Good leaders have a strong professional critic

 “Lieutenant, get in my f—-ing office, now!”  I can hear that voice as if it happened this morning, the day that Captain Chris Dessaso laid into me in one of the most memorable ass chewings of my lifetime.  It was my first unit assignments and I had really made a mistake.  Charlie 1-10 Infantry was a basic training company at Fort Leonard Wood, MO, that was arguably the best in the Battalion and certainly in the top tier of the Brigade.  And a big part of that was Chris’ drive for excellence and willingness to lay down the law as the commander to achieve it.  As a young, wet behind the ears, and eager second lieutenant, I was all about doing my best and driving hard in what equated to a 5 to 9 job, 7 days a week.  My mistake, however, was to open my mouth to his spouse about some inner murmurings that not everything was going as well as the commander thought they were, and that he needed to think about that some.  It was a classic case of “going around the boss” that proved to be a colossal failure.  But I learned more than that the next morning as I was in the front leaning rest before his desk as he raged for what seemed to be an interminable length of time.  It wasn’t just a lesson on why not going direct to your boss with concerns was a bad idea or don’t mistake cordiality of relationships with your boss’ spouse as a way to relay messages.  No, I learned a key lesson that I think every leader absolutely needs to learn:  you need to have a harsh, respected, professional, critic that can stab you in the eye when you need it.

One of my weaknesses as a leader is that I get what I call “sagely”.  It’s a mixture of both being a “know it all” and having way too much pride/confidence for my own good.  I am a type “A” personality.  Or as my wife puts it, I’m an over achiever.  Lots of folks around give me feedback that can absolutely stroke my ego and go to my head.  And sometimes it does just that.  But that is precisely when I need to be crushed back down to planet earth.  Jackie, in my personal life, is very adept at putting me in my place, and I deeply love her for that (even as sometimes I’d not like to admit it or appreciate it in the moment).  But in my professional life it’s been critical as well to have someone be my sounding board and to set me in my place periodically, less I travel down a road that hurts the mission and objectives of the work I’m trying to do, never mind myself and my career.  In my mind, as a result, I am beyond convinced, every good leader needs to have a mentor, peer, or other designated person in your professional life who’s job it is to knock you off your proverbial high horse, regularly.  And those who rise to high heights that don’t have this, not only fail as leaders, fail personally, but fail to actually be leaders in reality.

There are several historical examples of this reality, both in colossal failures and phenomenal success.  Napoleon is a classic example of where he did not have this critic, and it led him to exceptionally destructive behaviors, including the devastating March to Moscow.  But we can and should look at examples where the opposite occurred.  A pair of great examples were arguably our two best Presidents ever, Washington and Lincoln.   Both of these two leaders had such critics that served them well.  In Washington’s case he relied on Hamilton for this to a degree as well as ensuring he had a cast of rivals around him as advisors including Jefferson as well as Madison.  In Lincoln’s case, he had Seward and a similar team of rivals (to use a title of a famous biography of him) that he used to check himself.  Both of these leaders could not have risen to the heights they did without the required professional critic that they depended on to seek out and find the flaws in their leadership styles and approaches to issues.  While they were brilliant into themselves and had hearty egos to go with it, they knew that they had to dispatch with sycophants, surround themselves with capable persons who challenged them, and keep hubris in abeyance.

In my life, I have been a part of organizations where I’ve seen where the appointed or selected leader, both failed to have this kind of critic that was taken seriously and respected, and ones where they had one or two and thus the entire enterprise benefitted.  It was among the reasons for the clear differences between my two combat tours in Iraq.  Tour #1 went through two O-5 Battalion Commanders who didn’t remain grounded, despite the Battalion’s motto being “Down to Earth”.  The second had a full bird Colonel who had a Command Sergeant Major (CSM) who was unabashed in laying out his often forceful criticisms.  While not always going with the advice he got from his CSM, DeLuca listened and ensured he ameliorated the risks because of the criticisms he received.  Similarly, at two academic institutions, I have now witnessed the consequences of when the President has a person in his cabinet that holds significant sway and his respect that was a part of the loyal opposition, and one that has not.  The former thrived and the other is at a proverbial crossroads.

To me then, the sign of a great leader, is whom he or she or they surround themselves with. Do they have a distinct person or cadre thereof, professionally, that challenge them and tell them the harsh truth about themselves, such that the leader changes and grows and avoids their worst impulses?  Or are they unwilling to own that the failure in most organizations starts with them?  Leaders have to hold both those around them accountable as well as themselves.  The only way to do that is have someone that can confront them, who they respect and listen to, which will help them be the change they need to be in order for themselves and those they lead to be as successful as they can be.

“Erik you really have changed,” said Derrick Edmond, a peer during my second deployment to Iraq.  Going into what is probably one of my most successful military assignments, I was a very headstrong and direct leader within our small Facilities Engineer Detachment of 15 people.  Derrick, along with another officer whom I respected, along with the OIC, early on, pulled me aside and pointed out my flaw in my character.  I was not respecting some members of the team because I was so “high speed” and had expressed unrealistic expectations of the others to think, act, and function as I did.  Hearing this, I changed my approach and made choices to engage with the team.  It took conscious effort, I had to check some of my instincts, but in the end it made me and the whole team much more successful.  And this hasn’t been the only time.  Having someone that I check in with regularly that can give me honest feedback about my flaws and where I need to improve is among my most important colleagues and friends I can have.  If you too are a leader, make sure you have this professional guide in your midst; for your sake and that of those around you.

Avoiding Lobotomy - Again

As a junior officer in the US Army, and commonly spoken in the undercurrent among both Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) and junior officers alike, is the “Field Officer lobotomy”(https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/v5taom/majors_whats_wrong_with_you/).  This is the thing that happens, somewhere in the development of an officer, typically when they are a Major, when they seemingly forget the basics of how the Army runs, and get lost into some rabbit hole while stuck in the long period between company command and battalion command.  It’s as if we just loose sense of what is “common sense” as well as being grounded in (and with) the very challenging realities of troops at the company level and below.  It’s as if all the staff and broadening “special assignments” time you spend puts you into some esoteric death spiral.  Sure you’re smart or capable, etc, but you’ve become this amorphous blob of uncertainty, indecision, and constant incapability because you’ve lost that command touch.  The vast majority of officers succumb at some point, as if they become “company men” or “women”, and accept the utter stupidity and core failings in the systems instead of seeking to work to challenge them and make for better systems or simply level with folks about the absurdity of it all.

In my military career, I worked really hard, I mean really hard, to not get/have said lobotomy.  Part of this was done by not taking the “normal path”, by eschewing just going with the flow from above as a way to get ahead.  Sure I didn’t run away from the core traditional command assignments (company and battalion command), but I found a way to do things that were impactful and as pragmatic as possible, in between.  That said, when it came to late 2016 and what I was going to do as I reached 20 years of service, I decided that micromanaging whether Johnny Joe or Jane soldier went to their dental appointment as a the way I was being measured as a commander in the Army Reserve, was ludicrous.  While it wasn’t the only reason to opt to decline a full command assignment (medical, career, and family reasons were more prominent), avoiding becoming lobotomized was also on the list.  Soldiers who served with me can tell you how successful or not I was at that task.  By summer 2017, however, I was heading to retirement, lest I succumbed.

So I am now on the cusp of yet another one of those “lobotomy” points.  In 2014 I went to the “dark side” in my career in the AEC (Architecture/Engineering/Construction) world:  I became a full time professor.  This said, I did so in a fashion that was atypical; I did not possess a doctorate.  In academia, these days, holding a PhD is normally the minimum prerequisite for such a role.  But instead I was hired to be a full time instructor and Director of the much more pragmatic Construction Engineering Management program at my alma mater, Clarkson.  If we look back at the history of engineering education, it was not until the 1970s that it became common that those serving as professors held doctorates.  Rather, it was more critical, nay the minimum prerequisite, that you had experience and knowledge that came from practice, demonstrated through licensure and robust professional credentials otherwise, rather than a having a background primarily as a researcher.  At Clarkson in particular, who’s motto is “a workman who needn’t not to be ashamed”, it was very common/valued that most faculty were consultants on the side and had a large portfolio of practical experience before and during their appointments.  Academia, for a variety of reasons, has turned to become research first, practical knowledge second, as the resume required in most settings.  And akin to the above undercurrent in the Army, it’s pretty much the unwritten rule that PhD means you have “pilled high and deep” a wall of theoretical knowledge that makes you lose the ability to have common sense or be grounded in the practical aspects of life.  And that stereotype is way too often more true than false, including a number of my colleagues in my department and beyond.

As I said, I am on the cusp of crossing that PhD line.  Not counting my chickens before they’re hatched, I still have to figure out how to get this last course done and finish the edits to my dissertation by the end of April, but the light outside that tunnel is very bright at this point.  So, if that happens, it’ll be Dr. Backus, fitting in with the crowd that is academia.  Now, strictly speaking, I did not have to pursue this.  I am a Professor of Practice at this point, something academia is finally realizing is needed; not, therefore, requiring a doctorate.  That said, there’s still a barrier to those without one to academic leadership (as was put by one person, “Erik doesn’t have a PhD so he can’t become chair, and shouldn’t remain as XO of the department”).  As I’ve seen time and time again, I’m more or less convinced that the fetish academia has with research, and the normal track for preparation and promotion for professors, is neither good nor healthy long term for the greater academy.  Running a lab, doing fundamental research, and publishing papers, does not prepare you well for become a leader of a department, school, college, etc.  And the things that are needed (eg organizational management & training, practical knowledge, leadership skills, etc.), are seen as almost anathema to gaining tenure and promotion (distractions, as one colleague put it).

So here am I, at that crossroads, about to become “one of them”, a “true academic”, with a doctorate and all to prove it.  I have no intent nor do I desire to work to gain tenure, expecting to remain a Professor of Practice through to retirement (although, I’d be very welcome, many years hence, to be considered for professor emeritus status, should that come about).  I made this pursuit, however, because it will open the doors to more senior leadership academically, given the current way things work, and it will alleviate my rather constant requirements to correct students from referring to me as “Doctor Backus” when I don’t have one.  I have always been a deep and big thinker.  I love learning, I remain ever curious and interested in expanding knowledge.  So I am not allergic to research (there’s parts of it I really like) and have been doing research even as far back as my Masters and in other roles in the military and when I was a practitioner in facilities organizations.  But I really think studying the ability to generate electrical power from lobsters (https://improbable.com/2013/02/06/renewable-power-source-search-lobsters/ ), while novel and cool, is utterly impractical and I am really not that interested in it.  I’m not saying that there isn’t a need for researching such things if they can lead to some real breakthrough, but it’s not my bag.  And to that, I hope it never becomes “my bag” as I stay rooted in the much more pragmatic, like making sure my students actually know how a toilet works, have had the experience of actually hammering a nail, as well as being able to do structural analysis, understand how to do concrete batch designs, size heating and cooling equipment, and build safer, better, and more resilient/sustainable infrastructure & buildings. I just do not want to be lobotomized away from what my experience and continuing practice allow me to do to bring value to my students, in the immediate sense, and through them, for the broader AEC community as a result.

I am going to say, hitting this milestone is something I remain sheepish and humble about.  The resume, so long as things finish as they should, will now list getting a PhD in 2023 (long removed from my Masters in 2004, so a late return to getting a terminal degree).  I will remain a bit of a unicorn, not fitting in exactly and pushing back against the consensus on what the broader academy needs to look like to remain relevant.  I do not believe one can be “over educated” as some seem to think happens here, when you’ve done a pursuit for a doctorate.  But I do get that we cannot and should not stare down our noses or exhibit the too often seen elitism that comes being in an academic ivory tower (evidenced just this week as senior academics poo-pooed the idea that a long-term decades-experienced, successful senior manager in the AEC world was not capable of teaching a masters level course in the “business of construction”, because he lacked an advance degree in business).  And I think engineering education, in particular, needs to return more to the practical, hands on, even trade skill training and education, that keeps us rooted.  I just don’t want to fit the moniker, I don’t want to be unable to relate to, empathize with, and understand the plumber, carpenter, iron worker in the field.  To me, being at the top of what I do means I help tomorrow’s construction (and, more broadly, AEC) leaders, grow in ways that brings better solutions than we come to today, working together and respectfully across backgrounds and experiences.  I just can’t succumb to a PhD lobotomy, in other words.  To that end, I hope those around me keep me grounded accordingly.

The Cause of the High Rate of Price Increase in Higher Education in 9 Charts

I continue to have this dialog about the cost of higher education and the college debt crisis.  It is driving me more or less nuts that I can never find the time to write the full explanation for what is happening and why.  People keep blaming the wrong things on why the cost of college education on the part of the individual student is rising at a faster pace than nearly everything else in the economy.  Here are some of the reasons I have heard that are just bunk:

• Federal government backing college loans is driving up the cost of higher education.

• Higher education really isn’t “non-profit” or “not-for-profit” and is all about raking in money.

• Colleges and Universities have been on a building spree, creating mounting debt that is only causing tuition to rise.

• Athletics is costing more and the average student is paying for these non-academic “luxuries”.

• Too many are going to college that don’t need to, inflating the cost for those that do.

• And many more.

I am not going to spend time debunking each of these, because I want to get out a post on this now.  Suffice it to say, they just are not the reasons for the spiking cost of higher education.  The real reason for why this is happening comes down to a perfect storm of factors that have very little to do with the above, at all!  What it comes down to, in order of effect, is:

1. Plummeting taxpayer/public support for higher education by the several states.

2. Significant increase in labor cost to employers especially for healthcare and daycare in an industry that is highly labor dependent.

3. Increased mandated oversight and administrative tasks requiring increased administrative full time equivalent staff.

4. Increased demand for capacity for student support and auxiliary services as a differentiator among the competition.

So here in a series of graphs and charts I am going to try to spell it out.  Let’s first start with the fact that, yes, the cost of higher education has skyrocketed over the last several decades.  Here is a handy chart from the American Enterprise Institute that lays it out fairly clearly; other than hospital stays, the cost of the price college (to the consumer) has risen starkly.

[i]

But the question is why?  Well let me start with the most clear reason:  its simply not being subsidized like it used to be.  As a case in point, here is a chart from George Mason University, a public institution in the Commonwealth of Virginia.  This chart lays out in clear terms the impact of what the precipitous loss of State support to the institution is doing to the individual student and their expenses.

[ii]

Basically, since 1985, the ratio of state support coverage of the cost of attending Mason to that of what the student paid or other revenue sources[iii] pay has more than flipped (and if you go back to the 1960s, where many a baby boomer will recall covering college by “working their way through”, it is even more stark).  Simply, the taxpayer used to cover most of the cost, and now they are “supporting” the effort at a significantly reduced rate.  Mason is simply an easy example with a clear chart.  The next two charts show how States have pulled out of the college funding business, in some cases nearly completely.

[iv]

[v]

And as recessions hit, or other economic challenges emerge within the world of State financing, it’s getting worse each time.  As shown in this chart, the easy answer for State legislatures to help balance their budgets and/or lower taxes is to cut higher education spending when times are tough.

[vi]

So bottom line is that a huge contribution to the driver of the rise in the cost of college education to the individual student is that government is not helping nearly as much, or even at a reasonable proportion of as much as it did for their parents or their grandparents.  So what we have is that college costs are going to rise faster than inflation, or the general cost of everything else, because what had previously covered it was gone.

This brings us to the next driver, however, and that is the general cost of labor has risen steadily over that last decades driven by several things, but certainly healthcare.  The following a chart created from data available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as it relates to employer costs for employing its labor.

You will note from this graph, that the cost of labor has gone up.  If you look carefully, however, you will also note that workers’ wages are NOT increasing, rather it is really driven by the cost of insurance going up.  On the side of the higher education customer (students and their parents), this basically means that there aren’t any increased resources on their part to cover the costs that they are incurring.  So, the many charts available that show how the cost of college is outpacing wages and salaries are on par.  All good there (well not "good" but accurate).  What folks continue to forget, however, is that on the college and university side, this has yet another effect: driving the cost of higher education even higher.

As is illustrated in a report from the California State Legislative Analyst’s Office, the following graphs make clear that largest portion of any college or university is the cost of its employees, somewhere between 66 to 75% of the overall enterprise.

[vii]

Thus, when you put together that the largest portion of the actual cost to run a college or university has risen some 15 to 25% in the last two decades (and over 60% since the 1980s), it becomes clear that the reality is that it just costs a lot to do education, because education is a human resource intensive enterprise.  This is seen in K-12 education as well.  This is especially true when you want to do it well and at a level commensurate with the expectations society has for it (e.g. leading to professional careers or other pursuits near the top of society).  This is not really any different than one of the major causes of the rise in health care costs, in that health care is inherently human resource intensive too (which creates a bit of a price spiral).  To that point the following chart helps you see how salaries have tracked as it relates to higher education as compared with medical professionals as well as lawyers.

[viii]

These are just not industries like construction, finance, industry or others where there are other components like materials, energy, and equipment drive the cost of the enterprise.  This means the cost of it will outpace the cost growth in most of those other industries consistently.  So when you add the precipitous drop in public/taxpayer support higher education to this intensive real cost increase, that exceeds the norm for most any other industry or component in the economy, it is a perfect cost storm to the individual student.  These two factors (loss of support and increased cost of labor) are the largest components of the actual reasons for the increased cost of college for the average individual student.

That said, there are a couple more reasons for the rapid cost increases, that are not at the level of the previous reasons, yet are worth mentioning.  Of the two, one is shown in the following chart, which shows the increase in the full time equivalent senior staff and administrators compared with faculty in the University of California system over time.

[ix]

This is not unusual or particularly helpful in itself, except as it relates a couple points.  Administrators typically cost more than faculty at most ranks, so an increased number means increased marginal cost to the institution.  The further question is, why then are there more administrators?  Good question.  Well the biggest driver of the increase in the number of administrators is the numerous additional regulations and other oversight mechanisms that have been put into place on the industry, creating an administrative burden that someone is paying for (aka the average college student).  But it also ties to the other reason for the uptick in the college price tag: the demand for services that go beyond what we had in yesteryear.

The following chart helps to show this shift.  This chart from the University of California system, again, highlights the breakdown of the spending from two different snapshots in time, just 5 years apart.

[x]

If you look carefully, you will note that, as a percentage, instruction costs have gone down from 26.3% to 24.2% (and facilities costs have gone from 3.3% to 1%).  Then you will see that three specific areas have had varying levels of growth:

• Academic support went from 7% to 8.5%

• Student services went from 3.8% to 3.9%

• Auxiliary enterprises went from 6.3% to 9.1%

Adding those increases together, is a whopping 5% shift, all towards providing more “niceties” if you will.  Some of these are certainly things like an on campus Starbucks or better recreation facilities, but others are much more robust accommodative services, increased and improved tutoring or other academic help, counseling services, increased public safety, and better student life activities for all, which, many times are also mandated.  These final two reasons also contribute to the rise in per capita cost to the customer.  The bottom line is, yes, there are potentially some small nice to haves that are adding to the bottom line.  In many cases however, the cause for them is based on “must do” items that won’t appreciably change the picture unless the said same legislatures that are reducing the support for higher education also give relief from those requirements; there is fairly low likelihood of that.

In conclusion, the biggest driver of the increase in the price tag of college comes back to the rather dramatic decrease of taxpayer/public support coupled with the significant increase in the cost of the human resources required to make the enterprise work.  Fixes for this will inevitably come in the form of public policy shifts that we have to struggle to debate and resolve.  Public policies, however, can also make the problem a lot worse.  One such prime example is a minimum wage hike where colleges and universities employ many low-wage workers, sometimes college students, to accomplish a myriad of activities across campuses.  Adding even more costs to the already intensive human resource enterprise will only add to the high rate of growth.  I am not sure I have a silver bullet, other than to realize that yesteryear’s highly subsidized false price tag of higher education is a false comparison.  To that end, we need to get real and get on making some hard choices going forward.

End Notes:

[i] “Chart of the Day.... or Century?,” American Enterprise Institute - AEI (blog), January 11, 2019, https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-century/.

[ii] Davis, J.J. Wagner (2016), Presentation to the Board of Visitors, Finance and Land Use Committee, George Mason University, October, 13 2016

[iii] Basically, on campus enterprises, auxiliaries and so forth as well as fundraising.  In some cases this further increases the cost to the student (e.g. for housing and dining) and in others has driven decisions about things like athletics, public-private partnerships, and so forth with the costs being carried by others.

[iv] Mitchell, Michael, Michael Leachman, and Kathleen Masterson. “Funding Down, Tuition Up: State Cuts to Higher Education Threaten Quality and Affordability at Public Colleges,” August 15, 2016, 28.

[v] Mitchell, Michael, Michael Leachman, and Kathleen Masterson. “Funding Down, Tuition Up: State Cuts to Higher Education Threaten Quality and Affordability at Public Colleges,” August 15, 2016, 28.

[vi] Mitchell, Michael, Michael Leachman, and Kathleen Masterson. “Funding Down, Tuition Up: State Cuts to Higher Education Threaten Quality and Affordability at Public Colleges,” August 15, 2016, 28.

[vii] “The 2020-21 Budget: Analyzing UC and CSU Cost Pressures,” December 17, 2019, 20.

[viii] Archibald, Robert B, and David H Feldman. “Drivers of the Rising Price of a College Education,” August 2018, 20.

[ix] Christensen, Kim. “Is UC Spending Too Little on Teaching, Too Much on Administration?” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 2015. https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-spending-20151011-story.html.

[x] Public Policy Institute of California. “Higher Education in California: Institutional Costs.” Accessed December 8, 2020. https://www.ppic.org/publication/higher-education-in-california-institutional-costs/.

Resilience in the age of COVID-19

Today is 16 March 2020 and I am writing this post to “clear the air” regards to the realities and challenges of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis that is striking the globe.  Now, I am not a medical professional, an immunologist, a public health professional, or even a biologically focused person.  I do, however, listen and know many of these people.  I also read carefully and respectfully what the experts are putting out for us to digest.  This said, however, I am also a person that knows quite a bit about emergency planning and emergency response thanks to specific assignments and experiences in the US Army.[1]  Further, in my work at George Mason University and at Clarkson University studying and executing preparations to build resilience of campuses and communities, I can also speak to how we can and should react so as to best mitigate the effects of any kind of disaster, including an infectious disease crisis.  It is from that perspective, therefore, I will begin and end this discussion.

To begin with, resilience, simply put is the ability of a system, a society, or an individual, to “bounce back” from a disruption, trauma, disaster, or other stressor.  Here is how Merriam-Webster defines reliance:

“noun

1: the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress

2: an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change”[2]

To that end, one of the most popular ways to depict and describe the topic of resilience is using the reliance curve (also known as the critical functionality curve for resilience) as illustrated in Figure 1:

[3]

Figure 1. General form of the resilience curve as defined by rebound

For more on this curve, what it describes and useful for as well as its critiques and limitations, please watch this very informative set of videos by a colleague of mine, Dr. Thomas Seager of Arizona State University, made with others from the Naval Post Graduate School, in the area of speaking about infrastructure:

Critical Functionality Curve (1 of 3) for Resilient Infrastructure – Explanation:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX9Evd5374s.[4]

Critical Functionality Curve (2 of 3) for Resilient Infrastructure – Critique:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSIYsyDyEdw[5]

Critical Functionality Curve (3 of 3) for Resilient Infrastructure – Alternatives:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1OhvCzDF74[6]

Thus, what is critical to understand is that the recovery time and total functional rebound from an event is dependent upon the depth of absorption required of the system, society, or individual.  To that end, efforts to build resilience focus on how to both minimize the stressors as well as increase the capacity to absorb said stressors.  Thus preparation and learning can aid in the latter (capacity to absorb) and anticipation of, and adaption during, the acute trauma or stress enables the ability to aid in the former (minimize the stressor).  In the current crisis regarding the COVID-19 outbreak, we are no longer in a preparation stage nor are we in an anticipation stage (it is here).  While we are certainly constantly learning, where we are now is in the stage where we need to adapt in order to mitigate the depth of absorption our systems must take, lest they are unable to recover.

This brings us then to the nature of this crisis and the nature of what the COVID-19 virus means to our social and medical systems.  One of the best ways to get a handle on what the COVID-19 crisis is doing is to check out the John’s Hopkins live mapping tool for tracking cases of the disease:  https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6.  What is important to track is the graphic on the bottom right of the chart, shown here as Figure 2:

[7]

Figure 2. COVID-19 Virus spread over time, as of 16 March 2020

So you will note, in this tracking tool, that while the rise in Chinese cases occurred earlier (late January through mid-February), the rest of the world is having a much higher spike (driven largely by the European cases) well in advance of the rate of the Chinese cases per day.  The Chinese rate of infection, we have to remember, was, in part, initially hidden but also a result of extreme restrictions on behavior, which have now resulted in a leveling out of the infection rate.  What we are seeing elsewhere ought to alarm us, as we have seen situations like this before, historically, and in open societies, we are wont to take the draconian measures the Chinese have taken.

Let us touch first on the history.  In 1918, at the end of World War 1, an outbreak of a new disease, termed “the Spanish Flu,” broke out across the world.  This virus was not traditional influenza, but an H1N1 avian flu disease.  What makes this similar to the contemporaneous COVID-19 outbreak, is that this was a novel virus that had not struck before.  For that reason, like today, “[w]ith no vaccine to protect against influenza infection and no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections that can be associated with influenza infections, control efforts worldwide were limited to non-pharmaceutical interventions such as isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limitations of public gatherings, which were applied unevenly.”[8]  To that note about uneven application, the following chart, Figure 3, is illustrative of the effects in two communities, Philadelphia, PA and St. Louis, MO. 

[9]

Figure 3. Effects of social distancing on the 1918 flu epidemic

Succinctly, the chart illustrates what happened when social distancing, as an adaptive measure, was applied and when it was not.  The consequence was that failure to implement an effective adaption strategy resulted in system overload and a serious spike in deaths as a result of the outbreak.  Returning to the resilience curve, the system was not able to absorb the impact and thus resulted in many more deaths than when adaptive measures were employed.  As is seen in the St. Louis case infections and deaths still occurred, but that both the intensity (number of deaths per day) as well as the magnitude (total number of deaths; area under the curve) was minimized.  Again, when it was a novel disease outbreak, a stressor to use resilience language, adaptive measures were critical to ensuring a better rebound and recovery from the disaster.

Many have inappropriately categorized this outbreak as being nothing other than a “flu breakout”, going as so far as to say and cite that there have been more deaths as a result of influenza this year, so far, as have been from COVID-19.  Were this 1918, that might be an apt comparison, but this is 2020.  As such, when it comes to influenza in 2020 as it compares to COVID-19 in 2020, several things are critical to consider.  First, for the flu we have a vaccine and we have treatment regimens that don’t require hospitalization in large numbers within short periods of time.  Second, making it worse, the mortality rate (number of deaths per incident of known infection) is higher than we see in contemporaneous flu strains,[10] both as a consequence of the lack of a good preventative as well as its mode of attack in the body.[11]  Third, this is a novel virus, so tracking the cases has not been as good as we do with the flu, but what we’ve seen so far is much more concerning.[12]  Fourth, the rate of infection (the slope of the curve), is not as steep for flu (illustrated in Figure 4) as for COVID-19 (illustrated in Figure 5).  So the problem here is the RATE of infection is exceptionally high (we are currently tracking with Italy and Iran) with a treatment requirement that uses a high amount of resources (it’s a pneumonic disease requiring ventilators in many cases), without a known pharmaceutical solution (either as a vaccine or a drug treatment regimen).

[13]

Figure 4. Cumulative Rate of Confirmed Influenza Hospitalizations

[14]

Figure 5. Cumulative Rate of Confirmed Influenza Hospitalizations

Returning then to resilience as a way to analyze this problem, what is needed is to slow the rate of infections to allow us to a) buy time so we can get a better non-hospital treatment in place (which may not happen for another 12-18 months),[15] and b) not overwhelm the limited hospital based resources we have (roughly 35 ICU bed per 100,000, unevenly distributed around the country).[16]  To do that, we need to do things to slow the spread and prevent those most vulnerable from getting it inadvertently (noting that, again unlike the flu, the incubation period can be over 14 days from contact to symptoms appearing).[17]  This means, to use a hypothetical, that 4th grade Julie can have contracted the virus from neighbor Bill and consequently share it with her whole class including Bobby, Shelly, and Bart who all live with their ailing grandparents who are particularly susceptible and have a higher mortality rate.  What we need to do is follow the public health recommendations to keep physical separation and work to curtail anything non-essential.  The reason for this is that what has been termed “social distancing” is an adaptive tool that has proven effective to slow the rate of the spread of the disease, so as to make its transmission and treatment manageable.  This is illustrated in the chart below, Figure 6.

[18]

Figure 6. Social distancing effect on cumulative cases of corona virus

All of this requires us to maintain a level head and manage the adaption process carefully but swiftly so as to address the crisis in the best way possible.  Our goal is to engage in adaptive capacity while at the same time not compromising the systems that are responsible for absorbing the impact of this stressor.  To that end, we need to take this in a measured serious way.  For instance, we need to recognize that by running out and hoarding goods, we are likely to make the situation worse or take away from those in greater need than ourselves.  We still need to have access to basic needs and we still have to have the ability to have medical services operate effectively.  This means we’ve got to have truckers on the road and shippers shipping and fuel stations for the above, and so on and so forth.  Yes, we need to keep all of that to a minimum, and we need to keep the interactions between everyone to as small a set of numbers as possible, but we can’t “close everything”, otherwise we’ll exacerbate the problem by not getting the needed supplies and personnel to where it’s needed as well as have people not having the things they need to survive at home.  We also need to recognize that what we are trying to do is to slow the rate of infection, not stop the infection itself.  We can’t currently stop it (as articulated above) and engaging in mass psychosis about being infected will only heighten fears that lead to non-rational behaviors and longer term damage than the disease itself.[19]

So, what do we need to do to accomplish that.  First, we need to minimize our physical space contact with one another.  Avoid large gatherings, avoid places where significant infection is underway, and avoid doing anything that is not necessary.[20]  If you can work from home, we need to move to that mode.  Further, we need to support mission critical workers (health workers, emergency management professionals, military members, public service employees, key logistics support members, etc.) with having patience and forgoing on-demand items as well as only buying and getting what you need.  Luckily, we have technology we can rely on to make much of this happen.  But we also have to recognize not everyone is so equipped, so we also need to look out for our neighbors and families and help where we can.

Next, get with your public officials and deliver the message that they need to lead us by telling us we have to make some sacrifices in the short-term hardship now to avoid widespread devastation later.  Do so, however, by telling them to shut-down all non-essential services and carefully keep running, and manage well, the absolutely minimally essential services and goods to see us through.  Do NOT insist on having them “close everything,” which will only stoke fear and cause problems for the overall response system that we are relying on.  To that end, public language needs to be very clear to say what we mean and mean what we say.  This means we have to have leadership not obscure facts nor heighten fears, but instead provide steady, concerted and concerned messaging that follow the best advice our public health community can provide us.[21]  And these leaders do have to make the tough choices that will require us to forgo wants (as compared with bonafide needs) until we can have better handle on the rate of infection and have treatments that can mitigate mortality rates across the board.

Finally, we ought to remain humble enough to pray or otherwise connect with our spirituality.  Some may see this assertion as inappropriate for an otherwise academically focused post.  That, however, is actually false.  Spirituality has been shown in several studies to be a key coping mechanism that enables greater resiliency to traumas.[22]  To that end, if not already making this connection, I would encourage us to do so amidst this challenge to ourselves and our broader society.  This may not be by going to your normal worship services if that is your norm, but it does mean that we should connect with one another and with our spiritual side to enable us to have the necessary hope from which to build as we recover from this stressor.  We are in this together and its key that we make that a priority.

To conclude, what we in the resilience community know is that we need to do our best, in the midst of a crisis to adapt and to minimize the core disruptions so that we can reduce the depth of impact and amount of time to recovery.  This is not the end, this isn't the Black Death, but a disruption; one we can and will recover from.  To that end, we need to do all of the above to stay resilient and enable us to come out as well as we can on the other side.  Thanks and all the best to you and all of us in these challenging times.

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[1] one of which was a 3-year stint at a FEMA liaison officer at the Pentagon dealing with many a crisis from Super-storm Sandy to fires in California to the Ebola virus outbreak in west Africa.

[2] “Definition of RESILIENCE,” accessed March 16, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resilience.

[3] Azad M. Madni, Dan Erwin, and Michael Sievers, “Constructing Models for Systems Resilience: Challenges, Concepts, and Formal Methods,” Systems 8, no. 1 (March 2020): 3, https://doi.org/10.3390/systems8010003.

[4] Critical Functionality Curve (1 of 3) for Resilient Infrastructure - Explanation, accessed March 16, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX9Evd5374s.

[5] Critical Functionality Curve (2 of 3) for Resilient Infrastructure - Critique, accessed March 16, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSIYsyDyEdw.

[6] Critical Functionality Curve (3 of 3) for Resilient Infrastructure - Alternatives, accessed March 16, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1OhvCzDF74.

[7] “Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-NCoV),” accessed March 16, 2020, https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6.

[8] “1918 Pandemic (H1N1 Virus) | Pandemic Influenza (Flu) | CDC,” June 26, 2019, https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html.

[9] Carolyn Y. Johnson et al., “Social Distancing Could Buy U.S. Valuable Time against Coronavirus,” Washington Post, accessed March 16, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/10/social-distancing-coronavirus/.

[10] “No, Coronavirus Isn’t ‘Just Like The Flu’. Here Are The Very Important Differences,” accessed March 16, 2020, https://www.sciencealert.com/the-new-coronavirus-isn-t-like-the-flu-but-they-have-one-big-thing-in-common.

[11] “Yale New Haven Health | Influenza (Flu) vs Coronaviruses,” accessed March 16, 2020, https://www.ynhhs.org/patient-care/urgent-care/flu-or-coronavirus.

[12] “Yale New Haven Health | Influenza (Flu) vs Coronaviruses.”

[13] CDC, “Weekly U.S. Influenza Surveillance Report (FluView),” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, March 13, 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm.

[14] Dylan Scott, “How the US Stacks up to Other Countries in Confirmed Coronavirus Cases,” Vox, March 13, 2020, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/13/21178289/confirmed-coronavirus-cases-us-countries-italy-iran-singapore-hong-kong.

[15] “Coronavirus Vaccine: Development, Timeline, and More,” accessed March 16, 2020, https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/coronavirus-vaccine.

[16] “SCCM | United States Resource Availability for COVID-19,” Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), accessed March 16, 2020, https://sccm.org/Blog/March-2020/United-States-Resource-Availability-for-COVID-19.

[17] Tomas Pueyo, “Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now,” Medium, March 15, 2020, https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca.

[18] Pueyo.

[19] “How Fear of Contagious Diseases Fuels Xenophobia,” Stanford Graduate School of Business, accessed March 16, 2020, https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/how-fear-contagious-diseases-fuels-xenophobia.

[20] Pueyo, “Coronavirus.”

[21] Pueyo.

[22] Julio F. P. Peres et al., “Spirituality and Resilience in Trauma Victims,” Journal of Religion and Health 46, no. 3 (September 1, 2007): 343–50, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-006-9103-0.