Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1223727
19.03.2020 9 OPINION Kevin-James Fenech Go big and fast T he current COVID19 pandemic is crippling our economy; the eco- nomic effects of which will be felt in the months to come. Whilst I appreciate that the immediate priority of the Government is to fight the disease and protect public health; the government needs to also think of the necessary economic measures to help our economy bounce back when the time comes. To my mind the government has to go 'big and fast'; immediately. is is the only way to save our economy; our coun- try. e state needs to help businesses ride the storm in the short term and cash flow is paramount. No business should be al- lowed to make people redundant during this pandemic and the Government can act as a guarantor for peoples' wages/sal- aries until the health crisis stabilises. If the government does this, businesses can withstand a 4-8 week lockdown and when eventually it comes to kick-starting the economy all business will be ready and waiting to hit the ground running. We must do the same for our key in- dustries, especially those which have been severely impacted since if we do not protect our key drivers of economic growth it will take months if not years to recover. e tourism industry is an obvi- ous candidate but there are others. Sure this would come at a temporary, huge, financial cost to the government but the money will be paid back (even with interest) over the medium to long term, as profits resume. Given that our debt to GDP ratio was until recently circa 43% of GDP, there is plenty of room for manoeuvre for the state to borrow on behalf of all us and act as a guarantor and this in the name of stability and due to exceptional circum- stances. Failure to provide this sort of big and fast security, risks leaving an economy in tatters, confidence destroyed and re- covery rates stretched to years instead of months. e government therefore needs to be very bold in this precise moment. It needs to focus on the long term and see the big picture. is is no time to dither or penny-pinch. is is the time for the state to act like a bridge between the current crisis and the eventually economic recovery. Only the state has this sort of muscle, to protect our economy; so it is the state that must step in. We are after all in the midst of one of the world's worst ever crisis. I realise that we don't know what the impact or cost is going to be; since it is far too early to estimate. Yet this shouldn't be an excuse to wait-and-see or wait-and-quantify. If the government does that it will miss the opportunity to ensure the post-COV- ID19 economic recovery is swift and fast. erefore, the state must act big and fast. I can't repeat these words enough! Let's also not forget the human element here, we need to calm peoples' fears; there is already enough anxiety with the COVID-19 virus, all we need is people being made redundant and losing their ability to earn a living! is would be a disaster, with not just economic hard- ships but also a breakdown in civic so- ciety. Put another way, we will all be hit eco- nomically and financially in such a sce- nario. So there is no point waiting to quantify the cost or duration of this cri- sis. e government needs to think of en- suring all industries are ready to hit the ground running when economic recov- ery is back on. Since as soon as cash flow is positive; revenues normalised and eventually profits return, the once in a lifetime 'COVID19 financial guarantee' can and will be paid off in the medi- um-to-long term. I think there are three scenarios which can unfold: An economic slowdown fol- lowed by V-shaped recovery, a recession which we will come out of this year or a deep recession. Whatever the outcome and whichever scenario unfolds, with the government providing an immediate blanket guaran- tee for the short-term, this will protect our capability to recover as fast as pos- sible. People live in hope no matter what the hardship but the government needs to give them something to hope for. e government has a unique chance to pro- vide such hope, allay fears and install confidence for the future. By doing so, we will come through this crisis stronger and ready for better days. e Government needs to go in big + fast in this crisis and every single worker needs to be protected for the 'common good' otherwise there will be a complete collapse of state and we have collectively over the generations worked far too hard to let our beloved country do this. Kevin is the founder and owner of JOB Search - jobsearch.mt and FENCI Consulting fenci.eu. He is a management consultant and business advisor by profession, focusing on strategy, human resources and recruitment. He has a passion for anything related to business and has written about the topic for over 10 years in most major newspapers or journals Alexiei Dingli Prof Alexiei Dingli is a Professor of AI at the University of Malta and has been conducting research and working in the field of AI for more than two decades, assisting different companies to implement AI solutions. He forms part of the Malta.AI task-force, set up by the Maltese government, aimed at making Malta one of the top AI countries in the world Gaming Covid-19: Let's defeat the virus by playing a game! T he entire world is worried about the spreading of the coronavirus. We are locked inside our homes feeling powerless. Computers keep us connected to the outside world and allow us to maintain our sanity. But can we do more to help out the scientific communi- ty? e answer is, YES! Everyone can do his share to help medical researchers find a vaccine and stop the spread of the virus. e good news is that we don't need to be biomedical scientists. All you have to do is become a citizen scientist (the practice of public participation and collaboration in scientific research to increase scientific knowledge). To do so, ordinary people share and contribute to data monitoring and col- lection programs voluntarily. In reality, one doesn't need much to participate! In the case of the coronavirus research, all we have to do is play a free game availa- ble here https://tinyurl.com/BeatCOV- ID-19 called Foldit. e game works by presenting users with a puzzle, and they have to solve it. e underlying idea is rather simple. We all know that our body consists of various cells and these cells need pro- teins to break down food, send signals and loads of other stuff. ese proteins are made up of rows of elements (such as carbon, oxygen, sulfur, etc.) all hold- ing each other like a chain. However, the chain is not in a straight line but folded to make it compact. Different proteins then interact with each other if they have a matching shape. ink of it as a lock and a key interacting with each other. Only the correct key can open a specific lock. e Coronavirus Foldit game displays the part of the coronavirus protein, which usually interacts with humans. e players have to design a folded protein to match the coronavirus and block those interactions. is task can be rather complicated in real-life since a protein can consist of hundreds of elements. Nevertheless, the game pre- sents it as a simple dragging task. Foldit attempts to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans' puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins. e University of Washington will then test the most promising solution as a possible real-world vaccine for COV- ID-19. Some people have their doubts about this approach, but it did work in the past when a Foldit player helped re- searcher decode the AIDS virus in 2011. Figuring out which of the possible structures is the best is regarded as one of the hardest problems in biology. Current methods take a lot of time and money, even for computers. If gaming is not for you, you can still help research- ers by allowing them to use your com- puter. One can do so just by download- ing a tiny application called Folding@ home (https://tinyurl.com/BeatCOV- ID-19Home) and let it run in the back- ground. e program will then link your computer to an international network that uses distributed programs to chew through massive computing tasks. You can still turn the application off at any time whenever you want but if the com- puter is lying idle, might as well allow scientists to use its power. Once they have this computing pow- er available, scientists then create algo- rithms to solve the folding problem us- ing Artificial Intelligence. e latest of these companies is Google's DeepMind which just released a tool called "free modelling" to help scientists predict protein structures for previously unseen proteins. ey want to reduce the time taken to predict the protein structure since such experiments typically take months in the lab. In so doing, they are hoping to stop the spread of the virus and save some lives. In a locked-down world, the feeling of helplessness can be overwhelming. But today's machines can do miracles. ey can help us to contribute directly or passively to the advancement of science. e choice is ours. And the great thing about it is that one does not require any medical expertise. So while we're all at home, why don't we actively help the fight against the COVID-19 by down- loading these apps?