Just weeks into 2020, the world is faced with yet another epidemiological crisis: a Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19).
The epicenter of this respiratory illness has been identified in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province. As of early February, the death toll from this virus has risen to over 300, and the number of confirmed cases throughout China is nearing 15,000. In 15 cities throughout China, which together accumulate a combined population of nearly 60 million people, local governing forces have instituted varying degrees of quarantine and lockdown. China has additionally extended its national holiday celebrating the Lunar New Year, while canceling most major public festivals and events, in a continued effort to prevent exposure.
The Chinese government, led by President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, has articulated the severity of the outbreak. The government has reportedly allocated over one billion dollars to address the crisis. The virus, now known colloquially as the novel coronavirus, poses a unique challenge to community health and contagion efforts in that the virus can be transmitted between people before symptoms of the virus appear. The virus has now been confirmed in a number of other countries including South Korea, Italy, Japan, Iran, France, and the United States.
Despite this, many have criticized the local bureaucracy of Wuhan, which itself has a population of 11 million, arguing that their poor choices exacerbated the severity of the outbreak and that the decisions being made had too little accountability to both the people and the central government. Wuhan’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang, has accepted much of the blame laid at his feet, explaining on Chinese state television that his local government’s response was “not good enough,” that the city only gave 80% of what the situation required, and as a result, he has offered to resign in part as an “apology” to the people and the government.
Still, others criticize his unprecedented decision to stop the bleeding by quarantining the city entirely, concerned that getting food and medical supplies to the city will become difficult, endangering citizens.
So what would a clear and appropriate response to this disaster have looked like?
The bureaucratic failure of this moment may intimate a more general failure of modern technologies: administrative centralization. Because our modern governmental bodies have central administrators, they inevitably have central points of failure. And even without a capitalistic profit motive, as in the case of a state-run health care system, if that administration does not directly express the needs of the serviced population, then it can and will on its points of failure in the form of concentrated power. In the case of the Wuhan coronavirus, political fear and tactfulness around an issue that would reflect poorly on a major Chinese city, lead to severe mismanagement and a profound human toll.
The advent of blockchains and decentralized ledger technologies may be a turning point in the very nature of governmental health administration. Healthcare systems in areas of advanced technological innovation such as China or the United States rely heavily upon data platforms to maintain secure medical records for the public.
With blockchain technology, these systems would be able to detect and to make available the existence of public health concerns without releasing particular information about individuals in these systems. Blockchains, at the very least, will make the management and deployment of medical records more expeditious so that when a public outbreak does occur, those in need can be treated without giant backlogs in regions like Wuhan that are ill-equipped to protect their densely populated areas against disease from an administration and facilitation perspective. Moreover, the decision to act swiftly and righteously on behalf of the public can be separated from the governmental need to save face. Whereas the local government attempted to censor information concerning the severity of the disease, a decentralized healthcare administration would be able to pass that information directly to federal authorities or committees and organizations concerned with public safety and empowerment.
Decentralized embedded systems simply allow communities to monitor the safety and security of the resources they rely on. Blockchains, in short, can make these systems transparent and accountable. How are the safety concerns of my city being met by the agencies I have trusted to protect me? Are the air I breathe and the water I drink dangerous for me to consume? Where did this food or this medicine come from? Is it safe to travel? Am I at risk of putting others in danger? These questions should have permanent and immutable answers that are available for us to track through real-time embedded systems. They must not be answered according to political opportunism. With decentralized ledger technology, citizens will have clarity, at the very least, over the inner workings of these support networks.
