Data-Driven Decision Making Is The Only “Winner” From The Coronavirus

BY ADAM GROSSMAN

While there is very little good news stemming from the coronavirus, one upside is that measurement is having its moment. More specifically, data-driven decision making is one of the main strategies being used to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus.

Data-driven decision making is a topic familiar to these blog posts because it is one of the primary benefits our clients receive by working with Block Six Analytics. Companies, properties, and agencies leverage our technology and analytics to aggregate information from multiple channels, evaluate data on company-specific metrics, and generate actionable insights for key stakeholders.

This is a similar approach to what public health experts are doing now to fight the coronavirus. Arguably the most prominent advocate of the use of data to fight the disease has been the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci. He has advocated for the use of social distancing, maintaining a minimum six-foot distance from other people, as the primary approach to “bend the curve” of community spread of the coronavirus.

How did Dr. Fauci and other public health experts come to this decision? They first had to identify the coronavirus version of company-specific metrics. In this case, the goal is to limit the spread of the disease so that hospitals are not filled to overcapacity with patients, have as much equipment as possible (such as ventilators) available to treat patients, and can ensure medical personnel have as much personal protective equipment (PPE) as possible to avoid becoming sick themselves.

What does “success” look like in stopping the coronavirus? Taking these steps should slow the mortality and infection rate of the disease as seen in China and South Korea. However, they will also have a direct benefit on the domestic economy. A working paper from the University of Chicago projects that effective social distancing will have a $8 trillion impact on the U.S. impact based on the number of lives saved and the “value of a statistical life.”

This social distancing recommendation comes from data analysis specifically focused on the coronavirus. It is not always the case that social distancing is the right course of action or that taking these steps will always have a positive impact on the economy. In fact shutting large portions of the economy down through shelter-in-place orders will often have negative impact on the economy. Social distance works in this case because “of the lives saved, 630,000 are due to avoided overwhelming of hospital intensive care units.”

President Donald Trump is also increasingly using numbers to shape his policies towards the coronavirus. Despite having an undergraduate degree from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and having a long business career, Trump is well-known for making decisions based off his gut instinct rather than data.

A recent New York Times article titled “Behind Trump’s Reversal on Reopening the Country: 2 Sets of Numbers” shows that Trump appears to be using data more to drive his decision making now more than ever before. His initial goal was focused on “restoring normal life by Easter” to help revitalize the nation’s economy. After looking in greater detail at numbers from health experts and polling data showing that the public favored social distancing measures, Trump extended restrictions the federal government put in place from April 12th to April 30th.

The point of making the comparison between the coronavirus and corporate partnerships is not to say that they are equal in significance. Clearly, using data to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus is much more important than any application to corporate partnerships.

However, the point of making comparison is to show how a similar data-driven approach is now being used a primary tool to mitigate the impact of the largest epidemic in modern history. In addition, quantitative insights are being used by people that infrequently have relied on numbers in past decision-making processes. The spotlight that data-driven decision making is receiving is one of the few positives that has come from the outbreak of the coronavirus.