What can one do about this COVID-19 madness?

One can be nervous about the numbers of confirmed patient all day long, or one can step up and do something to help.

What can a group of people out of Sunnyvale do about this COVID-19 madness?

They can form a social media group worrying about the situation all day long, or they can come up with some plan and see it through to help.

And that’s what we do: step up to help the community!

The Map Reduce Way to Tackle Uncertainty

Originally, we had 18 volunteers, trying to source face masks to donate to local hospitals, city governments, public service agencies and community. All of us were the first timers regarding this import/export workflow, there are a lot of uncertainties we were faced with:

CDC recommendations are changing everyday, which masks are accepted by the hospitals and city?

How do we guarantee the quality of the masks purchased?

How do we pay the vendors?

How do we make sure the shipments can make through two customs and arrive at Sunnyvale?

How are we going to distribute them to the places that are in urgent needs of these masks?

How do we verify that the donees are really who they claim to be?

All of these questions were tangled together so much that we could hardly make any decision. After two days hectic discussion, we finally found a engineering solution:

Let’s do it a map-reduce way! (now you know that I am a software engineer)

Under the same mission, each of us go talk to different vendors, and pay them if enough confidence has been built up; monitor the shipment, and then check the quality and make the donation as soon as it’s available.

By doing this, we can still share information with each other, but we delegate the responsibility to each volunteer, and diluted the risk: If one purchase fails in any way, all we lose is that payment, not all. And if it’s small amount of shipment, it’s more likely to be allowed in two customs, even in this era of tension-love-flip-around.

And it worked!

Within five days, we made the first donation of 800 surgical masks to Sunnyvale DPS! And our dear officers didn’t keep them for themselves, they then donated to the local senior centers in the city! Respect!

Bigger Purchased Donation

When Sunnyvale Mayor Larry Klein told me that in some local hospitals, “they will soon be tying scarves around peoples faces instead of having masks”, my heart was broken. and immediately made an order of 8000 masks, among them are some expensive N95 respirators.

This time the decision was quick, I asked myself, what is your choice:

The money put into risk, or the lives are already in the risk?

I chose the lives, clearly.

After the order, I have been refreshing the UPS shipment update pages everyday, praying that everything goes through. At some point, when people told me that the USA custom may forfeit the masks because it’s in great need in New York state. My first reaction was, that would still be great because I know it’s going to be put into use to protect more people!

Yesterday, it finally arrived at my door in 5 packages!

Immediately, I checked the quality with water, fire and static, to make sure that it’s water proof, the middle layer is high quality cloth material, and enough sticky power to prevent droplets spreading out.

And they all passed the tests!

Within 30 minutes, the first donation was made to our Sunnyvale Post Office via pickup!

The same afternoon, we made another one to Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Medical Center.

Looking at the picture above, don’t you think that our doctors and staff at the front of the battlefield against the COVID-19 virus should be wearing masks? But they simply could not because there is no masks to wear! I cannot tell you how saddened I was, specially when I saw their smiling face, it made me more sad…

Kudos to our doctors and nurses, you are the true heroes!

When you are there fighting for us, we will make sure to cover your back!!!

Later, after a full day’s work, Dr. Enoch Choi picked up another 900 masks on behalf of his hospital. He is the new Medical Director of at Valley Health Center Urgent Care (San Jose), and I spent 3 days trying to verify his identity, to make sure he was the one who are leading the doctors at “the county clinic who is the only outpatient (non-admitted to hospital) place to screen for Covid-19”. Dr. Choi later told me that I was the first donor who checked so rigorously before the donation. Sorry Dr. Choi, I just had to make sure these masks be used by people who really need them, and there won’t be a second time of such scrutiny!

Another reason for the identity check was to make sure that these masks, after going through all these days of waiting and praying, should not be handed to the hoarders who want to make money out of it. So I had to be really careful when make the first donation to the hospitals.

What is Next?

More donations will be made to Sunnyvale City and DPS, and a good part of these masks will also be made available for seniors who really need these masks.

After the first donation, medias found me via Sunnyvale DPS, and I did some interviews with two of them (KTVU interview, KTSF Channel 26 interview). It’s a small thing, but if more people could be inspired to do the same thing for the community, why not?

Per the request of a lot of friends who want to be part of this effort, I reached out to Silicon Valley Chinese Association Foundation (SVCAF) for the help to set up a donation channel so we can do more!

Another big order will be made today or tomorrow, thanks to the surport of SVCAF. They not only helped to setup a donation channel so more people can be part of this effort, but also offered $5,000 for sooner purchases!

Thank you SVCAF!

Project #StrongerTogether

Today, after everything was proven to be working, I proudly kick off the Project #StrongerTogether, it’s community helping community, and it’s coming together, covering each other’s back so we can win this battle.

It was started from Sunnyvale, but there is no reason that it should stay in just Sunnyvale. We can definitely do more!

For people who want to take part of this efforts, you can either reach out to me for volunteer opportunities or chip in some amount of monetary donations via SVCAF (https://www.svcaf.org/strongertogether). When you do donate, please make sure that the amount should have a change of $0.19, so that it can be accounted to Project #StrongerTogether; and if you have corporation matching, please donate directly at SVCAF link, then ask for matching from your company.

Because everyday counts, and the sooner we can make the next donation purchase, the safer our community will be.

We may be keeping our social distances nowadays, but we are more united together than ever!

And we will win this battle together and strong!

For more real time update about this project, please go my twitter handle @tonyguan2010