships. In San Francisco, for example, a coalition of citywide Latinx organizations partnered with UCSF to form a COVID-19 task force. The coalition launched a project that tested nearly 3,000 residents in predominantly Latinx neighborhoods to better understand how the virus spreads. The task force and its local volunteers integrated concerns of community members and provided extensive support services to people who tested positive.

4. Advance research and innovation while emphasizing diversity and inclusion. Only a handful of tech companies and elite university labs develop most large-scale AI systems, and developers tend to be white, affluent, technically oriented, and male . Given that AI isn’t neutral and that technologies are a product of the context in which they are created, these systems often fail to meet the needs of different communities. Research initiatives like the recently launched Digital Transformation Institute , a collaborative effort to bring together tech companies and US research universities to fight COVID-19, must emphasize inclusion and justice (alongside innovation and efficiency), and prioritize multi-disciplinary and diverse teams. They can and should take advantage of tools like an AI Fairness Checklist in designing solutions.

5. Resist the urge to prioritize efficiency at the cost of justice and equity. Leaders should rise to the challenge of not compromising justice and equity. In some cases, the question is not how best to develop or deploy an AI system, but whether the AI system should be built or used at all.

As the pandemic continues to severely impact individuals, communities, and economies, nonprofit and business leaders must respond quickly—but not at the cost of heightening discrimination and inequality in the communities hardest hit by the pandemic. AI can help us improve medical response and minimize the spread of COVID-19, but using it wisely requires equity-fluent leadership and a long-term view. As Prashant Warier, CEO and co-founder of the AI company Qure.ai, put it , “Once people start using our algorithms, they never stop.”

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Infectious Disease
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Coronavirus FAQ

The Coronavirus Crisis

6 solutions to beat covid-19 in countries where the usual advice just won't work.

Malaka Gharib

The fight against coronavirus will not be won until every country in the world can control the disease. But not every country has the same ability to protect people.

For low-income countries that struggle with weak health systems, large populations of impoverished people and crowded megacities, "there needs to be a very major adaptation" to the established measures we've been using to fight COVID-19, says Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr , an epidemiologist and director of ICAP, a global health organization at Columbia University.

The COVID-19 playbook that wealthy nations in Europe, Asia and North America have come to know — stay home as much as possible, keep a six foot distance from others, wash hands often — will be nearly impossible to follow in much of the developing world.

"I think they're trying, but it's not easy," El-Sadr says. "Ministries of health are working, partnering with international organizations to try to innovate — and hopefully, if the innovation works, it can be scaled up."

Here are some of the solutions now being tried.

Fly in tons of medical gear

Problem: Countries in the developing world face massive shortages of medical gear like personal protective equipment, says Avril Benoit, executive director of Doctors Without Borders. And the cutback in commercial flights has made it difficult to bring in equipment.

Solution: The U.N. has launched what it's calling "solidarity flights" – hiring charter planes to airlift millions of face masks, face shields, goggles, gloves, gowns and other supplies. On April 14 , the U.N. dispatched an Ethiopian Airlines charter flight from Addis Ababa full of COVID-19 gear to transport to countries in need.

"This is by far the largest single shipment of supplies since the start of the pandemic, and we will ensure that people living in countries with some of the weakest health systems are able to get tested and treated," said Dr. Ahmed Al-Mandhari, WHO regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean in a statement .

Assessment: "In the short run, a program like this is fine so long as we're dealing with an acute event," says El-Sadr. "Without [supplies like] PPE, you're at risk of losing your scarce and precious health workforce — and you want to protect them at any cost."

But hiring chartered flights to deliver any kind of aid – instead of commercial flights – is expensive, says Manuel Fontaine, director of emergency programs at UNICEF. The U.N. is calling on donors to provide $350 million to continue this program; so far, it has received $84 million.

Create safe havens for the sick and elderly

Problem: How do you protect the most vulnerable individuals in crowded cities and refugee camps? And how do you keep infected individuals from spreading the disease?

Solution: Health authorities are trying out a somewhat controversial strategy: separating the sick and those at high risk, moving them from the homes where they might live alone or with an extended family into vacant homes or taking over facilities previously used for other purposes, such as learning centers. The people being targeted include the elderly and those with preexisting health conditions that make them susceptible to COVID-19 — as well as the homeless.

The strategy has been cited by several health researchers as a practical way to control the spread of disease in densely packed communities. Francesco Checchi of the London School of Tropical Health and Medicine wrote a paper on the subject , and Dr. Paul Spiegel of Johns Hopkins University, in another paper , recommended this as a potential solution in refugee settings.

Assessment: In his paper, Spiegel warns that the strategy of isolating these groups are "novel and untested." And thus far, in parts of the developing world where the strategy has been rolled out, it has had mixed results.

Shah Dedar, an aid worker with the humanitarian group HelpAge, says that religious and community leaders among the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh don't like the idea of taking the sick or the elderly from the families who might care for them. But "elderly men and women with chronic diseases [who lived alone] were very much keen to the idea and appreciated the initiative," says Dedar.

While HelpAge was able convince local Rohingya leaders to give it a try, Spiegel of Johns Hopkins University says that this may not always be possible. In the case of a severe outbreak, aid workers may have to forcibly separate populations, whether the community approves or not. And he warns that this shielding measure is no guarantee it will keep the virus at bay — it could spread within these facilities, as has happened at some nursing homes in the U.S.

And in Cape Town, South Africa, conditions in a homeless "camp" set up by the government have prompted complaints from the residents about close contact and lack of sanitation — and a call from Doctors Without Borders to shut it down.

Get out of town

Problem: Some citizens are afraid of staying in big cities where social distancing is hard to maintain and outbreaks are more likely to spread.

Solution: Those who have family in ancestral homelands are traveling back to stay in these rural environments – it's happened in countries ranging from Bangladesh to Italy.

Assessment: Both government officials and citizens have criticized this exodus, saying that it puts elderly people in those rural environments at risk if the city dwellers might be contagious yet asymptomatic or presymptomatic.

The other downside of fleeing to these more remote areas, says El-Sadr, is that "health care services are less likely to be available."

That said, El-Sadr notes that this kind of population shift can be a good strategy in an area where transmission within a community has not yet occurred but is deemed likely. This could be a "way that people can have more of an ability to survive, to make a living, get social support [if they are sick], get more access to food, where they can socially distance more readily."

Get the police involved

Problem: Social distancing is hard to enforce in densely populated low-income countries.

Solution: Many governments around the world have turned to the police to ensure that people stay home — and hand out punishments to those who aren't following the lockdown rules. In India, for example, people who violate the lockdown could face up to a year in prison. Others in the country have faced unusual punishments, such as writing "I am very sorry" 500 times, according to an NPR report .

Assessment: Unfortunately, there have been reports of officers using physical violence to keep people in their homes in several countries, including India, Bangladesh and the Philippines. In Kenya, the violence has resulted in public outcry , with citizens calling for more civility from its police force. "This is no way to fight a coronavirus epidemic," tweeted a Kenya-based journalist.

Reinvent factories so they can make medical equipment

Problem: More supplies to fight COVID-19 are needed.

Solution: Get factories to switch gears and respond to the coronavirus.Kenya's textile industry has pivoted to making masks and protective equipment. The Kitui County Textile Center (KICOTEC) has shifted from sewing chef's whites and school uniforms to turning out face masks and scrubs for healthcare workers. Kenya's state-owned oil company is now making hand sanitizer, which it says it is distributing for free.

In South Africa, the state-owned missile manufacturer Denel , has been working to design and build ventilators, and to convert armored trucks into ambulances. The government has launched an initiative called the National Ventilator Project , which calls for companies to build 10,000 ventilators by the end of June, using locally available parts and materials.

Similar efforts are underway in Nigeria, where the government announced that they're working with car companies to manufacture locally-made ventilators.

Assessment:

In Kenya, KICOTEC turning out 30,000 surgical masks a day, according to Kenya's Ministry of Health . Kenya's petroleum company has produced more than 80,000 gallons so far, and plans to make at least 600,000 gallons more.

But WHO projects that countries will need millions of masks, goggles and other supplies to protect healthcare workers and citizens while mounting a response to COVID-19.

So local manufacturing can only partly fill the gap. But local authorities believe it is critical: "We're trying to build up local capacity to ensure that the critical facilities, the beds and ventilators, respirators could be made available within the country," says Adaeze Oreh, a senior official in Nigeria's Ministry of Health, "So we're not constrained by international travel restrictions, border closures and relying on imports."

Set up handwashing stations

Problem: Public health officials globally stress the importance of frequent hand-washing in the fight against COVID-19. In low- and middle-income countries, however, 35% of people lack regular access to soap and water, according to WHO .

"The health workers say we must wash our hands," said Zukwisa Qezo, a 47-year-old mother of two who lives in the Cape Town township to NPR . "But with what?! The city must bring us soap."

Solution: To improve the ability for people to clean their hands, WHO advises that hand hygiene stations — either with soap and water or with alcohol-based hand sanitizer — to be placed at the entrances of buildings, and in transport hubs such as bus and train stations. The system can be as simple as two buckets — one filled with chlorinated water, and one to catch the wastewater.

Assessment: Public hand-washing stations, which were effective in the fight against Ebola, are being resurrected in countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone, NPR reports . Doctors Without Borders reports that their volunteers are setting up hand washing points in many of the settings they operate in, including migrant camps in Nigeria and health facilities in Mozambique.

Global solution to COVID-19 in sight, ‘we sink or we swim together’ – WHO chief

A team of scientists at Oxford University’s Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group is trailing a vaccine against the coronavirus.

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COVID-19 is an “unprecedented global crisis that demands an unprecedented global response”, the chief of the UN health agency said on Monday, unveiling a plan to have two billion doses of coronavirus vaccine available by the end of 2021.

Roughly 64 per cent of the global population lives in a nation that has either committed to, or is eligible to join, the coronavirus Vaccines Global Access Facility, or COVAX , which enables participating Governments to spread the risk and costs of vaccine development and provide their populations with early access to vaccines.

Working together through the COVAX Facility “is not charity, it’s in every country’s best interest. We sink or we swim together”, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO).

‘Vaccine nationalism’ will prolong pandemic

Grateful to @gavi & @CEPIvaccines for partnering with @ WHO on the COVAX Facility to allow countries access to the most diverse portfolio of #COVID19 vaccine candidates. Thanks @GaviSeth & @DrRHatchett for joining our media briefing today. Together! https://t.co/JFIIhJrisG Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus DrTedros

Speaking at a press briefing with the international vaccine alliance GAVI, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the WHO chief said that commitment agreements have been secured and the COVAX Facility would begin signing contracts with vaccine manufacturers and developers.

The overarching goal of the COVAX Facility is to ensure that all countries have access to vaccines at the same time, and that priority is given to those most at risk, according to the WHO chief.

“The COVAX Facility will help to bring the pandemic under control, “save lives, accelerate the economic recovery and ensure that the race for vaccines is a shared endeavour, not a contest that only the rich can win”, he upheld. “Vaccine nationalism will only perpetuate the disease and prolong the global recovery”.

More commitment needed

So far, $3 billion have been invested in the ACT Accelerator – only a tenth of the required $35 for scale-up and impact.

Tedros stressed that $5 billion is needed “immediately to maintain momentum and stay on track for our ambitious timelines”.

“Our challenge now is to take the tremendous promise of the ACT Accelerator and COVAX to scale”, he said, adding, “we are at a critical point and we need a significant increase in countries’ political and financial commitment”.

The WHO chief cited estimates suggesting that once an effective vaccine has been distributed, and international travel and trade is fully restored, “the economic gains will far outweigh” the $38 billion investment required for the Accelerator.

“This isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do”, he spelled out.

COVAX realized

“COVAX is now in business”, said Gavi CEO Seth Berkley. “Governments from every continent have chosen to work together, not only to secure vaccines for their own populations, but also to help ensure that vaccines are available to the most vulnerable everywhere”.

Coronavirus Portal & News Updates

“With the commitments we’re announcing today for the COVAX Facility, as well as the historic partnership we are forging with industry, we now stand a far better chance of ending the acute phase of this pandemic, once safe, effective vaccines become available”.

‘Great leap’ forward

Meanwhile, CEPI CEO Richard Hatchett called the international community’s coming together to tackle the pandemic “a landmark moment in the history of public health”.

“The global spread of COVID-19 means that it is only through equitable and simultaneous access to new lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines that we can hope to end this pandemic,” he said. “Countries coming together in this way shows a unity of purpose and resolve to end the acute phase of this pandemic. Today, we have taken a great leap towards that goal, for the benefit of all”.

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Covid-19, unemployment...

Covid-19, unemployment, and health: time for deeper solutions?

Read our latest coverage of the coronavirus outbreak.

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Peer review
Martin Hensher , associate professor of health systems financing and organisation 1 2
1 Deakin Health Economics, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, VIC 3125, Australia
2 Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania
Correspondence to: martin.hensher{at}deakin.edu.au

As covid-19 drives unemployment rates around the world to levels unseen in generations, once radical economic policy proposals are rapidly gaining a hearing. Martin Hensher examines how job guarantee or universal basic income schemes might support better health and better economics

Covid-19 has been a dramatic global health and economic shock. As SARS-CoV-2 spread across nations, economic activity plummeted, first as individuals changed their behaviour and then as government “lockdowns” took effect. 1 Macroeconomic forecasters foresee a major recession continuing through 2020 and into 2021. 2 Although the governments of many nations have taken novel steps to protect workers, unemployment has risen dramatically in many countries ( box 1 , fig 1 ); poverty and hunger are on the rise in low and middle income countries. 5 Covid-19 has directly caused illness and death at a large scale, and further threatens health through disruption of access to health services for other conditions.

Covid-19 and unemployment

Although unemployment soared in response to covid-19 in some nations, the policy measures undertaken by others have prevented many workers from becoming technically unemployed. In the United Kingdom, the headline rate of unemployment for April-June 2020 was 3.9%—only slightly higher than the 3.89% rate in April-June 2019. Yet in June 2020 9.3 million people were in the coronavirus job retention scheme (“furlough”) and another 2.7 million had claimed a self-employment income support scheme grant; there had been the largest ever decrease in weekly hours worked; 650 000 fewer workers were reported on payrolls in June than in March; and the benefit claimant count had more than doubled from 1.24 million to 2.63 million people. 3 The Australian Bureau of Statistics has produced an adjusted estimate of Australian unemployment that includes all those temporarily stood down or laid off, to allow a closer comparison with US and Canadian statistics ( fig 1 ). As emergency support measures are wound back, concern is growing that the downwards trend from the April peak might not be maintained in coming months.

Unemployment rates in Australia, Canada, and the United States from March to July 2020. 4

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The pandemic continues to spread, and hopes for a rapid “return to normal” look increasingly unfounded. The economic consequences of covid-19 have the potential to further damage human health if not managed effectively—even after the pandemic has faded. Even with the most rose tinted views of recovery, the effects of covid-19 on unemployment are likely to be substantial and long lived. Ambitious responses to the imminent scourge of mass unemployment are being discussed. Two such proposals—a job guarantee and universal basic income—might protect and promote health as well as prosperity. Governments around the world should consider radical plans to safeguard their citizens’ livelihoods and wellbeing.

Unemployment and health in the time of covid-19

Decades of accumulated evidence show a strong and consistent association between unemployment and a range of adverse health outcomes, including all cause mortality, death from cardiovascular disease and suicide, and higher rates of mental distress, substance abuse, depression, and anxiety. 6 7 8 Job insecurity is similarly associated with poorer self-assessed health status, mental distress, depression, and anxiety. 9 Unemployment and economic adversity are intimately related with despair and lack of hope, which have increasingly been linked with mortality and the rise and severity of the US opioid epidemic. 10 11 Whether recessions and mass unemployment increase aggregate mortality is less clear; historical studies indicated improvements in mortality during the Great Depression in the 1930s, 7 but more recent US research found that older workers (aged 45-66) who lose their jobs in a recession have higher mortality than those who lose their jobs in boom times. 12 Insecurity, precariousness, and austerity harmed both unemployed and employed people during the protracted economic crisis in Greece after 2008-09. 13 Meanwhile, differing welfare state institutions and unemployment insurance arrangements directly limit or amplify health inequalities in a society. 7 14

These factors could adversely affect the health of growing numbers of unemployed workers after covid-19. 15 16 Governments, business lobbyists, and civil society advocates around the world are debating how economies might best recover from the covid recession. Although governments currently acknowledge the need to spend freely during the crisis, experience suggests that pressure to pursue misguided austerity policies might grow, threatening subsequent recovery. Options on the table range from “green new deal” programmes to build a post-carbon economy and national industrial strategies to bring globalised manufacturing back onshore through to calls for reducing wages and labour protections to “free up” labour markets. Yet these are all indirect approaches to the effects of unemployment. Proposals for a job guarantee or a universal basic income seek to act more directly to support individual citizens.

The job guarantee

The idea of a right to employment can be traced back to the US New Deal in the 1930s, and to Article 23 of the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. More recently, in the contest for the Democratic Party’s 2020 candidate for US president, senators Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Cory Booker all included a job guarantee in their platforms, as did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s green new deal resolution. More than one detailed proposal for a Federal Job Guarantee has been published in the US 17 18 and in Australia. 19 In one US proposal, 18 a federally funded public service employment programme would provide a standing offer of work at a living wage ($15 (£12; €13) an hour), along with key benefits including healthcare coverage. Employees of this programme would be deployed on a wide range of public works and community development activities, delivered through federal, state, local, and non-profit agencies. The proposal argues that this would effectively eliminate unwanted joblessness and underemployment and would rapidly force the private sector to increase wages to match this “living wage” alternative, lifting millions out of poverty and greatly improving the incomes of working poor people. 18 Proponents argue that the job guarantee is the most efficient “automatic stabiliser” for the economy throughout the business cycle, able to adjust up and down to reflect the changing economic health of the private sector. In economic downturns, it would provide guaranteed employment to stop people falling into poverty and losing “employability,” while also supporting aggregate demand to lift the economy out of recession. In boom times, workers will simply exit the programme for the private sector, as firms offer higher wages to secure the additional labour they need.

In the US, the job guarantee has been proposed as not only a key tool for recovery from covid-19, 20 but also a mechanism to ensure that this recovery breaks down historically entrenched racial inequalities in wealth. 21 Similarly, an emerging job guarantee proposal for Australia could rectify decades of welfare policy failures that have disproportionately affected indigenous Australians. 22 Proponents point to successful past or present international experiences with full or targeted employment guarantee programmes, including Argentina’s Plan Jefes, South Africa’s Expanded Public Works Programme, India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Belgium’s Youth Job Guarantee, the US Youth Incentive Entitlement Pilot Projects, and the UK’s Future Jobs Fund. 20

Universal basic income

Over the past few years, there has been a global explosion of interest in the concept of universal basic income. 23 24 25 Andrew Yang, another former contender for the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination, made universal basic income a central plank of his platform. Such proposals share key characteristics: they are a transfer of income (from the state to individuals) that is provided universally (to everyone, with no targeting), unconditionally (with no requirements, for example to work), and in cash (with no controls on what the money can be spent on). 25 Proposals also typically specify an income that is sufficiently generous that it can fully cover a basic level of living expenses. 23 Universal basic income is a direct means of reducing poverty, by ensuring that all in society receive enough to live with dignity; it could reduce income inequality; it could radically simplify current social welfare systems and remove poverty traps and disincentives to move from welfare into work; it could improve the ability of workers to refuse poorly paid, insecure, exploitative or unsafe jobs, through a reduced fear of loss of income; and it could be a buffer against technological unemployment, as automation and artificial intelligence replace human labour. 23 25 Universality is the key difference from today’s welfare systems; everyone should receive universal basic income as a right of citizenship, and its receipt by all should build the solidarity and legitimacy that will sustain this right. Universal basic income could improve health and reduce health inequities through direct action on various social determinants of health. 26 27 This variety of aims leads to the concept being simultaneously supported by those on the left as a radical, anti-capitalist policy, often viewed as an essential component of the ecological degrowth agenda, and by libertarian, tech capitalists as an efficient solution to the risk that ever expanding digital automation will destroy more jobs than it creates, and as a vital measure to help capitalism survive mass technological unemployment in the future. 28

In the wake of the covid-19 economic shock, universal basic income has been discussed as a potentially powerful policy solution to unprecedented economic dislocation. It has specifically been suggested as a tool for limiting the economic, social, and psychological trauma of covid-19. 29 The Spanish government has just introduced a nationwide, means tested minimum income programme (not universal) as a direct response to covid related unemployment. 30 The US government has made unconditional, one-off economic impact payments to most (but not all) American households. Near universal and unconditional universal basic income programmes have only operated at nationwide scale in two countries, Mongolia and Iran. The Mongolian programme has since ceased, and the Iranian programme is no longer strictly universal (the richest people are no longer eligible). Partial schemes and regional pilots, however, have been run successfully in a wide range of nations. 25 A recent trial that provided universal basic income to 2000 recipients in Finland found that employment outcomes, health, and wellbeing measures were better in the universal basic income group than in the comparison group, 31 and the Scottish government has been contemplating a three year trial of universal basic income in an experimental group of recipients. 32

Potential health benefits

Given the substantial evidence linking unemployment to poor health, proponents of both job guarantee and universal basic income schemes point to their potential health benefits as major arguments in their favour ( table 1 ). 20 26 These measures could be expected to positively affect health through four main pathways: direct effects for individual beneficiaries; knock-on effects improving labour market conditions for all workers; the macroeconomic and distributive benefits of more widespread prosperity; and more localised community effects unlocked by these programmes.

Health effects of job guarantee (JG) and universal basic income (UBI) programmes

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Multiple mechanisms would work through these four pathways to deliver potential health benefits, including reduced mortality and improved physical and mental health status. Key mechanisms include reducing poverty, improving economic security, improving the quality of jobs and work, and rebuilding stronger local communities. Unsurprisingly, pathways that link unemployment with poorer health will be more reliably affected by job guarantee programmes than by universal basic income. But universal basic income offers alternative pathways for better health through informal caring and non-market activities. Both types of programme could help resolve one of the problems that the covid-19 pandemic has brought into sharp focus—that low paid, insecure, and casualised workforces cannot afford to self-isolate or stay at home when sick or potentially infected because they lack access to paid sick leave. This problem has proved especially disastrous for those who care for elderly people.

Controversies and choices

Supporters of job guarantee or universal basic income programmes typically have different priorities and view them as two alternative options, not as complementary programmes that could co-exist. Most job guarantee proposals see it as not only a means to fight unemployment, but also an explicit instrument of macroeconomic policy 38 ; universal basic income would not function as an “automatic stabiliser” in the same way. Critics of job guarantee and universal basic income schemes primarily question their affordability and potential macroeconomic consequences ( box 2 ).

Economic controversies

Implementing a job guarantee or universal basic income programme would be a major economic reform in any nation and a decisive break with the economic orthodoxy that has prevailed since the Thatcher-Reagan revolution of the 1980s. It would undoubtedly be controversial. Most obviously, some would question them on cost and affordability grounds. A job guarantee programme would incur a substantial net cost to governments—modelling of proposed programmes indicates a net cost to the federal budget equivalent to 1.5% of annual general domestic product (GDP) in the US 18 and 2.6% in Australia (based on a net budgetary cost of A$51.7bn). 19 By comparison, the Australian government is spending A$70bn, or 3.6% of its GDP, on its emergency JobKeeper employment protection programme this year—budget costs of these magnitudes are not unheard of. The gross costs of a universal basic income programme would be substantially larger: income of $12 000 (close to the 2017 US poverty line) for every US adult would cost the federal budget about $3tn, or nearly 14% of GDP. 23 Yet this gross cost estimate is arguably misleading, 39 not only because universal basic income would be partially offset by large savings from current welfare programmes, but because so many recipients would return much or all of it in the form of tax payments. One estimate of the net cost of such a programme indicates that it could be as low as 2.95% of US GDP. 39 These proposals emerge as a growing number of economists are saying that the governments of countries in possession of their own sovereign currency can never “run out of money” and can always purchase whatever goods and services are for sale in the currency they issue. 38 40 They also suggest that inflation—the other risk often pointed to by critics of job guarantee or universal basic income—is currently highly unlikely, with a general fear that the covid-19 recession will prove to be deflationary rather than inflationary.

For those concerned with health, however, philosophical differences might be of more interest. Social determinants and socioeconomic inequalities are well understood to be powerful forces driving health outcomes at both individual and population levels. Universal basic income seeks to reduce poverty and inequality by putting in place an absolute floor—a minimum income provided to everyone in society. A job guarantee seeks to affect poverty by ensuring that anyone who wants to work can work, for a living wage in a decent job. But in so doing, a job guarantee also explicitly increases the relative power of workers, ensuring that a larger share of national income flows to labour, rather than to the owners of capital—potentially reducing some of the extreme inequalities in income and wealth distribution that have arisen over the past four decades. One criticism of universal basic income is that it might (whether inadvertently or by design) become a “plutocratic, philanthropic” programme 28 —scraps from the table of the ultra wealthy, which might cement dependence and powerlessness in a future of technological unemployment. Equally, a job guarantee might be criticised as being a mid 20th century solution to a 21st century problem, which will reinforce social hierarchies by insisting on participation in paid employment as the solution to poverty.

The unemployment triggered by covid-19 in so many countries is a clear and present danger to individual and population health. Tinkering around the margins of current welfare systems, exhortations for yet more labour market “flexibility,” or an unwillingness to maintain public spending through a potentially long and drawn out downturn all offer a fast track to poor outcomes. The scale of the covid economic shock demands more radical action. The substantial health harms of unemployment might be mitigated by a universal basic income programme, but if unemployment is the problem, then employment seems likely to deliver more effective mitigation along the many and complex pathways by which these harms are transmitted. If so, implementing national job guarantee programmes should be a more urgent priority for governments in the immediate aftermath of covid-19. A successful job guarantee scheme would avert the harms of unemployment, strengthen the position of ordinary working people, and deliver a more broadly distributed prosperity in the short to medium term. This would be a much better position from which to then debate and trial universal basic income, allowing it to be correctly framed as a strategic, long term solution to the changing future of work, rather than simply as a response to the current economic crisis.

Key messages

Covid-19 has triggered economic recession and unprecedented rapid rises in unemployment in many countries

Mass unemployment has the potential to cause grave harm to individual and population health if not effectively mitigated

The scale of the crisis means that radical solutions might need to be considered, such as a job guarantee or universal basic income programmes

These policies have the potential to protect human health and dignity, but would mark a significant break with economic orthodoxy

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional owners of the land on which this work was undertaken.

Contributors and sources: MH has worked on health financing, planning, and economics as a senior policy maker and researcher in the UK, South Africa, and Australia and as a consultant for the World Bank, World Health Organization and the European Commission. His research on the ecological and economic sustainability of healthcare systems has included examining a number of emerging heterodox economic approaches, two of which are gaining in significance: ecological economics and modern monetary theory. Members of these schools have promoted universal basic income and a job guarantee, respectively, over many years. This article builds on the existing academic literature to consider very recent policy proposals that are emerging in response to the threat of mass unemployment in the wake of covid-19.

Patient involvement: No patients were involved.

Competing interests: I have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and have the following interests to declare: this research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Scholarship.

↵ Goolsbee A, Syverson C. Fear, lockdown, and diversion: comparing drivers of pandemic economic decline 2020. National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2020. https://www.nber.org/papers/w27432
↵ International Monetary Fund. World economic outlook update: a crisis like no other, an uncertain recovery. June 2020. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2020/06/24/WEOUpdateJune2020
↵ Office for National Statistics. Labour market overview, UK: August 2020. 2020. https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/august2020
↵ Australian Bureau Statistics. Understanding unemployment and the loss of work during the covid-19 period: an Australian and international perspective. 13 August 2020. https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/understanding-unemployment-and-loss-work-during-covid-19-period-australian-and-international-perspective
↵ World Bank. World Bank Group. 100 countries get support in response to covid-19. 19 May 2020. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/05/19/world-bank-group-100-countries-get-support-in-response-to-covid-19-coronavirus
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↵ Kangas O, Jauhiainen S, Simanainen M, Ylikännö M. Evaluation of the Finnish Basic Income Experiment/Suomen perustulokokeilun arviointi Helsinki: Ministry of Social Affairs and Health/Sosiaali- ja terveysministeriö; 2020. https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/162219/STM_2020_15_rap.pdf
↵ Paton C. Coronavirus in Scotland: Nicola Sturgeon eyes plans for universal basic income. The Times, London. 5 May 2020. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nicola-sturgeon-eyes-plans-for-universal-basic-income-c9rhfwbx7
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Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Covid19

How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid19 | Examples & Tips

11 min read

Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Here are the steps to help you write a persuasive essay on this topic, along with an example essay:

Step 1: Choose a Specific Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement should clearly state your position on a specific aspect of COVID-19. It should be debatable and clear. For example:

Step 2: Research and Gather Information

Collect reliable and up-to-date information from reputable sources to support your thesis statement. This may include statistics, expert opinions, and scientific studies. For instance:

COVID-19 vaccination effectiveness data
Information on vaccine mandates in different countries
Expert statements from health organizations like the WHO or CDC

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Create a clear and organized outline to structure your essay. A persuasive essay typically follows this structure:

Introduction
Background Information
Body Paragraphs (with supporting evidence)
Counterarguments (addressing opposing views)

Step 4: Write the Introduction

In the introduction, grab your reader's attention and present your thesis statement. For example:

Step 5: Provide Background Information

Offer context and background information to help your readers understand the issue better. For instance:

Step 6: Develop Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should present a single point or piece of evidence that supports your thesis statement. Use clear topic sentences, evidence, and analysis. Here's an example:

Step 7: Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and refute them with strong counterarguments. This demonstrates that you've considered different perspectives. For example:

Step 8: Write the Conclusion

Summarize your main points and restate your thesis statement in the conclusion. End with a strong call to action or thought-provoking statement. For instance:

Step 9: Revise and Proofread

Edit your essay for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors. Ensure that your argument flows logically.

Step 10: Cite Your Sources

Include proper citations and a bibliography page to give credit to your sources.

Remember to adjust your approach and arguments based on your target audience and the specific angle you want to take in your persuasive essay about COVID-19.

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid19

When writing a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important to consider how you want to present your argument. To help you get started, here are some example essays for you to read:

Check out some more PDF examples below:

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Pandemic

Sample Of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 In The Philippines - Example

If you're in search of a compelling persuasive essay on business, don't miss out on our “ persuasive essay about business ” blog!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Vaccine

Covid19 vaccines are one of the ways to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but they have been a source of controversy. Different sides argue about the benefits or dangers of the new vaccines. Whatever your point of view is, writing a persuasive essay about it is a good way of organizing your thoughts and persuading others.

A persuasive essay about the Covid-19 vaccine could consider the benefits of getting vaccinated as well as the potential side effects.

Below are some examples of persuasive essays on getting vaccinated for Covid-19.

Covid19 Vaccine Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay on Covid Vaccines

Interested in thought-provoking discussions on abortion? Read our persuasive essay about abortion blog to eplore arguments!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration

Covid19 has drastically changed the way people interact in schools, markets, and workplaces. In short, it has affected all aspects of life. However, people have started to learn to live with Covid19.

Writing a persuasive essay about it shouldn't be stressful. Read the sample essay below to get idea for your own essay about Covid19 integration.

Persuasive Essay About Working From Home During Covid19

Searching for the topic of Online Education? Our persuasive essay about online education is a must-read.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19

Covid-19 has been an ever-evolving issue, with new developments and discoveries being made on a daily basis.

Writing an argumentative essay about such an issue is both interesting and challenging. It allows you to evaluate different aspects of the pandemic, as well as consider potential solutions.

Here are some examples of argumentative essays on Covid19.

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 Sample

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 With Introduction Body and Conclusion

Looking for a persuasive take on the topic of smoking? You'll find it all related arguments in out Persuasive Essay About Smoking blog!

Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19

Do you need to prepare a speech about Covid19 and need examples? We have them for you!

Persuasive speeches about Covid-19 can provide the audience with valuable insights on how to best handle the pandemic. They can be used to advocate for specific changes in policies or simply raise awareness about the virus.

Check out some examples of persuasive speeches on Covid-19:

Persuasive Speech About Covid-19 Example

Persuasive Speech About Vaccine For Covid-19

You can also read persuasive essay examples on other topics to master your persuasive techniques!

Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19 requires a thoughtful approach to present your arguments effectively.

Here are some tips to help you craft a compelling persuasive essay on this topic:

Choose a Specific Angle

Start by narrowing down your focus. COVID-19 is a broad topic, so selecting a specific aspect or issue related to it will make your essay more persuasive and manageable. For example, you could focus on vaccination, public health measures, the economic impact, or misinformation.

Provide Credible Sources

Support your arguments with credible sources such as scientific studies, government reports, and reputable news outlets. Reliable sources enhance the credibility of your essay.

Use Persuasive Language

Employ persuasive techniques, such as ethos (establishing credibility), pathos (appealing to emotions), and logos (using logic and evidence). Use vivid examples and anecdotes to make your points relatable.

Organize Your Essay

Structure your essay involves creating a persuasive essay outline and establishing a logical flow from one point to the next. Each paragraph should focus on a single point, and transitions between paragraphs should be smooth and logical.

Emphasize Benefits

Highlight the benefits of your proposed actions or viewpoints. Explain how your suggestions can improve public health, safety, or well-being. Make it clear why your audience should support your position.

Use Visuals -H3

Incorporate graphs, charts, and statistics when applicable. Visual aids can reinforce your arguments and make complex data more accessible to your readers.

Call to Action

End your essay with a strong call to action. Encourage your readers to take a specific step or consider your viewpoint. Make it clear what you want them to do or think after reading your essay.

Revise and Edit

Proofread your essay for grammar, spelling, and clarity. Make sure your arguments are well-structured and that your writing flows smoothly.

Seek Feedback

Have someone else read your essay to get feedback. They may offer valuable insights and help you identify areas where your persuasive techniques can be improved.

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Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19

Here are some persuasive essay topics on COVID-19:

The Importance of Vaccination Mandates for COVID-19 Control
Balancing Public Health and Personal Freedom During a Pandemic
The Economic Impact of Lockdowns vs. Public Health Benefits
The Role of Misinformation in Fueling Vaccine Hesitancy
Remote Learning vs. In-Person Education: What's Best for Students?
The Ethics of Vaccine Distribution: Prioritizing Vulnerable Populations
The Mental Health Crisis Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
The Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 on Healthcare Systems
Global Cooperation vs. Vaccine Nationalism in Fighting the Pandemic
The Future of Telemedicine: Expanding Healthcare Access Post-COVID-19

In search of more inspiring topics for your next persuasive essay? Our persuasive essay topics blog has plenty of ideas!

To sum it up,

You have read good sample essays and got some helpful tips. You now have the tools you needed to write a persuasive essay about Covid-19. So don't let the doubts stop you, start writing!

If you need professional writing help, don't worry! We've got that for you as well.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Are there any ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about covid-19.

Yes, there are ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19. It's essential to ensure the information is accurate, not contribute to misinformation, and be sensitive to the pandemic's impact on individuals and communities. Additionally, respecting diverse viewpoints and emphasizing public health benefits can promote ethical communication.

What impact does COVID-19 have on society?

The impact of COVID-19 on society is far-reaching. It has led to job and economic losses, an increase in stress and mental health disorders, and changes in education systems. It has also had a negative effect on social interactions, as people have been asked to limit their contact with others.

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Keep reading

International edition
Australia edition
Europe edition

‘We need “science” in the broadest sense of the word.”

To solve the problems of this pandemic, we need more than just 'the science'

The government will unveil some of its strategy for ending lockdown this week. It must consult academics across disciplines

P oliticians make mistakes all the time. There is no getting away from it, as being wrongfooted by public opinion can spell the end of a political career. In that sense, they’re a bit like academics: we are also bound to get things wrong. But unlike politicians, we see the advantages in uncovering and learning from our errors and biases, in discovering new things and constantly thinking beyond the immediate problem.

That’s why the national academies – the British Academy , representing the humanities and social sciences, among them – are drawing together the country’s most distinguished researchers to support the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic by sharing different perspectives, knowledge and insight.

It is understandable that the government is focusing on short-term decisions about the pandemic, and gratifying that they aim to follow “the science” (ie data and evidence). Much of this science involves epidemiological, medical, engineering and technological capabilities.

But it is important to also focus on how to address many of the social and economic challenges in the wake of the pandemic: we need “science” in the broadest sense of the word.

Even now, we need to understand the long-term consequences of the government’s strategy for tackling the pandemic. This week, the government plans to unveil elements of its strategy for easing lockdown. It is vital that ministers seek a wide range of advice to inform this. Schools, businesses and other employers are counting on it.

We need to understand how people cope with medical and other threats to their lives and livelihoods, and how differing views and backgrounds affect responses to such challenges. We need to identify and address the weak points in our legal, educational, and informal care structures.

This pandemic may bring changes in many people’s work , roles and social relations, with significant implications for mental health and wellbeing. It has exposed new vulnerabilities not addressed by our health and benefits systems. With so much in flux, we need to work out what the new social contract will be.

We need psychologists to establish the potentially damaging impact of virtual learning on young children, ethical philosophers to scrutinise the value given to care work in society, legal scholars to interpret the powers devolved administrations have when implementing emergency measures, and urban geographers to turn the “test, track and trace” strategy into a reliable method to ease lockdown. These are just a few examples of the challenges society will face before it resolves the coronavirus crisis.

One example of how this is working already is research by social psychologists at several different universities, which has helped form our understanding of the dynamics of social distancing and crowd behaviour in emergencies. Their research has helped public policy makers identify the stress points, and develop social norms that people will actually be willing to comply with.

One lesson we must take from this pandemic is that governments need to understand the value of deferring to multiple scientific perspectives. Sars and Ebola have led to growing recognition that epidemics are social and anthropological – as well as medical – phenomena. A team of anthropologists at the Institute of Development Studies worked closely with communities in Sierra Leone to trace the social practices, such as burial rites, that might be involved in transmitting Ebola and replace these with temporary, risk-free alternatives. Thanks to this experience, the World Health Organisation now regularly relies on social scientists in shaping its public health emergency measures.

As Levi Strauss said, an expert knows all the answers – if you ask the right questions. Our quest is not to find the one truth or “the science”, but to deploy our different academic insights to best effect under the circumstances.

It is then perfectly possible to get multiple experts to work together to identify how we can get things less wrong. That is what we need to be doing now by drawing on every sphere of academic insight across the humanities, social and natural sciences. If we can get that right and stick with it, we will lay the foundations for shaping a better future.

Prof Dominic Abrams is the British Academy’s vice-president for social sciences

Universities
Higher education
Coronavirus

Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic

As a result of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, daily life has been negatively affected, impacting the worldwide economy. Thousands of individuals have been sickened or died as a result of the outbreak of this disease. When you have the flu or a viral infection, the most common symptoms include fever, cold, coughing up bone fragments, and difficulty breathing, which may progress to pneumonia. It’s important to take major steps like keeping a strict cleaning routine, keeping social distance, and wearing masks, among other things. This virus’s geographic spread is accelerating (Daniel Pg 93). Governments restricted public meetings during the start of the pandemic to prevent the disease from spreading and breaking the exponential distribution curve. In order to avoid the damage caused by this extremely contagious disease, several countries quarantined their citizens. However, this scenario had drastically altered with the discovery of the vaccinations. The research aims to investigate the effect of the Covid-19 epidemic and its impact on the population’s well-being.

There is growing interest in the relationship between social determinants of health and health outcomes. Still, many health care providers and academics have been hesitant to recognize racism as a contributing factor to racial health disparities. Only a few research have examined the health effects of institutional racism, with the majority focusing on interpersonal racial and ethnic prejudice Ciotti et al., Pg 370. The latter comprises historically and culturally connected institutions that are interconnected. Prejudice is being practiced in a variety of contexts as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. In some ways, the outbreak has exposed pre-existing bias and inequity.

Thousands of businesses are in danger of failure. Around 2.3 billion of the world’s 3.3 billion employees are out of work. These workers are especially susceptible since they lack access to social security and adequate health care, and they’ve also given up ownership of productive assets, which makes them highly vulnerable. Many individuals lose their employment as a result of lockdowns, leaving them unable to support their families. People strapped for cash are often forced to reduce their caloric intake while also eating less nutritiously (Fraser et al, Pg 3). The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have not gathered crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods. As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, become sick, or die, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

Infectious illness outbreaks and epidemics have become worldwide threats due to globalization, urbanization, and environmental change. In developed countries like Europe and North America, surveillance and health systems monitor and manage the spread of infectious illnesses in real-time. Both low- and high-income countries need to improve their public health capacities (Omer et al., Pg 1767). These improvements should be financed using a mix of national and foreign donor money. In order to speed up research and reaction for new illnesses with pandemic potential, a global collaborative effort including governments and commercial companies has been proposed. When working on a vaccine-like COVID-19, cooperation is critical.

The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have been unable to gather crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods (Daniel et al.,Pg 95) . As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

While helping to feed the world’s population, millions of paid and unpaid agricultural laborers suffer from high levels of poverty, hunger, and bad health, as well as a lack of safety and labor safeguards, as well as other kinds of abuse at work. Poor people, who have no recourse to social assistance, must work longer and harder, sometimes in hazardous occupations, endangering their families in the process (Daniel Pg 96). When faced with a lack of income, people may turn to hazardous financial activities, including asset liquidation, predatory lending, or child labor, to make ends meet. Because of the dangers they encounter while traveling, working, and living abroad; migrant agricultural laborers are especially vulnerable. They also have a difficult time taking advantage of government assistance programs.

The pandemic also has a significant impact on education. Although many educational institutions across the globe have already made the switch to online learning, the extent to which technology is utilized to improve the quality of distance or online learning varies. This level is dependent on several variables, including the different parties engaged in the execution of this learning format and the incorporation of technology into educational institutions before the time of school closure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. For many years, researchers from all around the globe have worked to determine what variables contribute to effective technology integration in the classroom Ciotti et al., Pg 371. The amount of technology usage and the quality of learning when moving from a classroom to a distant or online format are presumed to be influenced by the same set of variables. Findings from previous research, which sought to determine what affects educational systems ability to integrate technology into teaching, suggest understanding how teachers, students, and technology interact positively in order to achieve positive results in the integration of teaching technology (Honey et al., 2000). Teachers’ views on teaching may affect the chances of successfully incorporating technology into the classroom and making it a part of the learning process.

In conclusion, indeed, Covid 19 pandemic have affected the well being of the people in a significant manner. The economy operation across the globe have been destabilized as most of the people have been rendered jobless while the job operation has been stopped. As most of the people have been rendered jobless the living conditions of the people have also been significantly affected. Besides, the education sector has also been affected as most of the learning institutions prefer the use of online learning which is not effective as compared to the traditional method. With the invention of the vaccines, most of the developed countries have been noted to stabilize slowly, while the developing countries have not been able to vaccinate most of its citizens. However, despite the challenge caused by the pandemic, organizations have been able to adapt the new mode of online trading to be promoted.

Ciotti, Marco, et al. “The COVID-19 pandemic.” Critical reviews in clinical laboratory sciences 57.6 (2020): 365-388.

Daniel, John. “Education and the COVID-19 pandemic.” Prospects 49.1 (2020): 91-96.

Fraser, Nicholas, et al. “Preprinting the COVID-19 pandemic.” BioRxiv (2021): 2020-05.

Omer, Saad B., Preeti Malani, and Carlos Del Rio. “The COVID-19 pandemic in the US: a clinical update.” Jama 323.18 (2020): 1767-1768.

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CORRESPONDENCE
18 February 2020

Coronavirus: global solutions to prevent a pandemic

Charlotte H. Watts ,
Patrick Vallance &
Christopher J. M. Whitty 2

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Investment in research must be fast-tracked if we are to tackle the new coronavirus disease, COVID-19. We need greater insight into the transmission, progression and epidemiology of this respiratory illness. We need to know the risk factors for infection, the role of asymptomatic or mild infection and the nature of ‘super-spreaders’. We must determine disease seasonality and the viability of the virus in hot, humid environments, and improve estimates of death rates by age.

Research relevant to countries with weaker surveillance, lab facilities and health systems should be prioritized. In those regions, vaccine supply routes should not rely on refrigeration, and diagnostics should be available at the point of care. The World Health Organization is mapping such research and development priorities.

Social-science issues are important, too. These include how to communicate to the public what the options are for managing and preventing the disease, and how to tackle misconceptions and fear and avoid stigmatization. Community engagement and responsibility must be encouraged.

Nature 578 , 363 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00457-y

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a Department of Information Technology & Decision Sciences, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, 23529, USA

Zuopeng (Justin) Zhang

b Department of Management, Coggin College of Business, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL 32224, USA

Various technology innovations and applications have been developed to fight the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic also has implications for the design, development, and use of technologies. There is an urgent need for a greater understanding of what roles information systems and technology researchers can play in this global pandemic. This paper examines emerging technologies used to mitigate the threats of COVID-19 and relevant challenges related to technology design, development, and use. It also provides insights and suggestions into how information systems and technology scholars can help fight the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper helps promote future research and technology development to produce better solutions for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic and future pandemics.

1. Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an immense impact on hospital systems, businesses, schools, and the economy. Telemedicine, telework, and online education become essential to help society slow down the spread of the coronavirus ( Chavez & Kounang, 2020 ; Loh & Fishbane, 2020 ; Young, 2020 ). The pandemic has generated a rapid demand for efforts to use innovative technologies to cope with damage from COVID-19 on our life ( O’Leary, 2020 ).

The pandemic has not only raised opportunities to advance technology-based solutions but also provided a rare opportunity to study the research and practice of technology, including information management, work practices, and design and use of technologies ( Sein, 2020 ). The quick transition to telehealth, telework, and online education in response to the coronavirus threat is a reminder that digital technology brings many benefits and can play an essential role in managing and reducing the risks caused by the lockdown during the pandemic and even after the pandemic ( Richter, 2020 ). It is well known that information systems and information technology (IS/IT) play an important role in healthcare, clinical decision support, emergency/crisis response, and risk management ( Angst & Agarwal, 2009 ; Ben-Assuli & Padman, 2020 ; Chen, Sharman, Chakravarti, Rao, & Upadhyaya, 2008 ; Thompson, Whitaker, Kohli, & Jones, 2019 ). Many IS/IT professionals are working in various ways to help fight the pandemic, including developing products to combat the virus, tracking and predicting its spread, and protecting hospitals from cyberattacks ( Mingis, 2020 ). Information systems and technology scholars should contribute to this global effort to fight the COVID-19 and future pandemics ( Ågerfalk, Conboy, & Myers, 2020 ) by leveraging their previous experience and knowledge on responding to crises, decision making, remote working, managing virtual teams, analyzing large data sets, etc. There is currently a shortage of research contributions in the areas of information systems (IS) to help fight the COVID-19.

The pandemic has implications for the design, development, and use of information systems and technologies ( Sein, 2020 ). Information systems and technology researchers and practitioners can help conduct an analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic data and engage in potential emerging research topics, such as facilitating work while social distancing, contactless commerce, face recognition when wearing masks or in other crises, COVID-19 apps in terms of privacy, crowdsourcing, donating data, and tracking cases, robotics and their impact on organizations, monitoring vulnerable vs. non-vulnerable for their impact on work, changing patterns of supply and demand for fragile supply chains and autonomic systems, virtual communication tools, online education breakthroughs, and separation of work and private life ( O’Leary, 2020 ). Rai (2020) also identified some opportunities for IS research to contribute toward building resilience to pandemics and extreme events including (i) redesigning the public health system from reactive to proactive through the use of real-time surveillance systems and contact tracing tools to stem transmission, (ii) transforming organizations through enhancing crisis-driven agility and reducing crisis-revealed fragility, and (iii) empowering individuals and communities through adapting, coping, and stemming the infodemic. Dwivedi et al. (2020) present an assessment of critical challenges of COVID-19 through an information system and technological perspective and offer insights for research and recommendations studying the impact of COVID-19 on information management research and practice in transforming education, work, and life.

To reduce the overlap with O’Leary (2020) and Rai (2020) , this paper primarily focuses on technology integration from the data, system, and people perspectives to discuss how information systems and technology scholars could contribute knowledge and insights to help fight the pandemic. As information systems and technologies are becoming foundational to society, information systems and technology scholars are in an excellent position to leverage their experience and knowledge with information systems and various technologies to improve existing systems and technology practice and help the society become digitally resilient to future large-scale disruptions.

2. Existing IT solutions

This paper uses the data-people-system framework to examine technology solutions to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The data-people-system framework by Bardhan, Chen, and Karahanna (2020) demonstrates a multidisciplinary roadmap for controlling and managing chronic diseases by focusing on the following three components: (1) extraction, integration, and delivery of health data; (2) interoperability of systems; and (3) guidelines and interface to guide people’s behavior. It must be noted that the original data-people-system framework was proposed for chronic disease management, which needs further development to be proactive and take account of the pandemic context.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the urgent need to redesign the public health system from reactive to proactive and develop innovations that will provide real-time information for proactive decision-making at the local, state, and national levels of public health systems ( Rai, 2020 ). COVID-19 is different from chronic diseases as it is highly contagious, can pass from people to people, and has a high mortality rate. Additionally, as COVID-19 is a new disease, scientific understanding of the virus that causes it, medical response, and actions by governments and organizations continue to evolve. The impact of COVID-19 on people and society is changing daily in ways that would have been unthinkable. As the current pandemic situation and its consequence continue to remain fluid, combating the COVID-19 pandemic requires strong coordination of various resources.

In response to the threats and risks posed by COVID-19, this paper adopts the data-people-system framework to examine the existing technology solutions for fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic and identify their challenges and potential opportunities for information systems and technology researchers. In particular, we have conducted an extensive search using academic databases and web search engines with a variety of queries related to technology, coronavirus, and COVID-19, synthesizing the related discussions in newspapers, news websites, blogs, white papers, practitioner websites, grey literature or academic literature to help understand the existing information systems and technology solutions and the roles that they could play in this challenging time of the pandemic.

Some new technology applications such as mobile COVID-19 contact tracing apps and chatbots have been recently developed to fight this pandemic. Applying these technologies can help reduce the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on people, organizations, and society. Effective and innovative use of emerging technologies can help identify community spread of the coronavirus, monitor the condition of the infected patients, improve the treatment of COVID-19 infected patients, and help develop medical treatments and vaccines ( Johnstone, 2020 ). This section evaluates these technology applications based on the data-people-system framework by Bardhan et al. (2020) .

Technologies powered by artificial intelligence (AI) including machine learning, image recognition, and deep learning algorithms can be used for early detection and diagnosis of the infection, more rapid drug discovery for developing new treatments ( Brohi, Jhanjhi, Brohi, & Brohi, 2020 ). A few companies also repurposed existing AI systems that were initially designed for other areas to assist in social distancing enforcement and contract tracing ( Sipior, 2020 ).

3D Printing Technology can help make face masks and other Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers. Markforged has partnered with Neurophotometrics to produce 3D printed rayon wrapped nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs for COVID-19 testing. The swabs take less than three minutes to make, can be much quicker at collecting viral particles ( Markforged, 2020 ).

Big Data Analytics can be used to identify people that need quarantine based on their travel history, predict the COVID-19 curve, speed up the development of antiviral drugs and vaccines, and advance the understanding of the COVID-19 spread across both time and space. In Taiwan, big data analytics has been successfully applied to help identify COVID-19 cases and generate real-time alerts through analyzing clinical visits, travel history, and clinical symptoms ( Wang, Ng, & Brook, 2020 ; Wang, Zha, et al., 2020 ; Watson, Ives, & Piccoli, 2020 ).

HPC infrastructures and supercomputers are needed to address complex scientific problems and process big datasets in shorter time frames in order to develop new drugs and vaccines. The COVID-19 High-Performance Computing Consortium was launched to leverage the computing resources and supercomputers in the US. The consortium includes 16 public and private entities such as the US Department of Energy (DoE), IBM, and other academic and industry leaders ( Woo, 2020 ).

Mobile apps via smartphones and video-conferencing tools can be used to track the movements of individuals, alert people from visiting COVID-19 hotspots, help doctors to diagnose patients through video services and telemedicine/telehealth, support people with online shopping, e-learning, online meetings, and telework ( Marr B., 2020 ). Various phone and network-powered apps have been developed to help healthcare workers and ordinary people in this crisis. For example, the U.S. National Science Foundation funded an award to support researchers at Princeton University in developing a system to deploy a firmware update to mobile phones to provide proximity tracking ability for health officials. To preserve users’ privacy, the key to the proximity data would be stored on the phone itself and could only be unlocked when the phone’s owner voluntarily provided it to health officials. Suppose a person tests positive for a disease such as COVID-19. In that case, health officials could then use the system to automatically identify all other cellphone users who were within a certain distance of the infected person for a certain time. The time and distance could be determined by health officials based on knowledge of the disease. Healthcare departments can contact those potentially infected people, advise them of the exposure, and instruct them to get tested for the disease and self-quarantine as needed ( WHO, 2020 ).

Robots have been applied to fight the coronavirus outbreak. For example, hospitals use robots as support systems to deliver food and medicine, disinfect rooms, and other hotspots without direct human interaction with patients. A CNN news report shows that doctors in Seattle have used a telepresence robot to treat the first confirmed patient who tests positive for coronavirus in the United States ( Chavez & Kounang, 2020 ). Drones also are used to deliver medical supplies, patrol public areas, track non-compliance to quarantine mandates, and so on ( Marr B., 2020 ; Marr N., 2020 ).

The Internet of Things (IoT) can be used for the surveillance of people infected by coronavirus to reduce the spread of the coronavirus ( Kumar, Kumar, & Shah, 2020 ). IoT consists of several functional components: data collection, transfer, analytics, and storage. IoT sensors installed on mobile phones, robots, or health monitors can be used to collect data. Next, sensor data would be sent to the cloud server for processing, analytics, and decision-making. As an example, IoT helps check whether patients follow quarantine requirements. IoT can also be used to take the remote patients’ temperatures and then transmit the data through mobile devices to the doctors to monitor, track, and alert while reducing the chance for coronavirus inflections ( He, 2020 ). Additional roles of IoT technologies include the use of smart wearable devices in response to COVID-19 in early diagnosis, quarantine time, and after recovery ( Nasajpour et al., 2020 ).

Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that records online transactions. It is regulated through a consensus mechanism and is secured with cryptography ( Chong, Lim, Hua, Zheng, & Tan, 2019 ). As an example, a smartphone app that leverages blockchain technology and AI was developed to help fight the coronavirus pandemic. Blockchain technology enables the app to give each participant a "digital identity" controlled by a private key that brings access to a digital version of paper certificates issued by the government. These allow the confirmed healthy people to leave home to buy food or to work ( Sinclair, 2020 ). Blockchain has also been used to prevent the information from being manipulated by unauthorized parties. During the outbreak, a Chinese payment processor and financial services company used blockchain technology to monitor the process of processing claims and making payouts in a more secure and trustworthy way ( News Staff, 2020 ). Blockchain technology has been applied to resolve the tension and trust issues between maintaining privacy and addressing public health needs, such as tracking infected patients in the fight against COVID-19 ( Khurshid, 2020 ).

All the above technologies require the integration of data, people, and systems. Based on their primary focus and original design intention for use in practice, we broadly classify them into three categories. The data-centric technologies for combating COVID-19 include machine learning/deep learning, big data analytics, and HPC infrastructure. The people-centric technologies include robots and 3D printing technology; they are used to serve patients better and protect healthy people from infections with the support of specific systems. The system-centric technologies include digital contact tracing apps, the Internet of Things, and Blockchain; they are developed based on system concepts to monitor patients and prevent healthy people from contracting coronavirus. Some of these technologies are interrelated and may transcend multiple categories as they are being used in dealing with the pandemic, depending on how creative people are using them in varying contexts. For example, big data analytics that identify people who need quarantine could have system-centric or people-centric aspects depending on the specific purposes and use by different government agencies, health authorities, hospitals, and organizations. Table 1 summarizes the three categories of technologies and their required support from data, people, and systems.

Summary of technology solutions for COVID-19.

3. Challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of existing public health systems. The use of technologies to combat the pandemic raises challenges in many aspects. The specific nature of the COVID-19 pandemic requires strong coordination of connected data, people, and systems ( Bardhan et al., 2020 ) to facilitate worldwide collaboration in fighting against it. Traditionally, public health agencies and healthcare stakeholders have not used the same systems, data formats, or standards, hampering the ability to identify trends and develop interventions against the pandemic. Public health researchers, epidemiologists, and government officials need to be connected via integrated systems with connected data to understand the evolving pandemic better and make collective decisions on addressing this crisis. As people play a crucial role in this fight against the COVID-19, it is essential to connect, coordinate, and support various stakeholders through innovative and integrated technologies.

3.1. Connecting systems to integrate technologies

Emerging technologies including the IoT, big-data analytics, AI, and blockchain can be integrated to develop smart strategies for addressing immediate challenges caused by the coronavirus. For example, Facebook has used artificial intelligence and big data technologies to tap into satellite imagery and census data to generate maps that display population density, demographics, and travel patterns in order to help decide where to send supplies or how to reduce the spread ( Holt, 2020 ). Big data analysis of geographic information systems (GIS) and IoT sensor data collected from infected patients can assist epidemiologists to trace patient zero and help identify close contacts of the infected patients ( He, 2020 ). The U.S. National Science Foundation recently funded a RAPID award that explores the capabilities and potential of integrating social media big data, geospatial data, and AI technologies to enable and transform spatial epidemiology research and risk communication. The emerging convergence of blockchain, the IoT, and AI holds great promise for addressing the issues of trust and security in public health ( Gurgu, Andronie, Andronie, & Dijmarescu, 2019 ; Singh, Rathore, & Park, 2020 ). For example, medical device data and non-personal sensor data collected by IoT can be stored and shared on the blockchains. Patients’ personal data can still be stored in the hospitals’ enterprise systems due to privacy regulations such as the GDPR ( Agbo, Mahmoud, & Eklund, 2019 ; Onik, Aich, Yang, Kim, & Kim, 2019 ). AI and big data technologies can be leveraged to analyze and visualize both on-chain and off-chain data and provide near real-time analytics and recommendations to relevant stakeholders through customized dashboards.

Currently, most systems and apps that have been used to deal with the pandemic are poorly inter-connected since they are developed by different government agencies, health authorities, and organizations. There is a lack of systematic frameworks and tools to accomplish systematic integration across various technologies in the global response against pandemic challenges.

To integrate these different technologies, guidelines and systematic efforts are required to coordinate the collection of large amounts of quality data related to coronavirus cases. The design of effective big data analytics and AI algorithms requires public health departments and hospitals to provide a large amount of reliable and high-quality data. Due to a lack of standards, the integration of multiple data sources for promoting interoperability is challenging. Some data sources may be well structured, while others are not ( Pham, Nguyen, Huynh-The, Hwang, & Pathirana, 2020 ). There is also a need to generate standardized protocols to facilitate communication across systems without compromising data security. Governments, leading tech firms, health organizations, and other relevant stakeholders need to collaborate efficiently and effectively to define the standard, protocols, data formats and types, etc.

Information systems and technology scholars have been examining system integration in enterprise or organizational environments over the past several decades ( Henningsson, Yetton, & Wynne, 2018 ; Ravichandran & Rai, 2000 ; Xu, 2011 ). Information systems and technology scholars also studied the role of information systems in crisis, disaster, and emergency response ( Chen et al., 2008 ; Pan, Pan, & Leidner, 2012 ; Valecha, Rao, Upadhyaya, & Sharman, 2019 ). Information systems and technology researchers should take the opportunity to offer their expertise in system integration and experience with emergency or crisis response systems to provide recommendations and strategies to help developers with various systems and technology integration efforts.

3.2. Connecting data to share best practices

As the World Health Organization (2020) suggests, new collaboration and knowledge sharing are needed to deliver targeted solutions through a coordinated effort to support countries facing stages of this epidemic in different ways and at different times. Faced with a global pandemic, countries need to work together to share data, information, resources, effective practices, and strategies to combat the coronavirus. In addition, global collaboration among relevant stakeholders between organizations and governments will be crucial to coordinating the sharing and use of data and knowledge to solve the problems we encountered during this pandemic. For example, China took extraordinary measures for the shutdown of Wuhan, a large city with millions of people, to control the spread of the coronavirus ( Lin et al., 2020 ). Useful experience and lessons related to its efficacy as a containment measure could be valuable for other countries who are considering similar measures. Data integration and knowledge management (KM) technologies such as web portals, knowledge repositories, and online communities of practice can be used to empower data connections to leverage resources more effectively and efficiently at a lower cost ( Bardhan et al., 2020 ; Pan, Cui, & Qian, 2020 ).

Knowledge-based systems such as expert systems and intelligent decision technologies have been used to support health workers in detecting and diagnosing patients, and providing decision-making support for relevant healthcare stakeholders and decision-makers in a pandemic crisis ( O’Leary, 2020 ; Rehfuess et al., 2019 ). Data mining and visualization technologies have been used to discover and visualize knowledge evolution across time and locations as the coronavirus outbreak continues to evolve. Online health communities have been established to help healthcare workers, patients, and other stakeholders learn about COVID-19, symptoms, and the effectiveness of treatments ( Yan & Tan, 2014 ; Ziebland et al., 2004 ). However, these systems often operate in a silo, and the data, information, and knowledge stored in their systems are not widely shared. To allow various systems and stakeholders in different communities of practice to share knowledge within and across their individual areas, we need to create an environment to encourage people across countries to share knowledge instead of keeping or holding the knowledge. In the context of a coronavirus outbreak, strategies could be developed to assess the quality of the knowledge and help systems break down silos that hinder communication and sharing data more efficiently.

Besides, behavioral issues need to be addressed to facilitate the sharing of data and best practices among stakeholders. Over the years, there have been a number of calls for information systems and technology researchers to consider the unintended or negative consequences of technologies ( Chiasson, Davidson, & Winter, 2018 ). IT professionals have been rushing to build apps, services, and systems for contact tracing, tracking, and quarantine monitoring. Some of these technologies are lightweight for short-term use, while others are pervasive and invasive ( O’Neill, Ryan-Mosley, & Johnson, 2020 ). For example, many researchers have advocated the use of digital contact tracing and health code apps ( Oxford Analytica, 2020 ) to reduce the spread of the disease. Some people are concerned that short-term fixes such as monitoring of infected people via an app could lead to a permanent state of surveillance by the government ( Lin & Martin, 2020 ). Digital contact tracing can be effective but is controversial because it could have disastrous consequences if not implemented with proper privacy checks and encryption ( Huang, Sun, & Sui, 2020 ). For example, some experts are questioning how anonymous the data is and whether it can be easily de-anonymized to identify or infer the personal identity of infected persons ( Lee & Roberts, 2020 ). Healthy authorities may misuse or abuse the data they collected from digital tracing mobile apps for long-term and other purposes. Many people are concerned about whether these coronavirus-fighting apps are secure to use, how these apps will preserve privacy, and what policies are needed to prevent the abuse ( O’Neill et al., 2020 ). These concerns are likely to undermine public trust and affect people’s adoption of emerging technologies. There is also a need for further research to investigate security, privacy, and ethics issues related to technologies developed for fighting this pandemic.

Knowing about coronavirus exposures is important for containing the spread of COVID-19. Governments around the world are introducing technologies such as mobile apps to help health officials trace contacts of people newly infected with the coronavirus. These mobile apps work by recording whom a person comes close to—then alerting those people if a person contracts COVID-19. Out of precaution to protect people’s privacy and reduce people’s concern on increased surveillance, Australia made it illegal for non-health officials to access data collected on smartphone software to trace the spread of the coronavirus. The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has published guidance for the use of location data and contact tracing tools in order to mitigate privacy and security concerns. Apple and Google disclosed a series of changes including stronger privacy protections and accuracy to their COVID-19 contact tracing initiative.

On the other hand, some researchers think that it is justified to temporarily relax privacy measures for such technologies in the hopes of possibly saving lives, serving the public good, and protecting public health under pandemic circumstances. Many people have been engaged in self-disclosure on social media to share personal information such as health status and preventive behaviors (e.g., wearing masks and buying sanitizing products) because sharing such information contributes to the public good ( Nabity-Grover, Cheung, & Thatcher, 2020 ). Some researchers hold that privacy concerns should not decrease the usefulness of technology to protect public health ( Cho, Ippolito, & Yu, 2020 ). They do not think such technologies were designed to make a permanent change to society ( Ferretti et al., 2020 ). The lack of a consensus on privacy protection in technologies against COVID-19 indicates a strong need for establishing best practice guidelines to reassure citizens on data collection ( Fahey & Hino, 2020 ).

Public trust and confidence are necessary to people’s adoption of various technologies including sharing their data to address the challenges caused by this pandemic ( Ferretti et al., 2020 ). Currently, the adoption of digital contact tracing apps is voluntary in western countries. It has been recognized that these issues cause more controversy in Western countries with a culture of individualism such as Europe and the U.S. than in countries with a culture of collectivism. However, at least 60 percent of people with smartphones would need to opt-in for such apps to be effective ( Scott, 2020 ). How to incentivize mass user adoption of these apps is a challenge. In the context of this coronavirus pandemic with a lot of loss of life, information systems and technology scholars can help evaluate the use of digital data and technologies including AI-related algorithms in a responsible manner, provide oversight for user-related data, develop ways to incentivize users to share relevant data as needed, help develop mechanisms to ensure that technology design and use are guided by ethical principles in order to ensure transparency, equity, and security and increase public trust and confidence ( Ienca & Vayena, 2020 ; Lee & Roberts, 2020 ). Information systems and technology scholars can also help identify best practices to implement responsible data-collection and data-processing, and achieve a balance between privacy and utility of the proposed technologies.

3.3. Connecting people with enhanced collaborative tools and IT infrastructures

The COVID-19 outbreak is rapidly changing the workplace. Millions of people are moving their workspaces to their homes through teleworking. Many industries benefit as knowledge workers learn to operate virtually, work from home, and use cloud services to process and store files. We are witnessing wider acceptance of online services by people and diverse types of industries during this pandemic. The importance of IT infrastructure in enabling teleworking, online learning, e-government, e-commerce, and other online activities has been widely recognized. The pandemic is forcing a record number of employees to work remotely for an extended duration, which results in heavy traffic on remote connectivity networks. There are vital needs for society to continue investing in IT infrastructure and accelerate digital transformation efforts to deal with the impact of COVID-19 and future public health crises ( Watson, Ives, et al., 2020 ). Companies need to enhance their investments in tools such as video conferencing and group decision-making support systems ( Xu, Du, & Chen, 2015 ) to enable personnel and distributed teams to work remotely and collaborate virtually. On the other hand, costs for IT infrastructure are exploding as employees practice teleworking and students take online classes in light of the COVID-19 outbreak. It is necessary to understand the rise in hard costs of IT infrastructure associated with meeting spiking demand. As the pandemic continues to evolve, IT infrastructures need to be enhanced for workers to perform their duties safely and healthily ( CISA, 2020 ). Some critical tasks may not be executable from home, and workarounds need to be identified. It is particularly necessary to identify the factors that drive the cost of serving the increased demand due to teleworking, such as cloud server costs, video conferencing costs, additional licenses for support products. Cloud services should be further leveraged through existing infrastructures such as Google Cloud, Azure, AWS, or Salesforce. Strategies need to be developed to keep essential functions and services up and running. CIOs need to think about retrofitting the present for the new needs or creating new systems for new situations ( Watson, Ives, et al., 2020 ). Finally, digital infrastructure readiness and resilience are also important areas to explore ( Papagiannidis, Harris, & Morton, 2020 ).

Group decision-making is often needed for complicated situations involving much uncertainty and time constraints. Information systems and technology scholars can share their experience with group decision support systems to support collective decision making regarding the evolving pandemic, help connect stakeholders at different levels to build consensus, and support governments, health authorities, organizations, and the public to make culturally appropriate and sensitive decisions regarding the infection detection, infection prediction, and infection avoidance and when to reopen the economy. Information systems and technology scholars can also help build collaborative information systems, community-based information systems, talent, and volunteer networks to leverage the expertise and time of various stakeholders. As an example, an innovative application is a wastewater COVID-19 early warning detection system. Wastewater detection of COVID-19 could act not only as a supplement to medical testing but as an early warning system for community monitoring and prevention. Continued wastewater-based monitoring could alert public health officials whether the coronavirus is still circulating in a community ( Chakradhar, 2020 ). A lot of volunteers are needed to make the wastewater COVID-19 early warning detection system successful. Information systems and technology scholars can contribute by providing expertise to help the government, authorities, and local communities to design and develop a volunteer network to engage and organize a large number of volunteers, and help build a collaborative information system to deliver a national program in this area ( Thomas & Bertsch, 2020 ). As Rai (2020) points out, swift deployment of grassroots innovation could develop rapid solutions to meet urgent needs.

3.4. Studying human behavior with technologies and digital divide

It is important to study human behavior when designing, building, and using technologies as more COVID-19 related technologies are being developed, integrated, and used by governments, organizations, and people. Lots of efforts to combat the pandemic incorporate new technological advances and approaches in integrating various systems and innovations. However, we need to acknowledge that people’s misbehavior with technologies may reduce the eﬀ ;ectiveness of the technology-related interventions or countermeasures on containing the coronavirus break. Information systems and technology scholars can contribute by incorporating their understanding of human behavior into the technology design and development process, leading to more effective technology ( Pfleeger & Caputo, 2012 ). A large number of theories and models such as the technology acceptance model, innovation diffusion theory, the theory of reasoned action, health belief models and theory of planned behavior, social cognitive theory, and motivation theory can be used to explore the acceptance and use of COVID-19 related technologies such as telehealth technologies, study the strategic role of various technologies in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and also examine unintended consequences of using technologies. For example, information systems and technology scholars can examine online users’ information sharing behavior, study how online patient communities should be engaged and incentivized to share information and support COVID-19 patients and caregivers, and how to analyze data to reveal new insights to support policy-making for health departments and medical knowledge discovery ( Bardhan et al., 2020 ).

We have also witnessed a digital divide during the pandemic. The digital divide broadly refers to the uneven access to digital content and connection because of some people who do not own or have easy access to technology. People's ability to use technologies effectively remains inequitable ( Newman, Browne‐Yung, Raghavendra, Wood, & Grace, 2017 ). As emerging technologies such as mobile apps, AI, IoT, and big data analytics are increasingly used to fight the pandemic, existing disparities, inequality, and biases are further reinforced ( Park & Humphry, 2019 ). As people spent more time working, learning, socializing, and shopping online at home, this pandemic provides a chance to assess the issues and challenges faced by the rapid digital transformation of organizations and how the digital divide impacts people (e.g., underprivileged populations, women, workers in healthcare, elderly and those at-risk) ( Venkatesh, 2020 ). Therefore, information systems and technology scholars need to help develop strategies and approaches to addressing digital inequality and disparity, especially when the governments need to flatten the curve of infection.

Information systems and technology can play a significant role in improving the visibility of digital inequality and disparity at organizations and communities ( Bardhan et al., 2020 ). Data shows Black and Hispanic populations face higher exposure to coronavirus and more significant hurdles for medical treatment and level of care ( Nemo, 2020 ). People of color communities tend to have relatively lower public health literacy and less experience in finding and evaluating healthcare information. Information systems and technology scholars can investigate to what extent the marginalized, women, elderly, and people of color are engaged, included, and impacted by these COVID-19 technology-related applications and systems, including health information seeking tools, mobile contact tracing, and tracking apps, COVID-19 self-checking chatbots, quarantine monitors, and telemedicine in a sustainable manner. It would be valuable to understand the short, medium, and long-term impacts of the digital divide during the COVID-19 pandemic response on marginalized groups, women, the elderly, people of color and people in rural settings. Information systems and technology scholars can do their part to improve technology design and processes to promote digital inclusion, assist with eﬃcient development and sustainable implementation of the proposed technology, particularly in underserved populations. For example, Goh, Gao, and Agarwal (2016)) showed that technology-mediated online health communities could share information and alleviate rural-urban health disparities. Online health communities can also support the most vulnerable family caregivers ( Friedman, Trail, Vaughan, & Tanielian, 2018 ). Information systems and technology scholars can explore factors affecting underserved populations and communities to adopt and effectively use emerging technologies, encourage information sharing behavior during this crisis, and identify strategies to incentivize the mass adoption of relevant coronavirus-fighting technologies by underserved populations. Understanding the underserved population's unique perspectives in this coronavirus outbreak can provide guidelines for future IT systems and applications design, development, and potentially improve the adoption and use of novel IT systems.

4. Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced significant impacts on people, businesses, and society. The pandemic also has implications for the design, development, and use of technologies ( Sein, 2020 ). Technologies can be useful for reducing the severity of the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on people, organizations, and society. However, the use of technologies to combat the pandemic raises challenges such as security, privacy, biases, ethics, and the digital divide. This paper evaluates the technology applications based on the data-people-system framework and suggests that the specific nature of the COVID-19 pandemic requires strong coordination for connected data, people, and systems to facilitate worldwide collaboration.

Future pandemics are likely to come. While information systems and technology scholars might not be able to help with the scientific aspect of developing vaccination and treatment directly, we can contribute knowledge, experiences, and time to help society better prepare for future pandemics. To mitigate future pandemics’ costs and improve data sharing during global public health crises, Chin and Chin (2020) called for establishing a global common data space for highly infectious diseases. While it is very challenging to establish a global common data space for public health data sharing due to various reasons such as technical, geopolitical, and ethical barriers, we support this call for its promising benefits and broader social good. At this stage, information systems and technology scholars can at least help advocate and build a national common data space or health information systems for public health data sharing.

Solving grand challenges facing society requires significant financial and human resources. To increase the importance and relevance of information systems and technology research, we encourage scholars to actively apply for various government and industry grants, including various COVID-19 funding opportunities, to get financial support to put some of their research ideas into practice. For example, the U.S. National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health have grants programs that support technology-related research to develop solutions to addressing challenges caused by the coronavirus. Information systems and technology scholars should get involved by leading or joining an interdisciplinary team to write grant proposals and get funding to directly work on some of these research ideas. Furthermore, many students including undergraduate and graduate students in information systems and technology are looking for internship opportunities. Since many small businesses in industries such as tourism, food service, and retail are being hit hardest by the pandemic, information systems and technology faculty could collect student resumes, put them on a Google drive or a website, and share the resumes with interested small business owners. This would help match information systems and technology students with interested small businesses or non-profit organizations to solve the technology and other issues they may have during the pandemic. We are glad that some of the information systems and technology faculty are doing this and mentoring small business owners on deploying digital technologies to deal with the challenges of business continuity ( Papadopoulos, Baltas, & Balta, 2020 ). Some professors were involved in digital solution development projects (e.g., tackling misinformation) and helped to organize events such as online hackathons to gather people with diverse skills to work on solutions to help society fight COVID-19 ( Bacq, Geoghegan, Josefy, Stevenson, & Williams, 2020 ; Pan & Zhang, 2020 ). We hope to see more information systems and technology scholars involved in building and expanding technology volunteer networks and mobilizing community resources and services to fight COVID-19. At last, some of the developed technologies and application for this pandemic may cease to be useful after the pandemic ends, but many will likely be retained, enhanced, or repurposed for other uses ( Oxford Analytica, 2020 ), in which information systems and technology scholars can continue to play a role after the pandemic. For example, will data collected from mobile contact tracing be destroyed after this pandemic? What data management policies are needed to prevent the abuse of the user data and guide the improved design, development, and use of future mobile contact tracing and tracking tools?

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Wu He: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Zuopeng (Justin) Zhang: Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Wenzhuo Li: Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.

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The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) hired ICMA to implement the Strengthening Urban Resilience for Growth with Equity (SURGE) Project in Philippine cities to improve local capacity in inclusive and resilient urban development, improve local economic development, and expand economic connectivity and access between urban and rural areas. Here’s an update on the latest efforts in the recovery from COVID-19:

Designing Handwashing Facilities in the Philippines

Improved sanitation and personal hygiene are among the easiest ways to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. In this effort, USAID’s SURGE Project continues to provide technical assistance to the General Santos City Water District (GSCWD) and General Santos City’s local business chambers for the construction of handwashing facilities in public spaces such as markets, bus terminals, business establishments, and other strategic areas in the city.

On June 4, 2020, USAID/SURGE Project Engineer Bahnarin Salud presented the conceptual designs and budget requirements of two models of handwashing stations: one designed for a single user and one that can accommodate two to four individuals. Both models are foot pedal-operated to control the flow of water from the faucet and reduce the risk of cross contamination from multiple users touching the faucet and the sink.

Read "Coronavirus: Restroom Guidance for Local Leaders" »

To guarantee successful implementation, Sharon Gadayan, division manager of GSCWD, ensured that water services are available in all areas where handwashing facilities will be installed. Local business chambers—Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc. (FCCCII) and General Santos City Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc. (GSCCCII)—pledged to support the initiative by providing materials and labor for the construction and installation of the handwashing stations. FCCCII Executive Director Rofil Mae Rillo also committed to partner with International Pharmaceuticals, Inc., to supply all handwashing stations with germicidal soaps. The city government of General Santos will undertake the management and maintenance of the handwashing stations once completed.

With the construction of handwashing stations, local governments and private sector stakeholders can ensure access to basic sanitation facilities and enable people to adopt positive water, sanitation, and hygiene behaviors as part of COVID-19 prevention.

Women Entrepreneurs in the Philippines Adopt Digital Marketing and E-Commerce

Entrepreneurs are maximizing the rise of digital marketing and e-commerce to cope with the challenge of resuming business operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. On June 4, 2020, more than 80 women-owned or women-led micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Puerto Princesa City participated in a digital marketing session organized by USAID’s SURGE Project. MSMEs learned practical techniques and strategies to expand marketing through online platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and Omnichannel.

Read "How Women Can Maintain Momentum and Achieve Success Through Resiliency" »

Aside from the social media giant Facebook, these digital platforms can help entrepreneurs to optimize customer experience and gear them toward the sales funnel.

Entrepreneur Jasper Evangelista discussed the Philippines’ rapidly growing digital economy and the need for MSMEs to build an online store in the new landscape. Meanwhile, business owner Arrian Lim discussed online marketplace portals available for MSMEs and how entrepreneurs can reacquaint themselves with customers by identifying new behaviors and lifestyles. The MSMEs were also encouraged to jumpstart their e-commerce business and take advantage of booming e-commerce sales worldwide. USAID/E-PESO Activity Chief of Party Mamerto Tangonan presented various digital payments options such as GCash and debit and credit payments via electronic channels such as laptops and mobiles. The session is part of USAID/SURGE’s efforts to advance women entrepreneurship development under the U.S. Government’s Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) Initiative.

Read "Inclusive Economic Growth" »

As the world goes digital due to widescale quarantine restrictions, entrepreneurs equipped with the knowledge and skills to use online markets can maintain business continuity and adopt to the increasing digital habits of consumers.

New, Reduced Membership Dues

A new, reduced dues rate is available for CAOs/ACAOs, along with additional discounts for those in smaller communities, has been implemented. Learn more and be sure to join or renew today!

How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I.

OpenAI, Google and Meta ignored corporate policies, altered their own rules and discussed skirting copyright law as they sought online information to train their newest artificial intelligence systems.

Researchers at OpenAI’s office in San Francisco developed a tool to transcribe YouTube videos to amass conversational text for A.I. development. Credit... Jason Henry for The New York Times

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By Cade Metz , Cecilia Kang , Sheera Frenkel , Stuart A. Thompson and Nico Grant

Reporting from San Francisco, Washington and New York

April 6, 2024 Updated 5:00 p.m. ET

In late 2021, OpenAI faced a supply problem.

The artificial intelligence lab had exhausted every reservoir of reputable English-language text on the internet as it developed its latest A.I. system. It needed more data to train the next version of its technology — lots more.

So OpenAI researchers created a speech recognition tool called Whisper. It could transcribe the audio from YouTube videos, yielding new conversational text that would make an A.I. system smarter.

Some OpenAI employees discussed how such a move might go against YouTube’s rules, three people with knowledge of the conversations said. YouTube, which is owned by Google, prohibits use of its videos for applications that are “independent” of the video platform.

Ultimately, an OpenAI team transcribed more than one million hours of YouTube videos, the people said. The team included Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, who personally helped collect the videos, two of the people said. The texts were then fed into a system called GPT-4 , which was widely considered one of the world’s most powerful A.I. models and was the basis of the latest version of the ChatGPT chatbot.

The race to lead A.I. has become a desperate hunt for the digital data needed to advance the technology. To obtain that data, tech companies including OpenAI, Google and Meta have cut corners, ignored corporate policies and debated bending the law, according to an examination by The New York Times.

At Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, managers, lawyers and engineers last year discussed buying the publishing house Simon & Schuster to procure long works, according to recordings of internal meetings obtained by The Times. They also conferred on gathering copyrighted data from across the internet, even if that meant facing lawsuits. Negotiating licenses with publishers, artists, musicians and the news industry would take too long, they said.

Like OpenAI, Google transcribed YouTube videos to harvest text for its A.I. models, five people with knowledge of the company’s practices said. That potentially violated the copyrights to the videos, which belong to their creators.

Last year, Google also broadened its terms of service. One motivation for the change, according to members of the company’s privacy team and an internal message viewed by The Times, was to allow Google to be able to tap publicly available Google Docs, restaurant reviews on Google Maps and other online material for more of its A.I. products.

The companies’ actions illustrate how online information — news stories, fictional works, message board posts, Wikipedia articles, computer programs, photos, podcasts and movie clips — has increasingly become the lifeblood of the booming A.I. industry. Creating innovative systems depends on having enough data to teach the technologies to instantly produce text, images, sounds and videos that resemble what a human creates.

The volume of data is crucial. Leading chatbot systems have learned from pools of digital text spanning as many as three trillion words, or roughly twice the number of words stored in Oxford University’s Bodleian Library, which has collected manuscripts since 1602. The most prized data, A.I. researchers said, is high-quality information, such as published books and articles, which have been carefully written and edited by professionals.

For years, the internet — with sites like Wikipedia and Reddit — was a seemingly endless source of data. But as A.I. advanced, tech companies sought more repositories. Google and Meta, which have billions of users who produce search queries and social media posts every day, were largely limited by privacy laws and their own policies from drawing on much of that content for A.I.

Their situation is urgent. Tech companies could run through the high-quality data on the internet as soon as 2026, according to Epoch, a research institute. The companies are using the data faster than it is being produced.

“The only practical way for these tools to exist is if they can be trained on massive amounts of data without having to license that data,” Sy Damle, a lawyer who represents Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, said of A.I. models last year in a public discussion about copyright law. “The data needed is so massive that even collective licensing really can’t work.”

Tech companies are so hungry for new data that some are developing “synthetic” information. This is not organic data created by humans, but text, images and code that A.I. models produce — in other words, the systems learn from what they themselves generate.

OpenAI said each of its A.I. models “has a unique data set that we curate to help their understanding of the world and remain globally competitive in research.” Google said that its A.I. models “are trained on some YouTube content,” which was allowed under agreements with YouTube creators, and that the company did not use data from office apps outside of an experimental program. Meta said it had “made aggressive investments” to integrate A.I. into its services and had billions of publicly shared images and videos from Instagram and Facebook for training its models.

For creators, the growing use of their works by A.I. companies has prompted lawsuits over copyright and licensing. The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft last year for using copyrighted news articles without permission to train A.I. chatbots. OpenAI and Microsoft have said using the articles was “fair use,” or allowed under copyright law, because they transformed the works for a different purpose.

More than 10,000 trade groups, authors, companies and others submitted comments last year about the use of creative works by A.I. models to the Copyright Office , a federal agency that is preparing guidance on how copyright law applies in the A.I. era.

Justine Bateman, a filmmaker, former actress and author of two books, told the Copyright Office that A.I. models were taking content — including her writing and films — without permission or payment.

“This is the largest theft in the United States, period,” she said in an interview.

‘Scale Is All You Need’

In January 2020, Jared Kaplan, a theoretical physicist at Johns Hopkins University, published a groundbreaking paper on A.I. that stoked the appetite for online data.

His conclusion was unequivocal: The more data there was to train a large language model — the technology that drives online chatbots — the better it would perform. Just as a student learns more by reading more books, large language models can better pinpoint patterns in text and be more accurate with more information.

“Everyone was very surprised that these trends — these scaling laws as we call them — were basically as precise as what you see in astronomy or physics,” said Dr. Kaplan, who published the paper with nine OpenAI researchers. (He now works at the A.I. start-up Anthropic.)

“Scale is all you need” soon became a rallying cry for A.I.

Researchers have long used large public databases of digital information to develop A.I., including Wikipedia and Common Crawl, a database of more than 250 billion web pages collected since 2007. Researchers often “cleaned” the data by removing hate speech and other unwanted text before using it to train A.I. models.

In 2020, data sets were tiny by today’s standards. One database containing 30,000 photographs from the photo website Flickr was considered a vital resource at the time.

After Dr. Kaplan’s paper, that amount of data was no longer enough. It became all about “just making things really big,” said Brandon Duderstadt, the chief executive of Nomic, an A.I. company in New York.

Before 2020, most A.I. models used relatively little training data.

Mr. Kaplan’s paper, released in 2020, led to a new era defined by GPT-3, a large language model, where researchers began including more data in their models …

… much, much more data.

When OpenAI unveiled GPT-3 in November 2020, it was trained on the largest amount of data to date — about 300 billion “tokens,” which are essentially words or pieces of words. After learning from that data, the system generated text with astounding accuracy, writing blog posts, poetry and its own computer programs.

In 2022, DeepMind, an A.I. lab owned by Google, went further. It tested 400 A.I. models and varied the amount of training data and other factors. The top-performing models used even more data than Dr. Kaplan had predicted in his paper. One model, Chinchilla, was trained on 1.4 trillion tokens.

It was soon overtaken. Last year, researchers from China released an A.I. model, Skywork , which was trained on 3.2 trillion tokens from English and Chinese texts. Google also unveiled an A.I. system, PaLM 2 , which topped 3.6 trillion tokens .

Transcribing YouTube

In May, Sam Altman , the chief executive of OpenAI, acknowledged that A.I. companies would use up all viable data on the internet.

“That will run out,” he said in a speech at a tech conference.

Mr. Altman had seen the phenomenon up close. At OpenAI, researchers had gathered data for years, cleaned it and fed it into a vast pool of text to train the company’s language models. They had mined the computer code repository GitHub, vacuumed up databases of chess moves and drawn on data describing high school tests and homework assignments from the website Quizlet.

By late 2021, those supplies were depleted, said eight people with knowledge of the company, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

OpenAI was desperate for more data to develop its next-generation A.I. model, GPT-4. So employees discussed transcribing podcasts, audiobooks and YouTube videos, the people said. They talked about creating data from scratch with A.I. systems. They also considered buying start-ups that had collected large amounts of digital data.

OpenAI eventually made Whisper, the speech recognition tool, to transcribe YouTube videos and podcasts, six people said. But YouTube prohibits people from not only using its videos for “independent” applications, but also accessing its videos by “any automated means (such as robots, botnets or scrapers).”

OpenAI employees knew they were wading into a legal gray area, the people said, but believed that training A.I. with the videos was fair use. Mr. Brockman, OpenAI’s president, was listed in a research paper as a creator of Whisper. He personally helped gather YouTube videos and fed them into the technology, two people said.

Mr. Brockman referred requests for comment to OpenAI, which said it uses “numerous sources” of data.

Last year, OpenAI released GPT-4, which drew on the more than one million hours of YouTube videos that Whisper had transcribed. Mr. Brockman led the team that developed GPT-4.

Some Google employees were aware that OpenAI had harvested YouTube videos for data, two people with knowledge of the companies said. But they didn’t stop OpenAI because Google had also used transcripts of YouTube videos to train its A.I. models, the people said. That practice may have violated the copyrights of YouTube creators. So if Google made a fuss about OpenAI, there might be a public outcry against its own methods, the people said.

Matt Bryant, a Google spokesman, said the company had no knowledge of OpenAI’s practices and prohibited “unauthorized scraping or downloading of YouTube content.” Google takes action when it has a clear legal or technical basis to do so, he said.

Google’s rules allowed it to tap YouTube user data to develop new features for the video platform. But it was unclear whether Google could use YouTube data to build a commercial service beyond the video platform, such as a chatbot.

Geoffrey Lottenberg, an intellectual property lawyer with the law firm Berger Singerman, said Google’s language about what it could and could not do with YouTube video transcripts was vague.

“Whether the data could be used for a new commercial service is open to interpretation and could be litigated,” he said.

In late 2022, after OpenAI released ChatGPT and set off an industrywide race to catch up , Google researchers and engineers discussed tapping other user data. Billions of words sat in people’s Google Docs and other free Google apps. But the company’s privacy restrictions limited how they could use the data, three people with knowledge of Google’s practices said.

In June, Google’s legal department asked the privacy team to draft language to broaden what the company could use consumer data for, according to two members of the privacy team and an internal message viewed by The Times.

The employees were told Google wanted to use people’s publicly available content in Google Docs, Google Sheets and related apps for an array of A.I. products. The employees said they didn’t know if the company had previously trained A.I. on such data.

At the time, Google’s privacy policy said the company could use publicly available information only to “help train Google’s language models and build features like Google Translate.”

The privacy team wrote new terms so Google could tap the data for its “A.I. models and build products and features like Google Translate, Bard and Cloud AI capabilities,” which was a wider collection of A.I. technologies.

“What is the end goal here?” one member of the privacy team asked in an internal message. “How broad are we going?”

The team was told specifically to release the new terms on the Fourth of July weekend, when people were typically focused on the holiday, the employees said. The revised policy debuted on July 1, at the start of the long weekend.

How Google Can Use Your Data

Here are the changes Google made to its privacy policy last year for its free consumer apps.

Google uses information to improve our services and to develop new products, features and technologies that benefit our users and the public. For example, we use publicly available information to help train Google’s language AI models and build products and features like Google Translate , Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities .

In August, two privacy team members said, they pressed managers on whether Google could start using data from free consumer versions of Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides. They were not given clear answers, they said.

Mr. Bryant said that the privacy policy changes had been made for clarity and that Google did not use information from Google Docs or related apps to train language models “without explicit permission” from users, referring to a voluntary program that allows users to test experimental features.

“We did not start training on additional types of data based on this language change,” he said.

The Debate at Meta

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, had invested in A.I. for years — but suddenly found himself behind when OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022. He immediately pushed to match and exceed ChatGPT , calling executives and engineers at all hours of the night to push them to develop a rival chatbot, said three current and former employees, who were not authorized to discuss confidential conversations.

But by early last year, Meta had hit the same hurdle as its rivals: not enough data.

Ahmad Al-Dahle, Meta’s vice president of generative A.I., told executives that his team had used almost every available English-language book, essay, poem and news article on the internet to develop a model, according to recordings of internal meetings, which were shared by an employee.

Meta could not match ChatGPT unless it got more data, Mr. Al-Dahle told colleagues. In March and April 2023, some of the company’s business development leaders, engineers and lawyers met nearly daily to tackle the problem.

Some debated paying $10 a book for the full licensing rights to new titles. They discussed buying Simon & Schuster, which publishes authors like Stephen King, according to the recordings.

They also talked about how they had summarized books, essays and other works from the internet without permission and discussed sucking up more, even if that meant facing lawsuits. One lawyer warned of “ethical” concerns around taking intellectual property from artists but was met with silence, according to the recordings.

Mr. Zuckerberg demanded a solution, employees said.

“The capability that Mark is looking for in the product is just something that we currently aren’t able to deliver,” one engineer said.

While Meta operates giant social networks, it didn’t have troves of user posts at its disposal, two employees said. Many Facebook users had deleted their earlier posts, and the platform wasn’t where people wrote essay-type content, they said.

Meta was also limited by privacy changes it introduced after a 2018 scandal over sharing its users’ data with Cambridge Analytica, a voter-profiling company.

Mr. Zuckerberg said in a recent investor call that the billions of publicly shared videos and photos on Facebook and Instagram are “greater than the Common Crawl data set.”

During their recorded discussions, Meta executives talked about how they had hired contractors in Africa to aggregate summaries of fiction and nonfiction. The summaries included copyrighted content “because we have no way of not collecting that,” a manager said in one meeting.

Meta’s executives said OpenAI seemed to have used copyrighted material without permission. It would take Meta too long to negotiate licenses with publishers, artists, musicians and the news industry, they said, according to the recordings.

“The only thing that’s holding us back from being as good as ChatGPT is literally just data volume,” Nick Grudin, a vice president of global partnership and content, said in one meeting.

OpenAI appeared to be taking copyrighted material and Meta could follow this “market precedent,” he added.

Meta’s executives agreed to lean on a 2015 court decision involving the Authors Guild versus Google , according to the recordings. In that case, Google was permitted to scan, digitize and catalog books in an online database after arguing that it had reproduced only snippets of the works online and had transformed the originals, which made it fair use.

Using data to train A.I. systems, Meta’s lawyers said in their meetings, should similarly be fair use.

At least two employees raised concerns about using intellectual property and not paying authors and other artists fairly or at all, according to the recordings. One employee recounted a separate discussion about copyrighted data with senior executives including Chris Cox, Meta’s chief product officer, and said no one in that meeting considered the ethics of using people’s creative works.

‘Synthetic’ Data

OpenAI’s Mr. Altman had a plan to deal with the looming data shortage.

Companies like his, he said at the May conference, would eventually train their A.I. on text generated by A.I. — otherwise known as synthetic data.

Since an A.I. model can produce humanlike text, Mr. Altman and others have argued, the systems can create additional data to develop better versions of themselves. This would help developers build increasingly powerful technology and reduce their dependence on copyrighted data.

“As long as you can get over the synthetic data event horizon, where the model is smart enough to make good synthetic data, everything will be fine,” Mr. Altman said.

A.I. researchers have explored synthetic data for years. But building an A.I system that can train itself is easier said than done. A.I. models that learn from their own outputs can get caught in a loop where they reinforce their own quirks, mistakes and limitations.

“The data these systems need is like a path through the jungle,” said Jeff Clune, a former OpenAI researcher who now teaches computer science at the University of British Columbia. “If they only train on synthetic data, they can get lost in the jungle.”

To combat this, OpenAI and others are investigating how two different A.I. models might work together to generate synthetic data that is more useful and reliable. One system produces the data, while a second judges the information to separate the good from the bad. Researchers are divided on whether this method will work.

A.I. executives are barreling ahead nonetheless.

“It should be all right,” Mr. Altman said at the conference.

An earlier version of this article misstated the publisher of J.K. Rowling’s books. Her works have been published by Scholastic, Little, Brown and others. They were not published by Simon & Schuster.

How we handle corrections

Cade Metz writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology. More about Cade Metz

Cecilia Kang reports on technology and regulatory policy and is based in Washington D.C. She has written about technology for over two decades. More about Cecilia Kang

Sheera Frenkel is a reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area, covering the ways technology impacts everyday lives with a focus on social media companies, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Telegram and WhatsApp. More about Sheera Frenkel

Stuart A. Thompson writes about how false and misleading information spreads online and how it affects people around the world. He focuses on misinformation, disinformation and other misleading content. More about Stuart A. Thompson

Nico Grant is a technology reporter covering Google from San Francisco. Previously, he spent five years at Bloomberg News, where he focused on Google and cloud computing. More about Nico Grant

Explore Our Coverage of Artificial Intelligence

News and Analysis

Artificial intelligence is peering into restaurant garbage pails and crunching grocery-store data to try to figure out how to send less uneaten food into dumpsters.

David Autor, an M.I.T. economist and tech skeptic, argues that A.I. is fundamentally different from past waves of computerization.

Economists doubt that artificial intelligence is already visible in productivity data . Big companies, however, talk often about adopting it to improve efficiency.

OpenAI unveiled Voice Engine , an A.I. technology that can recreate a person’s voice from a 15-second recording.

Amazon said it had added $2.75 billion to its investment in Anthropic , an A.I. start-up that competes with companies like OpenAI and Google.

Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee signed a bill to prevent the use of A.I. to copy a performer’s voice. It is the first such measure in the United States.

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