Introducing the COVID Defense Initiative (CDI)

On By gyonas4 Comments
Gerry Yonas introduces COVID Defense Initiative
Illustration by Jenna Gibson

On March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan gave a televised address on national security that surprised everyone as he challenged “the scientific community who gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.” His brief words led to the creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and initiated my involvement in a giant program that, although it did not lead to an effective missile defense, did effectively flummox the Soviet Union.

Now we face a global health, economic, political and social threat that could possibly be as risky for all of us as the strategic missile threat we faced in the 1980s. I think we need to approach this real threat from a systems engineering approach, starting with a presidential call for action not just to the bioscience community, but also to the nation’s engineering community.

What I am suggesting is a multilayer defense involving detection and response similar to the concepts we created in the 1983 Fletcher Study. I described this study in my book “Death Rays and Delusions” and the basic approach was an information-based layered system of systems. The needed technology did not exist at that time and is still not available, so the notion of applying this methodology to a very dangerous, contagious and asymptomatic virus may seem a bit unrealistic The biggest deficiencies at that time were the need for space deployed high sensitivity and high specificity sensors, directed energy and kinetic interceptors and the command and control for the entire system.

I may be overly optimistic, but I am suggesting that the COVID Defense Initiative can provide an extremely useful approach. The virus defense technology needed for this system is no more available today than the technology we needed 35 years ago for the SDI, but now is the time for the national commitment and investment to make it real.

I envision a future system beginning with a readily available real time virus detection system. The  reliable sensors would be coupled through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Syndromic Surveillance Program to other symptomatic measurements and would provide the means to identify the threat and track it using millions of other simultaneous data sources.

Facility design would be required to prevent the infected person from entering an otherwise virus free location. A next step would be an immediate antiviral treatment  that might be provided using an inhaler. If the detection, reporting and treatment are included in a widely available system of systems, we could achieve a highly effective defense system that could be coupled with a vaccine to reduce the probability of infection. This multilayer approach would reduce the probability of spreading of the disease. As in our multilayer SDI system concept, there would still be a threat, but the probability of infection would become acceptably small .

Multi-layer missile defense and the coronavirus

On By gyonas7 Comments

My suggested missile defense approach to defense against the coronavirus would require a layered defense involving a  futuristic breathalyzer and inhaler.

I assume the virus is mostly transmitted by droplets in coughs, but the problem of pneumonia is caused by virus in the lungs,  not the nose or throat.  So I suggest the first layer of defense would be to examine a person who tries to enter a previously sterilized facility through a secure positive pressure  revolving door. The interior of the revolving door would be sterilized to intercept any virus on the person.

The person would first blow into a breath analyzer that would capture the air from the lungs.  After a strong exhale into the collector, a breath analyzer would detect any virus in exhaled droplets. An as-yet-to-be-developed sensor could be an instant  laser induced fluorescence and spectral analyses.  I assume the fluorescence is unique, but this needs to be determined. This is similar to the mid course discrimination problem where we require an excellent ROC curve.

This sensor could be embodied in a miniaturized virus  breathalyzer including a miniature laser and light spectrum analyzer. If the sensor is very sensitive, but not very specific, an  RNA based very specific real time sensor  might  be necessary after the first  positive reading.

If the virus is detected, the next layer would trigger the intercept of the virus. This would be an inhaler function possibly attached to the analyzer that sprays a virus killing drug into the lungs. Such drugs have  already been demonstrated in vitro and are being tested in hospitals.

If the result is a true negative, the person is allowed to enter the already certified facility. The next layer is needed if the person is detected as a true positive, and after treatment with the inhaler,  entrance is prohibited by the door.

The next layer of defense begins with a GPS labeled  signal that is sent to the defense management computer. Information giving the detection and treatment  information then permits contact  tracking and follow up of the person.

canary wearing a face mask

Canary ROC curve and architecture

On By gyonas10 Comments

A ROC curve shows the relationship between a sensor’s sensitivity and specificity. If the sensor is sensitive but can’t discriminate a true positive signal from a false signal it is useless. That was the problem I have written about on the subject of mid course missile defense and the problem of discrimination of real targets from decoys. Since we could not find a practical approach to discrimination, we could not make mid course intercept work. We expected the interceptor missile would have a terrible ROC curve if the adversary deployed effective decoys.

Let’s say the problem is to deploy a sensor in a coal mine to protect the miners. Since a canary succumbs to CO before the miners are affected, the canary provides a useful warning. The ROC curve for the canary makes it an excellent sensor to detect a poisonous environment. We could instead find a particularly weak miner and use  the miner as a warning indicator, but waiting to see if miners show some symptoms would not be a reasonable approach. To improve the miner as a sensor, we could try to create a ROC curve for miners based on if they they have CO in their lungs, are pre symptomatic,  slightly sick with a fever,  or just becoming unconscious, but the canary is certainly the preferred approach.

So  would we  use coal miners as sensors and then shut down coal mines if miners die on the job? Instead we could ventilate the coal mines to avoid CO build up and still use the canary, or maybe install a more modern CO sensor and keep the coal mines operating. I admit  coal mines are going away, but the metaphor might be useful.

So I wondered, why we are using people as sensors for detecting virus containing aerosols that are inhaled? The ROC curve for the RNA sensor has not been published, but I suspect its performance depends on when the sample is collected relative to time of the exposure of the person, how well the swab is stuck up somebody’s nose,  and the sensitivity of the analysis. One article claimed the false negative rate was 25%, but no ROC curve was published. An additional sensor such as fever detection could result in excessive false positives. If just a fever detector is used there would be unacceptable false negatives.

If instead, if  we have a closed space, such as an assisted living center, a business, air plane, restaurant, movie theater  or factory,  it could be ventilated with filtered air, sterilized  and an aerosol analysis sensor such as  an optical bio sensor could be used as a detector.

The optical sensor might be extremely sensitive and specific to the virus molecule. Except it does not exist as yet, but it is not impossible….I guess since considerable research is under way.

People would enter the protected environment through a revolving door that has its own aerosol sensor to instantly detect if the person entering has contaminated breath or clothing, and if so, the person would be rejected. This suggestion would require a major architecture redesign approach involving reliance on this as yet unavailable canary.

Liar, liar, pants on fire

On By gyonas5 Comments

The presidential impeachment hearings are a good example of one aspect of human behavior that I studied recently, when I was involved in a science and technology advisory panel. The question we addressed was: What methods can an observer use to determine if a witness; or if there are two opinions, which side; is credible when they give contradictory answers? It would be wonderful if we really had some method as we watch what is going on in Washington.

In the hearings, the Republicans accused the Democrats of “making false allegations.” The Democrats similarly accused the Republicans of “making statements that ranged from incomplete renditions to outright falsehoods.” Trump tweeted that “the Democrats are liars” and a senator called Schiff “the worst liar in politics.”

The purpose of the panel I served on was to determine if there were technical methods to determine if a subject was telling the truth. Our panel determined that the gold standard of deception detection was the polygraph that measured blood pressure, pulse, respiration and skin conductivity while the subject answered a series of questions. What we discovered from interviewing many experts in the field was that the test really determined a psychological stress response that could be characteristic of a guilty answer, or a response from an innocent person who feels intimidated or even no response at all. In other words, the results were not reliable.

There were also examples in the press of use by the CIA on Guantanamo detainees of sleep deprivation and water boarding to elicit confessions, but they were also found to be not useful and deemed a form of torture. Acute stress induced by torture was also found to destroy memory. From our discussions with professional interrogators, the one approach that seemed to work was to have extensive prior knowledge and then intimidate the subject in order to induce a confession. An expert at interrogation knew how to use psychological methods to condition a person to “spill the beans” with no gadgets at all.

So what does this have to do with my supposed knowledge about missile defense? One of the most controversial and contradictory aspects of my more than 50 years of participation in the technical community  was the response to President Reagan’s request in his national security speech March 23, 1983. Reagan asked the “scientific community…to turn their great talents …to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete” … to “intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies.” His speech was the starting point of my several years involved in trying to satisfy his request by first helping to make a plan for, and then participating in, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) as its first Chief Scientist.

Many years later, L. Wood, a primary representative of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories’ proposed X-ray laser program, told science writer J. Hecht, “SDI (AKA Star Wars) was a brilliantly successful bluff…illusion of an awesome technological capability.” Wood said, “I got the results I wanted. The Soviet Union collapsed.”

If there was an intentional hoax, Wood and others sure had me fooled since I was convinced nobody was bluffing. In my opinion, Reagan hated nuclear weapons as much as he hated Soviet Communism, and he believed we could find a way to defend ourselves, that is if we jointly managed a transition to eliminate nukes and then share a defense system. I became convinced that in fact SDI had little impact on the Soviet Union that went bankrupt on their own without our help through their society riddled with deception, mismanagement and moral confusion.

But what about the truth of the SDI? Gorbachev told the Politburo, “Our main goal now is to prevent another new stage in the arms race from taking place. If we do not do that, the danger for us will grow … an arms race that is beyond our strength. We will lose, because now for us that race is already at the limit of our possibilities.” There is no question that Gorbachev was a believer, even though his advisers, such as Evgeny Velikhov, the principal Soviet scientific leader, claimed it was a delusion.

At the same time, Gorbachev’s Military-Industrial Commission advisers told him, “Americans think that a multi echelon missile defense system should allow, at most 0.1 percent of the attacking missiles to get through” and their belief was that the key for missile defense would be “a new type of nuclear weapons consist of transforming part of the energy from a nuclear explosion into powerful streams of directed x-rays or electromagnetic radiation or stream of high energy particles…capable of striking in space or from space ballistic missiles, their warheads, satellites and the targets …at distances of several thousand kilometers.” The advisers added, “Full scale of these weapons is expected to occur in the second half of the 1990s.”

The head of their nuclear programs, Victor Mikhailov, was so convinced that nuclear directed energy was a realistic future possibility that he argued to stop such work that he called the “Evil Jinn.” There was no lack of conviction in the Soviet Union that directed nuclear weapons were critical to the success of the SDI program, even though at the time, Donald Kerr, the head of Los Alamos argued it was an exaggeration, Bud McFarlane, Reagan’s National Security Advisor, said the program was a “sting,” and much latter Reagan’s scientific adviser, Jay Keyworth, even called the work at LLNL “unadulterated lies.”

So what about the lying liars, whether it be in Congress, among scientists, weapons developers and politicians? In my opinion, the best expert on the subject is George Constanza from the television series “Seinfeld.” His memorable quote was, “It is not a lie if you believe it,” and I believe he is right.

Trust me.