[lug] curiosity about WFH

Thu Mar 19 11:03:11 MDT 2020

I wouldn't take that graph too literally.

I think it's a matter of avoiding one disaster at a time, and for now, the
idea is to keep the health care system from being overloaded.

As far as isolating at-risk populations while everyone else lets natural
selection take its course, I think we're too interconnected for that to be
practical.

Louis

On Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 7:55 AM Davide Del Vento <davide.del.vento at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi Stephen,
>
> I have seen this plot in various contexts, e.g.
> https://www.bvsd.org/current-topics/coronavirus/district-updates (click
> "Boulder Valley School District Schools Closing Starting March 13 to Limit
> Spread of Coronavirus" direct link does not work), the New York Times
> mentioned there, the Washington Post...  None of them labeled.
>
> One reasons for not labeling the X is that the timing of various things
> related to this virus are unknown: how fast (and how likely) it spread from
> person to person, how long it takes for people to recover, etc. Obviously
> these numbers vary from person to person, but solid statistics are needed
> to build a model and we do not have such statistics. After all, worldwide
> only 200,000 got sick and less than 8,000 died from COVID-19. For
> comparison, just in the USA almost 200,000 people die from regular flu and
> pneumonia EACH YEAR, i.e. way more than 3,000 die each single week, so
> that's a solid statistics (source:
> https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/data/NCHSData10.csv
> )
>
> I do not understand why they do not label the Y axis, since the
> information about the medical system capacity should be well known.
>
> One thing that only few sources mention and which to me is the most
> important aspect of this whole discussion is that the area under the curve
> stay the same. That is, everybody eventually get sick, and the total number
> of deaths will be identical (provided that we stay under the medical
> facility capacity). The only "way out" of this pandemic is having everybody
> immunized, i.e. sick. Unless.... yes, vaccinated. However my understanding
> is that the vaccine is 12-18 years in the future. Can you imagine the
> social unrest if they say "lock yourself down for up to 18 months?" Easier
> to say: "a couple of weeks and then we will re-evaluate", and then "another
> month" and so on. Put the frog (that is, us) in boiling water and it will
> jump out. Cook it slowly and it probably won't.
>
> I know I am the minority and that most people prefer the "wait for vaccine
> with a frog approach", but I will share my personal opinion anyway. No
> flaming, please.
> My personal opinion is that we should try to have the disease spread as
> fast as possible while keeping the peak under the capacity. With the
> exception of **voluntary** isolation by people who deem it appropriate for
> their situation, e.g. the elderly or people with immunodeficiencies (which
> should have made similar choices before anyway...)
>
> Take care,
> Davide
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 6:55 AM Stephen Queen <svqueen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I needed to express my concerns about the graph in the aforementioned
>> link in the section on Flattening the Curve. I know this is a small group
>> that has very little influence on what can or will happen. But I respect
>> most if not all the members and maybe someone can help my thinking. I
>> worked most of my life doing hardware engineering. One of the things
>> pointed out to me early in my career was that when a component of hardware
>> vendor didn't mention or wasn't clear on a specification that I should be
>> skeptical regarding the spec. Another fact I noticed about specifications
>> is that good specs don't come without some cost to other specs. For
>> example, sometimes a low noise component came at the cost of higher power.
>> The component manufacturer would put the specs on noise right at the front
>> of the data sheet, and the specs on power would be buried in the back.
>> Looking at the graph I'm questioning, there is no label on the x axis or
>> the y axis. The line showing the healthcare capacity is not labeled as
>> well. I understand that the reason is that these are all unknowns. What
>> concerns me the most is this info comes from people that are most
>> interested in not overwhelming the health care system. With an unknown T
>> axis as I expressed in my previous message, I'm very concerned about other
>> just as important resources becoming over whelmed. Examples of these
>> resources are availability and distribution of food, fresh water, power,
>> communication, and sanitation resources. What do other people think or know
>> about these concerns?
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 18, 2020 at 5:25 PM Tommaso Curto <tommaso.curto at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> The situation in the company I work for is very well described in the
>>> article below... happy reading!
>>> https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/16/charter-coronavirus-work-home/amp/
>>>
>>> Tommaso
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 4:41 PM George Sexton <georges at mhsoftware.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The company I'm working for has a great WFH policy. My manager, and two
>>>> other people on our team aren't even in-state. One in San Diego, one in
>>>> Arkansas, and one somewhere in the Bay Area. They all work from home. I've
>>>> never personally met the one in Arkansas and I've been there two years.
>>>>
>>>> It's typical for snow storm days to just take laptops home the night
>>>> before. There's a lot of good infrastructure. We've also got software
>>>> (VOIP) phones, so if you dial my work #, the app on my PC gives me the
>>>> option to answer. The same app (Avaya IX Workplace) also does video
>>>> conferencing. For headset, I have a bluetooth dongle that works with my
>>>> hearing aids. Our only concern now is that if we're 100% WFH, the VPN will
>>>> be overrun. We encountered some issues so far, but pretty minor.
>>>>
>>>> As far as the current crisis goes, I looked at it last Tuesday (3/10)
>>>> afternoon and said this is crazy, and I started WFH on Wednesday (3/11) of
>>>> last week. The company as a whole finally declared WFH for North America
>>>> effective Monday (3/16). EMEA is up to the site director.
>>>>
>>>> They haven't locked down the building, so if people need to go in to do
>>>> hardware work, they can. I've heard in EMEA that the buildings are locked
>>>> down and you need specific permission to enter.
>>>>
>>>> George
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 3/16/2020 5:00 PM, Davide Del Vento wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi folks,
>>>> I'm curious about the WFH policies at various companies (your
>>>> employers). Have they relaxed the WFH options? Mandated WFH?
>>>>
>>>> My employer, NCAR/UCAR, on March 6th relaxed its policies from the
>>>> previous sort of "discuss options with your supervisors and find a mutual
>>>> agreement" to "if you do not feel comfortable coming to work, any employee
>>>> may choose to work from home". Last Friday, March 13th, almost at the end
>>>> of the day, they made WFH mandatory for practically everybody and forbade
>>>> access by staff to its buildings starting tomorrow at noon. On Sunday PM,
>>>> they even abruptly cancelled shuttle and cafeteria services for today,
>>>> making it quite challenging for those who do not drive and needed to
>>>> collect items from office before the building became off-limits.
>>>>
>>>> Anybody willing to share what others are doing? I'm quite curious.
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Davide
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> --
>>>> George Sexton
>>>> (303) 438 9585 x102
>>>> MH Software, Inc.
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>>>
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>>
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>
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