
Twitter – “we are strongly encouraging all employees globally to work from home” - reimertz
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/keeping-our-employees-and-partners-safe-during-coronavirus.html
======
idnefju
That isn't the full sentence though, the sentence continues "if they’re able."

It further states

> Working from home will be mandatory for employees based in our Hong Kong,
> Japan, and South Korea offices due in part to government restrictions.

~~~
cylinder
I don't really see any reason why the US shouldn't already be on lockdown the
way most of Asia is.

~~~
lanstin
We like to wait until it is too late before taking steps.

~~~
dillondoyle
it's infuriating to me! i cant even get my parents to take it seriously they
keep diminishing my concern and dont even bother to read what I send them. I
had to mail them supplies!

If this does turn out to be a nothingburger (seems most here think that it
wont) what's the cost of a hedge/being prepared? a few hundred bucks in non-
perishable food you can eat later and changed behaviors should probably be
doing anyways?!

there's got to be a sensible in between panic bum rushing the store with black
friday insanity and doing nothing but repeating the stupid Trump presser TPs

~~~
baddox
> If this does turn out to be a nothingburger (seems most here think that it
> wont) what's the cost of a hedge/being prepared?

Umm, the cost of locking down an entire country? The cost would be absolutely
immense.

~~~
electriclove
Dollars vs lives

~~~
ryan_j_naughton
The value of statistical life [1] provides a method to estimate the dollar
value of a life.

    
    
       There is no standard concept for the value of a specific human life in economics. However, when looking at risk/reward trade-offs that people make with regard to their health, economists often consider the value of a statistical life (VSL). Note that the VSL is very different from the value of an actual life. It is the value placed on changes in the likelihood of death, not the price someone would pay to avoid certain death.
    

Given that humans make choices to buy things that reduce their chance of death
all the time, we have many sources of how people value their own lives. Humans
are often bad at this calculation, yet surprisingly their willing to pay to
reduce a certain risk divided by the reduction in risk is pretty consistent in
its estimate of how much people value their lives. The number comes out to
around $5-10M per life or $125K per year of life.

Thus, we can estimate how many people will be killed by COVID-19 versus the
economic cost of trying to contain it and do a cost-benefit analysis.

I just did a quick and dirty Cost/Benefit for this purpose, which you can find
here: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Rn9NFw-
ldpUVMEM6JvGU...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Rn9NFw-
ldpUVMEM6JvGUHatEi46299d5bJ67EZGRe48/edit?usp=sharing)

High level summary: If we assume that around the same number of people as the
flu would be infected annually if we did not stop it, anywhere from 10 - 45
million Americans would catch it yearly. Let's use 20M for this calculation.

Let's assume a COVID-19 mortality rate of 1% given that there are likely way
more undetected cases than confirmed cases (given the current rate wrt
confirmed cases is closer to 2%).

(20,000,000 cases * 0.01 mortality rate) => 200,000 deaths per year.

Most of those deaths are the elderly. Thus, they have fewer years left to
live. Let's take the expected age of a person who dies to be 60. Thus their
value of remaining life that is lost is $2.4M. Times the total expected deaths
is $475B per year of costs simply due to loss of life.

This doesn't take into account loss of future GDP (which is less than the loss
of life though) from those deaths nor the loss of GDP from people being sick
but recovering.

Then if we assume that to stop the virus, we will need a quarantine as severe
as China's and thus suffer extreme economic impacts, then many sectors of the
economy will contract dramatically. For example, China has seen a >90%
reduction in car sales year over year due to Coronavirus.[2] Hopefully a lot
of that will simply be transferred to a future quarter once they have
recovered, but that is TBD. For travel, restaurants, etc, it certainly isn't.

I estimated the total cost for the US GDP of containing COVID-19 as $6,605B
per year if the goal it to make it extinct like what happened to SARS.

Thus, it is absolutely worth paying the one time fee of losing 1/3 of one's
GDP to not pay the perpetual tax of 2.3% of GDP annually due to it sticking
around.

My biggest fear though is that we will pay the one time fee with hopes of
making it go extinct and it will persist nonetheless in countries with weak
public health infrastructure or lax quarantine enforcement. Thus, we will end
up with it perpetually anyway. That is especially likely if countries start to
believe it is as it becomes a race to the bottom / self fulfilling prophecy
where no one wants to take the extreme cost to fight it when other countries
are not.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life)

[2]
[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51583348](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51583348)

[3] [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/business/economy/china-
co...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/business/economy/china-coronavirus-
economy.html)

~~~
imtringued
What if we find a vaccine? Then all the lock-downs become a waste of money.

~~~
stjohnswarts
No they won't,they'll slow down the spread therefore fewer people die before
the vaccine becomes available, also any vaccine that comes out will be months
away from now, if not a year or more. They have to do animal and human trials
before they can start mass production.

------
7952
In my company a staff member in a different office has tested positive. The
ceo seems to be very careful to follow government advice. It's like they don't
want to be seen to under-react or over-react. This seems misguided when there
are positive things you can do like encouraging people to work from home. If
the cost is minimal then why not? It's like telling people to wash their hands
or use a tissue.

~~~
zdragnar
Your CEO probably isn't a health care professional and doesn't want to promote
or advise specific behavior that isn't in line with official recommendations.

It is also worth pointing out that not everyone _can_ work from home. I know
someone who would love to, but two autistic children under school age at home
makes that essentially impossible.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
Work from home doesn't have to literally mean home. You can set up a laptop in
the library and work there. Fairly often they have tables and decent chairs
with a power point available and you aren't expected to spend any money or get
out of the way like in a cafe.

Although I now realize this suggestion is entirely useless for avoiding
sickness. Still useful if you want to work away from the office in normal
conditions.

------
claudeganon
I urge everyone to listen to what this frontline ER doctor in NYC said this
morning:

[https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/03/02/coronavirus-testing-
em...](https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/03/02/coronavirus-testing-emergency-
room-doctor-cdc-department-health-squawk-box.html)

Testing is being stonewalled, false assurances are being made, and he
anticipates serious disruption once the full extent of community transmission
becomes clear and rears its head.

~~~
adamiscool8
I don't understand the need or upside to mass testing? We know the spread is
inevitable. It doesn't change the course of treatment right now, or the
recommended precautionary measures.

~~~
BryantD
It's still beneficial to slow the spread. It will be easier for a health care
system to handle X cases over the course of six months than X cases over the
course of three months. Mass testing has the potential to get infected
individuals out of the population more quickly, and thus create a slower
spread.

~~~
edmundsauto
How sensitive is the test? You might end up flooding ERs with false positives,
or people from not-at-risk populations.

~~~
rpearl
You wouldn't go to ER, even as a positive test, unless you needed intensive
care. Most cases could be isolated at home.

~~~
refurb
This is the big reason why you don't need to test everyone - the results of
the test change nothing.

If you have a mild case of Coronavirus and are able to self-isolate, then just
do it. Testing and confirming you have it doesn't change things, you'd still
be asked to self-isolate.

I can see the value in people who are very sick - confirming they have the
virus can inform the need for isolation in the hospital.

~~~
elihu
A positive test result would indicate to a person that they should remain in
isolation for a week or so (or whatever the current recommendation is) after
they get better, and not return to work immediately.

It might also be useful to have a diagnosis to present to an impatient boss
who wants you back at work.

~~~
refurb
I think the point is, if it becomes endemic, people should self-quarantine
even in the absence of a positive test.

That's what my employer is doing now. If you're sick, work from home for 2
weeks. Don't come in.

------
analog31
One thing that occurs to me is that even if my own job is hard to do from
home, I would still benefit from a significant number of my colleagues staying
home. One possible emergency measure that could be taken by a decisive
government would be to mandate paid sick leave for everybody.

------
pickdenis
I remember someone quipping on HN about how the Coronavirus outbreak would
effectively result in a global WFH experiment. I wonder what lessons, if any,
will be learned and if this will have a lasting impact on how much software
engineers (and people in similar positions) are expected to physically come to
work 5 days a week.

~~~
axaxs
If I had to guess, not as many as there should be. For WFH to work, you have
to have an environment conducive to it. You can't just tell people to stay
home and magically solve the problem without a huge productivity hit.

Unfortunately(in this context), I don't think it'll last long enough for those
changes to happen.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
It might have a negative effect when everyone tries to work from home without
making any adjustments and finds it to be sub optimal.

------
scurvy
Square is doing the same.

------
vzidex
The big (Fortune 500) company I work at already has an environment that is
conducive to WFH - most people on my team do it ~1/week on average.

I'm very curious to see if/when we all get instructed to WFH though, because
although WFH is allowed I doubt most people are as productive at home as at
the office given how collaborative our work is. We regularly get updates on
the virus from corporate so I expect it's only a matter of time.

~~~
joezydeco
I'm in a F500 company that's a little late to the party but they're catching
up. They just put some network restrictions in place to save bandwidth and
people are getting antsy. From looking at Slack apparently losing Spotify was
the biggest blow.

It wouldn't surprise me if that blacklist stays in place forever. I can't
imagine how much bandwidth is lost to streaming audio and video during a work
day.

~~~
ITWarrior
What do network restrictions have to do with WFH/COVID-19? Am I missing
something or was this comment meant for a different chain?

~~~
joezydeco
The company realized they don't have enough bandwidth at the VPN portals to
support hundreds of simultaneous Skype and Teams video chats for the entire
length of the work day when everyone starts working from home.

So the short-term fix (and probably long-term as well) is to restrict
bandwidth-hogging apps from company computers.

------
outside1234
This is the only responsible thing to do.

------
corpMaverick
Everyone who can do it, should work from home. Also avoid big gatherings and
pretty much reduce (but not completely avoid contact). The coronavirus is
inevitable at this moment it will stay with us. But slowing it out makes a BIG
difference so hospitals can keep up and we can develop and distribute a
vaccine which may take 2 years.

