Coronavirus

[Singer3000]

Ahem:

Fair enough

 

[SebastianR]

"There is sufficient uncertainty that I am going to cancel that Ryanair flight. Instead I'll buy a $40k car", said no one ever.

Not directly. But take my parents as example: they used to travel extensively by bus/train (Europe). They are elderly now, and want to avoid the risk of infection and start to take the car instead. Of course a couple of trips by car doesn't make them buy a new car. But I think that this may tip the scale in a few purchase decisions of people in similar circumstances. People still want to move. Your own car is less contagious than a train, a bus or a plane.

 

[lascavarian]

Author/doctor of book “Superbugs” on CNBC is saying likely best test data will first come out of South Korea. Thinks their mortality MAY be in the .4% but still early. Pretty good news.

 

[jerry33]

My wife's employer is telling everyone to work from home, as a precaution.

For many businesses (not all, obviously) almost everything can be done remotely so I expect this to spread as the number of reported infections grows. Our federal government is a complete trainwreck but businesses have a strong incentive to keep everyone healthy so hopefully that will help to some extent.

At least until it passes, then those who stayed home are not likely to have a job when the next RIF comes around (assumes a large business, where RIFs are rewarded by Wall Street).

 

[uselesslogin]

Author/doctor of book “Superbugs” on CNBC is saying likely best test data will first come out of South Korea. Thinks their mortality MAY be in the .4% but still early. Pretty good news.

Yeah thank you South Korea for having your stuff together. Drive through testing is the way to go.

 

[ggr]

I think something has gone awry with your usually excellent logic if you think demand for Tesla’s products is not going to fall in the face of the economic disruption the world is facing.

So demand falls from 150% of production to 120%...

 

[KarenRei]

I was just reading about China's "virus risk" app, and it's rather interesting (albeit rather authoritarian in its current form). It connects with people's AliPay accounts and sends the user's GPS coordinates to a central database, and if a person has been near a confirmed or suspected carrier, they're flagged as suspected.

It occurred to me that Google and Apple could easily implement a non-intrusive version of that. That is, only logging GPS coordinates locally. Only confirmed carriers get their location histories broadcast (names redacted). Everyone else's phones downloads the latest location reports and compares them against their stored location history. If they were possibly exposed, it could then warn the user and give them instructions.

If such a service ran on pretty much everyone's phone, you could stop local transmission of serious diseases in its tracks...

 

[dl003]

So demand falls from 150% of production to 120%...

 

[replicant]

Thats absolutely not the case.

In Europe all mild cases are isolated at home.

Seriously? Where do you get your information?

In France, all officially known carriers of COVID-19 who haven't recovered are hospitalized. According to the government, 12 have recovered and been sent back home, 2 have died and 116 are still in the hospital. Source: Info Coronavirus COVID-19

A 3rd person has died but hasn't yet been accounted for. There may be many other patients being tested positive as we speak but that's another question.

Edit: sorry mods, I was editing my post while you removed it; so it was posted again.

 

[SageBrush]

Seriously?

In France, all officially known carrier of COVID-19 who haven't recovered are hospitalized. That is 116/130. According to the government, 12 have recovered and been sent back home, 2 have died and 116 are still in the hospital. Source: Info Coronavirus COVID-19

A 3rd person has died but hasn't yet been accounted for. There may be many other patients being tested positive as we speak but that's another question.

Edit: sorry mods, I was editing my post while you removed it; so it was posted again.

Call it a Freudian slip on his part. He meant Germany

 

[Singer3000]

I was just reading about China's "virus risk" app, and it's rather interesting (albeit rather authoritarian in its current form). It connects with people's AliPay accounts and sends the user's GPS coordinates to a central database, and if a person has been near a confirmed or suspected carrier, they're flagged as suspected.

It occurred to me that Google and Apple could easily implement a non-intrusive version of that. That is, only logging GPS coordinates locally. Only confirmed carriers get their location histories broadcast (names redacted). Everyone else's phones downloads the latest location reports and compares them against their stored location history. If they were possibly exposed, it could then warn the user and give them instructions.

If such a service ran on pretty much everyone's phone, you could stop local transmission of serious diseases in its tracks...

Given what a fudge Apple have made of the UI on Apple TV+, I don’t know how easily Apple could do this.

But yes. This is exactly how you slow the spread. Singapore has been doing something similar, mixed with CCTV.

 

[EinSV]

At least until it passes, then those who stayed home are not likely to have a job when the next RIF comes around (assumes a large business, where RIFs are rewarded by Wall Street).

With VPNs and videoconferencing software a secure, fully functional portable office costs a few hundred dollars. Many people already work from home full or part time and this may accelerate the trend.

In the meantime, working at home temporarily is unlikely to have a major impact on productivity — as long as you have a laptop/home computer and VPN you have an office.

 

[lascavarian]

If such a service ran on pretty much everyone's phone, you could stop local transmission of serious diseases in its tracks...

Plagues open so many interesting discussion doors of morality vs liberty. It would be not far different to change "a service" to "surveillance"

There is an interesting parallel with pandemic social reactions to how society deals with mental illness. An interesting book is "The myth of mental illness" by Szasz where he points out society's comfort with coercive psychiatry that can essentially remove people from society with very limited (zero in some cases) rights. Lots of SciFi on this subject of course even to Superman and the phantom zone imprisonment concept.

It could be that research on a stubborn virus like Corona reveals something of tremendous value to humanity. Lots of interesting scenarios to think about. Thanks for your comment.

 

[jerry33]

With VPNs and videoconferencing software a secure, fully functional portable office costs a few hundred dollars. Many people already work from home full or part time and this may accelerate the trend.

In the meantime, working at home temporarily is unlikely to have a major impact on productivity — as long as you have a laptop/home computer and VPN you have an office.

Depends on the company. Generally the larger companies discourage work from home (the one I worked for cancelled all but emergency work from home two years ago). They give you junk computers to use so that you can drive for an hour to work, work for an hour, drive back home, and get more done than a whole day working from home. Managers of large companies almost always believe that you are not working unless you are warming a chair in the office. (Yes, there are a very few exceptions). Forty years ago we thought that in ten or fifteen years most people would be working from home and commuting would be mostly related to the service industry, but that's proved not to be the case.

 

[SageBrush]

The Korean kcdc makes for fascinating reading
KCDC

I think that they added a 3rd batch of tests yesterday that covered 16:00 to 24:00 (8 hours)
Over 10k were tested and 476 were positive.

I cannot draw any reasonable conclusions what these positive cases means to the trend of the country's epidemic but they have scaled up testing to China level awesomeness, and that is just outstanding.

The Christian cult cohort of ~ 300k sounds too big to contain, but perhaps SK has a chance given their amazing testing prowess.

 

[jerry33]

The Korean kcdc makes for fascinating reading
KCDC

I think that they added a 3rd batch of tests yesterday that covered 16:00 to 24:00 (8 hours)
Over 10k were tested and 476 were positive.

I cannot draw any reasonable conclusions what these positive cases means to the trend of the country's epidemic but they have scaled up testing to China level awesomeness, and that is just outstanding.

The Christian cult cohort of ~ 300k sounds too big to contain, but perhaps SK has a chance given their amazing testing prowess.

A lot of times cults like that only interact with themselves except for seeking new sheep, so there's a pretty good chance that they are mainly self limited.

 

[SageBrush]

except for seeking new sheep

Big time. The cult would penalize members that fell below quotas.

My impression is that the missionary zeal of the cult exceeded even US groups like LDS or Jehovah witness, and it was based on very close personal relationship bonding.

The only detail I have heard about the group that gives a glimmer of hope in terms of containment is that the group was highly concentrated. I don't know how much they travel, but given the ability of just one person to start a new outbreak I tended to discount that concentration advantage.

 

[EinSV]

Depends on the company. Generally the larger companies discourage work from home (the one I worked for cancelled all but emergency work from home two years ago). They give you junk computers to use so that you can drive for an hour to work, work for an hour, drive back home, and get more done than a whole day working from home. Managers of large companies almost always believe that you are not working unless you are warming a chair in the office. (Yes, there are a very few exceptions). Forty years ago we thought that in ten or fifteen years most people would be working from home and commuting would be mostly related to the service industry, but that's proved not to be the case.

We'll see if the prospect of sick employees who can't perform changes that thinking -- at least temporarily. Good laptops are dirt cheap.

 

[KarenRei]

A lot of times cults like that only interact with themselves except for seeking new sheep, so there's a pretty good chance that they are mainly self limited.

Also, all 300k weren't exactly meeting in the same place in Chengdu.

 

[SageBrush]

What is the situation in Hubei ?
Are people back on the streets and going to work ?