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I'm curious how other folks who work at large tech shops in the valley feel about working from home for a while. There is nearly zero reason for me to show up

I'm curious how other folks who work at large tech shops in the valley feel about working from home for a while. There is nearly zero reason for me to show up at work. I can do nearly everything from home, often better. At work, I'm in a large, open building surrounded by thousands of people. Am I overreacting? I know there's a good chance we're all going to get COVID-19, but if I can delay it a bit, I lessen the hit to our soon-to-be overworked heath care system and preserve resources for those who can't hide. I think those of us who have the ability to work from home for a while might want to consider agitating for it to be official policy for the next month or so.

Barrin92 7y ago
>I'm curious how other folks who work at large tech shops in the valley feel about working from home for a while. Am in the UK and not the US but given that I'm healthy and relatively young I don't really see the point. This disease is scary in the aggregate, i.e it imposes huge economic costs. The average case of it is basically having flu symptoms, and I never stayed at home unless I got sick during bad flu seasons. I'm not really sure why people paint being infected with this like the bubonic plague or something, there is already a bunch of corona viruses raging around all the time anyway. edit: lots of downvotes because I don't lock myself in because of a corona virus? People here seem to love hysteria a these days.
- kylemh 7y ago
  At a nearly 2% mortality rate even for younger people, I think the odds are high enough to be worried. It's obviously not as deadly as the bubonic plague, but this disease is very infectious...
  - yitianjian 7y ago
    It's not 2% for younger, it's like <0.5% for less than 40, and something like 10% for older than 70.
  - ihadfun 7y ago
    This is not true. A recent study from China showed the mortality rate for 30-39 year olds to be .2% I believe. And the rate goes down from there as age decreases.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      Link to source would be very much appreciated.
- jakeinspace 7y ago
  Seems worse than the average flu. Not likely that you'll die from it if you're young and not immunocompromised, but just because you don't die doesn't mean there won't be long term health effects. And if you have anyone over age 70 or under age 2 who you care at all about, their lives could be at risk.
  - Scipio_Afri 7y ago
    Seems like children under 9 are not effected much at all, not sure about under 2 tho.
    - vanniv 7y ago
      For some reason, coronaviruses generally rarely affect children -- and those that get it rarely spread it to others despite children being fucking disease magnets. This seems not to be very well understood, but it is really interesting. So far there are no known cases affecting children under 2 (as of two days ago when I read the paper about coronavirus and children)
      - netheril96 7y ago
        There have been several infants in China having contracted COVID-19. But no deaths yet.
      - JimDabell 7y ago
        > So far there are no known cases affecting children under 2 This is not the case, there have been a couple of babies infected in Singapore.
  - PopePompus 7y ago
    Seems worse than the average flu AND unlike the flu, there's no vaccine (and there probably won't be one in time to make much of a difference).
    - bulutsuzku 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- vanniv 7y ago
  This is a more-deadly-than-average coronavirus, or so it seems. It is really hard to tell, because it is still very new outside of China, and you can't trust any of the data coming from there -- so we won't really know for 2 more weeks, until the first big round of cases from open countries end in either recovery or death. That said, the Chinese statistics put median time between first symptoms and death (amongst fatal cases) at only 8 days -- and the 600 cases from the cruise ship are all older than that now, with 3 deaths as of yesterday, which suggests that the 2% mortality rate being bandied about is probably not wildly wrong. (It might be 1% or 3%, but probably not 10%+ like fearmongers are saying or 34% like MERS was -- unless fatalities from the cruise ship are being suppressed or there is something special about that group, or, I guess, if the median of 8 days turns out to be wildly, wildly wrong) Concern seems highly warranted. Vigilance seems warranted. The "ZOMG we all gonna die!" going on does not. But it sure does get ratings and score political points. Edit: I have been using https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ to view graphs and tables of the coronavirus data chopped a bunch of different ways. They list sources for all of it, though I haven't vetted the sources. One of their charts shows a breakdown of closed cases into % cured and % dead. That is currently at 92%/8%, with the recovery rate continually improving, but flattening out. That graph makes it look like the mortality rate may end up higher than 2% -- but still probably not radically so, and we really are extrapolating from very little data.
  - Leherenn 7y ago
    Not that I disagree with your post, but I would expect the average cruise goer to be older than the general population.
  - _-___________-_ 7y ago
    > One of their charts shows a breakdown of closed cases into % cured and % dead. That is currently at 92%/8%, with the recovery rate continually improving, but flattening out. That graph makes it look like the mortality rate may end up higher than 2% -- but still probably not radically so, and we really are extrapolating from very little data. I think there's a really large number of people who have been infected who will never be a "case", so I think 2% is still really high. Just look at e.g. Italy where there was no awareness of it spreading until people were already dying - meaning that it had been spreading for some time. Given that a large number of people seem to be asymptomatic or have mild illness, it's highly likely that many other people were infected in the same "cluster" and never knew.
- dis-sys 7y ago
  Multiple doctors in their late 20s or early 30s have died from the coronavirus. If you are under 18 and have good health, then you are pretty safe.
  - nicolas_t 7y ago
    For the doctors in Wuhan in their late 20s and early 30s who died from the virus, overwork compromising their immune system might have been a factor.
  - scruple 7y ago
    I've been trying to find mortality rates for the very young. Infants and toddlers. I haven't been finding much information. Is this being reported? Having twins under a year at home has somehow managed to become an even more stressful event...
    - Leherenn 7y ago
      I think the reported rate is 0, with contamination rates being low as well. It seems that currently there are more reasons to be worried for your parents than for your kids.
    - irq11 7y ago
      There have been a handful of infections but no fatalities. This virus is essentially a minor cold in young people.
    - pbourke 7y ago
      There was a study[1] released by China CDC that tracked 44,000 patients to 11 Feb. They found zero deaths under age 9, with 416 cases. The study doesn't load for me, so here's the wayback link[2]. [1] http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9a9b-fea8db1a8f51 http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20200221051245/http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9a9b-fea8db1a8f51 https://web.archive.org/web/20200221051245/http://weekly.chi...
    - lukevdp 7y ago
- irq11 7y ago
  Pretty much any halfway rational response on a covid thread is downvoted by the same handful of people. Don’t take it personally.
- akg_67 7y ago
  You are being downvoted, IMO, not for not locking yourself in but ignoring the chance that even you may survive for having strong immune system, you may still potentially be a carrier and transmit to others with weaker immune systems. Don’t be selfish and consider safety of other less fortunate people. As a society, cost is much higher than cost to yourself only.
  - Barrin92 7y ago
    >Don’t be selfish and consider safety of other less fortunate people. In the country right now there are a few dozen cases on a population of 60 million people. Even assuming there is hundreds or thousands of cases, the idea that I stay home (which is a trade-off, because I'm needed at work) isn't rational at all. If I get sick I'll obviously stay home, as I always do to avoid spreading any disease. But to preemptively lock myself in to avoid a disease that isn't particular dangerous in 80% of people and that has barely spread anywhere is ridiculous.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  The point of staying in even if you're young and healthy is not for your benefit, but so you don't walk around spreading the virus everywhere to people who aren't as young and healthy. It's not about you, but it can be hard to think about people other than one's self.
tenpies 7y ago
> Am I overreacting? Probably not. Mortality rate aside (anywhere from 2% to 5% depending on source), the biggest issue is hospitalization rate (about 20% based on Chinese numbers). No country on the planet could handle that hospitalization rate all at once. The priority going forward is about managing spread. Keeping spread as slow as possible so the absolute number of people who need to be hospitalized at any particular point in time is as small as possible. That makes it possible for hospitals to keep up and keep the mortality rate as low as possible. You want to have a trickle of patients coming in over a very long time, not a one-day tsunami. The other thing is that this will absolutely result in shortages. China has already banned the export of many medical supplies and as this sort of nationalism spreads the shortages will be more tangible. New supply chains will eventually emerge for many things, but they will take a while to do so. If you need any medications, now is probably a good time to stock up with as much as reasonably possible.
- cylinder 7y ago
  And how are we going to setup temporary hospitals when portable bed factories are probably all in China?
  - dx034 7y ago
    The problem is even that you can't properly prevent catching it if people are isolated at home since masks and disinfectants start being sold out pretty much world wide.
- hnick 7y ago
  Do we know how many of those 20% would die without hospital support? I assume the 2-5% takes into account treatment or is that excluding it?
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    About 4%. That's the death rate in Wuhan with the system maxed out. The limitation is actually mechanical ventilators.
  - 7y ago
gibolt 7y ago
I personally am watching others around me do what I consider "overreacting". Once it starts spreading locally though, the response will be reasonable. The biggest gain in working from home is not protecting yourself, but the spread to all of your coworkers and then to all of the next infections beyond them leading to actual deaths.
- 01100011 7y ago
  Exactly. I'm 0% worried about catching* COVID-19. I suspect I'm at much greater risk of dying from my daily commute. The reason to stay home is for others' sake. We in the tech industry often have jobs where we can stay home with no impact, so, why not do it now? * There's probably a 100% chance I'll get it at some point, I just don't fear severe consequences from it.
- swsieber 7y ago
  Once you know it's spreading locally, countermeasures are a lot less effective.
buboard 7y ago
no you re not. everyone who can do that should demand it. and not just for the corona, but for reclaiming back your time, and also, occam's razor
2sk21 7y ago
Same here - there is absolutely no reason for me to be physically present in the office so I plan to work from home as much as possible in the near future
- koheripbal 7y ago
  Pornhub is going to see sooooo much traffic.
t0mislav 7y ago
Happened yesterday in my company. :( Big tech company, 2000+ people, central Europe. First registered patient with COVID-19 in my country is from company I'm working for. We all received notice to work from home. It will be huge test now for remote work. I bet lot of people doesn't even know how to connect from home. (people from administration etc)
- ChuckNorris89 7y ago
  Which country are you from?
  - I-M-S 7y ago
    Based on info OP provided, Croatia
    - t0mislav 7y ago
      true
- electriclove 7y ago
  Which company? I hope we can US companies be proactive about this and not wait for someone to be infected.
  - t0mislav 7y ago
    Sorry , didn't saw this before. Ericsson Croatia, it is no secret.
thom 7y ago
I worry about the coming increase in home working where companies aren't prepared for it. What if this paints a picture of broadly lower productivity for the practice across the tech industry? Could this then be used as evidence against home working more widely for the long term?
- erikw 7y ago
  Yeah, having been much more productive in a previous remote position, I had thought that I was always more productive working from home. During a recent remote stint in my current position (which is normally onsite), I realized how much company culture and having a dedicated home office (which I don't have set up now) were a part of my productivity.
GhostVII 7y ago
Probably overreacting. There is a much greater chance of you dying on your commute than catching the virus if you are in the US, so the virus has not significantly increased your chances of death. And if you are worried about being a carrier, it is far more likely for you to get the flu, which can also be deadly, so the virus has not significantly increased your risk to others either. Maybe if the US had tens of thousands of cases it would make more sense, but right now I don't see why anyone in North America should be changing their habits given how small the risk is relative to the things we are already exposed to.
- starlust2 7y ago
  The scary thing is that we don't actually know how many infections there are. The test used in the U.S. reportedly isn't accurate.

Barrin92 7y ago

>I'm curious how other folks who work at large tech shops in the valley feel about working from home for a while. Am in the UK and not the US but given that I'm healthy and relatively young I don't really see the point. This disease is scary in the aggregate, i.e it imposes huge economic costs. The average case of it is basically having flu symptoms, and I never stayed at home unless I got sick during bad flu seasons. I'm not really sure why people paint being infected with this like the bubonic plague or something, there is already a bunch of corona viruses raging around all the time anyway. edit: lots of downvotes because I don't lock myself in because of a corona virus? People here seem to love hysteria a these days.

kylemh 7y ago
At a nearly 2% mortality rate even for younger people, I think the odds are high enough to be worried. It's obviously not as deadly as the bubonic plague, but this disease is very infectious...
- yitianjian 7y ago
  It's not 2% for younger, it's like <0.5% for less than 40, and something like 10% for older than 70.
- ihadfun 7y ago
  This is not true. A recent study from China showed the mortality rate for 30-39 year olds to be .2% I believe. And the rate goes down from there as age decreases.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Link to source would be very much appreciated.
jakeinspace 7y ago
Seems worse than the average flu. Not likely that you'll die from it if you're young and not immunocompromised, but just because you don't die doesn't mean there won't be long term health effects. And if you have anyone over age 70 or under age 2 who you care at all about, their lives could be at risk.
- Scipio_Afri 7y ago
  Seems like children under 9 are not effected much at all, not sure about under 2 tho.
  - vanniv 7y ago
    For some reason, coronaviruses generally rarely affect children -- and those that get it rarely spread it to others despite children being fucking disease magnets. This seems not to be very well understood, but it is really interesting. So far there are no known cases affecting children under 2 (as of two days ago when I read the paper about coronavirus and children)
    - netheril96 7y ago
      There have been several infants in China having contracted COVID-19. But no deaths yet.
    - JimDabell 7y ago
      > So far there are no known cases affecting children under 2 This is not the case, there have been a couple of babies infected in Singapore.
- PopePompus 7y ago
  Seems worse than the average flu AND unlike the flu, there's no vaccine (and there probably won't be one in time to make much of a difference).
  - bulutsuzku 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
vanniv 7y ago
This is a more-deadly-than-average coronavirus, or so it seems. It is really hard to tell, because it is still very new outside of China, and you can't trust any of the data coming from there -- so we won't really know for 2 more weeks, until the first big round of cases from open countries end in either recovery or death. That said, the Chinese statistics put median time between first symptoms and death (amongst fatal cases) at only 8 days -- and the 600 cases from the cruise ship are all older than that now, with 3 deaths as of yesterday, which suggests that the 2% mortality rate being bandied about is probably not wildly wrong. (It might be 1% or 3%, but probably not 10%+ like fearmongers are saying or 34% like MERS was -- unless fatalities from the cruise ship are being suppressed or there is something special about that group, or, I guess, if the median of 8 days turns out to be wildly, wildly wrong) Concern seems highly warranted. Vigilance seems warranted. The "ZOMG we all gonna die!" going on does not. But it sure does get ratings and score political points. Edit: I have been using https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ to view graphs and tables of the coronavirus data chopped a bunch of different ways. They list sources for all of it, though I haven't vetted the sources. One of their charts shows a breakdown of closed cases into % cured and % dead. That is currently at 92%/8%, with the recovery rate continually improving, but flattening out. That graph makes it look like the mortality rate may end up higher than 2% -- but still probably not radically so, and we really are extrapolating from very little data.
- Leherenn 7y ago
  Not that I disagree with your post, but I would expect the average cruise goer to be older than the general population.
- _-___________-_ 7y ago
  > One of their charts shows a breakdown of closed cases into % cured and % dead. That is currently at 92%/8%, with the recovery rate continually improving, but flattening out. That graph makes it look like the mortality rate may end up higher than 2% -- but still probably not radically so, and we really are extrapolating from very little data. I think there's a really large number of people who have been infected who will never be a "case", so I think 2% is still really high. Just look at e.g. Italy where there was no awareness of it spreading until people were already dying - meaning that it had been spreading for some time. Given that a large number of people seem to be asymptomatic or have mild illness, it's highly likely that many other people were infected in the same "cluster" and never knew.
dis-sys 7y ago
Multiple doctors in their late 20s or early 30s have died from the coronavirus. If you are under 18 and have good health, then you are pretty safe.
- nicolas_t 7y ago
  For the doctors in Wuhan in their late 20s and early 30s who died from the virus, overwork compromising their immune system might have been a factor.
- scruple 7y ago
  I've been trying to find mortality rates for the very young. Infants and toddlers. I haven't been finding much information. Is this being reported? Having twins under a year at home has somehow managed to become an even more stressful event...
  - Leherenn 7y ago
    I think the reported rate is 0, with contamination rates being low as well. It seems that currently there are more reasons to be worried for your parents than for your kids.
  - irq11 7y ago
    There have been a handful of infections but no fatalities. This virus is essentially a minor cold in young people.
  - pbourke 7y ago
    There was a study[1] released by China CDC that tracked 44,000 patients to 11 Feb. They found zero deaths under age 9, with 416 cases. The study doesn't load for me, so here's the wayback link[2]. [1] http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9a9b-fea8db1a8f51 http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20200221051245/http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9a9b-fea8db1a8f51 https://web.archive.org/web/20200221051245/http://weekly.chi...
  - lukevdp 7y ago
irq11 7y ago
Pretty much any halfway rational response on a covid thread is downvoted by the same handful of people. Don’t take it personally.
akg_67 7y ago
You are being downvoted, IMO, not for not locking yourself in but ignoring the chance that even you may survive for having strong immune system, you may still potentially be a carrier and transmit to others with weaker immune systems. Don’t be selfish and consider safety of other less fortunate people. As a society, cost is much higher than cost to yourself only.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  >Don’t be selfish and consider safety of other less fortunate people. In the country right now there are a few dozen cases on a population of 60 million people. Even assuming there is hundreds or thousands of cases, the idea that I stay home (which is a trade-off, because I'm needed at work) isn't rational at all. If I get sick I'll obviously stay home, as I always do to avoid spreading any disease. But to preemptively lock myself in to avoid a disease that isn't particular dangerous in 80% of people and that has barely spread anywhere is ridiculous.
nkrisc 7y ago
The point of staying in even if you're young and healthy is not for your benefit, but so you don't walk around spreading the virus everywhere to people who aren't as young and healthy. It's not about you, but it can be hard to think about people other than one's self.

tenpies 7y ago

> Am I overreacting? Probably not. Mortality rate aside (anywhere from 2% to 5% depending on source), the biggest issue is hospitalization rate (about 20% based on Chinese numbers). No country on the planet could handle that hospitalization rate all at once. The priority going forward is about managing spread. Keeping spread as slow as possible so the absolute number of people who need to be hospitalized at any particular point in time is as small as possible. That makes it possible for hospitals to keep up and keep the mortality rate as low as possible. You want to have a trickle of patients coming in over a very long time, not a one-day tsunami. The other thing is that this will absolutely result in shortages. China has already banned the export of many medical supplies and as this sort of nationalism spreads the shortages will be more tangible. New supply chains will eventually emerge for many things, but they will take a while to do so. If you need any medications, now is probably a good time to stock up with as much as reasonably possible.

cylinder 7y ago
And how are we going to setup temporary hospitals when portable bed factories are probably all in China?
- dx034 7y ago
  The problem is even that you can't properly prevent catching it if people are isolated at home since masks and disinfectants start being sold out pretty much world wide.
hnick 7y ago
Do we know how many of those 20% would die without hospital support? I assume the 2-5% takes into account treatment or is that excluding it?
- koheripbal 7y ago
  About 4%. That's the death rate in Wuhan with the system maxed out. The limitation is actually mechanical ventilators.
- 7y ago

gibolt 7y ago

I personally am watching others around me do what I consider "overreacting". Once it starts spreading locally though, the response will be reasonable. The biggest gain in working from home is not protecting yourself, but the spread to all of your coworkers and then to all of the next infections beyond them leading to actual deaths.

01100011 7y ago
Exactly. I'm 0% worried about catching* COVID-19. I suspect I'm at much greater risk of dying from my daily commute. The reason to stay home is for others' sake. We in the tech industry often have jobs where we can stay home with no impact, so, why not do it now? * There's probably a 100% chance I'll get it at some point, I just don't fear severe consequences from it.
swsieber 7y ago
Once you know it's spreading locally, countermeasures are a lot less effective.

buboard 7y ago

no you re not. everyone who can do that should demand it. and not just for the corona, but for reclaiming back your time, and also, occam's razor

2sk21 7y ago

Same here - there is absolutely no reason for me to be physically present in the office so I plan to work from home as much as possible in the near future

koheripbal 7y ago
Pornhub is going to see sooooo much traffic.

t0mislav 7y ago

Happened yesterday in my company. :( Big tech company, 2000+ people, central Europe. First registered patient with COVID-19 in my country is from company I'm working for. We all received notice to work from home. It will be huge test now for remote work. I bet lot of people doesn't even know how to connect from home. (people from administration etc)

ChuckNorris89 7y ago
Which country are you from?
- I-M-S 7y ago
  Based on info OP provided, Croatia
  - t0mislav 7y ago
    true
electriclove 7y ago
Which company? I hope we can US companies be proactive about this and not wait for someone to be infected.
- t0mislav 7y ago
  Sorry , didn't saw this before. Ericsson Croatia, it is no secret.

thom 7y ago

I worry about the coming increase in home working where companies aren't prepared for it. What if this paints a picture of broadly lower productivity for the practice across the tech industry? Could this then be used as evidence against home working more widely for the long term?

erikw 7y ago
Yeah, having been much more productive in a previous remote position, I had thought that I was always more productive working from home. During a recent remote stint in my current position (which is normally onsite), I realized how much company culture and having a dedicated home office (which I don't have set up now) were a part of my productivity.

GhostVII 7y ago

Probably overreacting. There is a much greater chance of you dying on your commute than catching the virus if you are in the US, so the virus has not significantly increased your chances of death. And if you are worried about being a carrier, it is far more likely for you to get the flu, which can also be deadly, so the virus has not significantly increased your risk to others either. Maybe if the US had tens of thousands of cases it would make more sense, but right now I don't see why anyone in North America should be changing their habits given how small the risk is relative to the things we are already exposed to.

starlust2 7y ago
The scary thing is that we don't actually know how many infections there are. The test used in the U.S. reportedly isn't accurate.