科技行业可以缓解流行病问题的三件事

COVID-19，又称”冠状病毒”，困扰着我们，虽然技术市场可能会因此而遭受重创，但技术参与者可以做几件事情来减轻损失。

本周，我将介绍前三名。我不会谈论每个公司都能做到的事情，很多人已经在做，比如让人们在家工作，我将重点介绍该行业可以采取的激进措施，以减轻世界历史上第一个可管理的大流行疾病带来的影响。

我将以我本周的产品来结束我的演讲:保利公司推出的一款新的视频会议解决方案，它可以极大地帮助你在家工作时保持专注。

1. 全球视频会议标准

我们要求人们回家在家工作，当他们在家工作时，他们需要将视频会议转化为会议，视频会议的质量多年来有了显著提高，而没有太大改进的是应用间的联动操作性。

我们很早就开始使用手机——他们需要互操作——在视频会议方面，我们似乎无法理解。如果有人用 Facetime 给你打电话，你最好有一台苹果设备。Zoom 需要一个缩放客户端， WebEx 需要一个 WebEx 客户端，Skype 和团队似乎无法互连，尽管事实上他们都来自微软。如果我们要让员工在家完全工作，我们需要确保这种视频会议内容将像与智能手机、电话、联网设备、WiFi 和 SD 卡一样进行互操作。我们可以解决这个问题，如果我们希望人们有生产力，我们应该这样做。

2. 热感应AR眼镜

像FLIR这样的公司拥有功能强大的红外热像仪，可以提供准确的温度警报，我们甚至在启用Windows Hello的Windows笔记本电脑和台式机中以较小的形式使用它们。

一段时间以来，我们一直在努力让虚拟眼镜脱颖而出，并且新的设计还内置了摄像头，可以更好地放置虚拟图像。如果我们用可以测量热量的通用相机替换那些通用相机，我们就可以判断出身边有哪些人发烧并避免发烧。

如果我们能避免生病的人，我们生病的可能性就会大大降低。如果我们遇到某个像篮球运动员那样的短棍，他认为四处走动很有趣，然后被诊断出患有COVID-19，我们也许可以缓解这个问题，我认为该人应对造成的灾难承担经济责任。急救人员，特勤局人员，任何执法人员和医疗保健人员都应能使用这种眼镜。我们可以识别威胁并扩大其能力，这样我们就不必靠近病原，而只有在有更好的方法来检测那些生病的人时才可以。

3. 对假新闻和坏演员的消除

有很多关于这种病毒的网上流传的错误信息。从用漂白剂漱口到使用非法药物（可卡因），甚至手淫（反应很有趣），一切都被建议来缓解病毒，它们都是假的，一些建议——比如吸毒或用漂白剂漱口——不仅不能保护你，而且会使你病得很重，甚至自己杀死你。

这种虚假信息正在给那些渴望降低风险的人带来真正的危险。社交媒体公司本身正在成为生存风险。很多这些不正确的信息来自那些希望我们受到伤害但无法控制可能遵循这一错误建议的人的数量的国家，这种伤害可能远远超出这些国家意图，甚至被视为战争行为。

我认为这个行业不仅需要删除这些虚假信息，还需要采取积极措施，将传播它的人绳之以法，就像密苏里州刚刚对吉姆·巴克和他的银解决方案骗局所做的一样。

我们拥有人工智能工具，可以大规模识别和消除这些无效的建议，这样做可能会挽救大量生命。

总结：净化效应

如果我们得到的病毒信息是准确的，你知道你的风险是什么，什么在减轻该风险方面有效，它将抵消对未知事物的恐惧。如果我们能看到那些发烧的人，我们不仅可以降低患COVID-19的风险，还可以降低患流感和其他有体温的疾病的风险，使我们随着时间的推移更加健康。最后，如果我们能让视频会议像现在一样工作，那么也许我们不必经常飞去亲自参加会议，而且我们可以避开许多我们可能患病的地方。

随着中国恢复，而美国越来越深陷其中，还有一点要考虑，将相关市场转移到一个国家可以执行的地方。如果我们不迅速找到这种病毒，我们就可以发现技术市场已经转移到了中国，而且要把它带回去并不容易。

如果中国从意外释放病毒中获得巨大的持续经济利益，就会让道德低落的政治家们相信，这种病毒途径是获得权力的一种相对风险低的极好方式，这种印象可能不会在我们的种族中结束。

因此，实施缓解这种病毒的方法不仅可以使我们更安全、更健康，而且能够确保美国最重要的资产之一——技术市场——最终不会属于COVID-19的发源地。

We are up to our armpits in COVID-19, also known as ‘‘coronavirus,” concerns. While the technology market could be devastated by it, there are several things tech players could do to mitigate the damage.

This week I'll cover the top three from my perspective. I'm not going to talk about things that every company can do, and many already are doing, like having people work from home and stand six feet apart. I'll focus on aggressive steps the industry could take to mitigate the first manageable pandemic in the world's history.

I'll close with my product of the week: a new video conferencing solution from Poly that could help significantly to stay engaged while you work from home.

1. A Global Video Conferencing Standard

We are asking people to go home and work from home. When they work from home, they'll need to video conference into meetings, and the quality of video conferencing has improved dramatically over the years. What hasn't improved much is interoperability.

The thing we got early on with phones -- that they needed to interoperate -- we seem unable to grasp when it comes to video conferencing. If someone calls you using Facetime, you'd better have an Apple device. Zoom needs a Zoom client, WebEx needs a WebEx client, Skype and Teams seem unable to interconnect despite the fact they both come from Microsoft.

If we are going to enable employees to work from home fully, we need to make sure this video conferencing stuff will interoperate much as we did with smartphones, telephones, networked devices, WiFi, and SD cards. We can fix this, and if we want people to be productive, we should.

2. Heat Sensing AR Glasses

Companies like FLIR have powerful infrared cameras that can provide accurate alerts on temperature, and we even use them in smaller form in Windows laptops and desktops that have Windows Hello enabled.

We've been trying to get augmented reality glasses off the ground for some time, and newer designs have built-in cameras to better place virtual images. If we replaced those generic cameras with ones that could measure heat, we could tell which people close to us were running a fever and avoid them.

If we can avoid sick people, there is far less likelihood we'll get sick. If we encounter some nimrod like that basketball player who thought it was funny to go around touching everything he could, and then was diagnosed with COVID-19, we may be able to mitigate the problem. I think the guy should be held financially responsible for the disaster that resulted.

First responders should have access to glasses like this, as should Secret Service personnel, anyone in law enforcement, and anyone in healthcare. We can identify threats and scale that ability up so that we don't have to close events -- but only if there is a better way to detect those who are sick.

3. A War on Fake News and Bad Actors

There is a lot of misinformation circulating online about this virus. Everything from gargling with bleach to using illegal drugs (cocaine), or even masturbating (the response is pretty funny) have been suggested to mitigate the virus. They're all bogus, and some of the recommendations -- like using drugs or gargling with bleach -- not only will not protect you, but also could make you very ill or even kill you on their own.

This false information is creating a real danger for those desperate for a way to mitigate the risk. Social media companies are becoming an existential risk all by themselves. A lot of this incorrect information is coming from countries that wish us harm but have no control over the number of people who are likely to follow this wrong advice. The harm could grow well beyond what those countries intend and even be considered an act of war.

I think the industry not only needs to delete this false information but also take aggressive steps to bring the people spreading it to justice, much like Missouri just did to Jim Bakker and his silver solution hoax.

We have the artificial intelligence tools to identify and eliminate these invalid recommendations at scale, and doing so potentially could save a lot of lives.

Wrapping Up: Net Positive Effect

If the information we are getting on the virus is accurate, so you know just what your risk is and what works in terms of mitigating that risk, it will offset the fear of the unknown. If we could see those who are running a fever, we could reduce the risk not only of getting COVID-19 but also of getting the flu and other illnesses that present with a temperature, making us all healthier over time.

Finally, if we could get video conferencing to work as well as phones now do, then maybe we wouldn't have to fly as often to attend meetings physically, and we could avoid many of the places we are likely to get sick.

Something else to think about, as China recovers while the U.S. gets sicker, is that related markets will move to where a country can execute. If we don't get our arms around this virus quickly, we could find the technology market has moved to China, and it won't be easy to get it back.

Having China get a huge sustaining economic benefit from accidentally releasing a virus would teach politicians with low morals that this virus path is an excellent relatively low-risk way to gain power, and that impression likely would not end well for our race.

So, implementing ways to mitigate this virus not only could make us safer and healthier, but also could ensure that one of the U.S.' most significant assets -- the tech market -- doesn't end up belonging to the country where COVID-19 originated.