Making the Right Moves in a Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect our lives at multiple levels: our health, our daily lives and our communities. Dealing with the pandemic requires us to make effective decisions, communicate rapidly, and harness all our resources.

The COVID-19 pandemic — caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus — has challenged the world with unprecedented public health and economic crises. We need effective strategies to slow the spread of the virus.

We must be able to rapidly and affordably diagnose the virus, because a major reason for the extreme societal and economic disruptions is the lack of appropriate testing technology to easily identify infectious people, especially those who do not have symptoms. We also need effective decision making and communication at both the clinical and community level to mitigate SARS-CoV-2 transmission in schools, at work, and in the community at large.

In this virtual Stavros Niarchos Foundation Brain Insight Lecture Series event, we will hear from two experts from Columbia University who are involved in our response to the COVID-19 pandemic in very different ways. Dr. Dara Kass will reflect on decision making, both clinical and community, from the perspective of an emergency medicine doctor who, herself, was infected with the virus. She will also discuss how to communicate rapidly evolving information in an effective manner. Dr. Andrés Bendesky will discuss his lab’s work to develop a simple, affordable test that can be performed at home.