I just had a conversation with a man who travelled back and forth from China to Taiwan during the COVID-19 pandemic. A Taiwanese citizen, he works in China and travels home to his wife and kids often. He is the manager of one of our SleepPhones® supply factories, and we speak on a weekly basis. This past week, he spoke about his quarantine experience in China, which I found fascinating and worthy of recording. This is his story.

February 2020

Shortly after the Chinese New Year of 2020, he flew into China just as the entire country went into lockdown in February…

The WHO put out a statement recently about how antibody testing cannot be used for “immunity passports” because the test cannot guarantee immunity. This raised a lot of anxiety and questions. There are a few things to understand from a science perspective.

An “immunity passport” may inadvertently incentivize disease spread. — Wei-Shin Lai, M.D.

• SARS antibodies lasted about 3 years. SARS and MERS are coronavirus diseases most similar to COVID-19. People who contracted these diseases produced antibodies that lasted for about three years. Although not a guarantee against illness, having antibodies means that your body still has immune cells that…

One of the first studies of its kind, researchers from Stanford recruited 3,330 people via online advertising (Facebook and Reddit) for coronavirus antibody testing. They concluded that the actual number of cases may be 50 times the number of confirmed cases in the County, and the mortality rate may be as low as the flu (0.12%). There were many problems with this study.

1. The advertisements read like this:

Why get tested? (1) Knowledge — Peace of mind. You will know if you are immune. If you have antibodies against the virus, you are FREE from the danger of a) getting…

In 1985, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev took a break from formal negotiations. According to Gorbachev, Reagan asked him if the Soviet Union would help the US if there was an alien invasion. Gorbachev said, “No doubt about it.” Reagan said, “We too.” “So that’s interesting,” said Gorbachev, and they both laughed. That was the turning point in ending the Cold War — having a common enemy that could end the world as we know it.

“So that’s interesting,” said Gorbachev.

The novel coronavirus is a common enemy for every country in the world. Our leaders can leverage it. We…

When we commit as a country to strictly enforce isolation of coronavirus patients and quarantine their close contacts, we will need an efficient way of monitoring the quarantined people. Borrowing a proven method from Taiwan, we can use a mobile phone app. This is potentially a very powerful, relatively inexpensive tool to keep good people honest for 14 days or possibly longer. It’s difficult for anyone to be so isolated for so long, and yet so necessary to keep everyone safe. …

When will things get back to “normal?” When we are able to give the vaccine to most of the population by the end of summer in 2021. In the meantime, we have to manage the next 12–15 months in a way that minimizes infections and impacts on our economy. Collectively, we have transitioned from the initial shock and denial phase to the anger and sadness phase. Some of us have come to accept the temporary new normal and are doing everything we can to mitigate and suppress the contagion.

Dyson invented a new type of ventilator and has started production…

Many smart people are making coronavirus projections and writing convincing social media posts and articles about it. I think it’s great for people to think for themselves, and I want to encourage people to do their own math. However, the key points I see people missing over and over is the difference between confirmed cases versus actual cases, concept of the denominator, and lag time to death.

We all know by now that we are short on testing for the novel coronavirus in the US. Three weeks ago, the CDC finally sent out working test kits, which ran out almost…