anacapamalibu

Multiple OC firefighters placed in isolation after encountering patient being tested for COVID-19

A group of Orange County firefighters were placed in isolation after encountering a patient who was being tested for coronavirus as county leaders on Monday held an emergency meeting in response to the potentially deadly virus.

The firefighters from Engine Company 20 in Irvine were exposed to the patient on Saturday, according to an Orange County Fire Authority spokeswoman. The fire station has been disinfected and the firefighters are in isolation until test results come back.


OC Fire

nk15

So the news report that resources in WA are already stretched thin, and there are obviously very likely more people infected in the community. They are purchasing a hotel to quarantine people, so that's likely some of the future of the quarantines, hotels (and hopefully no worse as time goes by). It makes me wonder if there have been already covid-19 deaths in WA or elsewhere but were not detected or counted as such, or counted as regular flu deaths. Is there a way that all such deaths are properly diagnosed or autopsied?

Lastly, another expert on CBS reiterated that models suggest 40-70% worldwide infection, it won't be an existential threat event, but it will be a bad flu pandemic comparable to the 2-3 worst ones of the 20th century.

GinFizz

I have no idea what kind of data traffic akamai logs, and I can't speak for Shanghai, but here in Beijing there are absolutely no problems (with the usual caveat that a VPN is needed to access certain sites - and in other cases, such as Flyertalk, needed to avoid time-out issues with embedded calls to Google/Facebook/etc. trackers).

Yesterday afternoon (from home) I taught my Monday afternoon class to 12 students inside China, as well as three international students still in their home countries (one in France; one in Nepal; one in Pakistan). That was using something akin to Zoom (video+screensharing upload to a server - encoding - then delivery to the students - in our case though using a system run by my university). In my apartment complex there are about 500 other university staff and a good fraction of these will be doing the same thing (all teaching is being given remotely at the moment) - though obviously not all at the same time.

At one point yesterday during my class my wife (also working from home) also had to take part in a video-conference meeting with a client in Japan. This is all from a home-based ADSL connection. Other times during the day she is logged in to her company's system, both for document handling and analysis (this is a patent law office). In her case the company already had a system in place where nearly everything is handled "online" already. Out of an office staff of around 300, at the moment there are about 10 people in the office each day (staggered to minimize overlap) running tasks such as sorting mail (post) and scanning-in documents to their online system.

I think it was already mentioned waaaay up-thread, but they have been surprised at how easy it has been for everyone to work from home. For the first week they had online meetings at the group-leader and above level every day, to discuss problems and to set-up new workflow patterns. Now (three weeks later) those meeting are down to one on Monday and a review meeting on Friday. Obviously this doesn't apply to any kind of manufacturing - I don't have any first hand information there as my only contacts in that area are friends with small start-ups, and in most cases they are still running as normal (mostly in any case on local government seed funding rather than sales). I just remembered though that one of my ex-students works for P&G, so will ask about that.

Oh, and my PhD students are also still in their hometowns (including one in Wuhan) and not allowed to return to university - for these students I set up remote access software on their desktop PCs (in the student office on campus) and I can see heavy traffic flow on those connections - so either they are working on data analysis or gaming ... so no change to normal there either

notquiteaff

The Fauci et al article in the NEJM

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.105...02387?query=RP

mentioned flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-res...-pandemic.html

1957: 1.1 million worldwide, 116,000 in the US.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-res...-pandemic.html

1968: 1 million worldwide, 100,000 in the US

Definitely not an existential thread for humanity. But do remember, this would be on top of the bad seasonal flu we already have. Still a lot of dead and many more severely sick people.

(I am quite concerned about places like India and most of Africa...)

moondog

Working from home has been one of the more interesting sub plots to Covid.

Following are my observations:
1. Most people seem to like the arrangement
2. We have encountered several issues with guys/ladies slacking off
3. My CEO pondered the idea of installing cameras on their computers to monitor them, but I told him NO
-believe it or not, China has pretty strong privacy laws
4. I don't like the "we can't pay you because we are working from home" excuse; sort this stuff out, and spare me of the drama
5. We successfully asked our landlords to give us 60% reductions on our leases
6. Zoom will benefit from this

wco81

WHO published a report about what they observed in China.

https://www.who.int/docs/default-sou...nal-report.pdf

First a summary of the cases:

Then some more details on mild vs. severe or critical cases:

Transmission mechanics are interesting:

onlyairfare

I'm not at work today because I have a "cold" (I'm not very sick, no fever so I don't think it is Covid-19) and I do not think I should be at work, seeing patients when I have a cough/sneezing/runny nose. So I am not sure what they have done since I was at work Friday, before the local Covid-19 deaths occurred and before they loosened up on the availability of testing. Which seems like months ago now.

I work at a satellite clinic for a small rural hospital that is 20 miles away. The policy last week was for any patient who suspected Covid-19, they should call us first to discuss if or where they should be seen. If a patient suspicious for Covid-19 walks in, the front desk had a list of questions to ask - travel to Asia, fever, cough, exposure to someone known to have Covid-19. The patient is then told to take their cellphone and go back to their car to wait, while we called the health department to discuss what to do next.

Given that Covid-19 is now known to be in the community, I do not know how the patients who present with fever and cough (which is probably more likely to be influenza) should be handled. Send the doc or nurse in full PPE out to the car to interview the patient and get a flu swab? Refer them to the ER, which is small but reported to have and appropriate exam room? The Covid-19 tests are not yet available in every office; requests will still be run through the county health department. Stay tuned.

nk15

It may likely be somewhere between the 1957/1968 ones and the 1918 one, but much closer to the former. Fauci on the evening news tonight said death rate between 2.5% and 1%, with 1% as the lower estimate.

notquiteaff

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...oms-city-says/

We continue to lose first responders, nurses, and doctors with each case.

notquiteaff

I’ll take the 1% if that 2.5% to 1% is the range... but that is still a very bad outcome overall. I am not personally terribly concerned. But I have family members in the “bad outcome” age range. Let’s make sure the basis for that 1% (or whatever it is) is as small as possible. 1% of 100,000 is a lot different from 1% of 10 millions. Or 100,000,000. (US only)

GinFizz

With regard at least to childcare (given that all schools here are still closed) in Beijing the local government announced mid-way through February that employers must find arrangements to allow one parent to work from home (or at least pay them).

" ..the Beijing Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau and the Beijing Municipal Education Commission jointly issued a notice stipulating that one spouse from every dual-working household shall be permitted to stay home and look after children under the age of 18. Likewise, the one parent staying home is entitled to full pay regardless of the amount of work they can get done, Lu clarified."

I am not sure how enforceable this is - and we don't have kids so cannot comment on how this works in practice. And it will only apply until such time as the school reopen. Full article on this is here

Good job on getting the rent reduction - that is a decent sized deal!

PanAmWT

The government would not allow people starve. In China while everything else is closed, food market and drug stores remain open. If they have to close one there will be another available until the first one is cleared. Another business that stays open is food delivery. My cousin in Tianhe District of Guangzhou said restaurants cannot open for sit down business, but can open for take out and delivery.

This seems to be the usual and also the most strict case. One person allowed to go buy food. Market stays open.

tauphi

Yes it is possible. One of the deaths in Shanghai (I think the only one that wasn't a geriatric case) was infected with both SARS-CoV-2 and Influenza.

nk15

Inside edition has a tutorial tomorrow how to make your own hand sanitizer. That's what's on the curriculum tomorrow...

nk15

I saw a clip on the news about a faculty member in Italy, he was in the physical classroom and teaching in front of the empty seats, and I assume all students were streaming from home. It looked weird.

In your case, were you just videoing it, or was it interactive/synchronous, and were they able to ask questions during it? If yes, were the questions typed or via audio/video conferencing?