Coronavirus

Just got back from a Monday-Thursday trip to Beijing last night. Despite not having the virus being spread here there were a ton of reasonable precautions in place. 100% mask coverage at the airport and subway (I took the subway to avoid having to deal with taxi drivers who are invariably going to try and hustle me because I am white). In one of the subway cars a guy pulled his mask down and the police in the car told him to put it back up within a minute. Every car had a policeman inside. Inside the hotel among guests, mask wearing was sparse at breakfast and in the lounge. Going out to lunch on the street it was pretty sparse too. I didn't go in a store, but was told it is 100% inside any store no exceptions. No mask wearing inside the Embassy. I did have breathing difficulty at one point but I 100% think that is because I had a soup that used shellfish in the broth and triggered an allergic reaction.

The only thing that was difficult for me is when you depart a city you have to have a mini-app installed on your phone (basically everyone has WeChat and there are thousands of tiny add ons inside WeChat). Put in your national ID number (for me passport) and input the locations you visited in the last week and unless there is an alert for a place you have been it shows green. They then check this when you enter the airport. I couldn't get it to work because I had no idea where the hotel or Embassy was located by drilling down from city to district to local government to street. I ended up just writing my cell number and name on a sheet. I had someone help be before I left Guangzhou, but it timed out by the time I left Beijing. I guess if there is an outbreak in Beijing I'm going to get a call. It honestly wasn't intrusive.

We are having a new surge in cases in Denmark right now. Nowhere near as bad as in early spring, but masks are now mandatory in shops (have been in public transportation and cafes for some time), bars klose at 22:00 and no more than 10 people are allowed to gather indoors. But movie theaters, concert venues, theaters etc are still open if people face in the same direction, sit down and the place is well ventilated. Seems like an okay compromise.

At the office we don't work from home for some reason. We could totally do it or we could at least reduce the amount of days spend in the office. But the boss believes he cannot keep track of projects if people aren't close to him which is more about systems than about working remotely. Also, we all know that he himself is bad at working from home, so it seems kind of stupid - especially since we all have made it pretty clear that we would prefer to be less people in the building. I'm not super worried, but at the same time it just feels idiotic to put myself at risk when I know that I could work at least as well if not even better if I didn't have to commute four days out of five.

mads b. wrote: We are having a new surge in cases in Denmark right now. Nowhere near as bad as in early spring, but masks are now mandatory in shops (have been in public transportation and cafes for some time), bars klose at 22:00 and no more than 10 people are allowed to gather indoors. But movie theaters, concert venues, theaters etc are still open if people face in the same direction, sit down and the place is well ventilated. Seems like an okay compromise.

At the office we don't work from home for some reason. We could totally do it or we could at least reduce the amount of days spend in the office. But the boss believes he cannot keep track of projects if people aren't close to him which is more about systems than about working remotely. Also, we all know that he himself is bad at working from home, so it seems kind of stupid - especially since we all have made it pretty clear that we would prefer to be less people in the building. I'm not super worried, but at the same time it just feels idiotic to put myself at risk when I know that I could work at least as well if not even better if I didn't have to commute four days out of five.

Some strange differences to the UK .
Concert venues and theatres have been closed since March, even when it all dropped away late summer, and no sign of them opening for a long time. Yours may seem like an OK compromise but you have no idea how much that is contributing to your surge.
The govt recommendation is to work from home if possible for your job and I suspect this is being followed by high percentage of office population in the country (I have been at home since March and will be here probably until March this year), some of our offices have opened but with extremely minimal staff, basically those that can't do their job properly from home but with the legally required social distancing required our management think they could only get 30% back in anyway.
The country (England) is slowly (quickening now) becoming more and more restricted and with the infection rates still rising drastically I suspect a lot of it will be under full restrictions in the next few weeks (Wales is already under a 3 week 'firebreak' lockdown).
Western Europe is not far off the lockdown of six months ago.

No, we don't. But it seems like being in a well ventilated area helps a lot. Also, some of the guidelines seem stupid (wear a mask when walking around in a bar, but not when seated at the table, wear a mask when walking from the showers to the gym, but not while training), but honestly I think they try to find a balance between not shutting down bars, allowing people to get exercise and still doing something to prevent the disease from spreading.

Almost everybody I know who can work from home do so and are at the office at most two days a week. It's also the official recommendation from the government, but for some reason our owner/boss feels like we have to be at work for the company to function. We don't.

ubarose wrote: @Southernman

I listened to a program recently (I think it was NPR) that discussed the reasons behind this phenomena in the US.

1. Mixed messages from our political, medical, and academic leaders
2. The human tendency to believe whatever is most comforting and least scary
3. The fact that our social media is riddled with Russian Troll Farm propaganda

The cumulative result is that some people are only getting the message that COVID isn't dangerous (or not dangerous to them i.e. it is only dangerous to old, sick people in nursing home environments) from the leaders they trust. This message is being reinforced by the social media they consume. It is the most comforting and least scary thing to believe, so if a conflicting message does reach them, they dismiss and disparage it and the person that delivers it (see Smeagol's experience above).

That may be an explanation but still doesn't nullify the two main factors that are appearing in your popuIation (that I ranted about):
- Stupidity: hundreds of thousands are dying but they don't seem to understand.
- Selfishness: The 'don't tell me what I can do I have individual rights in our constitution' view rather than the 'protect my community, friends, family' attitude.

Still a fucked up country compared to most of the rest of the world.

You're absolutely right, we are raised here with a strong sense of individual freedom, and not enough caring about others. This is the current result.

All of the assholes currently protesting about government overreach when it comes to public health are putting on their seatbelts when they drive their cars, even though the government told them to do it. While I was too young to specifically remember this, when the seatbelt laws went into effect, there was a similar uproar about freedom, etc. Eventually people got over it and the laws saved lives. Yet they don't see the analog to this, because they are stupid.

hotseatgames wrote: While I was too young to specifically remember this, when the seatbelt laws went into effect, there was a similar uproar about freedom, etc. Eventually people got over it and the laws saved lives. Yet they don't see the analog to this, because they are stupid.

Well, the obvious difference is dying in a car crash is not something that happens because of 5G, and wearing a seatbelt will not allow Bill Gates to personally inject microchips into your body. So I guess it makes total sense.

On a more serious note the right wing parties in Denmark (which currently aren't in government) are objecting to the restrictions made by the social democratic prime minister. Because of freedom or businesses or the economy or some such. It's almost as if they belive we in Denmark have a special less-dangerous version of the virus or that we're just so exceptional that it won't really be a big problem again even if the curves are more or less precisely like those in other countries with more restrictions.

southernman wrote: - Stupidity: hundreds of thousands are dying but they don't seem to understand.

The vast majority of these people fully understand. They're just comfortable with people dying.

It's how the political system is set up here. The districts have become so gerrymandered that there is no risk of being thrown out of office by moderates. The risk is in being abandoned by your party. So we have people running for Congress that say things like "I'm more conservative than Attila the Hun" in order to get elected. The current leader of the Senate can have any senator in his party thrown out of office just by financially bankrolling another person in his party's primary election.

southernman wrote: - Selfishness: The 'don't tell me what I can do I have individual rights in our constitution' view rather than the 'protect my community, friends, family' attitude.

The "individual rights" thing is just the fig leaf. These same people are on the opposite side of "individual rights" on a lot of other issues. The real driver in this argument is Total War politics. It's about opposing the other side, regardless of the merits of a particular issue.

southernman wrote: Still a fucked up country compared to most of the rest of the world.

Oh come on, I mean . . . it's not like . . . ok you got me. Fair enough.

I'm completely off-topic, even after a polite warning earlier. I'll shut up now. Gary, you really need to delete this.

mads b. wrote: No, we don't. But it seems like being in a well ventilated area helps a lot. Also, some of the guidelines seem stupid (wear a mask when walking around in a bar, but not when seated at the table, wear a mask when walking from the showers to the gym, but not while training), but honestly I think they try to find a balance between not shutting down bars, allowing people to get exercise and still doing something to prevent the disease from spreading.

I think that what has happened in western Europe in the last few months shows that there isn't a balance, each time the virus gets a hold you have to put hard restrictions on straight away else you just end up doing what we all either are (France, Wales) or going to do of going into a full lockdown again.

People in close contact and touching communal stuff (bars, gyms, many other places) spreads the virus. As an example the medical advice here as to why a social distanced concert was able to take place (I think it was a thousand, or fewer, in a large hall) inside but a socially distanced crowd for a football match in an outdoors stadium is that it is the close proximity/contact of travelling to the match on public transport and going to the pub before/after that is the problem.

So it appears according to the local news (assuming they're correct) that my facility has had 28 identified cases of Covid since the beginning of the pandemic. This was based on Public Information Requests.

The director of the place has indicated that there is information in the common areas of the building about what's going on, but I haven't seen them. If that is the case it's a step up, but the bigger concern is that the lack of information flow to the general staff produces a lack of faith in management's ability to develop plans and execute them. That perception produces adverse output, and were it me I would be working to make the processes more transparent, presuming the processes exist.

In the light of this, my local school district is looking for comments on reopening, and as is usually the case not providing any significant information on how they intend to proceed. Comments for the official meeting were supposed to be limited to 250 words, but c'mon. You guys know me -- I'm not even warmed up at 250 words.

Dear Board,

I appreciate that the Board wants to get schools open and that it's appropriate to plan for contingencies both positive and negative. But the fundamental fact is this -- the virus decides. As it stands now the number of cases is growing nationwide and slowly growing in Maryland, and it's likely that will continue as we proceed into the Fall and Winter.

Yesterday my wife sat as a school bus loaded students, presumably headed for one of the private schools in the area. One of the students boarding the bus didn't have a mask on, didn't have one in their hand or hanging from their face. That student will cut the legs out from any plan you may choose to implement. This doesn't mean you shouldn't implement, but it absolutely means that you need to plan for the failure cases that will inevitably occur.

My opinion is this -- no parent can make an informed decision on whether to send their children back to school until AACPS has released its full set of instructions on how you will proceed when a student or staff member tests positive for COVID-19.

What are the processes that are in place at each school for "business as usual", i.e., no COVID Positives identified? How will contact-tracing be logged pre-incident? This is critical to success in the event of a Positive test. What are the entry-criteria for a school proceeding with classes when no COVID Positive issue is identified?
What are the processes to be implemented when a student, teacher or staff identifies as COVID Positive? Who do they call, how are they contact-traced, how is the information disseminated to all affected parties? When a parent becomes aware that their child is COVID Positive, who do they call? How do they kick off the Positive Response business process?
How does someone previously identified as COVID Positive receive permission to return to schools at some point in the future?
How will people be replaced as teachers, administrators and staff are identified as at-risk and quarantined? How will parents be informed when the level of staff is insufficient to have their school open safely? How will parents view the status of their child's school on a day-to-day basis?

I am working for a state agency that has botched two outbreaks, and the information we get from them fits solely in the "hearts and prayers" category of information. The entire organization now has zero trust in management.

If you want to reopen schools, you need to prove to parents that you don't just "care". You need to prove that you've already developed the business processes to handle when Positive tests occur. They will. The actions that follow a Positive test need to be fully developed and in place prior to that event. If you want to allay fears and generate trust, you need to prove to your constituents that you are competent to handle the adverse events that will assuredly follow reopening. This can happen, but it needs to happen in an environment of high communication, firm control, and complete understanding of business process.

Very truly yours,
John Edwards
South River High School parent.

I got a reply indicating that the email had been received and would be forwarded to the Board and Superintendant, who likely will file it in the appropriate manila envelope. But I just wanted to get across that "we're doing this, trust us" is not something that any parent who likes their child is going to go for. There needs to be a display of leadership, a display of competence.

In an era when project management follows the move-fast-and-break-things model (and it is venerated for God's sake), someone coming to us with a plan will make for a very refreshing change.

My hyperlocal paper is a fucking rag (not the LA Times, though, also a rag) and I was struck dumb by the framing of this lede:

"Despite pay raise, some teachers still upset over back-to-school"

That puts everything out there, doesn't it? "We agreed to pay you more money, and yet you still balk at risking your life and those of your family, your students, and their families." There is a group of people that see dying a horrible preventable death as a necessary risk (for others) to keep things going. It's too bad teachers have to be exposed to a deadly illness, but we will pay them more money, so it's OK. Also we provide off-brand alcohol gel and a piece of plexiglass. Get back to work.

We have so much money in this country. Trillions of dollars, TRILLIONS. But we have a lot more greed, cruelty, and indifference. Much, much more of that.

2,000 people a day are going to die in the US from this disease in November. I look back at this thread and I can honestly say I didn't think it would be like this. I want to say the US isn't "stupid" but I'm the stupid one for thinking we wouldn't let people die for no reason at all. I didn't think landlords would be evicting people in the middle of this. I'm so stupid. I keep thinking there is a bottom to our casual cruelty and I am always wrong.

jeb wrote: I didn't think landlords would be evicting people in the middle of this. I'm so stupid. I keep thinking there is a bottom to our casual cruelty and I am always wrong.

Depends on the state - Oregon is protecting it's tenants through 12/31 (for non payment of rent) - And the community resources provided by the CARES act have been spent wisely and is keeping some hurting folks current. Most communities are working through this fine, other than Portland - which was a mess before the pandemic. But for the private landlords (Mom and Pops) that are faring far far worse....they don't screen, and I've heard anecdotally that they are having around 10% delinquency for the rest of the state, with the majority of those types being multiple months of missed rents : This is a gut punch and is going to crater the supply in rental markets (state wide) if the State's sole responce is to protect tenants short term habitation with no long term plan that shores up landlords. We were already seeing the available inventory drop steeply over the last year because of state wide rent protection, and another tenant law protection, removing landlords ability to sever tenancy after the first year for any non-tenant reason other than selling the house to someone that would be using it as a primary residence or to move themselves or a family member back in, or tearing it down.

Casual landlords, that we need to meet housing demands (especially modest affordable housing), will not continue to participate in a system that puts an undue burden and liability on them. I do not think it's fair to lay this burden of housing folks on them, without compensation to pay the mortgage, and maintain the buildings. The only real mitigations put in place for landlords apply to the fatcats that run subsidized housing. Once the courts open up everywhere....it's going to be a bloodbath. And it'll be on the States and the Feds for asking folks to bear a financial hardship on behalf of their tenants.

It took decades to teach people through public communications and law enforcement to wear seatbelts.



Here is another chart showing the death rate per Vehicle Miles Travelled. Some of this is seatbelts, and some is vehicle safety standards. Anyway, I don't have anything insightful to say except that it takes a long time to teach people to wear seatbelts and to not litter.