Japan Urges Telecommuting, Staggered Shifts To Curb Coronavirus (reuters.com) 44
The Japanese government on Tuesday urged companies to recommend telecommuting and staggered shifts for workers in a bid to curb the spread of the new coronavirus. From a report: The plan, approved at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, also urged people with symptoms of cold or fever to stay at home and asked event organizers to carefully consider whether to proceed with their plans. Japan has 159 cases of infections from the flu-like coronavirus, apart from 691 on a cruise ship docked south of Tokyo. On Tuesday, broadcaster NHK reported a fourth death among passengers. Rather than trying to contain the disease outright, authorities are seeking to slow its expansion and minimize deaths. Telecommuting, or working online or from home, would reduce the infection risk from people gathered in one place.
Cancel the Olympics (Score:4, Insightful)
It would probably be a good idea to cancel the Olympics too that are scheduled in July in Tokyo. Just saying....
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They don't have to cancel the Olympics, but they could recoup some of the loss by focusing on remote spectators. If the disease is still spreading, I think they'll have to ban at-event spectators, but they can add LOTS more cameras.
Time for one of my crazy suggestion approaches: Drop the data caps on Internet services. Not just to boost remote viewing of the Olympics, but to strongly encourage various forms of remote conferencing that prevent face-to-face meetings where COVID-19 can spread. Minor but relate
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It doesn't matter so much whether the disease is still spreading. I expect by July it will be pretty much everywhere anyway. What matters is whether we have discovered treatments and vaccines. It is impossible in todays world of easy travel to stop a virus from spreading completely. All we can hope for with the current measures is to slow it down enough to give time for science to come up with solutions.
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It doesn't matter so much whether the disease is still spreading. I expect by July it will be pretty much everywhere anyway. What matters is whether we have discovered treatments and vaccines. It is impossible in todays world of easy travel to stop a virus from spreading completely. All we can hope for with the current measures is to slow it down enough to give time for science to come up with solutions.
If the spreading of the disease is prolonged, then not as many people will require medical attention within a given period of time lowering the burden on medical facilities and personnel.
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It would probably be a good idea to cancel the Olympics too that are scheduled in July in Tokyo. Just saying....
By July, COVID-19 will either be gone or it will have spread worldwide and just be yet another endemic disease.
The latter is more likely. There are already cases in Korea, Vietnam, Italy, Iran, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and Oman.
Containment has failed.
Countries with confimed COVID-19 cases [cdc.gov]
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Japan has done a pretty decent job. (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of travelers from China and passengers from the Diamond Princess (before it was quarantined) made things hard from them, but they've probably peaked [teslamotorsclub.com]. Would be nice to see a couple more days of this decline to be sure. Japan is usually pretty disease-paranoid, so I've never had much doubt that they'd eventually get it under control.
Honestly, I have little concern for most places except for Iran, which is in full coverup mode right now, pretending that they only have a dozen or so new cases per day, when nearly as many people in other countries who caught it in Iran are diagnosed per day, and where the ratio of deaths to new infections is totally unbelievable. Even their bloody health minister [businessinsider.com] was recently diagnosed with the disease. He was out there just the other day giving a speech while clearly sick [twitter.com]. Even their own freaking health minister isn't willing to take proper precautions to prevent the spread of the disease... it's maddening. Now who did he infect?
I'm so mad with Iran right now over this.
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>Honestly, I have little concern for most places except for Iran.
Then you're clueless. Once it gets into the subculture populations it's game over. Look at SanFran/bay area California - when the virus hits the homeless population there's no stopping it in that city.
Long incubation times, symptom-free carriers, and global travel. It's already to late - the virus will hit everywhere, it's just a matter of time.
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>Honestly, I have little concern for most places except for Iran.
Then you're clueless. Once it gets into the subculture populations it's game over. Look at SanFran/bay area California - when the virus hits the homeless population there's no stopping it in that city...
* Steps over fifth pile of shit in the downtown toilet that used to be SanFran *
"Uhh, yeah. About that public health concern of yours..."
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Every place outside China where there's been an outbreak so far has seen it stamped out over the course of a couple weeks. As a random example, here's today's news that all of Vietnam's 16 cases and no new cases have been reported since 13 Feb [msn.com]. Inside China there's been the same sort of decline (now only a tiny handful of cases outside Hubei (apart from the Shandong prison last week, but that's by definition contained), and case rates in Wuhan are a shadow of what they used to be. And I only mention China
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Right. You can trust the reports out of Vietnam. Have you ever been to Vietnam? LOL. There is no magic person(s) going around testing everyone for the virus. You way over-analyze things.
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** All of Vietnam's 16 cases have recovered
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You work for Abe, right? Minister of Propaganda, perhaps?
Stamped out everywhere but Iran, and that's okay because you hate Iran? Well, stamped out except for South Korea and Italy and all the new prefectures where it's appeared in Japan this week. Various other places, but why annoy you with the facts? You probably hate the Koreans, too, so that's why you're ignoring them, eh? You were probably on the verge of congratulating South Korea for passing up Japan on the total number of non-Chinese cases of COVID-
Re:Japan has done a pretty decent job. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know when you were in Japan last, but when I was there, you'd see people walking around in face masks even when there wasn't a potential pandemic spreading. Water fountains are rare because they're dirty. You not only take off your shoes when you enter a building, but sometimes you even have to put on separate bathroom slippers just for the bathroom as an added measure - and of course the toilet is never in the same room as the bath / shower, because toilets are dirty, so why would you put it in the same room where you clean yourself? And of course you shower before you get in a bath. And on and on; the very word for "pretty" (kirei) means "clean". I've never before or since been in a place as obsessed with cleanliness and preventing disease as Japan. It's a dream country for people with OCD.
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None of those things will do anything to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
And japanese are still very much about 20 hours at the office every day.
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None of those things will do anything to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Exactly. It is so amazing how ignorant people are of the basics. Wear a mask all day long and browse Teslarati forums.
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Most of the masks people wear are useless, breathing the same air as other people is enough to spread covid19. Buses and trains will spread the disease to all commuters very fast. The most infectious period is 3 to 5 days but symptoms appear after a week.
Re:Japan has done a pretty decent job. (Score:4, Informative)
Viruses do not spread "through the air", as individual particles. They spread on aerosol particles, and aerosols are indeed blocked by masks. Medical professionals don't wear masks as a joke. People with infectious diseases like TB aren't made to wear masks as a lark.
Masks also help prevent you from touching your face, which is definitely of use.
Masks are not absolute protection against infection. There are lower-probability alternative routes of infection, and even the simple fact that the mask catches infected aerosols but does not kill the viruses therein means that you now have an infected mask, which if not properly handled, could later lead to transmission. But overall masks allow for a dramatically reduced risk of transmission - particularly if the concern is only random exposure during the day (rather than working as a medical professional surrounded by likely disease vectors all day).
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Only the model RX-1000 and RX-4EEE masks can protect you from the Coronavirus. There are currently five assembly lines (one in China, the rest in India) which are dedicated to producing these models. Each line can produce 5,000 masks per hour so we there should be enough masks available in 23.5 days. I reported this on the Teslarati forums so you know it is accurate.
Rei
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Good masks that fit properly will stop aerosols, but half the crap the public wear aren't worth the paper they're made with.
1700 medical professionals in China have contracted Covid-19, what does that tell you?
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It tells me that being one of the tens of thousands of medical professionals in Wuhan, being surrounded by tens of thousands of sick patients every day all day, is a dangerous job.
It also tells me that the earlier reports that proper disease control measures were not being practiced early on are probably correct.
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My experiments with using masks during spray painting tend to agree.
I tried the cheap masks you can get in DIY stores, but it was almost impossible to get these to seal properly, so I'd find paint particles in my nose despite wearing a mask.
I can't imagine the cloth masks used in hospitals working any better.
I had to switch to a mask with a rubber seal and replaceable filter cartridges to stop getting paint everywhere.
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Indeed the fit is important, if it doesn't fit then it doesn't work. The area next to the bridge of the nose is where many masks fail I find.
The construction industry doesn't take lung health seriously 'comfort mask's should be banned IMO.
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That does not actually happen. As a droplet evaporates, water is lost but salts and proteins (including any viruse themselves) do not, which increase their concentration. Eventually the vapour pressure at the surface of the droplet matches the relative humidity, and evaporation ceases.
Also, complete desiccation of viruses generally kills them regardless. Non-enveloped viruses generally can't handle rapid changes in humidity at all.
Reference for both parts:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
It's an East Asian thing across the globe (Score:2)
I don't know when you were in Japan last, but when I was there, you'd see people walking around in face masks even when there wasn't a potential pandemic spreading. .
This isn't just a Japanese thing. Hell, it's not just an Continental Asian thing either. This is now pretty deeply embedded culturally among the East Asian diaspora across the world. I live in an area in the Southern US, and we have significant Korean manufacturing in my area. The Koreans tend to stick to themselves socially and commercially (whole strip malls here have been converted to exclusively Korean shops... they shop in their own food and small goods stores).
But... they still buy houses in establish
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Face masks are a false sense of security. Doctors and healthcare workers in China have been infected, and hospitals have far more effective infectious agent protocols than people in subways or shopping malls. Face masks are to contagions what Medieval doctor's bird masks were to the Black Death. And frankly, the responses by some national governments have crossed the line into the absurd; China trying to suppress the bad news, and even now going after critics, and Japan, of course, turning a cruise ship int
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I don't know when you were in Japan last, but when I was there, you'd see people walking around in face masks even when there wasn't a potential pandemic spreading. Water fountains are rare because they're dirty. You not only take off your shoes when you enter a building, but sometimes you even have to put on separate bathroom slippers just for the bathroom as an added measure - and of course the toilet is never in the same room as the bath / shower, because toilets are dirty, so why would you put it in the same room where you clean yourself? And of course you shower before you get in a bath. And on and on; the very word for "pretty" (kirei) means "clean". I've never before or since been in a place as obsessed with cleanliness and preventing disease as Japan. It's a dream country for people with OCD.
Sorry, but as a person with diagnosed OCD ("O" is contamination fears, diseases, general "dirtiness" (if something touches the ground, I'm washing it or throwing it away)), no it isn't. Namely because the availability of soap in public bathrooms is still somewhat of a crap shot. I've been four times (recently) and always bring a 100mL bottle of liquid soap and have used it multiple times each trip.
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Honestly, I have little concern for most places except for Iran
North Korea. They share a border with China with frequent clandestine travel between the countries feeding the black market there. And you can expect them to keep a tight lid on any issues happening in their country.
The most interesting aspect of this.. (Score:2, Funny)
Watching the local press trying their hardest to make coronavirus the fault of the "white male".
My tax dollars at work at the CBC.
Telecommuting is fine, but (Score:1)
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Oh crap. Will your mom still deliver meals to the basement?
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That's why you have telecommuting for those jobs that can, and staggered shifts for those that can't...
Because a large number of people are telecommuting, those who can't and still have to travel to work will encounter far less people on their way to work and thus reduce their chance of infection quite significantly too. Having staggered shifts helps that too as there will be less people travelling at any one time.
This is also hugely beneficial in other ways, less congestion makes travel less unpleasant for
Congestion/environment (Score:2)
It's great that they're urging telecommuting and staggered shifts as a way to reduce the spread of viruses...
However, this also brings other massive benefits for people's wellbeing and the environment. The actual travelling is going to be far less unpleasant when you don't have thousands of people crammed into over crowded trains at the same time, and the reduced instances of travel will benefit the environment too.