A 101 Damned Covid Insights
“Alright!! The latest Covid-19 Datasets are on Kaggle. Your time starts — Now!!” The teams leaned forward with their eyes glued to their blue laptop screens. The downloads had already begun. Over the next few days, they would sift through pandemic data, shuffle it and try to diagnose what it is trying to tell them. Now, this is where the digital gloves come on.
For the uninitiated, here is the debrief. The Center for Disease and Control (C.D.C.) had just uploaded large files containing data of Covid-19 patients (excluding their personal details) on to the website www.kaggle.com(a site famous for its hackathons). In fact, across the world, countries such as India, the E.U. and even China have also been doing the same on similar websites.
Kaggle.com founded about a decade ago, shot to fame early on even as their concept of gamification of Data Science became a sellout. Since then hoards of aspiring data scientists have flocked to the site, enticed by not only the prize money of their hackathons (which could go up to $100,000) but also by the lucrative job offers that may follow a good ranking on their site.
Hackathon competitions ranged from problems that centered around solutions for common citizens problems, to companies who wanted to flaunt their latest set of functionalities (termed A.P.I.) to companies who just wanted to build a simple working prototype of an intelligent drone. Yes, I already see us in a Utopian future hurtling around in our cars dodging drones flying overhead that are flagging us for speeding!!
The Simple Question here from the datasets above is “what are we trying to achieve?”. With the tons of data out there on covid-19, public datasets which thankfully have been shared by governments across the world, what is the outcome of these hackathons?
This is the point we need to move beyond well known insights such as: -
“our analysis shows that we can flatten/shatter the curve by social distancing” (ahem .. we already knew this .. next please)
“we need to scale up on our testing capacity to be able to get more accurate results” (again .. knew this too .. thank you. Talk about testing, we’re running short on healthcare personnel — would you like to don a mask and volunteer??)
“we have successfully developed an app which can track the spread of covid-19 infections. Now we will be able to keep infected patients at bay with this app” !!(Really ?? so what now? Everyone has to install this app? what if they don’t want to? The only other country where they are making such an app mandatory now is China. Are we heading in that direction?)
“we have developed an app that tracks and eliminates fake news from spreading” (really? Can we start with the definition of what fake-news is?)
“we have been able to predict with existing data the eventual flattening-off the curve for covid-19 deaths over time” (see below)
The problem with the above finding is that it applies a mathematical model to a micro-organism trying to find a steady state of cohabitation in our human bodies. The virus would do anything to survive, just like our species felled forests, reclaimed rivers and pushed animals out of their natural habitats in order to do the same. This may explain why insights from the above analysis fluctuate frequently.
A 101 insights on Covid. Do they really matter in the large scheme of things? Have they taken us forward in dealing with the pandemic or are we still stuck at ground zero at the mercy of this virus? Actually, there is another genre of Hackathons other than what we see above, working silently behind the scenes. These hit at the root of the problem, instead of dancing around it.
The search for a cure or a vaccine is a journey into the labs of chemists dressed in white, wearing gloves, peering into microscopes affixed on their desks next to rows of labeled test-tubes. Quite often, a new molecule is needed in order to synthesize a new drug. The other option is to re-purpose an existing drug for a cure. Then there’s the animals they need to line up for the pre-cinical trials and the human volunteers for stages -1,2 and 3 of human trials. Can we afford to wait so long every-time a pandemic strikes?
Traditional Drug discovery takes at an average 10–12 years to complete with the major chunk of the research being done by PhD’s and experts in the field. The need of the hour is to speed up this ungodly cycle of fascinating bio-medical discoveries. This would involve democratizing analytics, or in other words exposing those large medical datasets to Deep learning Algorithms and enabling A.I. to come up with candidates for Molecules which would have otherwise taken scientists lots of time with the tools they presently have.
About a month ago India ratcheted up its research into finding a vaccine for covid-19. A nation with over a billion people with a large educated college-going middle class saw it fit to to tap into its creative center to speed up its progress in finding a vaccine. Indian academia and start-ups are now working on vaccine candidates in the very strong Indian vaccine industry.
With the advent of irreversible climate change and the unstoppable rise in population and migration, the only silver lining visible here from land is the long overdue rise in wages for healthcare professionals along with our inevitable dependence on treatments co-built by A.I.
It takes years of patient study and focus for one to become a pharmaceutical scientist and I am not even beginning to suggest that hackathons are the new drug producing factories!! The hackathon is just a means of pooling more brains together along with technology available to hasten the Drug Discovery life-cycle.
Apple Computers can produce up to 350 iPhones a minute in its Zhengzhou facility. What we need is a new kind of supply chain for the Pharmaceutical Industry, one that does not get held up in bureaucracy, where technology helps in narrowing down choices and optimizing processes. One that puts the scientist in the center of things and who is now better enabled to make timely decisions. We don’t need a 101 insights which we already know, we need the insights that help drive us forward.
And yes .. The time starts — Now!!
