
Google employee diagnosed with coronavirus - tosh
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/google-employee-diagnosed-with-coronavirus.html
======
anonymous1457
Googler working in Zurich here.

FWIW all Google Zurich leads and my whole management chain insisted that
people having any kind of symptom (in general, and not just for the
Coronavirus) should rest at home & see the doctor to recover and prevent
infecting other Googlers.

They also insisted that even "healthy Googlers" feeling insecure coming to
work can fully work from home in the coming weeks, and told managers that they
shouldn't prevent their managees from doing so.

This company has just always been super comprehensive regarding health
conditions. If you don't feel good and just want to go back home to rest or
take a 2h nap in the sleeping room you can just do it without any
justification. Whenever I discuss this with friends none of them has the same
freedom and trust that Google gives us.

Wishing the best to everyone in this scary period.

~~~
mondoshawan
Can confirm -- also a Googler, but from Austin and recently Mountain View.
This is both Google's default policy (not feeling well? go home) and
recommendations for current conditions, with more emphasis on staying home
even if you're uncomfortable. We even have a whole team dedicated to tracking
this stuff and keeping Googlers safe.

It's amazing how much outright hate is being spewed here over this -- it
borderlines on outright panic.

~~~
akhilcacharya
> This is both Google's default policy (not feeling well? go home)

I can’t imagine many tech companies (or even salaried office jobs) having very
different default policies.

That is sort of missing the point in an emerging pandemic.

~~~
mav3rick
You won't get Google's culture. Regardless of the HN bubble it really is
employee friendly and it shows in crises like these. Our health insurance is
also the best if not way better than other FAANG + Microsoft. When the travel
ban happened Google security helped people across the globe. Not many tech
companies would do that. Doubt Amazon would.

~~~
akhilcacharya
> Doubt Amazon would.

yikes

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/31/amazon-
ex...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/31/amazon-expedia-
microsoft-support-washington-action-against-donald-trump-travel-ban)

~~~
mav3rick
Bezos fighting Trump. No history there. Also did Amazon send it's own security
to help employees stuck in other countries ? I'm sure they would have charged
people for help.

------
strangeloops85
Once testing actually ramps up in the US... I'd expect similar cases to pop up
all over the Bay Area. The Fairfield case was infectious starting weeks ago.

The CDC site shows only 8 more tests having happened in the last few days
(aka: preposterously low!). We're really flying blind until we have more data
and testing. When the history of this epidemic in the US is written, it will
be noted that the entire month of February was wasted diagnostically and
critical opportunities to still attempt containment lost.

~~~
JTon
So it's probably the virus is spreading around the bay area undiagnosed. Has
there been any reports of hospitals experiencing higher than normal volumes of
flu-like cases?

~~~
strangeloops85
Unfortunately, it will be a very small signal relative to the total number of
respiratory illnesses at this time of year. Moreover, there's often a multi-
week lag-time between it spreading and getting cases that get severe enough
for hospitalization. Until there's a critical mass of enough infected to get
sufficient number of patients with ARDS (like the woman at the UC Davis
Medical Center), it may be hard to notice. The problem is, once it's noticed
through this method, it's likely spread to a significant number of people.
This is what happened in Northern Italy and Iran (and to some extent in Wuhan
as well).

------
Johnny555
_We have taken — and will continue to take — all necessary precautionary
measures... as we prioritize everyone’s health and safety_

...

 _Google’s Zurich office will remain open_

So they've taken all necessary precautions except the one that would actually
prioritize health and safety by asking all employees in that office (or at
least those on the same floor/seating area as the infected employee) to work
from home and self-isolate.

I thought the germ theory of disease was already well accepted and we had a
pretty good idea of how pandemics spread.

~~~
koheripbal
They aren't even telling employees which group or floor the employee was in,
so employees cannot even gauge their risk level.

Imagine going home to your family without knowing if you've been exposed to a
disease that has a ~2% mortality rate.

...and then the company asks everyone to come back into work the next day.

Google's response here is shocking.

~~~
notlukesky
Not condoning Google but the mortality rate increases with every age bracket
and is much lower under 50 years of age. I would assume that the Google office
is quite young.

~~~
koheripbal
The rate of employees with young children and grandparents is pretty high.

What makes you think Google employees only care about themselves? You don't
think they (and we) should care about the more vulnerable members of society
that they will infect?

~~~
username90
Young children are not at risk, unlike the flu.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
less at risk is not the same as not at risk. At any rate there are children
that have immunity problems that as the virus spreads I worry it will effect
them - for example MBL deficiency and it's susceptibility to respiratory
ailments [https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/mannose-binding-lectin-
def...](https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/mannose-binding-lectin-deficiency)
[https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/191/10/1697/789682](https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/191/10/1697/789682)

~~~
ltbarcly3
I think you are taking common idiomatic English and interpreting it as though
it is meant to be precise.

"Not at risk" does not mean 0 risk, it means negligible risk.

For example, if I was standing on a cruise ship, am I at risk for drowning?
Not really, it's extremely unlikely that I would drown. Could I drown? For
sure, I could fall in the ocean, or in the pool, or pass out into a bowl of
soup. Despite the nonzero possibility of drowning, if someone saw me on the
cruise ship waiting in line for the buffet and yelled "be careful, you are at
risk of drowning" at me, I would think they had lost their mind.

~~~
Johnny555
But as long as you just keep standing on the deck, you're not going to drown.

But even though the risk of infection is low, I wouldn't say that a child is
"not at risk" of contracting the disease if their dad catches it at work and
brings it home.

I'd say that he's "at low risk", not "no risk".

~~~
ltbarcly3
Again, not at risk means not at risk. "At risk" means more than average risk.
Not at risk means the opposite in common usage, it means much below average.
Nobody said anything about "no risk". "low risk" and "not at risk" mean
exactly the same thing.

[https://www.macmillanthesaurus.com/at-
risk](https://www.macmillanthesaurus.com/at-risk)

------
koheripbal
It's almost unbelievable that they haven't closed that Zurich office down.

A group of employees I know at that office went out tonight in Zurich for a
night out on the town.

Google's response here is almost unconscionably irresponsible. It's almost
like they _want_ the residents of the city to get infected.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Is Zurich shutdown? If not, I don’t see why google employees in Zurich should
have special restrictions.

~~~
oarsinsync
Chevron employee in London was confirmed infected. Chevron shutdown that
London office and have all staff WFH.

~~~
oarsinsync
Just looked up citations given the downvotes, and you're right, the employee
wasn't confirmed infected. The employee is suspected to be infected, and they
_still_ shutdown the office.

[https://www.cityam.com/coronavirus-chevron-tells-canary-
whar...](https://www.cityam.com/coronavirus-chevron-tells-canary-wharf-staff-
to-work-remotely/)

------
H8crilA
I'm not sure why is this a shocker. It's extremely likely that there will be
infections in all cities of the world, after all there's no coordinated global
shutdown. Planes from Milan keep taking off every 5 minutes (well, during the
day, now it's quite late so the frequency has gone down):
[https://www.flightradar24.com/data/airports/mxp](https://www.flightradar24.com/data/airports/mxp)

It is probably here, in your big city, too.

~~~
koheripbal
It is a logical fallacy to assume that because a mistake is being continuously
made, that it therefore isn't a mistake.

...also, having an employee IN THE OFFICE have Coronavirus is a much much
bigger risk than a random passenger from Milan.

------
Hokusai
In our office, in Europe, it is mandatory to work from home for 2 weeks after
traveling to any area affected by the virus (whatever it is a personal or job
related trip).

I do not think that USA work culture is compatible with this measure. I hope I
am proved wrong and health care takes higher priority that having people
siting in an office.

~~~
miguelmota
Unfortunately US culture is to keep working if you don't want to lose your
job.

~~~
andreygrehov
This is not true and highly depends on employer.

~~~
unlinked_dll
Around half of all workers in the US are paid hourly. "Sick day" means "no
pay" for most of them.

edit: according to most recent data [0] it's actually 58.5% of all workers are
hourly. Do they get paid sick leave?

[0] [https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-
wage/2018/home.htm](https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-
wage/2018/home.htm)

~~~
andreygrehov
Sure, but if you're paid hourly, isn't "sick day/no pay" true for pretty much
any country in the world?

------
fancyfredbot
It's interesting that Switzerland has banned all events involving more than
1000 people but not all workplaces with more than 1000 people. I suppose the
logic is that people travel further for events?

~~~
jsnell
People are packed together a lot more closely at an event than at work.

~~~
koheripbal
This virus transmits most efficiently in a cool dry environment, like an A/C
controlled office.

That is why the hotel in Singapore and the cruise ship were such hotbeds for
transmission.

What Google is doing here is acting with complete idiocy - with ZERO regard
for employee health and safety.

------
01100011
And now it's in Santa Clara county:

[https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/02/28/santa-clara-county-
an...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/02/28/santa-clara-county-announces-
new-coronavirus-case/)

------
sjg007
Seems like a good time to work from home. I mean if Google can't do it then
... ?

------
tazedsoul
Headlines like this irk me. I expected it to be a Google employee in the Bay
Area, or a major US city, not Switzerland.

~~~
mercer
Not everything revolves around the US, and not every HN user is from the US.

~~~
tazedsoul
True enough, but CNBC is primarily a US audience, I believe. Correct me if I
am wrong.

~~~
mercer
Fair enough. I think many HN users, myself included, primarily look at the
headlines and not at the domain though.

------
thedance
Would be really helpful if the person's home city was mentioned, in addition
to the name of the place they briefly passed through. "Google employee", in
addition to to being reductive and dehumanizing, is vague. There's not even
anything here to suggest the ill person is American, or Swiss, or what.

~~~
H8crilA
Why would the nationality matter?

As to city - it's Zurich, they live in Zurich (or in the extended Zurich
suburbs, perhaps as far as Lachen or Winterthur or Zug).

~~~
thedance
It matters because the facts in the article are consistent with the idea that
the person visited the Zurich office and returned to their place of origin, or
they just live there.

------
alpb
I am hearing Amazon has restricted non-essential travel for all its employees
(even domestically within the US), which sounds like a bigger news than this.
Maybe someone can confirm.

~~~
mrep
So has google for the most part: "it has restricted its employees from
traveling to Iran and parts of Italy. In March that will expand to Japan and
South Korea. The company had already prohibited travel to China, except for
employees returning home." [0].

[0]: [https://www.npr.org/2020/02/28/810494030/google-employee-
tes...](https://www.npr.org/2020/02/28/810494030/google-employee-tests-
positive-for-coronavirus-company-expands-travel-restrictio)

~~~
alpb
Not sure how you're interpreting this thread. Most of Amazon's employees are
here in the US. And Amazon discouraging US domestic travel (which obviously
isn't as critical as those regions, yet) has nothing to do with what you
quoted above.

------
aaron695
I thought Youtube comments were the cliche, then I met HN comments on the
Coronavirus.

Even an attempt to understand why this particular case out of the 100,000
would be discussed is pointless given the comments.

~~~
jacquesm
Because a lot of people on HN work for google and upvoted the article until it
ended up on the homepage. People tend to care more about things they can
relate to. George Carlin had a bit about that, how when there is an earthquake
in Pakistan nobody cares but when there is a car crash in front of their door
they'll gawk for hours.

------
markdown
Why is CNBC still calling it coronavirus when WHO has asked for this outbreak
to be called COVID-19?

~~~
FalconSensei
because everyone is still searching for news related to "coronavirus", and
also "coronavirus" is easier to say/remember than "covid-19"?

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
Epidemiology 101

Those of us who don’t know history will repeat it.

~~~
postalrat
What history? SARS and MERS?

~~~
qrbLPHiKpiux
Broad St Chlorea outbreak, the birth of epidemiology.

~~~
ghaff
Which had everything to do with drinking contaminated water and nothing to do
with person to person contact.

~~~
qrbLPHiKpiux
You shut off the choke point, let things fizzle out. As I type, people are
still coming and going.

