A real gift to learn from all of you together on the call -- the beginning of many possibilities to come!

In Germany there are about 300 official sources reporting COVID-19 statistics each for their own jurisdiction. Our small team is trying to collate all of this into one view for the whole country and post daily updates on Twitter as no one else is doing it. So with that lens, we have been observing the case numbers in Germany daily. It went from 7,182 confirmed cases on Tuesday to 11,051 this morning here in Germany. That's over 50% increase in one day. We have gone up about 30% a day since March 5, and updating this daily. Here is a video of the progression.



From a disaster resiliency perspective, I believe the main challenge in this moment is how we can sustain the aggressive mitigation policies needed to suppress the spread over the next weeks/months. How successful will these interventions be is also an unknown. It will depend largely on how people will adhere to these measures, and the experience for something like this is simply missing. How long can maintain these type of deep-cutting interventions that are bound to have many indirect effects (the economic vs. public health equation). Will the disease quickly spread again once the supersession measures are lifted.

The question I ask myself is how do we as a society collectively care for and serve the elderly and high risk population. They need sustained social distancing until a vaccine is here. This is a segment of population already vulnerable and isolated. Despite social distancing how can we build heart connections and serve in simple ways, such as buying groceries and medicine for the elderly and vulnerable populations?

This is a case of creative constraints and I think this collective can have a lot to offer at embracing these constraints and coming up with amazing ideas to bring love and kindness into social distancing -- or "physical isolation with social solidarity" as Kala said! :)

My parents both in their 80s celebrated 51 years of marriage today :) I live upstairs with my family but we are keeping our distance. We chat in the balcony while I sit at a safe distance away from them. Normally we would have had a big celebration, but we are so fortunate to be have each other. Strangely enough, these times of physical separation have brought us closer together and reminds us all how much we need each other.