9 ms·

San Jose: Three TSA agents test positive for Covid-19

212 points by godot 7y ago

mdorazio 7y ago
I hate to stoke FUD, but that's pretty much it for any semblance of containment. If those TSA agents tested positive, 1) you can be sure other TSA agents at other airports are also infected, and 2) I'd be extremely surprised if they didn't pass Covid-19 to a significant number of travelers, 3) whatever individual(s) gave it to the agents undoubtedly also gave it to other travelers.
- garmaine 7y ago
  We lost the chance at containment weeks ago. It's in the community. We need to stop all flights, close all schools, and discourage travel. Our best chance now is in flattening the curve so our healthcare system isn't overburdened.
  - speedplane 7y ago
    > We lost the chance at containment weeks ago. It's in the community. We need to stop all flights, close all schools, and discourage travel. Our best chance now is in flattening the curve so our healthcare system isn't overburdened. If it's already out, how will stopping flights and closing schools really help? How long will you stop them? At best, this will just slow the spread, not stop it.
    - dogecoinbase 7y ago
      The idea is to slow the spread, to avoid a situation like Italy where hospitals are overwhelmed: https://www.vox.com/2020/3/10/21171481/coronavirus-us-cases-quarantine-cancellation https://www.vox.com/2020/3/10/21171481/coronavirus-us-cases-...
      - zone411 7y ago
        I just made a map with state-by-state data about ICU beds and vulnerable (older) population. Some states have less than half the number of ICU beds per vulnerable population than others. https://twitter.com/LechMazur/status/1237545167659253763 https://twitter.com/LechMazur/status/1237545167659253763
    - zachberger 7y ago
      As the poster above you said said, slowing the spread so healthcare system isn't overburdened should now be the goal. This animation helps understand the concept: https://thespinoff.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Covid-19-curves-graphic-social-v3.gif https://thespinoff.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Covid-19...
    - Benjammer 7y ago
      The point is that slowing it has a huge amount of merit as well, so that the healthcare system isn’t flooded with everyone getting sick all at once.
    - im3w1l 7y ago
      Same areas will be able to snuff it out with luck, social distancing and contact tracing. Stopping flights prevent them from being reinfected. But quarantining incoming travelers might achieve the same thing with fewer drawbacks.
      - hcknwscommenter 7y ago
        Quarantining incoming travelers from high-risk destinations will likely help, but will NOT achieve the same thing. COVID-19 is already here and circulating in the community. It has been for weeks. We just aren't testing for it (this will change in days or maybe a week, so wait for the big explosion in cases). Two weeks ago, there was capacity to administer and process 700 tests. Not 700 per day. 700 total. It has improved a little since then. But it is only now that actual significant testing capacity is being brought on board. Something S. Korea has had for about a month. We are way way behind.
        im3w1l 7y ago
        If by community you mean the US as a whole, yes. But there are many areas and smaller cities in which it has not arrived. Those could be helped. And if a smaller city is infected and then gets clean, they could be helped too. That's what I was referring to. Stopping domestic flights.
    - adrr 7y ago
      There’s 60,000 icu beds in the US. We are in full flu season and a lot of those beds are being used. We need to slow down this virus till summer and hope it that inverts the curve so we have time to develop methods and drugs to minimize the risk of hospitalizations. If we don’t slow it down, we’ll see 3% mortality rates instead of sub 1%. Our path is similar to other countries, we’re just a few weeks behind.
      - sigmaprimus 7y ago
        Forgive my ignorance but I recently saw a video of two women fighting over bathroom tissue in Australia or New Zealand. If they have infections there where summer is just ending why do people think that warmer weather will some how stop the spread?
        adrr 7y ago
        Flu and cold is seasonal. There’s a bunch different theories around it from cold air lowers our defenses to vitamin d production from sun light. Sars burned out during the summer months so hopefully we see a reduction with this virus.
        sigmaprimus 7y ago
        Thanks that makes sense, I'm still a bit confused as to the fact it's going to be summer in the northern hemisphere but winter in the southern, does that mean things will get better in Europe and North America but worse in South America, Australia etc?
        adrr 7y ago
        Flu seasons are usually judged by what is happening in the other hemisphere. During our summer Australia had a bad flu season which corresponded to the US having a bad flu season during our winter months. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_season
        AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    - nullc 7y ago
      Contagion is funny. Each sick person will only, on average in unmitigated conditions, get two or three other people sick. If you consider just a single infected person that doesn't seem that infectious at all. Yet because this is an exponential process that won't slow down until a significant fraction of the population is infected or immune 2-3 is enough to go from a couple people sick to most of the world in fairly short order. Yet if you can reduce that 2-3 down to 1 or below even with relatively half-assed measures like telling some people to stay in inside, isolating known-infected and likely-infected persons, closing down some major spreading venues, telling people to wash their hands or use surgical masks... presto chango the disease dies out and no more than a tiny percentage of the population will get infected. If the half-assed measures reduce the exponent but don't get it below 1, eventually most people will still get infected but it will take a lot longer. That extra time means the hospitals get less overloaded and lots of additional lives are saved because many covid19 cases require serious medical intervention (forced respiration). It also potentially creates time for better treatments to be created/discovered. The best time to start seriously addressing this would have been weeks ago when it became clear that it was spreading from unknown and non-isolateable sources inside the country-- at least to the extent that it could be done without major damage... before there were thousands (likely hundreds of thousands now; given the observed spreading rates) of cases circulating in the US. But so long as the vast majority of the people who could eventually be infected are not yet infected, it's STILL a good idea. On top of the risk we're facing from hospitals overloading, there is also a lot of potential for widespread panic once testing catches up and the numbers go from a rounding error to "big and scary looking" overnight. Beginning countermeasures earlier should help reduce the panic both by decreasing the peak infected numbers and by making it clear that the issue is being addressed.
    - garmaine 7y ago
      Slowing the spread is exactly what we need to do. Around 15% of the people who get COVID-19 need ICU care in order to keep breathing. The fatality rate with care is no higher than around 2%, and maybe less. Without medical access, it is around 15%, guaranteed. The problem is there are only so many ICU beds available. If we self-isolate and slow the spread, then we can keep the number of dangerously ill people below our capacity limits, and make sure that everyone who needs care gets it. This is what Japan and South Korea have done. Italy did not react fast enough and now the fatality rate there is approaching 8%(!!). With very strict measures, we might even stop the epidemic in its tracks. So far, only China is on track for doing that.
      - nullc 7y ago
        > Around 15% of the people who get COVID-19 need ICU I'm usually the doomssayer, but that's 15% of people who are diagnosed. Usually people who are asymptomatic or nearly asymptomatic don't get diagnosed. Only a few countries have testing programs widespread enough to start estimating case vs infection rates... and certainly not the US, where there are plenty of people who have been obviously infected who are still not included in the official counts because of god-knows-what-the-CDC-is-doing. What is clear enough is that whatever the rate of serious cases are, it's more than high enough to overload the hospitals-- just as is happening now in Italy. So I fully agree with your point, I just don't want to see if lost in the noise because some people will notice the 15% claim is almost certainly an overestimate.
        freeone3000 7y ago
        CDC is keeping the numbers down, as requested.
        garmaine 7y ago
        Other countries don't have the problem with widespread testing that the US has. That number comes from China, Italy, and South Korea. 15% of people who show symptoms need intensive medical care.
        7y ago
    - cmurf 7y ago
      Slowing the spread is the point. We have a lack of capacity for handling the urgent care cases. Once the capacity is over limit, in particular ventilation, people will die who otherwise would not die. The difference is in thousands of deaths.
    - marklacey 7y ago
      Slowing things down is important in order to keep the medical system from being overwhelmed. We already know we don’t have enough ventilators or enough staff to care for the ill if we end up with a similar growth curve to what they’ve seen in Italy.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - llamataboot 7y ago
      exactly, and slowing the spread is the difference between Japan, Italy, and something far worse... https://www.flattenthecurve.com/ https://www.flattenthecurve.com/ Or if you want more math, here's why putting into place extreme measures even one or two days later can make outcomes significantly worse https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
    - barrkel 7y ago
      Slowing the spread is entirely the point; the slower it spreads, the lower the peak of acute cases, which means less burden on healthcare resources.
    - bsder 7y ago
      > If it's already out, how will stopping flights and closing schools really help? How long will you stop them? At best, this will just slow the spread, not stop it. Yes, it will. One thing that tends to get neglected is that in a lot of diseases, most people don't pass the disease on very well (maybe infect one other person) but a small number of people (superspreaders or superinfectors) pass it on EXTREMELY effectively. If you can block the superinfectors by quarantines, that is like putting control rods into a nuclear reactor--you slow the progress dramatically.
    - umanwizard 7y ago
      Yes, slowing the spread is the goal. Slowing the spread gives vaccine and antiviral researchers a fighting chance to win the race, gets us to summer where if we’re lucky enough that this virus is seasonal it’ll go away, and, most importantly, “flattens the curve”, as your parent commentator already pointed out.
      - hcknwscommenter 7y ago
        Everyone keeps hoping the virus is "seasonal." That warmer temperatures will dampen the spread. The data on that is total hokum. The flu is seasonal because everyone in the WORLD is exposed in a matter of months and either develops immunity or gets sick first and then develops immunity. The next season's flu comes from viruses incubating in animal populations and agricultural wildlife patterns are seasonal (e.g., pig/chicken raising in Asia, global bird migration patterns). Influenza circulates year around, but in the Summer months, we are mostly immune due to prior exposure. The new version of the flu starts going in Winter and we are all immune again by the Spring/Summer. IMHO, COVID-19 will only have the same pattern by happenstance.
  - sjtindell 7y ago
    Many parents can’t take time off if we close school. Children aren’t at risk here, reason why still unknown. That’s a terrible idea.
    - yaks_hairbrush 7y ago
      The issue with schools is that they're daily large gatherings where the virus can be transmitted. Children can be carriers with schools providing the network effect for spreading covid-19.
    - testcase_delta 7y ago
      Garmine's recommendation is in line with expert opinions I've been reading for the last couple of days. There is at least one really great case study from the Spanish Flu: St Louis proactively closed schools and reduced deaths by 50%, compared to Pittsburg who closed schools relatively. It seems a decidedly good idea to get ahead of these things.
    - vkou 7y ago
      1. Just because kids aren't dying, doesn't mean they aren't carriers. 2. When it gets bad, schools will be closed anyways, and parents will need to figure out how to handle childsitting. 3. The longer we delay closure, the worse off everyone else will be.
    - dcolkitt 7y ago
      Children aren't at risk, but can still act as vectors of infection. And it's not just kids, many adults work in the school system. Shutting down schools is almost assuredly an effective measure to slow the spread of the disease. And slowing the spread is the overriding public health imperative. Even if the same number of people get infected, fast transmission means the healthcare system gets overloaded with all the patients at once. A 5% reduction in the rate of transmission could plausibly reduce the number of fatalities by 50% or more. We need to do everything possible to institute "social distancing" to slow the process done.
      - dx034 7y ago
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
  TSA agents likely are having direct contact with a much more diverse crowd than the average person, with maybe exceptions for folks in super urban areas, regularly using NYC's subway, etc.
  - staticautomatic 7y ago
    Also they infrequently change their gloves, as if the gloves' only purpose is protecting the TSA agents from the things they're touching.
    - zx2c4 7y ago
      Going through SFO on Sunday, the TSA agent working the controls behind the X-ray screen sneezed into his hands. A colleague looked up at him, and then he sheepishly ceded his seat to the other agent and put on new gloves. As I was packing up my things on the other side of the metal detector, I saw him chatting with a more managerial looking TSA agent. Not sure what conclusion to draw from the brief observations, but it did leave an impression.
      - garmaine 7y ago
        Super nitpick: SFO doesn't employ TSA agents. Those were CAS contractors.
        zx2c4 7y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_Aviation_Security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_Aviation_Security Thanks! Never knew that this role was sometimes contracted out.
        throw03172019 7y ago
        Wow, I never knew such thing existed. Do you have any idea what makes an airport use CAS over TSA?
        7y ago
- leggomylibro 7y ago
  Yeah, it's pretty clear by this point that the virus has been spreading widely in the States for some time. Such is life. Just wait until they actually start testing people in earnest; the infected numbers will skyrocket in a very short period of time, causing another stock crash and more mass panic. It'll probably be at least another few weeks before it's time to buy with both fists, imo.
  - usaar333 7y ago
    Are people not aware at this point that the US will look like Italy/South Korea in a few weeks time? Hence, the hoarding of goods that has already begun..
    - slg 7y ago
      Last reports I saw had us 11 days behind Italy based on known cases. We are probably even closer with unknown cases. I think tomorrow is the day to ensure you have a couple weeks of food and incidental supplies in your home if you haven't done so already. I don't think there is any hope of us slowing things down as successfully as they have in South Korea with their widespread testing.
      - nostromo 7y ago
        This disease is fatal for people that are very old or otherwise ill. In Italy the average age of fatal infection is 81, which is older than the life expectancy for an Italian man. For 80% of people infected it's a mild cold or flu, not requiring hospitalization. I realize HN is full of Zero Hedge gold bugs, but this doesn't strike me as the apocalypse.
        refurb 7y ago
        You’re getting downvoted, but none of your facts are inaccurate.
        dx034 7y ago
        That's absolutely true, but the problem with this virus is not mortality but hospitalization. I read numbers yesterday that in Bergamo, up to 30% of ICU patients are under 60. Those are very likely to survive but need ICU treatment for up to 2 weeks. Most European countries have already accepted that most will get infected at some point (see Merkel's statement yesterday). It's all about flattening the curve to make sure hospitals have capacity. If we manage that, mortality could stay at reasonable levels. But we have no idea how high mortality rates could go if people with severe symptoms would need to stay at home.
- grecy 7y ago
  I just flew through Seattle, Spokane, Orange County and Salt Lake City this weekend. TSA agents physically touched my passport and boarding pass at each one. I wonder what are the chances they've given it to me?
  - briandear 7y ago
    You probably should self quarantine for at least a month. Have a family member carefully purchase at least 86 rolls of toilet paper because apparently that boosts immunity.
  - refurb 7y ago
    You didn’t actually fly through San Jose, but are asking what your chances are?
- rorykoehler 7y ago
  We were past the point of containment about a month ago
- a3n 7y ago
  This part has always bothered me. The TSA agents wear gloves. They handle your ID and your possessions. Whatever one passenger may have, that the gloves protected the agent from, is going to be smeared on to subsequent passengers' ID and possessions.
- threatofrain 7y ago
  Most major institutions probably don't even want to know whether their staff is sick.
tus88 7y ago
That doesn't sound good...
jdkee 7y ago
This is the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VScSEXRwUqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VScSEXRwUqQ
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post duplicate comments.
sneak 7y ago
I am slowly coming to the realization that a quarter to a half of a percent of people who are alive on Earth today may not be in one year. Please send the following links to your employers, especially if you work with the public: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop... https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-cancel-everything/607675/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronaviru... The only way we will avoid swamping the healthcare system in the US is by enacting widespread measures before it seems necessary/imminent. NOW is the time to act, not later.
- gok 7y ago
  A bold prediction, given that around 2% of people die every year.
- llamataboot 7y ago
  It's gonna be bad. It's gonna be /really/ bad in the US I fear. Not even sure we have the social cohesion or political will to do what we will need to do (furlough workers with pay, free childcare for quarantine, weeks spent mostly at home, etc) when we realize it. May just let it burn through population and keep people working. Gonna be ugly.
  - sneak 7y ago
    I am especially worried about people in US prisons or detention centers, where density is high, sanitation is low, and medical treatment woefully substandard. Tens of thousands of prisoners may well die in the next 60-90 days if this spreads as much as it seems it’s going to.
    - allovernow 7y ago
      I'm more concerned with mass prison riots and escapees. Couple prison riots have been reported abroad. Then again, though we have one of the highest per capital prison rates in the world, most are non violent drug offenders so there may not be much to worry about.
killjoywashere 7y ago
A useful number is that the deaths today represent the disease burden 3 weeks ago. Propagating that multiplier forward, the deaths today represent 500-1000 infected individuals today. So the US has 16 deaths. You're looking at 8000-16000 infected individuals in the US today.
RVuRnvbM2e 7y ago
The US seems like it's pretty screwed at this point. All the recent cases here in Australia have been people returning from the US. Just look at the exponential growth on this plot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_outbreak_in_the_United_States#Timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_outbreak_in_t... That's not a trend that's going to reverse quickly.
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  Yep, this looks completely out of control. I imagine in 2 weeks the entire country will have pretty much shut down like how china did a few months ago.
- networkimprov 7y ago
  It looks that way because it's almost certainly been circulating in the US since January [1], and testing was hardly available until recently (and is still ramping). Despite the long, largely unchecked circulation period, there's no hospitalization crisis here. And another record-hot Spring/Summer are on the way... take heart! [1] https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-10/us-coronavirus-cases-far-above-official-tally-scientists https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-10/us-coronavi...
  - Benjammer 7y ago
    "there's no hospitalization crisis here." Yeah, there wasn't a crisis in Italy 3 weeks ago either.
- DarthGhandi 7y ago
  Why Australia is blocking South Korean travelers and not US travelers is mind boggling at this point. The smallest amount of intel sharing can stop the infected from traveling. Virtually every case to date in SK has been caught by now, their testing regime is incredibly comprehensive and free for everyone person in the country, even illegal immigrants. By comparison the US is willfully not testing people presenting symptoms coming back from infected areas, even insurance covered citizens will pay absurd amounts for an on-demand test and it's clear to anyone watching the government is putting it's head in the sand.
timcederman 7y ago
Are they wearing masks at the airports yet? I am still surprised at the lack of deployment of temperature sensors and masks in the US.
- cek 7y ago
  Masks do not help prevent spread when worn by someone who is not infected (except by reducing hand to face contact to some degree). They help prevent infected from spreading to others. [1] [1] https://www.cnet.com/how-to/which-face-masks-protect-against-coronavirus/ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/which-face-masks-protect-against...
  - adrianmonk 7y ago
    Well, since we seem to have woefully inadequate testing capability right now, we don't know who is infected. If everyone wore masks, then the would be one way of making sure that infected people wore masks.
  - timcederman 7y ago
    In this instance the infected person was the airport worker. So wouldn't that help limit transmission? And you also agree already that it reduces hand to face contact, further helping limit transmission. Also, it's not as clear-cut to say they do not help prevent spread. Doing a quick search and picking the very first article from https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=face+masks+influenza https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=face... says this: > Hand hygiene and facemasks [vs just hand hygiene, or nothing] seemed to prevent household transmission of influenza virus when implemented within 36 hours of index patient symptom onset. These findings suggest that nonpharmaceutical interventions are important for mitigation of pandemic and interpandemic influenza.
  - yibg 7y ago
    I hear this a lot but the whole message isn’t consistent to me. Masks (mostly n95 respirators) aren’t effective for the general population but they are needed by healthcare workers? How is it they are at the same time effective and ineffective?
01100011 7y ago
It seems extremely irresponsible to not give more details on where the TSA agents were working. Did they handle or inspect baggage? Were they working a checkpoint? Which terminal? They just threw a fear grenade out into the general public and now anyone who went through that airport in the last week going to wonder if they need to get tested or self-quarantine.
zone411 7y ago
This piece of news is scarier: Sacramento County Gives Up On Automatic 14-Day Quarantines https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/10/813990993/coronavirus-sacramento-county-gives-up-on-automatic-14-day-quarantines https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/10/8139909...
- oefrha 7y ago
  > Effective immediately, people in Sacramento County should not quarantine themselves if they've been exposed to the COVID-19. Instead, they should go into isolation only if they begin to show symptoms of the respiratory virus, the county's health department says. > Sacramento County has at least 10 coronavirus cases, including one person who recovered. 10 cases and they already gave up on quarantines? The decision maker either knows more about unpublished cases or don’t understand infectious diseases at all... What a great way to make sure more people “show symptoms” two weeks down the road.
- mistersquid 7y ago
  That article was full of equivocations and misdirection, with CDC Director Nancy Messonnier wriggling out of any leadership on establishing federal guidelines for containment and mitigation and hapless (?) Dr. Peter Beilenson, head of Sacramento County's Department of Health Services, rhetorically throwing up his arms and embracing mitigation because Sacramento County failed to track infections. All the while, the author of the piece is clearly trying to convince the reader that mitigation (which in Sacramento County means “self-quarantine only in cases showing symptoms”) is adequate if not superior to containment.
animalnewbie 7y ago
Serious question, even if dc drops the ball why can't states do something about it? USA is a federation after all and states are responsible for the welfare of individual citizens too?
- freeone3000 7y ago
  You see a lot of individual states acting - Washington State has banned gatherings of more than 250 people, NY has placed a town under lockdown and the National Guard is distributing food, California has given up on quarantine and headed to mitigation... As you can see, without direction it's a bit of a mess.
  - zamfi 7y ago
    > headed to mitigation Not for long, as this approach will clearly appear to be a disaster when mortality rates exceed 5% because of a lack of ICU care to handle the thousands of severe cases. The response will be swift, but two weeks too late.
  - dantheman 7y ago
    California is bigger and richer than most countries - why would they need direction? Of course it'd be good if the CDC released some general guidance, and was doing better on providing stats, etc. But the States really need to handle things.
codezero 7y ago
I flew out and back to SJC this weekend on a trip to Disneyland, so this doesn’t bode well. Upside, my company has mandatory work from home this month so I’m self quarantined already.
sillysaurusx 7y ago
I was going to attend Tensorflow Dev Summit. We dropped $350 on flights + airbnb for this week. But even after Google canceled the summit, it was still tempting to fly out anyway and go enjoy a week in Sunnyvale. Our plane took off at 3:30pm today without us. This article is pretty vindicating. Thank you to Google for making tough decisions early, like canceling the summit.

212 points by godot 7y ago

I hate to stoke FUD, but that's pretty much it for any semblance of containment. If those TSA agents tested positive, 1) you can be sure other TSA agents at other airports are also infected, and 2) I'd be extremely surprised if they didn't pass Covid-19 to a significant number of travelers, 3) whatever individual(s) gave it to the agents undoubtedly also gave it to other travelers.

garmaine 7y ago
We lost the chance at containment weeks ago. It's in the community. We need to stop all flights, close all schools, and discourage travel. Our best chance now is in flattening the curve so our healthcare system isn't overburdened.
- speedplane 7y ago
  > We lost the chance at containment weeks ago. It's in the community. We need to stop all flights, close all schools, and discourage travel. Our best chance now is in flattening the curve so our healthcare system isn't overburdened. If it's already out, how will stopping flights and closing schools really help? How long will you stop them? At best, this will just slow the spread, not stop it.
  - dogecoinbase 7y ago
    The idea is to slow the spread, to avoid a situation like Italy where hospitals are overwhelmed: https://www.vox.com/2020/3/10/21171481/coronavirus-us-cases-quarantine-cancellation https://www.vox.com/2020/3/10/21171481/coronavirus-us-cases-...
    - zone411 7y ago
      I just made a map with state-by-state data about ICU beds and vulnerable (older) population. Some states have less than half the number of ICU beds per vulnerable population than others. https://twitter.com/LechMazur/status/1237545167659253763 https://twitter.com/LechMazur/status/1237545167659253763
  - zachberger 7y ago
    As the poster above you said said, slowing the spread so healthcare system isn't overburdened should now be the goal. This animation helps understand the concept: https://thespinoff.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Covid-19-curves-graphic-social-v3.gif https://thespinoff.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Covid-19...
  - Benjammer 7y ago
    The point is that slowing it has a huge amount of merit as well, so that the healthcare system isn’t flooded with everyone getting sick all at once.
  - im3w1l 7y ago
    Same areas will be able to snuff it out with luck, social distancing and contact tracing. Stopping flights prevent them from being reinfected. But quarantining incoming travelers might achieve the same thing with fewer drawbacks.
    - hcknwscommenter 7y ago
      Quarantining incoming travelers from high-risk destinations will likely help, but will NOT achieve the same thing. COVID-19 is already here and circulating in the community. It has been for weeks. We just aren't testing for it (this will change in days or maybe a week, so wait for the big explosion in cases). Two weeks ago, there was capacity to administer and process 700 tests. Not 700 per day. 700 total. It has improved a little since then. But it is only now that actual significant testing capacity is being brought on board. Something S. Korea has had for about a month. We are way way behind.
      - im3w1l 7y ago
        If by community you mean the US as a whole, yes. But there are many areas and smaller cities in which it has not arrived. Those could be helped. And if a smaller city is infected and then gets clean, they could be helped too. That's what I was referring to. Stopping domestic flights.
  - adrr 7y ago
    There’s 60,000 icu beds in the US. We are in full flu season and a lot of those beds are being used. We need to slow down this virus till summer and hope it that inverts the curve so we have time to develop methods and drugs to minimize the risk of hospitalizations. If we don’t slow it down, we’ll see 3% mortality rates instead of sub 1%. Our path is similar to other countries, we’re just a few weeks behind.
    - sigmaprimus 7y ago
      Forgive my ignorance but I recently saw a video of two women fighting over bathroom tissue in Australia or New Zealand. If they have infections there where summer is just ending why do people think that warmer weather will some how stop the spread?
      - adrr 7y ago
        Flu and cold is seasonal. There’s a bunch different theories around it from cold air lowers our defenses to vitamin d production from sun light. Sars burned out during the summer months so hopefully we see a reduction with this virus.
        sigmaprimus 7y ago
        Thanks that makes sense, I'm still a bit confused as to the fact it's going to be summer in the northern hemisphere but winter in the southern, does that mean things will get better in Europe and North America but worse in South America, Australia etc?
        adrr 7y ago
        Flu seasons are usually judged by what is happening in the other hemisphere. During our summer Australia had a bad flu season which corresponded to the US having a bad flu season during our winter months. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_season
        AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  - nullc 7y ago
    Contagion is funny. Each sick person will only, on average in unmitigated conditions, get two or three other people sick. If you consider just a single infected person that doesn't seem that infectious at all. Yet because this is an exponential process that won't slow down until a significant fraction of the population is infected or immune 2-3 is enough to go from a couple people sick to most of the world in fairly short order. Yet if you can reduce that 2-3 down to 1 or below even with relatively half-assed measures like telling some people to stay in inside, isolating known-infected and likely-infected persons, closing down some major spreading venues, telling people to wash their hands or use surgical masks... presto chango the disease dies out and no more than a tiny percentage of the population will get infected. If the half-assed measures reduce the exponent but don't get it below 1, eventually most people will still get infected but it will take a lot longer. That extra time means the hospitals get less overloaded and lots of additional lives are saved because many covid19 cases require serious medical intervention (forced respiration). It also potentially creates time for better treatments to be created/discovered. The best time to start seriously addressing this would have been weeks ago when it became clear that it was spreading from unknown and non-isolateable sources inside the country-- at least to the extent that it could be done without major damage... before there were thousands (likely hundreds of thousands now; given the observed spreading rates) of cases circulating in the US. But so long as the vast majority of the people who could eventually be infected are not yet infected, it's STILL a good idea. On top of the risk we're facing from hospitals overloading, there is also a lot of potential for widespread panic once testing catches up and the numbers go from a rounding error to "big and scary looking" overnight. Beginning countermeasures earlier should help reduce the panic both by decreasing the peak infected numbers and by making it clear that the issue is being addressed.
  - garmaine 7y ago
    Slowing the spread is exactly what we need to do. Around 15% of the people who get COVID-19 need ICU care in order to keep breathing. The fatality rate with care is no higher than around 2%, and maybe less. Without medical access, it is around 15%, guaranteed. The problem is there are only so many ICU beds available. If we self-isolate and slow the spread, then we can keep the number of dangerously ill people below our capacity limits, and make sure that everyone who needs care gets it. This is what Japan and South Korea have done. Italy did not react fast enough and now the fatality rate there is approaching 8%(!!). With very strict measures, we might even stop the epidemic in its tracks. So far, only China is on track for doing that.
    - nullc 7y ago
      > Around 15% of the people who get COVID-19 need ICU I'm usually the doomssayer, but that's 15% of people who are diagnosed. Usually people who are asymptomatic or nearly asymptomatic don't get diagnosed. Only a few countries have testing programs widespread enough to start estimating case vs infection rates... and certainly not the US, where there are plenty of people who have been obviously infected who are still not included in the official counts because of god-knows-what-the-CDC-is-doing. What is clear enough is that whatever the rate of serious cases are, it's more than high enough to overload the hospitals-- just as is happening now in Italy. So I fully agree with your point, I just don't want to see if lost in the noise because some people will notice the 15% claim is almost certainly an overestimate.
      - freeone3000 7y ago
        CDC is keeping the numbers down, as requested.
      - garmaine 7y ago
        Other countries don't have the problem with widespread testing that the US has. That number comes from China, Italy, and South Korea. 15% of people who show symptoms need intensive medical care.
        7y ago
  - cmurf 7y ago
    Slowing the spread is the point. We have a lack of capacity for handling the urgent care cases. Once the capacity is over limit, in particular ventilation, people will die who otherwise would not die. The difference is in thousands of deaths.
  - marklacey 7y ago
    Slowing things down is important in order to keep the medical system from being overwhelmed. We already know we don’t have enough ventilators or enough staff to care for the ill if we end up with a similar growth curve to what they’ve seen in Italy.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - llamataboot 7y ago
    exactly, and slowing the spread is the difference between Japan, Italy, and something far worse... https://www.flattenthecurve.com/ https://www.flattenthecurve.com/ Or if you want more math, here's why putting into place extreme measures even one or two days later can make outcomes significantly worse https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
  - barrkel 7y ago
    Slowing the spread is entirely the point; the slower it spreads, the lower the peak of acute cases, which means less burden on healthcare resources.
  - bsder 7y ago
    > If it's already out, how will stopping flights and closing schools really help? How long will you stop them? At best, this will just slow the spread, not stop it. Yes, it will. One thing that tends to get neglected is that in a lot of diseases, most people don't pass the disease on very well (maybe infect one other person) but a small number of people (superspreaders or superinfectors) pass it on EXTREMELY effectively. If you can block the superinfectors by quarantines, that is like putting control rods into a nuclear reactor--you slow the progress dramatically.
  - umanwizard 7y ago
    Yes, slowing the spread is the goal. Slowing the spread gives vaccine and antiviral researchers a fighting chance to win the race, gets us to summer where if we’re lucky enough that this virus is seasonal it’ll go away, and, most importantly, “flattens the curve”, as your parent commentator already pointed out.
    - hcknwscommenter 7y ago
      Everyone keeps hoping the virus is "seasonal." That warmer temperatures will dampen the spread. The data on that is total hokum. The flu is seasonal because everyone in the WORLD is exposed in a matter of months and either develops immunity or gets sick first and then develops immunity. The next season's flu comes from viruses incubating in animal populations and agricultural wildlife patterns are seasonal (e.g., pig/chicken raising in Asia, global bird migration patterns). Influenza circulates year around, but in the Summer months, we are mostly immune due to prior exposure. The new version of the flu starts going in Winter and we are all immune again by the Spring/Summer. IMHO, COVID-19 will only have the same pattern by happenstance.
- sjtindell 7y ago
  Many parents can’t take time off if we close school. Children aren’t at risk here, reason why still unknown. That’s a terrible idea.
  - yaks_hairbrush 7y ago
    The issue with schools is that they're daily large gatherings where the virus can be transmitted. Children can be carriers with schools providing the network effect for spreading covid-19.
  - testcase_delta 7y ago
    Garmine's recommendation is in line with expert opinions I've been reading for the last couple of days. There is at least one really great case study from the Spanish Flu: St Louis proactively closed schools and reduced deaths by 50%, compared to Pittsburg who closed schools relatively. It seems a decidedly good idea to get ahead of these things.
  - vkou 7y ago
    1. Just because kids aren't dying, doesn't mean they aren't carriers. 2. When it gets bad, schools will be closed anyways, and parents will need to figure out how to handle childsitting. 3. The longer we delay closure, the worse off everyone else will be.
  - dcolkitt 7y ago
    Children aren't at risk, but can still act as vectors of infection. And it's not just kids, many adults work in the school system. Shutting down schools is almost assuredly an effective measure to slow the spread of the disease. And slowing the spread is the overriding public health imperative. Even if the same number of people get infected, fast transmission means the healthcare system gets overloaded with all the patients at once. A 5% reduction in the rate of transmission could plausibly reduce the number of fatalities by 50% or more. We need to do everything possible to institute "social distancing" to slow the process done.
    - dx034 7y ago
JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
TSA agents likely are having direct contact with a much more diverse crowd than the average person, with maybe exceptions for folks in super urban areas, regularly using NYC's subway, etc.
- staticautomatic 7y ago
  Also they infrequently change their gloves, as if the gloves' only purpose is protecting the TSA agents from the things they're touching.
  - zx2c4 7y ago
    Going through SFO on Sunday, the TSA agent working the controls behind the X-ray screen sneezed into his hands. A colleague looked up at him, and then he sheepishly ceded his seat to the other agent and put on new gloves. As I was packing up my things on the other side of the metal detector, I saw him chatting with a more managerial looking TSA agent. Not sure what conclusion to draw from the brief observations, but it did leave an impression.
    - garmaine 7y ago
      Super nitpick: SFO doesn't employ TSA agents. Those were CAS contractors.
      - zx2c4 7y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_Aviation_Security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_Aviation_Security Thanks! Never knew that this role was sometimes contracted out.
      - throw03172019 7y ago
        Wow, I never knew such thing existed. Do you have any idea what makes an airport use CAS over TSA?
        7y ago
leggomylibro 7y ago
Yeah, it's pretty clear by this point that the virus has been spreading widely in the States for some time. Such is life. Just wait until they actually start testing people in earnest; the infected numbers will skyrocket in a very short period of time, causing another stock crash and more mass panic. It'll probably be at least another few weeks before it's time to buy with both fists, imo.
- usaar333 7y ago
  Are people not aware at this point that the US will look like Italy/South Korea in a few weeks time? Hence, the hoarding of goods that has already begun..
  - slg 7y ago
    Last reports I saw had us 11 days behind Italy based on known cases. We are probably even closer with unknown cases. I think tomorrow is the day to ensure you have a couple weeks of food and incidental supplies in your home if you haven't done so already. I don't think there is any hope of us slowing things down as successfully as they have in South Korea with their widespread testing.
    - nostromo 7y ago
      This disease is fatal for people that are very old or otherwise ill. In Italy the average age of fatal infection is 81, which is older than the life expectancy for an Italian man. For 80% of people infected it's a mild cold or flu, not requiring hospitalization. I realize HN is full of Zero Hedge gold bugs, but this doesn't strike me as the apocalypse.
      - refurb 7y ago
        You’re getting downvoted, but none of your facts are inaccurate.
      - dx034 7y ago
        That's absolutely true, but the problem with this virus is not mortality but hospitalization. I read numbers yesterday that in Bergamo, up to 30% of ICU patients are under 60. Those are very likely to survive but need ICU treatment for up to 2 weeks. Most European countries have already accepted that most will get infected at some point (see Merkel's statement yesterday). It's all about flattening the curve to make sure hospitals have capacity. If we manage that, mortality could stay at reasonable levels. But we have no idea how high mortality rates could go if people with severe symptoms would need to stay at home.
grecy 7y ago
I just flew through Seattle, Spokane, Orange County and Salt Lake City this weekend. TSA agents physically touched my passport and boarding pass at each one. I wonder what are the chances they've given it to me?
- briandear 7y ago
  You probably should self quarantine for at least a month. Have a family member carefully purchase at least 86 rolls of toilet paper because apparently that boosts immunity.
- refurb 7y ago
  You didn’t actually fly through San Jose, but are asking what your chances are?
rorykoehler 7y ago
We were past the point of containment about a month ago
a3n 7y ago
This part has always bothered me. The TSA agents wear gloves. They handle your ID and your possessions. Whatever one passenger may have, that the gloves protected the agent from, is going to be smeared on to subsequent passengers' ID and possessions.
threatofrain 7y ago
Most major institutions probably don't even want to know whether their staff is sick.

tus88 7y ago

That doesn't sound good...

jdkee 7y ago

This is the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VScSEXRwUqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VScSEXRwUqQ

dang 7y ago
Please don't post duplicate comments.

sneak 7y ago

I am slowly coming to the realization that a quarter to a half of a percent of people who are alive on Earth today may not be in one year. Please send the following links to your employers, especially if you work with the public: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop... https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-cancel-everything/607675/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronaviru... The only way we will avoid swamping the healthcare system in the US is by enacting widespread measures before it seems necessary/imminent. NOW is the time to act, not later.

gok 7y ago
A bold prediction, given that around 2% of people die every year.
llamataboot 7y ago
It's gonna be bad. It's gonna be /really/ bad in the US I fear. Not even sure we have the social cohesion or political will to do what we will need to do (furlough workers with pay, free childcare for quarantine, weeks spent mostly at home, etc) when we realize it. May just let it burn through population and keep people working. Gonna be ugly.
- sneak 7y ago
  I am especially worried about people in US prisons or detention centers, where density is high, sanitation is low, and medical treatment woefully substandard. Tens of thousands of prisoners may well die in the next 60-90 days if this spreads as much as it seems it’s going to.
  - allovernow 7y ago
    I'm more concerned with mass prison riots and escapees. Couple prison riots have been reported abroad. Then again, though we have one of the highest per capital prison rates in the world, most are non violent drug offenders so there may not be much to worry about.

killjoywashere 7y ago

A useful number is that the deaths today represent the disease burden 3 weeks ago. Propagating that multiplier forward, the deaths today represent 500-1000 infected individuals today. So the US has 16 deaths. You're looking at 8000-16000 infected individuals in the US today.

RVuRnvbM2e 7y ago

The US seems like it's pretty screwed at this point. All the recent cases here in Australia have been people returning from the US. Just look at the exponential growth on this plot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_outbreak_in_the_United_States#Timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_outbreak_in_t... That's not a trend that's going to reverse quickly.

Polylactic_acid 7y ago
Yep, this looks completely out of control. I imagine in 2 weeks the entire country will have pretty much shut down like how china did a few months ago.
networkimprov 7y ago
It looks that way because it's almost certainly been circulating in the US since January [1], and testing was hardly available until recently (and is still ramping). Despite the long, largely unchecked circulation period, there's no hospitalization crisis here. And another record-hot Spring/Summer are on the way... take heart! [1] https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-10/us-coronavirus-cases-far-above-official-tally-scientists https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-10/us-coronavi...
- Benjammer 7y ago
  "there's no hospitalization crisis here." Yeah, there wasn't a crisis in Italy 3 weeks ago either.
DarthGhandi 7y ago
Why Australia is blocking South Korean travelers and not US travelers is mind boggling at this point. The smallest amount of intel sharing can stop the infected from traveling. Virtually every case to date in SK has been caught by now, their testing regime is incredibly comprehensive and free for everyone person in the country, even illegal immigrants. By comparison the US is willfully not testing people presenting symptoms coming back from infected areas, even insurance covered citizens will pay absurd amounts for an on-demand test and it's clear to anyone watching the government is putting it's head in the sand.

timcederman 7y ago

Are they wearing masks at the airports yet? I am still surprised at the lack of deployment of temperature sensors and masks in the US.

cek 7y ago
Masks do not help prevent spread when worn by someone who is not infected (except by reducing hand to face contact to some degree). They help prevent infected from spreading to others. [1] [1] https://www.cnet.com/how-to/which-face-masks-protect-against-coronavirus/ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/which-face-masks-protect-against...
- adrianmonk 7y ago
  Well, since we seem to have woefully inadequate testing capability right now, we don't know who is infected. If everyone wore masks, then the would be one way of making sure that infected people wore masks.
- timcederman 7y ago
  In this instance the infected person was the airport worker. So wouldn't that help limit transmission? And you also agree already that it reduces hand to face contact, further helping limit transmission. Also, it's not as clear-cut to say they do not help prevent spread. Doing a quick search and picking the very first article from https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=face+masks+influenza https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=face... says this: > Hand hygiene and facemasks [vs just hand hygiene, or nothing] seemed to prevent household transmission of influenza virus when implemented within 36 hours of index patient symptom onset. These findings suggest that nonpharmaceutical interventions are important for mitigation of pandemic and interpandemic influenza.
- yibg 7y ago
  I hear this a lot but the whole message isn’t consistent to me. Masks (mostly n95 respirators) aren’t effective for the general population but they are needed by healthcare workers? How is it they are at the same time effective and ineffective?

01100011 7y ago

It seems extremely irresponsible to not give more details on where the TSA agents were working. Did they handle or inspect baggage? Were they working a checkpoint? Which terminal? They just threw a fear grenade out into the general public and now anyone who went through that airport in the last week going to wonder if they need to get tested or self-quarantine.

zone411 7y ago

This piece of news is scarier: Sacramento County Gives Up On Automatic 14-Day Quarantines https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/10/813990993/coronavirus-sacramento-county-gives-up-on-automatic-14-day-quarantines https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/10/8139909...

oefrha 7y ago
> Effective immediately, people in Sacramento County should not quarantine themselves if they've been exposed to the COVID-19. Instead, they should go into isolation only if they begin to show symptoms of the respiratory virus, the county's health department says. > Sacramento County has at least 10 coronavirus cases, including one person who recovered. 10 cases and they already gave up on quarantines? The decision maker either knows more about unpublished cases or don’t understand infectious diseases at all... What a great way to make sure more people “show symptoms” two weeks down the road.
mistersquid 7y ago
That article was full of equivocations and misdirection, with CDC Director Nancy Messonnier wriggling out of any leadership on establishing federal guidelines for containment and mitigation and hapless (?) Dr. Peter Beilenson, head of Sacramento County's Department of Health Services, rhetorically throwing up his arms and embracing mitigation because Sacramento County failed to track infections. All the while, the author of the piece is clearly trying to convince the reader that mitigation (which in Sacramento County means “self-quarantine only in cases showing symptoms”) is adequate if not superior to containment.

animalnewbie 7y ago

Serious question, even if dc drops the ball why can't states do something about it? USA is a federation after all and states are responsible for the welfare of individual citizens too?

freeone3000 7y ago
You see a lot of individual states acting - Washington State has banned gatherings of more than 250 people, NY has placed a town under lockdown and the National Guard is distributing food, California has given up on quarantine and headed to mitigation... As you can see, without direction it's a bit of a mess.
- zamfi 7y ago
  > headed to mitigation Not for long, as this approach will clearly appear to be a disaster when mortality rates exceed 5% because of a lack of ICU care to handle the thousands of severe cases. The response will be swift, but two weeks too late.
- dantheman 7y ago
  California is bigger and richer than most countries - why would they need direction? Of course it'd be good if the CDC released some general guidance, and was doing better on providing stats, etc. But the States really need to handle things.

codezero 7y ago

I flew out and back to SJC this weekend on a trip to Disneyland, so this doesn’t bode well. Upside, my company has mandatory work from home this month so I’m self quarantined already.

sillysaurusx 7y ago

I was going to attend Tensorflow Dev Summit. We dropped $350 on flights + airbnb for this week. But even after Google canceled the summit, it was still tempting to fly out anyway and go enjoy a week in Sunnyvale. Our plane took off at 3:30pm today without us. This article is pretty vindicating. Thank you to Google for making tough decisions early, like canceling the summit.