Election Day Newsletter

Below please find what was a snazzy newsletter, but now only simple text! It’s the thoughts that count. It’s also your vote that counts.

Vote to take action against the plague. Vote to feel empowered!

When early in the first lock down people spoke about staying at home watching TV as "easier than what your grandparents did in WWII," I silenced my little protest.

Humans react best in crisis by uniting. We volunteer, go to church, and put out German incendiary bomb fires with a neighborhood of men and metal trash can lids. Together. In times of trouble, we yearn to serve.

So far for so many, leadership and the nature of this pandemic have robbed us of that chance.

Voting and its' waiting in long lines outdoors with neighbors has been the first communal act of empowerment I've experienced this year. If for no other reason than to feel human and useful, GO VOTE!

State-by-state cell phone tracing apps: a chance for science communicators to show their stuff.

This morning, searching junk email to return my hoard of late-night online buys, I found an phone-tracing COVID app invite from the Virginia Department of Health (VDH).

VDH was in the vanguard of states working with an Apple-Google collaboration to create a COVID tracking application. Using low-energy bluetooth technology for phone-to-phone communication and encrypted "tokens" as identifiers, these apps could play a part in reducing spread. Although the 60% usage number has been thrown around as essential to create benefits, an earlier paper from the MIT Tech Review states "Oxford models found that the app has an effect at all levels of uptake." Facing a new wave, we need any slack we can get.

Trust is the currency of public health, and the public must trust this technology to use it. This is an opportunity for science and tech communicators: make it simple, safe, and appealing.

Research, understand, explain, and pitch your local DOH, health care organizations, and political representatives. Put a sandwich board on your dog and walk that cutie around.

Cat lovers: use that social media cat"che" to inform (and probably grow) your following. We're in this together, and the role of science communicator is made for this moment.

Exploring the possibilities of YouTube for science communication is a medium with explosive potential. Check out Mark Rober's clean water video with Bill Gates' cameo. It made me happy.

Please, take a photo of your animal billboard, attach your infographic, video, or pitch and send it to melicrawford@gmail.com or tag me @melbcb on IG or Twitter. I love to RT!

ART OF THE MONTH, It's what keeps us going.

If you have the time and the stomach, I recommend the new documentary Totally Under Control. It's on Hulu (so make up with your brother and get his password). Life since February has been a blur of sleepless nights, heroic moments, and stretches of unimaginable frustration. This documentary gives you the timeline, the validation, and the secure knowledge that our public health system was not what failed in this pandemic.