(upbeat music)
(air whooshing)
- Hey everyone, and welcome to Freethink's Progress Report.
I'm Nick, and I'm here with some stories
about what's moving forward in the world today.
And today, we're actually gonna be talking
about a story that's very near
and dear to-- - Hey, man.
- Hi.
- Hey Taylor, How are you today?
- I'm fantastic, how are you?
- I'm good, can I ask how you got into my house?
- Through your door.
I've actually been thinking a lot
about how to get into buildings recently.
- That's an extremely creepy thing to say.
Can you tell me more?
- Yes, okay.
So in a bunch of places, we've flattened the curve,
like here in San Francisco.
However, we're not gonna have a vaccine
for months, if not years.
And places are starting to open up right now.
And we know that coronavirus spreads
way easier indoors, versus out of doors.
So what are the security checks that we're gonna have
as we enter buildings just to make sure
that nobody has coronavirus inside that building.
- How are other countries handling this?
- [Taylor] So there's this viral video right now
with this kid in China where he goes through four
or five sanitation stations before he can enter his school.
We're also seeing things like in Taiwan,
where people are doing temperature checks
as they enter the building.
- [Nick] What does it look like in the U.S.?
- The problem is that you can't test everyone
for coronavirus every day.
One of the things that hasn't gotten covered
in the news a lot is how
are hospital workers actually entering the building?
And the reason why I think this
is actually really interesting is that,
you know, the hospital is where we take sick people,
it is literally a hotspot.
And so if one doctor has coronavirus,
he or she could spread it throughout the entire hospital.
So how do you actually get all of
your healthcare workers into a building every day?
And we're talking about hundreds,
if not thousands of people.
We actually have some friends over at UCSF,
and they had to face this problem a few weeks ago
when the pandemic was really starting
to hit the United States.
And I thought they had a really clever solution to this.
(Taylor makes whooshing sound)
- So UCSF is about 25,000 employees.
March 13th, I got a phone call on a Saturday afternoon
saying, "The city and county of San Francisco
"has a mandate to start screening all employees
"before they come in to work".
We were facing long lines of employees at the entrances
to the hospital that needed to be screened to make sure
that we were keeping patients and our workers safe.
- So a long line is no fun,
But is it really a health hazard?
- Yeah absolutely, I mean, let's say there is someone
that is infected with coronavirus,
and they've been waiting in line for 15 minutes,
they've probably infected the people around them.
I mean, I think about this every time
I've had to go to the grocery store, I'm like,
"This is the time when I'm actually gonna catch
"this thing, waiting in this line."
- So how did they handle this
if they can't check everybody as they go through the door?
- Technology (Taylor makes whooshing sound)
(Nick and Taylor laugh)
- [Aaron] We worked with a partner called Conversa Health
to design a digital tool that we released to our employees.
- So the goal was to create this screener
that would allow people easily
to assess their exposure risk,
at the time also their travel risk, and their symptoms.
We went to work the next day, and within five days
we had a pilot version launch.
So every day, a healthcare worker coming into the hospital,
takes a screen in the morning.
And it screens them, either you have to stay at home,
and if so, here are the followups you need to go through
with your occupational health department.
And if you're cleared for work, you have to wear a mask.
And then can you work with,
or not with, immunocompromised patients.
And it provides a badge back to their device
that they have to show to get to the building.
- And so it's kind of like TSA PreCheck,
so as you go through security in the building
you just show it i.e. no more lines.
- The waiting times went down from 25 minutes
to just a minute or two at peak wait times.
Now, we're at about 4000 or 5000 employees a day
who are using the tool.
(screen swooshes)
- So, so--
- Yes?
I'm sorry, you go ahead.
- Yeah, I was gonna go--
- Oh, I'm totally sorry.
- What does this look like
for most of us in our daily lives?
How is this gonna actually impact us?
- Well, maybe if you're going into your office building,
or a restaurant, or even your comic book store
maybe you'll have to use a screener app like this
and show security as you go through the door.
Maybe this is what this looks like
for the foreseeable future,
until we actually have a vaccine.
- It goes without saying,
there's a lot of privacy concerns here.
And it's also super inconvenient.
Do you think that's really realistic?
- I mean, the parallel example is, you know,
metal detectors to go into festivals or into a club.
It's annoying, it's some level of invasion of privacy.
But we all do it to feel a sense of safety.
- Are you sticking around for a drink, or what?
- No I'm gonna go, but I did get Junebug some tuna.
Juney! Juney!
Do you have a can opener, actually?
Forgot it.
- No, I don't have a can opener.
- Okay, I'll go get one.
- It's the thought that counts.
Well, what do you think?
Would you be willing to enter your health data
into a questionnaire just to enter
a retail store or any other building?
Let us know in the comments below.
And we'll see you soon.
And if someone has a can opener
that would be super, super helpful right now.
(screen whooshes)
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