Coronavirus, Again

The numbers in my first post were meant as a best/worst analysis. And, again, go find a real expert.

By best/worst, I mean the best mortality/hospitalization needs in a situation where we just let the virus run its course. Not counting the deaths of an overwhelmed medical system, but also not taking into account the measures we could take to slow the spread.

So if it spreads too fast, and healthcare is overwhelmed, things will be worse. 

But if we lock everything down (or, what would have been even better, conduct massive testing and lock down the places actually dealing with cases), things will look better.

And this is where I don't have a good sense of where we're going. Each state, and sometimes even cities and counties, are making choices that will effect what happens. 

Some states have gotten serious about that, so it's slowing the spread and things might not get that bad. 

Others? Well, I could wish the governor of Florida was more concerned about reducing transmission within his state, instead of acting as though all they had to worry about was outsiders coming in. I mean, any reduction in travel will prob help, but a) how will they know who is coming from a hotspot? As many pointed out, people often rent cars with license plates from other states and b) as widespread as this is, with cases in every state, it doesn't make sense to pick and choose who you're going to try and force to take precautionary measures. If you're going to ignore all the people already infected within your state, and try to keep 'outsiders' from bringing more cases in, you really ought to just stop everyone crossing your border.

Its the illogical and inconsistent countermeasures that get me. They just don't make sense. 

Anyways. Point is Idk what the end result will be, I recommend checking with the professionals (Dr Fauci was estimating something like 100,000 deaths? Which may reflect the effort so many of us have made so far), but I can see why they're all taking this so seriously and I hope enough of us are staying home to make a difference. 

Coronavirus Addendum

To avoid a worst case scenario (and the numbers I laid out in the previous post are most definitely NOT the worst case), I'm keeping my eye out for three or four things.

1) (and maybe 2) a vaccine, mass produced enough for everyone. Or a credible antiviral. Careful here, there are definitely snake oil salesmen selling miracle cures.

2 or 3) warm weather reducing the transmission level. Right now nobody knows if it will or not, and it seems to still be spreading fine in Texas and Florida, so... Maybe?  If it does, this will probably just buy us time to find a vaccine or treatment, because it will probably be back in the fall. Like the 1918 pandemic.

3 or 4, and maybe also 5 and 6) social distancing/quarantine/thorough testing to reduce transmission and help identify where it's spreading. This is what we can generally do right now, since we don't yet have a treatment and have no idea whether warm weather will make a difference. It can buy us time to find a vaccine, and/or keep hospitals from being overwhelmed while it runs its course. 

A few more notes. I suspect it's more likely that 3/4 of the population will get it, if not more. Again, though, I'm not an epidemiologist. I'm making that guess because everybody exposed to it seems to get it and spread it, even if they don't show symptoms, so I'm guessing that there might be a quarter of the population (or less) that's isolated enough to somehow miss getting exposed. Probably people in rural areas, for the most part. Or towns with little in the way of shipping and traveling and whatnot. 

If you run my numbers with 225 million people catching it, the numbers are obviously going to be even worse.

There's apparently other factors, like the average age, average number of smokers, and (the big one for us) obesity - which means we'll have different results than South Korea and Italy, purely for demographic reasons. 

Plus, ofc, the socioeconomic elements. 

But ultimately, the biggest factor (outside of vaccines and antivirals) is making sure we don't overwhelm our medical resources... 

Because when doctors have to decide who gets a ventilator and who doesn't, or they're so exhausted that they make mistakes, or there's nobody trained to hook people up to the ventilators, people will die. 

And the worst part is that their deaths will not be inevitable. They might have survived, in other circumstances. 

So that estimate of 900,000 deaths might easily become 2 million, and even much, much, worse. 

So yeah, I'm all about flattening the curve and social distancing right now. 

I hope I'm overestimating things. I'd heard a possible mortality rate of 6%, if hospitals get overwhelmed, and plugging that into my crude calculations is just horrific. 

But I am pretty ticked at all the people who are supposed to be smart, and know better, that still - still! - are acting like we're all blowing it out of proportion, or that we should just let all the vulnerable people die and get back to work. 

Coronavirus Update

So the US now has the most coronavirus (shouldn't we call it the 'bat flu'? I mean, we had 'avian flu' and 'swine flu', and people are clearly looking for a name that isn't 'coronavirus' or 'COVID-19'... why not 'bat flu'?) cases in the world. 105,052 as of midnight, according to one of the tracking sites. And there's been a bit of a debate this week, still, about whether things are as bad as epidemiologists say... and whether 'the cure is worse than the disease', and whether we need to open up the economy, and a bunch of other things.

Which makes me furious, so let me lay out all the reasons why.

I've seen various arguments going around that 'it's not really all that bad', though most of the arguments saying that have some serious flaws to them. I want to go through my own thinking on this matter, with the caveat (of course) that I'm not an epidemiologist.

So... the US has over 300 million citizens. Technically it's more like 327 million, but 300 is a nice even number to work with so it's what I've been using for my own calcuations.

I suppose not everyone will get infected, depending on where you are and how isolated you are (which is why these calculations will change depending on how good we are at social distancing.) Right now I'm trying to look at what will happen if we don't do much of anything - if we all go back to our normal routines, reopen businesses, etc. I suspect, in that case, that we'd still see a good three quarters get infected, but I'll be generous and say only half get the disease.

So let's say 150 million get infected. Now, South Korea has done the most testing, so they're numbers are probably the most accurate in terms of mortality rate (as long as there's adequate healthcare. Ventilators, oxygen tanks, etc. This is a best case scenario where everyone gets the best treatment.)

South Korea has a mortality rate of 0.6%. That's only part of the story, though, because many people still need hospitalization (and ventilators, and oxygen) even though they will survive. Numbers are still hard to get right now, but let's say about 14% are severely affected and need hospitalization.

150,000,000 x .006 = 900,000
150,000,000 x .14 = 21,000,000

So we are talking, best case scenario, 900,000 deaths. That's almost a million deaths, but since people think this has been overhyped already, I won't try rounding that up. 900,000. And 21 million people who will need ventilators/oxygen tanks/hospitalization.

Every argument that claims it's not so bad, that tries to say the death toll would only be in the thousands, is misleading. (I want to know where they get their numbers. Are they assuming only a third of the population catches it? Do they think the mortality rate is really .04%? How are they figuring it?)

Every.

Single.

One.

The ones talking about 60,000? Even 600,000? I want to know where they get that number from. And it better not be 'the flu', because with flu shots and some level of immunity, the flu is not going to go through our population as fast as a new disease that nobody has immunity to.

That's not even talking about the hospitalization aspect. 21 million.

Million.

21 million people who will need oxygen and ventilators and nurses and doctors...

And we apparently have about 924,107 hospital beds. Many of which are already occupied. We are short on hospital beds by a couple of orders of magnitude.

I'm using that to give a sense of the scale of the problem, because it's not a count of ventilators or oxygen tanks... and without proper availability of masks and protective equipment, a lot of medical professionals will also get sick... which also means we'll be short doctors and nurses and so on and so forth.

Which is where the real problem starts. Because South Korea's mortality rate comes from having the ability to give everyone the best treatment, but if you don't have the capacity to treat those 21 million people (who can and would survive with treatment), then they will die.

The mortality rate will be much worse than .6%, not because the new coronavirus is that deadly, but because we weren't able to provide the treatment they needed.

This is why flattening the curve is such a big deal. Because we need to make sure we have the resources to adequately treat everyone, and if we don't a lot of people will die completely unnecessary deaths.

So much of it depends on when it hits, and whether it's spread out or happens all at once. Do nothing, and the hospitals are overwhelmed and the death toll grows. Not just from people who catch COVID-19... but from all the other people who need medical care when the hospitals are overwhelmed. Have a heart attack? Get in a car accident?

Good luck getting the care you need.

I've run the numbers to my own satisfaction, though I'm sure this is an oversimplified example and would recommend you contact a credible epidemiologist for a more accurate analysis. Like I said, I'm not trying to take into account counter-measures like social distancing. I also don't know how likely it is that only half the population will catch it... this thing seems ridiculously contagious, especially if it can survive on metal for days.

But I call BS on almost every argument (and there have been a lot in the news this past week) trying to say that its not that bad.

And I wonder about that. About the people making those arguments, and how many places are publishing those arguments and pushing that story line.

Because I can't tell if it's just denial (I understand that. I don't want to believe it will be that bad, either.) or if it's something more sinister.

I can't tell if the people pushing these arguments genuinely believe it, or if they really don't care.

Which gets into the second part of this. We've had a couple of people try arguing that 'it's better to let a few of us die, than to ruin the economy'.

I'll highlight two of the most memorable; the Texas Lt Governor who argued that grandparents would be willing to die for the sake of their children and grandchildren, and Glenn Beck - who said he would rather die than kill the country.

First of all - the economy is not synonymous with the country. Or, to put this another way, Thor: Ragnarok got it exactly right when they said Asgard "is not a place, it's a people."

America is not a place, and it's not it's economy. It's a people. Every single American is precious, something I didn't think we'd have to say to the supposedly 'pro-life' faction.

I don't want to minimize the pain and frustration of economic turmoil. There are a lot of people out there right now, scared and worried because they've been laid off, or can't work and don't have enough savings to wait for things to blow over.

But our starting point has to be "how do we take care of our people". Or, to put it in Biblical terms, 'how can we be good shepherds'.

Every single one of the pundits arguing that it's okay to just let people die has shown some serious moral failings, a completely skewed perspective, and I don't trust their judgment in the slightest.

There are things we can do to address the economy, and the people who survive the next few months will eventually recover. The dead will not.

The pressure to reopen the economy, if it's not coming from a place of denial, shows a crass disregard for the lives of the American people. And for what?

So many of the ones arguing for that seem more concerned, tbh, with the stock market... and with regaining the flow of profits they're used to... then it is with the average American.

The only reason why we can't all sit tight for a few weeks -

Well, okay. There's a couple of reasons. a) people need to eat, so unless they've stocked up enough to get through those weeks, they'll have to go out to buy groceries and whatnot. And we'll still need people to produce the food they need, so there still has to be some flow of goods. b) people need to pay their bills. If they've got rent due, they have to have a paycheck. And if they're living paycheck to paycheck, with no paid time off and no sick time, and their workplaces have shut down, then they're screwed.

And yes, it will be hard for businesses to stay in business for similar reasons. They've got rent to pay, business loans to pay, etc.

Which is why I've seen people arguing for policies that, when you put them all together, act as though we can put the economy on ice.

That is, tell everyone not to collect rent/mortgage/loans during this time of crisis (so those bills don't come due... with no penalties) and give people the resources to stock up on food and whatnot so they can get through this.

If you do that, well. Businesses 'shouldn't' go out of business, and can pick back up when we allow people back out. People 'shouldn't' starve. Landlords 'shouldn't' be screwed by the lack of money coming in, because they're bills shouldn't be collected either.

It's like flash freezing everything, and giving everyone enough resources to buy the groceries they  need to stay home.

Would it work? Idk... I'd again encourage you to go find an economist (or really, two or three. Plus some business leaders, small and large, and some average Americans and some financial experts).

I do, however, think that's a better idea than pushing this 'the economy will die, so you all have to go back to work and we don't care how many of you die in the process" policy.

Work, and Various Other Musings.

I want to talk about work for a bit, though I'll probably post something about the coronavirus soon after. I'll try to keep this from getting too technical, so bear with me. :)

My job title is "Technology Integration Engineer". I don't recall if I wrote about that before, so here's a very simplified version of what I do -

Every time you have an app that updates (Windows updates, smartphone apps that update, whatever) it generally involves many, many hours of work behind the scenes. You have programmers that code up some changes, testers to test them, etc.

Because some things change on a regular basis, there are also configuration files for just about everything. That way if you are using a specific url (as one example), when it changes you don't have to change the code, you can just update the configuration files as needed.

Since applications run on multiple machines (generally a machine for the database, which stores all your data. A machine for serving up the webpage, and various machines for other tasks - like verifying you when you log in, or validating your credit card when you pay a bill, and so on and so forth) there's also connectivity settings, messaging, and a lot of other things. It's complicated and messy -

And I actually kind of like it. I do still intend to get into computer security (infosec, cyber security, whatever you want to call it), but it's kind of fun to troubleshoot why the heck something isn't working. I'm getting reasonably good at reading logs and trying to figure out what they mean.

Now, tech is a fast-paced industry, and it seems to me that tech companies that have been around for a while are always in the midst of some sort of transition. There's older, legacy systems - and since they work, and most of the bugs have been sorted out, they don't generally want to replace them unless they have to - and then there's newer technology, and it all makes a rather confusing mess. One of the big changes going on is less about the tech (though that plays a role), and more about how the company is organized.

See, in the older style of software development, you might put out new code one a month, or once a quarter. The developers develop, the testers test, and my job is to help integrate the code with all those various configuration settings so that the environment works. Sometimes that means fixing issues when a new build (i.e. the code changes for whatever version they're working on), and sometimes it means trying to help troubleshoot some defect that the testers have identified.

But once a month is... slow. Faster, more agile companies can push out changes daily... or even faster. Which is what one of the current industry buzzwords is - agile.

As someone who graduated a little over a year ago, I had heard the term but didn't initially have a clue what it really meant - but last Feb I was in Dallas for some corporate training, and we discussed it in more detail.

The biggest takeway, for me at least, is that in order to be more agile they essentially want to restructure how we do things. Instead of having a dev team, and an integration team (mine), with database administrators and the like, and testers... they essentially put those skills all on a small team dedicated to one particular application. That way they can code it up, run it, test it, and push it out in a timely fashion.

Which made me wonder what was going to happen in my own company, because it means my current job would go away. (Maybe. Supposedly the transition can take five years or so).

Now, I want to circle back to something that happened early in my career here. Before I learned enough to actually be busy fixing things, I got sent to some training that discussed the concepts layed out by Google for SRE. I then got tagged to be on a scrum team (which is what they call those small teams in the agile framework, iirc), but tbh I hadn't really been able to do much with it. Most of it was very different from what I do in integration, and the project I found most relevant to my day job was when we tried looking at file system cleanup.

But now that I've learned enough to be more useful, and don't have to spend most of my time dealing with the day-to-day integration issues (we each take turns being 'on call' as the primary point of contact for the days issues, and as a trainee I'd been handling more and more of the non-production issues. Now, though, I should be rotating when I'm on call... so about one week a month I should be busy with that, and the other three weeks I can start working on other things.)

Last week was the first time I had the chance to really dig into some of that, and it sort of amuses me. Because even though I was hired as an integration engineer, and even though I learned java for school, it turns out that I'm apparently also a bit of a python developer now.

Sort of. Still spend most of my time in integration, ofc. It kind of amuses me, as someone who learned an entirely different language. Like, yes... you too can wind up programming in an entirely different language, even if you weren't hired as a programmer in the first place.

The last few months have been interesting. I like learning new things, but I have had to learn soooooo much! It's right at the edge of my comfort zone, tbh. And there's all sorts of things that I feel I only barely understand. (The number of times I've been asked to help fix something, and have no clue what the acronym they're using means, or what it really does for our application... well. I can see why imposter syndrome is such a thing in our industry. I now have a little bit of an understanding of containers, and microservices, and mq, and a bunch of other enterprise level technology... and a bit of sql and Oracle, plus some Couchbase and nosql. Only superficial knowledge, I'd say... barely scratched the surface on a lot of it, but def something that keeps me on my toes.)

There's other parts to the job, non-tech related. Some days we're slammed with issues, all of which they claim are 'Severe 1, high priority, must be fixed right away.' Which, I mean, yeah... we'll all do the best we can. But the true top priority is production, since there are real live people who would get pretty darn mad if things break. If they couldn't pay their cell phone bill, or get a new phone, or whatever.

And the training environments are also pretty important, since our customers have people who are trying to learn the system... and they can't if that system isn't working.

Which is why, as someone still relatively new, my focus has been on non-production. If I screw something up there, it won't have as big of an impact.

But the customers often act as though these testing environments are as important as production (Severe 1, high priority. Fix it now!), and there's only so many of us to do the fixing. Which means I also have to learn how to multi-task, and prioritize, and try to keep the customers happy while also keeping some semblance of work-life balance.

Supposedly, I think as part of that work-life balance our bosses and clients got together and agreed that we wouldn't support outside of working hours, but the clients don't often act like that... and want us to work all hours of the day. (I had been a bit miffed when one of them called on Christmas Eve - Christmas Eve!!! - for one of those issues. It wasn't production, it wasn't the training environment, and what the heck are they doing testing on Christmas Eve!)

I feel a bit guilty saying that. Like, there is so much pressure, maybe mostly self-imposed?, to try and get it done, fix things, and keep the customers happy. But... nobody is getting shot at. It's not production. Especially now, with the coronavirus and everything else going on, I wish I could tell them that they're are more important things they ought to be doing right now.

Like spending time with family.

Whatever. I don't really think I'm wrong, I think I feel guilty for two reasons. One, because I can do it, and it prob wouldn't take all that much time, but I'm putting my foot down because you have to draw the line *somewhere*. It becomes too easy to say, sure... let me knock that out. And then you wind up staying an hour or so after work, and dealing with non-production issues on Saturday and Sunday, and skipping lunch, and no. Not unless it's a true priority.

Secondly, because it feels like most businesses (no matter what they say) don't like people acting as though there's more to life than work,  so I wonder whether or not my company has my back on this.

Except they mostly do? Sort of? I'm on call again this week, and just got a call about an hour or so ago for another one of these things, and basically said "we're not supporting you right now, feel free to escalate to my boss"... and I haven't got a call yet, or been told I'm in the wrong.

It's Saturday. What are the consequences of not testing, right now? A slight delay in releasing to production? Is that really that big of a problem?

Smh. (This touches on something I may or may not get into as I talk about coronavirus, since there's been this whole question about the impact of social distancing on the economy, but I'll get to that if or when I get to it.) 

Leadership

A great article on leadership, from a friend - https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2020/01/09/leadership-as-an-infinite-game/amp/

Systemic Thinking, and Other Things

I've been thinking about - well, lots of things.

Economics, capitalism, the failures made evident by COVID-19... oligarchs and social dilemmas, and various other odds and ends.

I might go into some of that, another time. Because I think, fundamentally, there's something else to be addressed first.

Systemic vs... idk, individualistic?

Let me explain.

When something bad happens, some people shrug and say 's*** happens', and others say 'why did this happen? What can we do to prevent it from happening in the future?'

This is not meant to say one way is better than the other. As with all things, there are advantages and disadvantages to both. The disadvantage to just shrugging and accepting something is that it can (and probably will) happen again. To someone else.

But as anyone who used to climb trees as a kid, and feels sad knowing so many trees have their lower limbs cut off to make it 'safe' and keep kids today from doing the same, there are disadvantages to handling everything systemically.

First, it gives the false sense that you can somehow 'put padding on all the harsh corners of the world'. It means you focus more on making the world itself safer, instead of teaching the resilience, decision-making, and know-how that allows people to navigate safely regardless of the risk. (This is what many on the right get at, when they complain about lawsuits for failures in common sense or attempts to control speech instead of making people less susceptible to the message. Plus there's a bit of paternalism, an "I know better than you and will make sure you make the 'right' choice" tied up, here.)

As I typically say - both sides have good points, and where I fall on any particular issue depends. It's true that there are systemic changes we can make, changes that will reduce the chances of injury or death... and if we can, then choosing not to seems irresponsible.

But there's also something to be said for making people responsible for themselves, and for letting people make their own decisions. Letting them decide for themselves what risks they're willing to take.

This pandemic, btw, puts those issues in stark relief. If a Gen Z college kid evaluates the risks and decides its worth it to go on spring break, is it paternalistic and controlling to force them to stay home?

Or is the good of the larger public - the ability to 'flatten the curve' and ensure hospitals aren't hit with demand all at the same time - enough to justify it?

I'm not going to explore that issue right now, because this post isn't about answering that so much as it is about framing the way we look at the issue, and how we think about it.

Because this is true for a lot of other things, as well. Like healthcare, racism, student loan debt, and a lot of other things.

We can do a "5 Why's" on any of them, we can explore the systemic issues on all sorts of levels -

Or we can shrug and say "you agreed to that debt when you signed the loan agreement. Nobody owes you anything, and if you get sick and can't pay your medical bills too bad. And racism exists, but I'm not racist and if you just showed the cops some respect and don't commit any crime you'll be fine. What's the big deal?"

We can all choose to socially distance ourselves, hoping that we can slow the spread and prevent the hospitals from getting overwhelmed... so that everyone who catches the disease has the best chance of surviving it. And we can use the powers of the federal government to get businesses churning out masks and ventilators and PPE... And we can ask ourselves why testing isn't widely available, and why this disease spread so fast and so quickly, and why it's so much worse here than in a place like South Korea -

Or we can say "it's a virus, s*** happens. Let's not ruin the economy over it."

Coronavirus - Iran

I do wish we'd go ahead and drop the sanctions on Iran right now.

It just doesn't seem like the time, and we can always reinstate it when this is all over.