Important notes about this page
Why “many small solutions”
Society works because many small things work. In a pandemic, we’ll want to keep essential functions without helping the virus go from one human to many humans. Just as an example, we’ll want food from one person to the next without the virus going from one person to the next.
As soon as the next pandemic starts, many people will pay attention all of a sudden. No time for stocking up. If “the economy” is “the way we exchange goods and services”, then “delivering goods” is a “service”, so the question becomes How do we service each other without passing on the virus? We’ll want to do the same old things in perhaps very different ways. All at the same time.
People will use whatever ideas are available. No time to stock-up by then. Just ideas. With whatever already available means there are in place. Ideas, not stuff.
Please note: each item assumes all the other items work, or at least that they work well enough. If enough pieces of the puzzle work, the whole thing might work.
Hence many, small, solutions.
This page
Please keep this page’s format simple. Don’t argue with each other. We want a list of situations and many options for each situation. Edit away, either by adding new situations, or by enriching the options under each situation. You’ve thought long and hard about pandemics. You can help.
Conversation spaces
If someone hosts a diary over at http://newfluwiki2.com OR OTHER FORUMS please link to them here. Just because some people prefer to use their favourite “conversation spaces” and only a few brave souls feel capable of writing in wiki-pages. All are invited ;-)
- Link to conversation spaces where this is being worked on.
Supermarket
Function: a supermarket receives food and passes it on to customers.
Problems in a pandemic: people gather and the virus goes from person to person.
Ideas for alternative ways to carry out the function:
- Home delivery. So if, say, a given supermarket normally does home delivery for 1% of their customers, then they’ll want to do it for 90% of their customers in a pandemic. If all supermarkets want to do that at the same time, we’d run out of trucks, right? So we can use people’s cars, with home delivery done by neighbours. We can use school buses, taking out the seats as there’s no school in a pandemic, and having delivery teams ride motor-bikes behind the bus, to minimise respiratory contact. Teams can be augmented by supermarket workers who now won’t be assisting customers on site, but devoted to home delivery. Shifts can run day and night if a neighbour receives the delivery for a number of neighbours, staying up until late say once every few weeks.
- phone or internet based permission and passport system. only certain amount of people are allowed to move at same time.
- Add other ideas here.
Child care
Function:
Problems in a pandemic:
Ideas for alternative ways to carry out the function:
(Find link to 3-family tribes.)
Education
Function:Transmission of knowledge and skills among people
Problems in a pandemic:As typically constituted, schools have congregations of people. K-12 schools also function as day care allowing parents to work. Universities are loath to close for an extended period during the term with the financial risk of needing to refund tuition for schooling not delivered.
Ideas for alternative ways to carry out the function: see http://communitylearning.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/pandemic-flu-school-closing-and-community-learning/ for thoughts as they apply to universities