012: Tiffany & David
In this episode, we’re joined by Dr. David Walcott, a Jamaican entrepreneur, doctor, and Co-Chair of the Global Shapers Community COVID-19 Steering Committee, to chat about mobilizing young people around the globe through the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Community to fight COVID-19.
We discussed:
His background in medicine, science and business
How he mobilized the Global Shapers Community to create Shapers Against COVID, two weeks before the World Health Organization (WHO ) had declared a pandemic
How he knew masks would be effective before CDC and WHO made the recommendation
COVID-19 in the Carribean
The Fourth Industrial Revolution and responsible leadership during COVID-19
Show Notes
About Dr. David Walcott
David Walcott is a Medical Doctor (MD. Ph.D. MSc.) and entrepreneur with over 5-years experience as a founder, operator and consultant to several businesses in the Caribbean. He serves as the Co-Chair of the Global Shapers Community COVID-19 Steering Committee. David is committed to attracting world-class healthcare resources into the Caribbean and driving investment into the region. His knowledge area of expertise is medical tourism and global trends in healthcare services, and he has travelled to over 50 countries observing healthcare systems and speaks 5 foreign languages. Ultimately, his work is centered around driving the adoption of innovative local and regional healthcare solutions in the Caribbean.
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Transcript
Tiffany Yu: You’re listening to Tiffany & Yu, the podcast. This is Tiffany Yu. On this episode, I’m joined by Dr. David Walcott, a Jamaican medical doctor and entrepreneur who is passionate about driving the adoption of innovative local and regional healthcare solutions in the Caribbean and emerging markets. We’ll be chatting about the power of mobilizing young people to help fight COVID-19. Through his involvement with the Global Shapers Community, an initiative of the World Economic Forum to empower young people for impact, he launched a COVID task force weeks before the World Health Organization declared COVID a pandemic. He is now the Co-Chair of the Global Shapers Community COVID Steering Committee for the next year, helping to oversee the 130+ hub projects to support health systems, protect livelihoods, and build more inclusive community responses around the world. We started a project here in San Francisco to distribute cotton face masks to anyone in the disability community who still needs them and their care team in the US. You can visit http://bit.ly/masks4disability to learn more about our project and help with outreach.
Tiffany Yu: Hi everyone. It's Tiffany and you are listening to this episode of Tiffany & Yu. I have with me, my friend, Dr. David Walcott. Hi, David.
David Walcott: Hi Tiff! Good to be here.
Tiffany Yu: So David and I met a little over two years ago. We're both part of this community called the Global Shapers and I have interviewed other Shapers. And actually part of the reason why I had initially reached out to David is I had shared our episode with Kasley and he had commented that he thought my podcast was awesome. And then I was like, Oh, I should totally have David on the podcast. So, so anyway, so David and I are both Shapers. He's in the Kingston hub in Jamaica, I'm in San Francisco. It's a community of people in their twenties and early thirties who are passionate about making an impact within their local communities . We both had the opportunity to attend the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland in 2018. It was a very surreal experience for me. How was it for you?
David Walcott: Well, it was equally surreal for me as well, Tiff. And thanks for the very, very kind of introduction. It almost felt like I was in a real life Madame Tussauds just sort of seeing all these personalities in real life and, being able to drink from the fountain of what many would consider forefront cutting edge knowledge? That was, I think what defined my experience on arriving to Davos. But on leaving Davos, I felt like I had learned much more about myself than I had learned from the outside. And so it was a pretty transformative moment in my life as well.
Tiffany Yu: Yeah. And I haven't even gotten into David's bio. We're like all talking about this thing that happened two years ago. So David, so why we're having him on our show. So he's a medical doctor, an entrepreneur, ultimately with the goal of driving the adoption of innovative local and regional healthcare solutions in the Caribbean. Is also a Rhodes scholar, mini MBA from INSEAD. What am I missing? What are you working on these days?
David Walcott: I'm working too much these days. That is, that is, that is the only thing that's missing. A little bit too busy, tied up with COVID. The interesting thing is when you have a broad sorts of vision, then a broad mandate, the work is never done. And so, we're working on several different projects and we had been all of which are aligned around bringing world class healthcare into emerging markets, starting with the Caribbean. And we had to naturally reprioritize and pivot once we realized that we were going to go through what is the first pandemic in a hundred years. So right now I'm sort of at the balance between managing projects that are going concerns and driving projects as direct responses to COVID-19.
Tiffany Yu: For sure. I'd love to hear a little bit more about what got you interested in medicine, healthcare.
David Walcott: What defines my story, I think, is a concept that Professor Schwab, the Founder of the World Economic Forum and the Global Shapers Community, of which Tiff and I are a part, is serendipity. And I've always been a strong believer in serendipity. And so I have resisted the urge to sort of overly, structurally plan my life and ensure that there's a certain level of openness to not just opportunity, but influence. And I think that is the overarching theme. And so what that looks like or has looked like in terms of my journey and my story is I did medical school in Jamaica. I did pretty well. Worked for a year in the public hospitals. And so I was sort of exploring, what clinical medicine was like. And then I got the scholarship, went to the UK, immersed myself in a highly rigorous academic environment, did a Master's in Immunology and then a PhD in Immunology as well. And so, I was exploring, what healthcare was like from the perspective of a scientist and at some point I felt like being a scientist is very interesting. But I wanted to add a dimension of pragmatism and practicality to my portfolio. And so, I decided to do business studies. So I applied for a program at INSEAD and got in. I've been doing business studies intermittently since. The last of which was this year at HBS. And it's sort of created a combination of perspective that I think serves me well, because it allows me to identify, clinical gaps, scientific gaps, and, business gaps in healthcare and find ways to fill those gaps and problem solve in a region that matters to me most, which is the Caribbean and emerging markets.
Tiffany Yu: Hmm. Beautiful. I love that idea of serendipity and how that has flowed through your narrative. So if we fast forward a little bit, or a lot, you know, we're in the middle of this COVID-19 pandemic. Did you start this international task force against COVID?
David Walcott: Yeah. I mean, so, starting it is always a very, I suppose, loaded term, I did, I did issue the first call. I think the term started and founded, attributed a little bit too much to me. The truth is, it really was a burgeoning concern that I felt like the global citizenry didn't quite understand on one hand. And on the other hand, as young, talented and ambitious individuals who are really the Shapers of tomorrow. I felt like the Global Shapers Community both had an obligation and an opportunity to really stand up and play a strong force in this fight. And so I issued a call, on several platforms, Facebook, et cetera. And a few individuals responded to the call and I mean, over in a few hours, We had a pretty large cohort of over 300 Shapers who had sort of joined the fight. It was amazing to see the level of global engagement. And what we opted to do was we opted to just kind of quickly strategize around how best can be drive immediate impact because the thing with many of these task forces, et cetera, is, it's important to sort of demonstrate momentum early in and show a certain level of progress. So we opted to run a campaign within 24 hours of starting, the #PreventionOverPanic campaign / #ShapingHealth campaign. And it was reposted in over 50 countries by 300 Shapers. So, I mean, it's been an absolutely interesting ride. We've done many other projects since. And I think what is most mind-blowing is the fact that there is a union of young people who have a certain level of grassroots connectivity that even large top-down organizations typically don't have, that can then serve to broadcast and serve as ambassadors for trusted information.
Tiffany Yu: I just want to step in and add more context here. So this is a, it's a task force against COVID-19, which consists of medical doctors. Innovators and entrepreneurs through the Global Shapers Community and the World Economic Forum. The task force has been driving impact across the globe through providing grassroots solutions, fighting misinformation, like the campaigns you just mentioned #PreventionOverPanic, translating resources into different languages, resourcing governments with equipment, et cetera. If I think back, you and I, we're still part of this WhatsApp group of all of the Global Shapers who were at Davos. And I remember a couple months ago, you had posted about acquiring a lot of masks. I remember it distinctly because the WHO and the CDC hadn't yet come out with the guidance, that those who were seemingly healthy or, didn't seem to exhibit any symptoms should be wearing masks. Was that call related to the taskforce or how were you thinking about acquiring PPE that early on?
David Walcott: Interestingly enough, I was just trying to look at everything from as independent of a perspective as I could . At that point I had absolutely no business or commercial interest in any sorts of PPE. I was just sort of trying to identify problems that I could contribute to solving. And I started thinking about COVID from several perspectives. And I think this ties back into what you had asked me before in terms of the value of being able to look at problem solving from several perspectives, because I took a look at the epidemiological patterns of COVID-19 and look at the immunology. I was able to come to my personal conclusions that this really was a threat to be taken seriously and then kind of dig into, evidence from peer review journals stating that masks can actually help them in the fight against respiratory viruses. And I think I'm not going to label it as forethought or foresight. I do think that it's very easy to get caught up in observing protocol from larger institutions without necessarily subjecting it to a certain level of sober scrutiny. And, and I think in most cases it works well because these large organizations are well-equipped to , amass their insights and broadcast their insights, but I felt like I had enough experience just in terms of the whole scientific method and critical thinking to be able to really form an independent opinion. And it formed my opinion. I was then faced with, okay, well, my opinion now differs from what the CDC and the WHO are recommending, how do I then communicate my opinion in a way that is sensitive to the authority of the CDC, WHO? Which was again, something to think about, because I don't think it would be right for any sort of independent party to directly contravene an institution fighting the same fights. So I adopted a collaborative, I would say cooperative approach of sort of sharing my thoughts in a public forum in a way that I felt was sensitive to the message of the CDC and the WHO, not necessarily chastising them for their perspectives, which are totally understandable, but inviting them to consider a different perspective and sharing evidence as to why I think that perspective may be valid and credible.
Tiffany Yu: Right. And the result of that ended up being this April 7th piece on the World Economic Forum Agenda titled What is the evidence on wearing masks to stop COVID-19? Is that correct?
David Walcott: That is correct. Correct.
Tiffany Yu: All right. I always responded with a link to the WHO or the CDC saying that if you were healthy and exhibit and no symptoms, and weren't going to be in the vicinity of anyone else who may be sick, then you didn't need to wear it. And so of course, now we know that the CDC and WHO have changed their opinion and here in San Francisco, it's by law that in public places now masks are required. I think the way that you did this was really beautiful. I mean, the article it's been seen by almost 40,000. For those of us who are in the West, who didn't grow up in mask culture, can you provide a little bit more context as to why we need to be wearing them?
David Walcott: Yeah, well, how I had approached making the argument was twofold. One, I sought to draw a sort of high level, picture of the contrast and approaches by the, I would say the largely the East and the West, right. The global East and the global West. So what I had seen was that the global East had managed to contain this virus surely, you know, certain specific, uh, institutions in the global East and what all of them had in common was wearing masks. And now, of course, naturally it's very easy to sort of derive that assumption as a confounding factor. What I think is significant enough to at least introduce the, idea of wearing masks into the conversations. And having ushered the idea of wearing masks into the conversation , the next step in determining any level of credibility was looking at the scientific evidence. And I dug deep into a few papers. I spoke to a few trusted peers whose opinion and sort of thinking skills I respect. Then ultimately we realized that fundamentally, what masks do is they prevent both the transmission and reception of respiratory disease. And that is supported by it's actually supported by scientific evidence that has been pretty well documented over the past I would say two decades. The only challenge that I think we faced globally was it's not something that we had been challenged to think about. And when we look at the extent to which COVID-19 spreads, masks have been shown to reduce the R0, which is the probability or the number of individuals that the virus is likely to spread from one single infected person and be assumed that it's three or four, which are in data suggests if you can reduce that number by 80%, it's surely a worthy proposition. And so ultimately the only way to trigger some sort of decline in the contagion is to reduce the R0, which is the extent to which it spreads again to a number below one, because what it means is that every individual is likely to pass the virus on to less than one person. And so over time you'll see a decline. And so I felt like masks were one, scientifically supported to be able to reduce the R0, or reduce the level of contagion and two, they were a relatively low barrier investment to make. Because they don't require a very high level of technical expertise. They should be relatively broadly available. So I felt like that was perhaps the line of best fit between effectiveness and reducing the contagion and really, practicality.
Tiffany Yu: Got it. We're gonna take a quick break here. And then when we come back, we will keep chatting with David.
[break]
Tiffany Yu: And we are back from the break. You're listening to this episode of Tiffany & Yu. I'm chatting with Dr. David Walcott. Before the break, we were chatting about this piece that he wrote for the World Economic Forum, around the evidence around wearing masks. I know for many of us who live in the West, it's a new behavioral change to try and slow the spread of COVID-19. David my last question for you on that is, what's the recommendation around N-95 masks versus a cloth covering?
David Walcott: Yeah. Well, I mean, the thing is recommendations have differed, from institution to institution, but, it would be ideal if everyone could wear N-95 masks. the supply dynamics are such that that's not practical. And so the, practical consensus is that N-95 masks should be left to our frontline healthcare workers who are sort of putting themselves in the line of fire every day and we should stick to surgical masks or below, right. so most citizens are wearing cloth masks, which I think is reasonable practice. Not necessarily because of their level of permeability. They're very permeable, but they reduce the amount of times that we put our hands to our mouth and they make you a lot more conscious of your hygiene. and so even if they generate some sort of placebo effect, they're still a significant benefit.
Tiffany Yu: I want to take things back and learn more about what's happening in Jamaica and the Caribbean. And so I remember about a month ago, I reached out to you David because I wanted you to come on the podcast. Took us about a month to figure some things out because, and I'm looking at this old note from you, you said, This virus is forcing us to take things a day at a time. and this was in mid April. You said in Jamaica, we had our case load double in the past three days. One day at a time has become a must. Now we're recording this in mid May. What does the situation look like now?
David Walcott: Our case number had ballooned. We were actually doing quite well in per capita terms , compared to other countries in the Caribbean. And what I felt like my role was was to find ways to share learnings from the globe, best practice learnings from the globe in Jamaica, as well as other Caribbean countries. But unfortunately I would suggest about two, three weeks ago, we had an episode of a community spread from a single night. And that had just driven a sudden upsurge in our case number. Fortunately, our local resources have executed aggressive contact tracing. And so we're finding that the number of new cases has dwindled over the past week. Our case load, just to give you a sense of numbers our case caseload increased by a factor of almost 10 in just about seven to 10 days. So it was a pretty aggressive increase, but the number of new cases has been slowly decreasing as we've continued to aggressively contact trace and we've increased our testing capacity. Now one of the good things I'll still share about Jamaica and its position right now is that there's enough public dialogue among thought leaders to ensure that the masses are relatively aware of the risks of COVID and I'm very proud to see that the level of health literacy has increased significantly. Another key thing that I think has positively defined our response here is for some reason, we appear to have a relatively low mortality. Now, COVID-19 is touted to have a mortality rate, fatality rate of anywhere between one to 4%. Experts will say the true mortality is between one and 1.5% if they get good care. And so we are just about on the brink of just under 2%, which I think is actually quite good and is certainly unexpected for an emerging market. Right. And so right now our priority is to of course keep case loads down as much as possible, or keep case loads controlled rather. but also ensure that mortality and fatality stay low.
Tiffany Yu: I'm thinking about the work you're doing in terms of working with governments in the Caribbean and helping supply them with PPE, but then also helping them manage this multilateral international task force. how much of your attention is kind of spent dealing with what's happening on the ground in the Caribbean versus communicating globally with all of these different stakeholders.
David Walcott: So in many ways I sort of see it as the same thing, with different channels, because there is such a massive overlap in the contents of the conversations. I mean, it's a pretty small of Delta for me to have a conversation with our sort of global resources on ventilators or on testing, and then have a similar conversation with the Jamaican government. And I think what is really interesting is being able to share insights, bilaterally, bi-directionally. So, to our global community, I've seen this work in Jamaica. This may be a value to you. And conversely for Jamaica, I've seen this, this seems to be best practice. Why don't we adopt it here? And an example I can give you is now we're ideating through how to increase our testing capacity out here. And it's been interesting to explore that as a problem solving question. Isn't that there's several solutions. Do we increase our operating hours to do we do we use robots to run things, is not feasible for us right now. Do we get different tests that have a higher turnover or do we use more intelligent means of testings? One example is pool testing and it's, you know, that has been sort of latest conversation I have had straddling the line between what's taking place in the global community. I'm in Jamaica. I mean, naturally, it takes up a bit of time balance, but apart from that, the content of the conversations is really the same.
Tiffany Yu: For sure. And one of my prior guests was Dr. Victor Pineda, who is part of this initiative called Cities for All around, how can we be more disability inclusive in our pandemic response? And a lot of the work he's doing is connecting local governments to really transfer best practices along policy and enforcement. And it's interesting, right? Because as Global Shapers, a part of our mandate is to be hyper-local. But right now globally, we are all experiencing, what I would call collective trauma and collective grief and the collective experience. And so you actually came out with another article in the World Economic Forum called How the Fourth Industrial Revolution can help us beat COVID-19. For our listeners, what is the Fourth Industrial Revolution? I start with definition.
David Walcott: So the Fourth Industrial Revolution really refers to the idea of the sort of phase of transformation that our world is going through. And it really represents a fundamental change in how we live and work and how we relate to each other and to our environment. And the defining pillar of this revolution is really technology. And the ways that technology has seeped into our lives and has enabled us in many ways. And so the central points, I was really aiming to drive across is that we have a broad arsenal of tools at our disposal. We have Big Data, we have AI and both of them have been leveraged pretty extensively in contact tracing and predictive models for how COVID is expected to spread, which informs, planning, et cetera. But at the same time, it's not sufficient to simply have these tools. These tools must be balanced by good solid leadership. That is the key message I wanted to share because I think that no one has experienced dealing with a pandemic in 2020, right. The last pandemic was 1918. And in as much as of course we have to the value, the knowledge that the historians and the epidemiologists have in terms of how that pandemic was dealt with, a pandemic in 1918 is not the same as a pandemic in 2020. And so we're really sort of figuring things out as we go along and in the process of using the tools available to us today, we have to also exercise a certain level of responsible leadership in how we decide to use these tools. So that was the main message I wanted to drive home. We have the tools we need to ensure that these tools are made with a certain level of leadership to really defend the security of a future.
Tiffany Yu: I've read the article and there's a headline here that says, if we do not have the tools of tomorrow, we must have the leadership of today. And I think what I appreciated about this piece is that I know that we are hyperfocused on the Fourth Industrial Revolution and emerging technologies. And there's a quote that I came across yesterday that said, it said, Emotional issues demand an emotional response and business issues demand a business response. And so it reminds me of this article to say, there's a very human element that is happening here as well. We can leverage Big Data and AI and all of these technologies, but we also need the people who are in charge to really take the lead and serve as models and stuff.
David Walcott: Absolutely, and I couldn't agree with that more. this really is a collective effort, right. There's case studies around the world will show that, the success of the entire response can be thwarted by a few bad apples. And so in addition to having these useful tools, it's important that there's a certain level of leadership that is able to ensure that the mass population buys into a certain vision of collective, surmounting of this problem. And that really needs to be, it cannot be understated or overstated rather how important it is for collective action to be demonstrated in fighting this fight. It's like the butterfly effect , butterfly flaps its wings, and there's a ripple effect across the world. As much as that is a sort of a frivolous metaphor, it really represents the sorts of the way we should be thinking about this problem because my actions really affect your actions and your actions affect those around you. And so it really takes a village to not raise a child in this case, but defeat COVID.
Tiffany Yu: I'm curious what things are going to look like as things start to loosen and we don't really know whether or not we'll have a vaccine yet. And I'm seeing the theme of this like serendipity or surrender, coming through there. I just wanted to, again, thank you for your leadership during this time, propelling yourself into action and coming out with these really great articles that are helping to combat misinformation, right? Because as we started the conversation around masks, it was hard in the beginning to know what information was the best recommended course of action. So all of that said, if people want to continue the conversation with you, I'll include links to your articles on the World Economic Forum. Are there other places that you'd like people to follow your work?
David Walcott: My work is published on my website http://novamedhealth.com.
It's a pleasure to be invited to share my thoughts and in these conversations. Every time I speak about my personal experiences, I learn something about myself as well in addition to learning something about you. So the, the, the gratitude comes from my side as well.
Tiffany Yu: This is, this is what I'm calling the social fabric. Grateful to know you, grateful to have you on my podcast. Grateful that we met, that we could also reconnect in this way. So I will close the episode here. Thanks for listening to this episode.