Only 10% of designers understand design ethics and what it means to save society. Design has a minimal bias on who is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in society. Design is a very outward discipline. It accommodates the poor, middle-class and rich income earners. Design is meant to care for everyone you and I hate and love. Design looks at reality objectively. The law looks at society subjectively. Hence, my professor Dr Soheil Ashrafi once stated the truth about the law, “The law cannot please every morality; design can”. And in saying that, as the great Kevin Samuels once stated, “Technology was made to challenge nature”. Design is very understanding of the human biological imperatives.

Everyone will die one day, but everyone reaches old age at different times to a point where even hospital capacity isn’t overwhelmed, making a practical society. Viral pandemics don’t care about capacity.

I read many books about healthcare workers’ and laboratorists’ experiences on the front and statistics before the pandemic. I had to stop the gunman from walking in and shooting everyone. I knew what would happen to first and third-world countries. I sometimes am so baffled by what I learn from all that reading. Imagine knowing all the chaos that would occur on a large scale and knowing that it would be genocide to sit back and let it happen. Imagine knowing how flawed the tools were for epidemic containment that cost healthcare workers, the public their lives and the economy because people ranging from poor to rich are the backbone of the economy. 

A whopping 58% of healthcare workers who tried to contain the Ebola outbreak from 2014 to 2015 lost their lives; they left the more giant killers to assist with the more diminutive killer (Ebola). Malaria (the biggest killer) killed 50 times more than the Ebola death toll. I found a safe material for the garments in a technical textile book that wouldn’t put the healthcare workers in danger (but is not feasible on a pandemic scale); then, I found a humanitarian communicative system that healthcare workers used for outbreaks since the 1960s and planned how that would function for responders and then I thought of rapid computational genome systems which computer scientists never invented. No fast genome systems were invented to keep up with that 40% to 90% mortality rate virus because its overestimated mutation rate was 9.5 until 2020 by Ark Innovations. 

Emotionally by Jan 2019—I was swimming in a pool of my tears and sweat because nobody understood ‘probability.’

Look—90% of product designers do commercial work. They’re not impacting the global economic place with world-improving products/services. And most companies settle for mediocrity by employing people who don’t want to grow the 10% of designers contributing meaningfully.

When people say, “Pandemics are normal”, they don’t know that superviruses (if they go global) will be the demise of our human biological imperatives. Even social media is disagreeable with our human biological imperatives. Everything has a capacity.

The notion that ‘work from home’ was a revolution could’ve been done without a pandemic. Why didn’t people who passed their probation period or have excellent performance ratings at work get to work from home before the pandemic? Yes, money through public transportation spins the economy. But preventing pandemics spins the global economy.

You can expand that 10% by doing construction, biomedical engineering, engineering (all disciples), computer science and Industrial Design (to design medical equipment and devices) or any sustainability discipline. 

I would encourage young men, in particular, to be excellent in those fields because men have designed everything in this world since the beginning of time, and men can design more sustainable economic infrastructures.

I’ve got a little test for you—tell your loved ones you’ll learn how to prevent pandemics ethically and see how they react.

For the last couple of years, I’ve emphasised that I wanted men to become first responders. Being a first responder is very demanding, and many thanks will go into this position.

Under honest and ethical intentions and actions, merit places our purpose at the height of societal worth. It’s an indescribable feeling to know that most people primarily favour this purpose to prevent pandemics ethically, and most of the time, I want it for everyone.

But what about the women? The women will also be responsible for keeping those on the frontlines and those legally allowed to disclose what is happening on the frontlines to live and be free to express freedom of speech.

Women will be taking charge of Service Desk duties which consist of the following:

• Responsible for staff access details
•   Sound knowledge of medical devices and diagnosis knowledge
•   Subscribing medical staff
•   Not disclosing private information to the public
•   Collecting relevant qualifications from healthcare workers
•   Linking bank details for medical staff
•   Data entry
•   Addressing first responders’ information enquiries on devices and function(s)
• Managing dispatch of stock

Accounts Payable:

• Process services annual payments
•  Process staff payments

First Responders:

• Sound knowledge of medical devices and diagnosis knowledge
•   Liaising with Service Desk if there are any questions on devices and function(s)
•   Liaising with healthcare workers in realtime
•   Managing P1 to P4 cases between junior and senior level responders by task allocation using ticket tagging
•   Negotiating with air and water services for risk mitigation for the spread of the virus(es) by utilising resources for prevention methods
•   Collecting data for cases by liaising with healthcare workers and colleagues

Service Desk roles may be quieter or busier than responder roles. However, the responsibilities test emotional tameness and dealing with life-and-death situations. First responders are more in leadership roles and understand the very function of devices that assist with risk mitigation. Risk mitigation requires a lot of practicality when it comes to being resourceful. In contrast, computer scientists, immunologists, material engineers and programmers must create diagnostic devices and communication systems between WHO, CDC, UNICEF, Red Cross and other health organisation data centres for borders, airlines, and travel boats to mitigate the risk of rapid public exposure and treatment.

Men and women working alongside each other are way more powerful when we understand gendered natural choices. And guess what? It’s all legal. Reporting the crisis in lab or frontline outbreaks right through to cross-contamination is legal. It’s been legal since the 1970s when Roger Tomlinsons’ invention to report outbreaks came into play.

Essentially both teams are responsible for the global economy and people are the economy.