Monday Memo #82: Stanford Using Big Data to Help Beat COVID-19
By Noah Howard and Jackson Vachal
Welcome to this week’s (not-so-monday) Monday Memo! Start your week off right, with a round-up of Stanford-related news from Stanford Politics.
Will Big Data Help Beat COVID-19? Stanford Research Group Provides an Example
On Sunday, the U.S. COVID-19 death toll passed 500,000. As new variants of the disease spread and states struggle to implement vaccine rollout schemes, the American health system continues to creak under the pandemic’s burden. Many data scientists and physicians hope that large-scale data analysis will prove an increasingly valuable tool in the fight against COVID. A group of Stanford researchers led by Dr. Nigam Shah is harnessing patient demographics and outcomes data to optimize coronavirus treatment strategies. Dr. Shah is a Professor of Bioinformatics at Stanford Medicine. His team has compiled a database of over 700 coronavirus cases with detailed information on each patient’s demographic traits and course of treatment. Using this data, the researchers found that, for many patients, ICU care was no more effective than lower-level treatments. For much of 2020, Stanford referred all patients requiring six or more liters of oxygen to intensive care units, but Shah’s team discovered that portable oxygen systems were just as effective as ventilators in many of these cases. This allowed Stanford hospital to change their ICU referral policy, resulting in an ICU capacity increase of 25%. Moving forward, some scholars believe that “big data” will provide significantly more treatment resources, including the ability to identify vulnerable populations with drastically greater specificity. This kind of predictive power requires massive amounts of data, however. At present, there is no database containing the thousands of patient cases (or perhaps more) that would be necessary to make reliable predictions. Developing such a system presents an enormous challenge, and one that is significantly complicated by healthcare companies’ reluctance to share data. Commenting on this obstacle, Dr. Shah stated, “Pretty much every other industry that I can think of uses information on what they have done in the past to make their services better. COVID-19 has accelerated a decade worth of technological progress in one year, and if people buy into this idea that we can share data for benefiting the care of other patients, I think that's very powerful.”
Congressional Redistricting in Tumult
Delays to the 2020 census are causing concern among experts about the integrity of the redistricting process for the 2022 election cycle. The population data required to redraw state legislature and congressional districts will not be available until September 30, six months later than the normal March 31 deadline, the Census Bureau announced on Friday. This delay, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Trump administration actions, drastically shortens the window for public scrutiny of new district maps. With insufficient time for lawsuits that litigate the new maps’ legality, voting rights advocates worry that some state legislatures may engage in illegal redistricting practices that disadvantage minority voters. Heightening these concerns is a Supreme Court decision that struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act requiring Texas and eight other states to seek federal preapproval of new district maps due to consistent discrimination in the redistricting process. According to Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford law professor and co-director of the Stanford-M.I.T. Healthy Elections Project, the compressed timeframe and Supreme Court ruling present enormous obstacles to the success of suits challenging new district maps. Said Persily, "The late arriving census data should not be an excuse to rush through otherwise illegal plans, and I worry that is going to be the nature of the argument from states." The Stanford professor argued that the extraordinary circumstances of the 2020 census are grounds to extend redistricting deadlines, potentially providing more time for public review. The majority of districts not controlled by nonpartisan commissions will be redrawn by Republican-controlled state legislatures. With a slight Democratic advantage in the House and a 50-50 party split in the Senate, this year’s redistricting has enormous implications for the partisan balance going forward.
Stanford Scholar’s Offers New Analysis on Iran
In a recent discussion on the Freeman Spogli Institute’s World Class podcast, Dr. Abbas Milani, Director of the Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford, offers his analysis on the Iranian economy, political leadership, and a new nuclear deal. Dr. Milani describes the present Iranian economy as the worst he has ever seen, including during the years during the Iran-Iraq War. This can be attributed to harsh sanctions by the United States, but Dr. Milani points to the gross mismanagement of the economy by political elites causing double digit inflation and unemployment as well as capital outflows totaling 20 billion dollars in the last year alone. In addition, Dr. Milani highlights instability in Iran’s future leadership. With the Supreme Leader, Khamenei, aging and ill, succession disputes abound in the Islamic Republic. The two main contenders appear to be the son of Supreme Leader Khamenei, Mojtaba Khamenei and the current head of the judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi. However, there also is a third potential successor in the form of a military dictatorship by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a parallel military in Iran tasked with safeguarding the Islamic Revolution. Concerning Iran’s nuclear program, Dr. Milani discussed the rapid expansion of Iran’s nuclear capability upon the election of Joe Biden. He explains this as a desperate effort by the regime to create facts on the ground before negotiations ensue, in an attempt to garner leverage for a better deal with the United States. Additionally, Dr. Milani expressed his immense satisfaction with Joe Biden including respect for human rights in any future deal to be made between the United States and Iran.
And in case you missed it…
Vlad Tenev ‘08 Apologizes to House Financial Services Committee over Robinhood Controversy (Turk | Stanford Daily)
A Stanford Student’s Non-Profit Farmlink Receives Westly Prize (Mohanpuhr | Stanford Daily)
As admissions season descends, warning signs appear for low-income applicants (Marcus | Washington Post)
Texas Storms, California Heat Waves, and ‘Vulnerable’ Utilities (Penn | New York Times)
About the Authors
Noah Howard ’22 is pursuing majors in Economics and International Relations with a minor in Iranian Studies. Living in Washington D.C., he is currently writing a thesis about the role of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in Iranian Politics.
Jackson Vachal ’22 is pursuing majors in Political Science and Philosophy, with a focus on democratic theory. A San Francisco native, he is interested in social entrepreneurship and nonprofit advocacy work.
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