CypressRiverAdvisors.org’s COVID-19 Response
Strategic Planning Support
The world is facing an unprecedented pandemic in modern times. As a data-led organization, businesses rely on Cypress River for intelligence and strategic advice. Managing uncertainty due to an outbreak is not new to the Cypress River team. Many of us were in APAC during the SARS epidemic. So, in conjunction with The Atlantic Council GeoTech Center, we’ve published a Pandemic Survival Guide to facilitate strategic planning, whether you are a corporate or an NGO.
Data for Good
In the spirit of open data and data for good, we believe that you, the public, also deserve the same information we are providing to our clients. We want to encourage everyone to understand the complexity of the problem and build resilience against active disinformation campaigns that are occurring around the world. Please explore the graphs. You can find the link to the dashboard is here.
Personal Protective Equipment
We are working with hospitals to source PPEs and related equipment to help protect our front line workers. They are our first line and last line of defense.
Intubation Boxes
In conjunction with Dr. Ee Tay, from NYU Langone Health’s Pediatric Emergency Medicine department, we have modified the “Aerosol Box” design to support adult and pediatric intubations. We are providing the open-source plans for this low-cost, easily manufactured intubation shield that can be assembled by anyone with access to Lexan or acrylic. Any shop or maker space that can produce signboards has the equipment and supplies to manufacture this. The design documents that you will find are a variation of an open-sourced design by the original inventor: Dr. Lai Hsien-Yung from Mennonite Hospital in Taiwan. The original plans are located here on Google Drive. The design plans for the version created with NYU are available below.
Faceshields
The shortage of PPE continues to be a problem globally. To augment goggles and face masks, we are producing limited quantities of single-use emergency face shields for donations in the US and Japan. Inspired by resourceful and scrappy Makers and DIYers around the world, we have turned to them to create can find temporary solutions until the global supply chain for PPEs is available. Look further down the page for details on these initiatives.
Pandemic Survival Strategies: A leadership guide for organizations wanting to weather the COVID-19 storm
Jason Wang, Cypress River Advisors and David Bray, PhD, Director
Atlantic Council GeoTech Center
Both of us witnessed the impacts of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003, though from different perspectives. Jason was in East Asia and witnessed the fear and market collapse that happened then. He drafted this initial version of the guide. David meanwhile was in the U.S. with the Centers for Disease Control’s Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Program and saw the outbreak from a public health emergency response perspective.
Fast forward to 2020 and now we have a global pandemic with effects that will change the way we work, live, and interact for some time to come. At the time of writing, some 20% of the world’s population find themselves under lockdown and the economic powerhouses of Europe and North America grapple with the realization that they are now the epicenter of the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic. The prospect of global economic depression looms.
While the pandemic is serious, however, we can and will get through this. This article is about more than business continuity planning for organizations, be they in tech or NGOs, that seeks to provide value to people. This guide is about good leadership in turbulent environments. If we act smart and if we are willing to invest in each other, we may all come out of this situation faster — and potentially stronger.
Jump to the full article here:
Data for Good: COVID-19 Dashboard
This dashboard represents the consolidation of the latest data feeds from legitimate public sources. This work is the culmination of work conducted by reporters, scientists, healthcare workers, and researchers around the world. They are doing the work to ensure all of us understand the magnitude of the pandemic and the challenges we all face. Currently, we are incorporating the public data set released today by the heroic reporters at the New York Times. As analysts, we give a heartfelt thanks to these individuals who are collecting data at the county and state-level.
Please know that this project is in active development. Some features may occasionally break as we are responding to the rapidly changing landscape of the outbreak and any revisions to the data integration pipeline.
The process of obtaining, cleaning, and updating data from a variety of data streams is challenging. Should you identify more reliable sources than the ones we have listed, please let us know. Each day we are identifying and evaluating new sources of data. Please send suggestions or data sources to mailto:inquiries@cypressriveradvisors.com.
Pulling together, staying home to “flatten the curve,” and supporting each other’s families and business is how we are are going to get through this.
Stay safe. Stay home. Let us support the medical professionals that are risking their lives on the front line.
The Team @ Cypress River Advisors
OPEN SOURCE Personal Protective Equipment
Intubation Boxes designed with Ee Tay, MD of Langone Health
When lives are at stake, every second counts. At the request of Dr. Ee Tay of NYU Langone Health’s Pediatric Emergency Medicine department, we’ve modified the original Taiwanese Aerosol Box design. This intubation box is optimized for adult and pediatric intubations. It includes larger and oval shaped holes so a medical professional can insert their hands and instruments into the work space.
The original design has been modified to:
enable quick production by minimizing the number of cuts (Two Pieces)
minimize the plastic used (we recommend lexan or acrylic)
disassemble easily for cleaning
stack multiple units for shipping
We want to thank and acknowledge Dr. Lai Hsien-yung, an anesthesiologist with Mennonite Christian Hospital in Hualien, Taiwan, for creating the original plans and making it available to the open source community. Without his low-cost and ingenious design, much time would have been wasted in prototyping. We also want to thank Tracy McSherry and Sovann Neak at GiveNeed.org for producing the open sourced design files for the NYU version. Please use the following link to download the plans.
EmeRgency One time USe Face Shields
Essential workers don’t need our praise. They need our help.
Given the shortage of PPEs, we again turned to the open-source community to generate easily manufactured designs. Cypress River Advisors has contracted a factory in Taiwan (one of the most successful countries at managing the COVID pandemic) to produce these shields at scale. These face shields are to be used in conjunction with masks and goggles.
We are donating these face shields to essential workers and communities in need around the world.
Should you want to contribute to the effort, please send mail to: inquiries@cypressriveradvisors.com.
The Team @ Cypress River Advisors