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Daily Archives: March 18, 2020

We Live in Zoom Now

The New York Times: “…Teenagers have jokingly referred to themselves as “Zoomers” online for years; now the name is literal. Overnight, Zoom has become a primary social platform for millions of people, a lot of them high school and college students, as those institutions move to online learning. Zoom Video Communications is a videoconferencing company in San Jose, Calif., that has been thrust into the spotlight over the past week. On Monday morning, its iOS app became the top free download in Apple’s App Store. On Sunday, nearly 600,000 people downloaded the app, its biggest day ever, according to Apptopia, which tracks mobile apps. While the stock market crashes, Zoom shares have soared this year, valuing the company at $29 billion — more than airlines like Delta, American Airlines or United Airlines. Zoom has been preparing for this moment since the new coronavirus began spreading in China in January. Even then it was easy to see that Zoom’s primary customer base — videoconferencing desk workers — would become more reliant on its services while quarantined at home. So the company began closely monitoring its capacity and started hosting free training sessions. In China, Zoom dropped its 40-minute limit for free calls. But no amount of planning could have anticipated the company’s emergence as a cultural phenomenon used to host parties, concerts, church services and art shows. Zoom could not have prepared to become a meme…”

Presidential Powers and Response to COVID-19

Presidential Powers and Response to COVID-19. Lawrence O. Gostin, JD; James G. Hodge Jr, JD, LLM; Lindsay F. Wiley, JD, MPH. JAMA. Published online March 18, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.4335 [h/t Mary Whisner] “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) modeling suggests that, without mitigation, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes… Continue Reading

Recent changes in Internet traffic during the pandemic

Cloudflare Blog [this posting has charts identifying traffic around the world]: “…Over the last few weeks, the Cloudflare Network team has noticed some new patterns and we wanted to share a few of them with you. Entire countries are watching their leaders. Last Friday evening, the US President announced a State of Emergency in the… Continue Reading

ABA principles to better align legal education licensure to 21st century

“The American Bar Association Commission on the Future of Legal Education today issued a set of principles and recommendations to more closely align legal education and licensure with the objective of better addressing the legal needs of the public and the nation’s access to justice problems. The commission outlined its set of principles in a commentary… Continue Reading

Caring for COVID-19 patients – Hospitals will not be able to handle the volume of patients

Can Hospitals Around the Nation Keep Up? – Harvard Global Health Institute. Counting every bed, in every major hospital market, to inform community response – Cambridge, MA, March 17, 2020 — “When it comes to caring for a surge of COVID-19 patients, a closer look at hospital capacity in communities across the United States reveals… Continue Reading