Dear Reader

Reflections on the ‘coronaversary’

The word “anniversary” typically connotes ultra-convivial events: the birthday of a dear one; golden celebrations of longstanding unions; defining historical moments that stir our national pride; silly, random holidays for things we love (because, darn it, this is America, and we deserve special days dedicated to doughnuts, tap dancing, “Star Wars” and turtles — you better get out of my way in the buffet line when it’s National Eat What You Want Day!). These are the annual observances that boost our happiness, hope and civic self-esteem.

“But in the years to come, when we reflect back on this crazy time, the word that But here we are, passed through the gate of a very different type of anniversary. It’s been more than many of us might think of a year since the coronafirst will be heroism.” virus pandemic made its conspicuous landing in our backyard, utterly upending life as we knew it and plunging our global population into a state of constant existential arrest. In response to the threats, losses, suffering and discord that have characterized this past pandemic year, we’ve also been witness to the remarkable ability of humans to rise creatively and bravely to the challenges facing them. You can call this adaptation or resilience, sure. But in the years to come, when we reflect back on this crazy time, the word that many of us might think of first will be heroism. We of course will remember and regale the truly heroic and tireless efforts of our essential and frontline workers (please show your appreciation for them, p. 13) and exemplary individuals whose expertise, endeavors and innovations helped turn the tide (you’ll want to read about one such person on p. 6), but I think we should also remember how the perilous circumstances of the pandemic engendered a type of ordinary, everyday heroism that is creditable to, well, the multitude of us. This banality of pandemic heroism — demonstrated daily in our faithful hewing to public health and safety measures and in the sacrifice and suspension of activities that put us and others at risk — has saved lives, keeping the morbidity rate in our greater metro area the lowest in the United States. That sounds like textbook heroism to me. So, this year on April 28 — the official National Superhero Day — reflect not only on the many standout heroes in our community fighting this pandemic and keeping society from toppling over, but honor yourself and your kids for your part in sticking to a safe course. The end is in sight!

— Patty Lindley, managing editor

APRIL 2021, VOL. 18, NO. 4 PUBLISHER Alayne Sulkin

EDITORIAL

MANAGING EDITOR Patty Lindley OUT + ABOUT EDITOR Nancy Chaney DIGITAL CONTENT EDITOR Vicky McDonald DIGITAL CONTENT PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Nicole Persun OUT + ABOUT EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Devon Hammer COPY EDITOR Sunny Parsons CONTRIBUTORS Gemma Alexander, Heidi Borst, JiaYing Grygiel, Tiffany Doerr Guerzon, Devon Hammer, Angie McCullagh, Sanya Pelini, Ph.D., Nicole Persun

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DIGITAL MARKETING MANAGER Lindsey Carter EMAIL + SOCIAL MEDIA SPECIALIST Angelica Lai DIGITAL MARKETING COORDINATOR Taryn Weiner

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BUSINESS MANAGER Carolyn Brendel

If the pandemic wasn’t an issue, what would be your family’s spring break dream destination?

I just finished a bike ride series about Chile, and I really want to go there.

Mexico! We had two Mexico trips canceled last year. We’re aching to go!

Repeat our Joshua Tree California trip

Maui!

Palm Springs: We’d rent a house with a pool, ride bikes, eat In-N-Out burgers, hike and revel in being warm and dry.

PARENTMAP EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Benjamin Danielson, M.D. CLINICAL PROFESSOR, UW SCHOOL OF MEDICINE PRACTICING PHYSICIAN, UW MEDICINE Joan Duffell RETIRED EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COMMITTEE FOR CHILDREN John Gottman, Ph.D. THE GOTTMAN INSTITUTE PROFESSOR EMERITUS, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON Laura Kastner, Ph.D. PSYCHIATRY + BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON Bea Kelleigh VICE PRESIDENT, DOVETAILING, LLC Yaffa Maritz, M.A. FOUNDER, LISTENING MOTHERS + COMMUNITY OF MINDFUL PARENTING Ron Rabin EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, KIRLIN CHARITABLE FOUNDATION Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MINDSIGHT INSTITUTE CONTACT INFORMATION

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Change Starts at Home

ParentMap wishes to thank the following organizations for supporting our recent event, Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, featuring activist Jeffery Robinson. Their support makes our commitment to providing antiracism education and resources to Washington families possible. Presenting sponsors Seattle Children’s Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle | Pacific Medical Centers Community partners Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center Cascade Public Media | Citizen University Holocaust Center for Humanity Rainier Scholars | TADA Partners

Learn more about The Who We Are Project at thewhoweareproject.org.

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Meet Avi Schiffmann

This local teen created a website to track the global spread of COVID-19

By Patty Lindley

When Avi Schiffmann was honored as the 2020 Webby Awards Person of the Year for creating his nCoV2019.live website, an interactive dashboard that updates in real-time to provide accurate global data on coronavirus cases, deaths, testing and vaccinations, he shared a five-word acceptance speech that is the matterof-fact motto of his life: You can learn anything online.

Schiffman was 17 and a junior at Mercer Island High School when he launched the site, in late December 2019; at the time, the coronavirus had not yet been detected outside of China. Within a few months, as the virus spread insidiously around the globe, Schiffman’s website grew apace to become one of the most essential resources for trustworthy data on the pandemic. By the time the esteemed Dr. Anthony Fauci presented Schiffmann with the Person of the Year award the following May, the site had already provided information to more than 600 million people from every country on Earth. Fauci called the tracking tool “an invaluable resource that sounded the alarm on the virus and its spread, notably calling attention to its severity long before it was broadly recognized.”

While the creation of the coronavirus dashboard site is a standout accomplishment, it is by no means the only project to Schiffmann’s credit for 2020 and beyond. ParentMap caught up with him recently to learn more about his impressive achievements over the past pandemic year and to hear more about what’s next for him.

How did the coronavirus dashboard site come about? I had a friend in Asia who was talking about it — he was going into lockdown in China. I just thought it would be interesting to build a dashboard website to track information about the virus. The site first became popular in Asia, just because the virus had not really spread [from there yet]. I think there were something like 51 cases at that time. Then the first case came to the United States — to Washington, which was kind of crazy. So, I’m tracking this virus in China, and all of a sudden it is a couple miles from where I am.

In mid-February, I posted [about the site] on Nextdoor. Someone gave a tip to a reporter at GeekWire, and then they wrote an article about me and my site. Within 24 hours [of the article being published], I was doing interviews for The Seattle Times, The Today Show and so on. That’s how the site initially became recognized in the media.

How much traffic has the site received over the past year? I’d say in the range of hundreds of millions to 1, maybe 2, billion visitors. I remember I had a peak of 36 million visitors in a single day in late March or early April of last year. It was pretty crazy to think about how to just deal with that — computer-wise, servers and stuff.

Have you ever been hassled for scraping data from domains? For countries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, it was hard to get the data in the first place. And the data that I do get, it’s hard to know if you can even trust it. That’s been a big thing I’ve had to deal with. I’ve received long emails in Chinese calling me the devil and things like that. It has made for quite an eventful year.

How have your friends and family reacted to all of this? I have always worked on my own little things — developing websites, video games, 3D modeling, stuff like that. So, it was kind of like, “Oh, Avi’s working on his own little websites.” I didn’t really talk that much about it with them. Back then, when I was

still in school, people in my Running Start class at Bellevue College were using my website, but they had no idea that it was my site, that the site was being run by a teenager.

Talk about some of your other recent projects. I made two other bigger websites in 2020. I basically developed a site for every major issue in 2020. I did a coronavirus website [nCoV2019.live], I did a protest tracker website [2020protests.com] and I did a whole election site [whoto.vote]. For the election, I found it kind of hard to know exactly what I was voting for. So, I thought it’d be cool to make a really nice user interface to easily navigate the issues and candidate stances on them.

Providing data to people who can’t easily access it is something I’m very passionate about, and something I think you can see at all three of these websites. They’re all variants of just making it easier to find information.

How have the experiences of the past year influenced your own sense of what being a good citizen or a change-maker is? I definitely would say the biggest thing is that I’ve learned there’s so much an individual can do. You doomscroll through social media and just see all these things that are so terrible, and it feels like there’s really nothing you can do about it. But working on these websites really has given me the naive confidence that I actually can do a lot of things as an individual to solve the problems we face.

Other than obsessively refreshing college application portals, what are you working on right now? I come up with a thousand ideas for websites every single day. I’ve also been trying to learn a lot more about the startup world: raising money and how pitching to investors works. Just kind of stumbling around it, and also learning more fancy development things and getting better at that. ■

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Explore interactive exhibits and find ways you can take action at the Gates Foundation Discovery Center, discovergates.org.

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