Day 1; The Story So Far

In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people angry and been widely regarded as a Bad Move. - Douglas Adams

The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly. - Madeleine L'Engle (or earlier

The first kick I was given towards treating CoViD-19 as deadly serious came from Liz Specht, to whom I was referred by Marginal Revolution. (If you're at all like me, you will love MR.) People who work with me at RSS also posted links to some articles, including epidemiology and information about how long the virus survives on various surfaces. A key fact caught my eye: one of the most effective means China found to slow the epidemic was to shut public transport down. (They can do that in China, just by saying so.) Since I was commuting by train and bicycle, this made it clear that simply getting to work was putting me at risk.

Being at work wasn't great, but it seemed bearable. There are surfaces everyone touches -- door handles, coffee machines, etc. -- and surfaces only I touch, and I knew which were which, so I knew when my hands needed washing; some controls can be operated with an elbow or a knuckle or a clothed wrist, rather than with fingers. As long as I avoided touching my face with unwashed fingers, my odds were not too bad. And surely at a medical company, nobody would come to work, under the circumstances, if they had a cough.

Well, yes, they would. During the first week of March I saw two people coughing into their hands in the fashion that was once regarded as polite, but is actually dangerous, and I corrected them both. Then on Friday the 6th, I heard three different people coughing loudly, at various distances. Meanwhile, guidance from management was rather wishy-washy, along the lines of "Do what you feel comfortable with." What I felt comfortable with was taking my laptop home on Friday night and working from home until further notice. I made this known and nobody objected.

I am also on the Board of the Sunday Assembly Silicon Valley, and we had an Assembly planned for the 8th. I was looking forward to this one, since I was to be the presenter and the guest speaker was a friend from my Google days. So when the question was raised of whether it should go ahead, starting on Thursday the 5th, my first reaction was that it should, but we would space chairs further apart, discourage physical contact, and skip the shared lunch afterwards. On Friday, the County Public Health issued new guidance:

They suggest that people over 50 as well as those with health conditions "should stay home and away from crowded social gatherings of people as much as possible such as parades, conferences, sporting events, and concerts where large numbers of people are within arm’s length of one another."

Now, the Assembly includes people of all ages, but there is a large contingent of over-50s, including some of the hardest-working volunteers, not all of whom are as healthy as I am.  So it did look quite difficult to hold a full Assembly, and I didn't want anyone to feel torn between keeping themselves healthy and keeping SASV going. I changed my vote, and in the end we did cancel. (My decision to work from home probably influenced my vote, too.) We ended up holding a small gathering, five people, in a kitchen, with everyone eating food they had brought themselves. I'm sure it was the right decision. My wife's church went ahead with the usual services, held for diminished congregations, but cancelled a concert to which tickets had been sold widely. Well, sort of cancelled: since the performers had already been exposed to each other, they performed together once, and it was streamed and recorded. Clearly this meant some additional risk, but little compared with what I would have run (and imposed on others) at an Assembly with people I hadn't seen in a month. The church has now gone 100% to live-streamed services; she says there wasn't even any argument about whether, only how. In short, the stereotype is fulfilled: democracies take longer to decide than dictatorships, but they do the right thing.

Since then I have left the house very little. I decided to keep my work schedule the same: I get up at the time I would have to get up to catch my train, and take a brisk walk before breakfast -- I meet very few people at that time -- in place of my usual bike ride, then sit down to work with my own coffee and tea. I may be working more hours than when I commuted, but it doesn't feel any harder. Without the food that was ordered in to the office, I am eating less than usual, slightly. There has been a vigorous debate in workplace chat about whether stronger guidance  on working from home should be issued; I spoke up quite loudly (and got a rap over the knuckles for it). Eventually, on the 13th, after a debate at whose tone and content I can only guess, management issued drastically revised guidance: there will be a white list of people whose job functions must be performed on site, and everyone else will be kept out of the building. That makes sense to me.

The University is closing for spring quarter, so my sons will come home. They seem fairly calm about it, though they will miss their social group. Yesterday evening, my wife went to stock up on food. The supermarkets were busy at a time when they are usually near-empty. What were nearly empty were the shelves! No bread at all, and other items gone or very scarce. We have enough on hand, and I trust that normal supplies will continue, so once the hoarding is over, there will be food to buy. She points out that there are no reports of starvation in countries harder hit than we are.

It is puzzling, come to think of it, that other countries are harder hit. We get, we must get, a lot of flights from China arriving here. I grant that there must be many unsuspected infections in the Valley, but I don't credit that there are unsuspected serious illnesses or deaths. So we probably have had (until recently, anyway) hundreds rather than thousands of cases. 

For what it's worth, I'll summarise my reactions to the week's news.

• Italy: what can you expect?
• Iran: they must have been in denial, but was it due to fatalism or bad government?
• Li Wenliang: it seems he did not die for nothing.
• Europe in general: damn you, this can happen to you too!
• UK relying on herd immunity: it will come anyway in the long term, and trying to shorten that is foolish. Besides, coronaviruses mutate rapidly, so herd immunity may not be worth much. If it were strong, the annual flu season would be much milder. Do I hope I'm wrong? Of course!
• USA: sigh.
• My corporate cousins in Roche Molecular Diagnostics: well done.

Oh, and I've checked a fringe news site, unz.com. The headlines were about DARPA research involving coronaviruses and bats, and about an attempt to destroy the Chinese economy. First, DARPA doesn't launch attacks, and second, they already understand that biological weapons can spread out of control, without having to have it demonstrated under their noses.

One more little thing. The Chinese lockdowns may, according to recently published studies, have selected for versions of SARS-CoV-2 that cause patients to remain asymptomatic for longer. This is not good news, but something like it was probably inevitable. Unanswered is whether the delayed onset of symptoms will be accompanied by decreased severity.