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For those of you reading this from the bay area, we already have suspected community transmission 50 miles away, in a town with a lot of people who commute to the Bay. If it's easy for you to work from home, consider doing so, giving explicit permission to your reports to do so, and asking your manager to give permission to their reports to do so.

We're fortunate to be in an industry where WFH has relatively little cost, and we can afford to get ahead of this in a way that other industries can't. We don't have to wait for the government to give us guidance. For people doing technical tasks, IMHO, the cost/benefit tipped in favor of WFH yesterday.

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A friend of mine flew back from Japan yesterday. They were involved with providing food to the passengers quarantined on the Diamond Princess. He worked about an hour away from the cruise ship.

This friend called the Center for Disease Control before flying back and asked them if he should do anything, like maybe quarantine himself in his home; they said no. No one questioned him when be boarded the plane to the states. When he left the plane he was asked if he had traveled to China and he said no; they waved him through.

My friend feels reasonable safe, their thinking was is that since they worked a good distance from the cruise ship, they should be fine. They are quarantining themselves for the two weeks, on their own, out of their own personal sense of caution.

IMHO, the CDC should be more careful. Japan continues to see more cases show up.[1] It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that the CDC should quarantine everyone coming from Yokohoma, Japan. Especially if their work was somehow related to the quarantined cruise ship.

Science reported three days ago[0] that maybe people who directly interacted with the cruise ship maybe weren't careful enough...

"Normally, those supporting a quarantine don’t have to be quarantined themselves, presuming they use personal protection equipment (PPE)—masks, gloves, goggles, and gowns. 'But the available evidence suggests that PPE was not appropriately used on board,' Hunter says. He believes the officers who worked onboard the Diamond Princess should have been quarantined once the problems with infection control came to light. If such lax management had resulted in the infection of government officials in the United Kingdom, 'I suspect criminal proceedings would follow,' Hunter says."

[0]: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/coronavirus-infectio...

[1]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

The CDC is (allegedly) already working on expanding the criteria for who gets tested and who doesn't. Making the conditions less strict. They are also working hard on getting the testing kits available broadly in every region of the country which is no easy task (apparently a bit part of the supply chain for the actual testing kits is coming from China, which is ironic in a way).

Previously only people who were in contact with infected people showing symptoms or were in China (previously Wuhan) would be allowed to get tested. This may be missing a ton of aystompatic people walking around who don't know they have it, and may be spreading it to other people [1]. Your friend most certainly should have been tested and possibly self-quarinited.

Fun story, an area in northern Italy, Lombary decided to test more broad, not just the people showing symptoms and they found 600 people (only roughly 200 showing symptoms). It seems that no one really cares about the other 400 infected people walking around because "they aren't coughing and spreading it like a symptomatic person".

The funny part is a bunch of other Italian areas got mad at Lombardy for testing broadly and spiking the total number of infected in Italy. It's like shooting the messenger. The Lomary official had a great quote (this comes from [2]):

> Lombardy officials said they preferred to know who had the virus.

> “Either you hide problems under a carpet, or you lift the carpet and you clean the floor,” Attilio Fontana, the region’s president, said in an interview in his office, with views over a foggy and eerily quiet Milan, 29 floors above the virus hunters.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/health/coronavirus-asympt...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/world/europe/italy-corona...

They've already been on a plane with hundreds of other people flying to the US. If they're contagious, it's way too late to avoid spreading the disease. (Which is not to say they shouldn't continue to quarantine themselves -- just that flying was foolish if they were concerned about being a vector for introducing the disease to the US.)

For those who haven't kept up:

https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/message-campus-community-covid-...

In addition to the confirmed Solano county case (unknown transmission), three UC Davis students are currently in isolation, with one showing symptoms (tested, pending results).

> We don't have to wait for the government to give us guidance.

I can not stress this enough, if you have the ability to do something at relatively little cost, which will delay or prevent the unnecessary spread of this virus, you have a moral obligation to execute on that ability. If you live in a major city or a city near one, it is probably in your community already, and the key thing that will reduce the deaths in this outbreak is reducing the peak load on hospitals.

Hospitals will be placed under extreme strain, and the quality of care will decline with the volume. A significant proportion of those suffering confirmed COVID-19 require oxygen and/or ventilatory support. Ventilatory support in hypoxemic patients relies on many highly specialized personnel and consumable resources, and keeping the rate of infection low enough that these facilities are sufficient is of great importance.

Do not hesitate to act now, even if you will be questioned later on your authority to do so.

I'm not sure why officials haven't come out suggesting things like this. And to avoid non-mandatory travel.

It's probably a bit late for this stuff from a containment perspective. But it would help reduce the r0.

Speaking personally, I have to decide by mid March if we should take our trip to Legoland in San Diego. Right now I'm leaning towards "no". And I don't imagine the outlook will be much better in just 2 weeks.

> I'm not sure why officials haven't come out suggesting things like this. And to avoid non-mandatory travel.

Maybe because it's not needed yet? We are talking about a few cases in a country of 300+ millions inhabitants. Even if we assume that there are many unreported cases, we can still assume that the risk is extremely low.

It's notoriously hard to assess probabilities of low events, so I would simply follow recommendations from experts, and so far my government hasn't emitted any specific restrictions (besides avoiding traveling to China and a few other places).

> so I would simply follow recommendations from experts, and so far my government hasn't emitted any specific restrictions (besides avoiding traveling to China and a few other places).

You are in a better position to assess your personal cost of WFH than the government is.

Anecdotally, companies are sending communication whereby company-related travel is restricted and requires approval from the chief health officer in the company/HR.

Officials have to calibrate their guidance against how the general public will react. If they announce that you should try to stay home and cancel your travel plans, but the average Joe looks around and says "nah it's not really spreading in the US right now", how do you get him to actually stay home if/when it's absolutely necessary?

> I'm not sure why officials haven't come out suggesting things like this.

Because they're being told it is "contained in the U.S."

Because they're balancing being extra-cautious with the serious risks of overreacting.

The worst case scenario right now is that some people might lose their grandparents a couple years early -- which is obviously incredibly sad, but also not something worth crashing the world economy over.

Ouch. I have this opinion of my dog. An extra year or two... not a big deal.

I do not have this opinion of my parents or any other immuno-compromised individual. Your worst-case-scenario is absolutely the worst-case scenario in many individual's minds.

If the greater good is not the extension of the life of those around us what exactly are we trying to do here?

There are many things worth crashing the world-economy over. Slavery was one. Climate change probably another.

Asking for a 90 day slow-down to prevent real-world deaths is probably one of the more concrete and predictable things we could do compared to most other altruistic choices facing us today.

Please don’t put words in my mouth.

I apologize if I misunderstood your intent. I can see other ways of interpreting what you said.

I originally took your point to be that the current risks, although sad, are acceptable and we face greater peril from slowing down economic activity.

Although I see trade-offs to everything I see economic activity fundamentally as in service to the quality of life of a person and would rather take the sadness of losing greater economic gains to the sadness losing significantly more people.

There is always a balance to this and I could interpret what you said as having a different perspective on what the current risks are but without additional context, I took it as I did.

> The worst case scenario right now is that some people might lose their grandparents a couple years early

"Colleagues mourned the death of Peng Yinhua, a 29 Yo doctor who postponed his wedding to fight the COVID-19 outbreak"

"Liu Zhiming, the director of Wuhan Wuchang hospital, died at 51 Years old"

"Dr. Li Wenliang died at 33 Yo.

"Xia Sisi, 29, was a digestive physician working at Hospital in Wuhan. She died Sunday morning"

"Huang Wenjun, 42, deputy chief physician at the department of respiratory medicine at Xiaogan Central Hospital also died Sunday".

> The worst case scenario right now is that some people might lose their grandparents a couple years early

Any sources for that theory?

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

I am looking for

"The worst case scenario right now is that some people might lose their grandparents a couple years early"

in those numbers, but I can't find anything like this.

As cavalier and apathetic as your assessment is, that is far, far from the worst case scenario.

The WHO is now encouraging it. https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1233488277363183617?s=19