Episodes
Saturday Mar 28, 2020
How Coronavirus Changed America’s Social Contract (Livestream 3-28-20)
Saturday Mar 28, 2020
Saturday Mar 28, 2020
Doc does a face validity check in, describes the American social contract, and then identifies ways personal privacy changed this month and how those changes will likely be permanent. ARE WE ALL DEPUTIZED? Doc notes counties and communities encouraging residents to report alleged violations of social gathering decrees and how such measures pressure people to conform - even if it's unlikely local government would allocate strained, depleted police units to investigate a large family's backyard barbecue. WHAT IS THE SOCIAL CONTRACT? It’s an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, for example by sacrificing some individual freedom for state protection. This has been around for thousands of years and through the rise and fall of civilizations. We pay taxes to government and in return the government provides a military to protect us from invasion. We restrict the items we take on planes and submit to invasive screening in order to have safe air travel. PATRIOT ACT of 2001 CHANGED THE SOCIAL CONTRACT. The PATRIOT Act was quickly developed as anti-terrorism legislation in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. The large and complex law received little Congressional oversight and debate. Critics caution that it gives sweeping search and surveillance to domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence agencies and eliminates checks and balances that previously gave courts the opportunity to ensure that those powers were not abused. FIVE WAYS THE PATRIOT ACT EMPOWERED GOVERNMENT. (1) Information sharing across agencies without need for authorizations; (2) Roving wiretaps across company and personal computers, networks and cell phones; (3) “215 Orders” which are gag rules preventing people from talking; (4) “Sneak and Peak” warrants which let authorities search a home or business without notification of the target of the probe; and (5) Material support such as investing anyone that made a donation to, or otherwise supported, an organization that could be involved in terrorism. This might result in the government seizing computers, records and other personal items. THOMAS HOBBES’ LEVAITHAN. Written during the English Civil War (1642–1651), Leviathan argues for a social contract and rule by an absolute sovereign. Hobbes wrote that civil war and the brute situation of a state of nature ("the war of all against all") could only be avoided by strong, undivided government. In other words, Hobbes believed that a basic form of government was necessary otherwise people would default to a perpetual state of being “brutish” and fighting with each other for food, shelter or beliefs. FIVE WAYS CORONAVIRUS WILL LIKELY EXPAND THE PATRIOT ACT. Per Edward Snowden, the US government, for instance, is reportedly in talks with tech companies like Facebook and Google to use anonymized location data from phones to help track the spread of COVID-19. While some say the measure could be a helpful tool for health authorities to track the virus, others have expressed concerns.” (1) TRACK YOUR PHONE. This is an easy argument as the government can posture this practice as necessary to inform citizens if they have been subjected to persons testing positive for a virus or to guide them from “hot zones.” Doc describes several ways phones could be controlled to shape the user’s behavior, such as turning them off when people aren’t social distancing; (2) VEHICLE GPS could be tracked in ways similar to phones; (3) DNA INFORMATION willingly surrendered to learn about their ancestors might be used to identify people more or less likely to survive specific viruses. This could result in months of quarantines for “at risk” people solely due to their genetic code. (4) WEARABLE FITNESS COMPUTERS could be monitored for heart rate, pulse, and body temperature. If your temperature is above 100, you might be quarantined. (5) SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS saturate America as people have them on doorbells, dashes, stores, schools, etc. Also, police in Great Britain are using drones to capture images of people engaged in “non-essential” activities such as watching a sunset at a park. These images were shared with the public and resulted in social shaming – and could lead to separation from employment. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. This is episode 125 of The Safety Doc Podcast.
- Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Book: School of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America. www.schooloferrors.com
Thursday Mar 26, 2020
My Quarantined Neighbors & Face Validity Update
Thursday Mar 26, 2020
Thursday Mar 26, 2020
Doc's neighbors are quarantined for 14 days after returning from a coronavirus hot zone; update on face validity; this great disruption is similar to Bell Labs 1950s Idealized Design meeting in which phone engineers were told that the existing phone system was destroyed and they had 30 days to re-invent it; portable battery packs that look like explosives; and PBS Kids is not a curriculum. MY NEIGHBORS ARE QUARANTINED. A neighbor informs Doc that his family is quarantined for 14 days. However, they receive mail delivered to the postal box affixed to their house, food deliveries, and can travel for essential items such as food. Doc and participants in the chat note the obvious problems with people being home-quarantined without any requirement to alert the public. It would make sense to print a “Quarantined” sign and put it on their door or mailbox. Any political correctness of hiding this information went out the door with governor-decreed “Safer at Home” mandates. FACE VALIDITY. Doc reminds people to authentically observe what is happening in their immediate environments. He notes an uptick in vehicles at hospital parking lot, busier parking lots at grocers and WalMart, no change in activity at the armory, and sharp increase in visible police patrols. Doc noted that a nearby county had a webpage for citizens to report large gatherings to authorities – but the site was removed after a day. This also suggests that local law enforcement agencies might be considering deputizing citizens to monitor neighborhoods. RED BATTERY CHARGER NO-GO FOR TSA. Doc shows battery charging pack he ordered from Amazon. Works great, but looks like a flattened stick of explosives! Yikes, probably shouldn’t have ordered it in red. BELL LABS in 1950 – HOW DISRUPTION LEADS TO MASSIVE INNOVATION. In 1951, Bell Labs (the people making telephones and communications systems) summoned its top engineers for an emergency meeting. As one attendee recalled, “About ten minutes after the hour, the door to the room squeaked open. All eyes turned to it, and there he was. He was obviously very upset. He was a pasty gray and bent over as he slowly shuffled down the aisle without a word to anyone. He mounted the platform, stood behind the podium, put his elbows on it, and held his head in his two hands, looking down. The room was dead silent. Finally, he looked up and in an uncharacteristically meek voice said, “Gentlemen, the telephone system of the United States was destroyed last night. Then he looked down again. (Idealized Design: How Bell Labs Imagined – and Created the Telephone System of the Future, August 09, 2006).” Engineers, now unshackled from the conventional, clunky phone system, assembled in small teams and had about a month to create the phone system of the future. One engineer experimented with using a touch pad calculator to replace the rotary dial, others figured out called ID and conference calls, and another group prototyped voicemail. What innovations and evolutions will the coronavirus event bring forward in healthcare (tele-medicine), schools (virtual classrooms), asset delivery (relaxed regulations for drones)? PBS Kids IS NOT A CURRICULUM. A flurry of free content is being pushed to parents who are now responsible for educating their children (with some partnership with schools). Doc notes that a potpourri of enrichment activities isn’t a curriculum and that parents should search for activities that have a scope and sequence. Doc also cautions that some districts are reporting that up to 40% of their students have yet to log into their new virtual classrooms and we are overlooking that some families don’t have the bandwidth or skills necessary to carry out virtual education. BE KIND TO OTHERS. Thanks to Bryan in the chat room for encouraging everyone to be kind to others, check in on relatives, and to avoid judging the atypical actions of people who are struggling to settle into a similarity. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. This is episode 124 of The Safety Doc Podcast.
- Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Book: School of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America. www.schooloferrors.com
Saturday Mar 21, 2020
Face Validity - What's Going on in My Town Today - March 21, 2020
Saturday Mar 21, 2020
Saturday Mar 21, 2020
Doc samples locations in his town on a Saturday afternoon to determine face validity of the impact of the coronavirus event on everyday life in southern Wisconsin about 40 minutes north of the state capital. Places visited included the hospital, a park, WalMart, a grocery store, a school and the armory. You’ll be surprised at what was notably different today compared to the same locations just one week ago! The video version of this is available on The Safety Doc Podcast YouTube Channel as episode #123. FACE VALIDITY. This is a term taken from research and means simply whether the test appears (at face value) to measure what it claims to. Think of it this way, if a thermometer read 77 degrees, yet you were standing outside shivering and snow was falling, the “face validity” of the thermometer wouldn’t match what you were actually experiencing. Maybe it’s 77 and sunny somewhere, but certainly not here and not right now. MEDIA BIAS. Media is incomplete and stitched with bias. To help identify valid news reports you should seek face validity – or, check things out for yourself. Better yet, develop a network of reliable friends across the country (or globe) to tell you what they are observing and experiencing with their own senses in their settings. VELOCITY OF INFORMATION. Doc explains the avalanche of information people have to deal with for the first 72 hours of a sentinel event – including the coronavirus. He also shares that people’s responses are often not aligned until a week or more after an event. For example, how drive-through food service workers should wear PPE and safely interact with patrons. And, why aren’t postal carriers wearing gloves as though go house to house in Doc’s neighborhood? HOSPITAL. Visitor parking lot was empty. Curb parking near “respiratory entrance” was also empty. The back parking lot was full, but no activity while I was there. GROCERY STORE. 30% of the parking lot was full. WALMART. 40% of the parking lot was full. No signs of a drive-through virus testing tent. PARK. People walking, kids biking and at least 3 folks fishing! ARMORY. A handful of civilian vehicles in the parking lot and two or three more military vehicles. Massive front entrance gates that were closed a week ago were open today. Adjacent airstrip was quiet and no helicopters or military aircraft on site. SCHOOLS. The high school and one elementary school were completely vacant – not a single car in the parking lots. A sign on the door indicated that schools were closed due to coronavirus and were being sanitized. The high school would be a FEMA location if needed, but no evidence of any staging of assets or preparation of the site. DOC’S NEIGHBORHOOD. Mitch was full-throttle bananas with his leaf blower, Tim hadn’t taken advantage of the nice weather to bring in the reindeer or take down the Christmas lights, and somebody was building something a few houses up the street. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. LOOKING FOR DR. TIMOTHY LUDWIG, PHD? Dr. Perrodin’s “Safety Doc Podcast” negotiates school and community safety. To be informed about industrial safety, please contact Appalachian State University Professor Dr. Timothy Ludwig, PhD, at www.safety-doc.com. This is episode 123.
- Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Book: School of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America. www.schooloferrors.com
Wednesday Mar 18, 2020
How Thinking About a Bagel Can Get You Through the Worst Day of Your Life
Wednesday Mar 18, 2020
Wednesday Mar 18, 2020
Doc talks about what it means to enter chaos from the perspective of someone that researches crises. THINK OF A BAGEL. It's tasty as hell and also a metaphor for our lives and routines. Humans expect things to be similar and go bananas when they are moved out of the bagel - and the further you get outside the bagel, the more chaos. CHAOS IS A NATURAL STATE. But, chaos is part of nature and the sooner we recognize it and embrace, the sooner we inventory our options and make intelligent decisions to get us to the outcome basin. In other words, there are infinite ways to get from point A to point B - yet we've become comfortable in thinking everything must be convergent, or linear, that there is a "best way" to do every specific thing. That's BS. If we would have kept on thinking that way, we would have devolved as a species and innovation would have been stifled. And, we were kind of that point of barnacle regulations and unchecked spending. EPIC HUMAN EVOLUTION. Some company made the last ice box. Restaurants, for example, are scaling up take up and drive-thru. They are changing business models and it's working. Doesn't mean that is won't be bumpy and that we won't have losses - we will - but we will also rapidly evolve - perhaps an unparalleled 24-36 month evolution as humans in how we work, educate, build, design, entertain, etc. than we would have experienced on the trajectory without the Coronavirus. In fact, these, and other, core aspects of societies might leap 10-20 years further down the road due to how we've had to "solve the problems" presented by the coronavirus disruption. There is a very real probability we will look back upon 2020 as a time of great human innovation and not a time of human collapse. SCHOOLS WILL CHANGE in 5 GREAT WAYS Also, watch this livestream for tips on navigating life during chaos, making better decisions, and also 5 ways that schools will be better after the coronavirus event. This is episode 122 of the Safety Doc Podcast. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. LOOKING FOR DR. TIMOTHY LUDWIG, PHD? Dr. Perrodin’s “Safety Doc Podcast” negotiates school and community safety. To be informed about industrial safety, please contact Appalachian State University Professor Dr. Timothy Ludwig, PhD, at www.safety-doc.com. This is episode 122.
- Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Book: School of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America. www.schooloferrors.com
Sunday Mar 15, 2020
Coronavirus Vs. 9/11 - What we got right in 2001 and wrong in 2020
Sunday Mar 15, 2020
Sunday Mar 15, 2020
LIVESTREAM: Dr. Perrodin delivers a rare livestream analysis of coronavirus response, comparisons to 9/11 response, what's unprecedented, what's likely ahead, and the pace of new developments. He also discusses the impact on post-secondary education institutions and a likely complete closure of the K-12 school system for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year. Live chat was enabled and Dr. Perrodin responded to questions and comments in real-time. This is an essential parents for all parents to watch - especially parents of children with disabilities with questions about IEP services. This is episode 121 of The Safety Doc Podcast.
Monday Mar 09, 2020
Insider Truth of How Schools Will Respond to Coronavirus
Monday Mar 09, 2020
Monday Mar 09, 2020
Schools aren’t prepared to handle long-term closures due to the coronavirus. Don’t be fooled by germ-zapping robots or custodians fogging hallways with disinfectant. If a pandemic hits, the schools will close - and probably for the rest of 2019-2020 school year! I worked in school for 20 years with most of those being a school administrator involved in school crisis preparedness. In this episode, I’ll step you through what’s happening behind the scenes in America’s schools. HOW MANY SCHOOLS IN AMERICA? 55 million students are educated in 140,000 public and private school buildings each day. That’s more than one million classrooms. As we think of schools, we need to account for community preschool sites, portable classrooms and online instruction. PANDEMIC PLANS ARE AFTERTHOUGHTS. Most schools have antiquated pandemic response protocols in a file - likely something downloaded from a website. Unlike fire drills and intruder exercises, schools are not required to conduct “pandemic” practice activities, such as tabletops or simulations. With school safety singularly focused on intruder drills, schools haven’t been preparing for pandemics. Hype about schools effortlessly being able to teach kids online is greatly sensationalized and won’t work for more than a week or two. Schools simply aren’t designed to offer instruction in an exclusive online format. FEMA CAN TAKE OVER YOUR SCHOOL. Yep, that’s true - and it’s likely in the fine print of your county’s emergency management plan and only after the governor has declared a disaster - but it can happen. Dr. Perrodin explains what would rapidly unfold if FEMA took over school as medical or supply sites due to a coronavirus outbreak. In 2008, Dr. Perrodin worked in a school district that had two of its schools quickly taken under the complete authority of FEMA following a natural disaster. THE 5 THINGS THAT WOULD CAUSE SCHOOLS TO CLOSE. (1) COVID positive test for school staff or student that had been attending school - yep, one person and you can expect the district to shutter; (2) Local decision due to pressure by parents or teachers; (3) More than 30% of students are absent; (4) Disruption of supply chain including food, soap, paper towels, or cleaning supplies; (5) Government decree to close schools (likely beginning at a county level). It is very unlikely that the federal government would close all schools. WHY THE 2014 MRSA SCARE COST US DEARLY RIGHT NOW. On September 18, 2014, President Obama issued an executive order combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This order included a multi-agency plan due in 2020 to respond to this threat to domestic security – a plan that would mandate standards for electronic health record-based reporting for MRSA (Obama, 2014). As of July 2019, a uniform MRSA database had not yet been established in the United States and other countries. Had the plan been carried out, we would have had an established model to replicate for a coronavirus database. It also underscores how we pretty much just wait (and hope) for things to run their course and return to some type of similarity. MARKETING FEAR. In 2016, a $100,000 germ-zapping robot named ‘Gronk’ helped to kill MRSA at a Massachusetts High School. Hundreds were sold as school boards couldn’t vote fast enough to burn cash on items that probably worked, but weren’t necessary. (Ever heard of bleach and a rag?) Today, schools are buying Ghostbusters-like backpacks that fog hallways with disinfectant clouds. US WARNS 7 COMPANIES OVER FRAUDULENT CORONAVIRUS CLAIMS. On March 9, 2020, Federal regulators warned seven companies to stop selling soaps, sprays and other concoctions with false claims that they can treat the new coronavirus — or keep people from catching it. There are no approved treatments for the virus, and none are likely to be ready for months or years. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. LOOKING FOR DR. TIMOTHY LUDWIG, PHD? Dr. Perrodin’s “Safety Doc Podcast” negotiates school and community safety. To be informed about industrial safety, please contact Appalachian State University Professor Dr. Timothy Ludwig, PhD, at www.safety-doc.com. This is episode 120.
- Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Book: School of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America. www.schooloferrors.com
- Read Dr. Perrodin’s Crisis Response Journal article at https://tinyurl.com/CRJ-Perrodin