
Engineer who attended cybersecurity event contracts coronavirus - apaprocki
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-10/engineer-who-attended-cybersecurity-event-contracts-coronavirus
======
marcyb5st
As an Italian, I really hoped the horror stories that are coming out of Italy
right now could help raise awareness of how things could look like when a
government reacts too late to this threat.

However, it seems every major country is sadly going down the same path:
[https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/1237119688578138112](https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/1237119688578138112)
.

I hope you won't have to be as scared as I currently am for my parents. My dad
is in one of the categories that has low priority for an ICU bed. Older than
65 and diabetic. If he gets sick and require an ICU chances are he'll die
because medics, rightly so, will choose someone with better survival chances.

~~~
mrits
"will choose someone with better survival chances."

How does this differ from the death panels that used to be brought up in the
US? Serious question as I didn't follow politics too much when I was younger.

~~~
davidw
It's called 'triage'. It's what they do _anywhere_ , including the US, when
there are too many casualties to deal with.

And it's the doctors deciding based on who is most likely to pull through if
they get care, not bureaucrats.

~~~
ggreer
Normal triage is when you prioritize the most seriously injured patients so
they don't die waiting for treatment. That's what hospitals typically do.

In a mass casualty event, hospitals engage in _reverse triage_ which optimizes
for throughput. They prioritize cases that can be discharged quickly so that
they can treat as many people as possible. This means they'll label the most
serious cases "expectant" and let them die. After all, it's better to save two
or three easier people than to squander limited resources on one person who is
unlikely to survive.

It is _extremely_ rare for hospitals in the US to use reverse triage. I think
the most recent time was during Katrina. The stories of that are not
pretty.[1]

1\. [https://www.newsweek.com/vindicated-katrina-doc-tells-her-
st...](https://www.newsweek.com/vindicated-katrina-doc-tells-her-story-99333)

~~~
davidw
Yes, that sounds accurate. I am not super familiar with all the terms, as I
guess is evident.

The second thing is what's happening in a few hospitals in Italy right now and
it's gut wrenching for everyone. The staff involved are human too and already
stressed and to have to make those kinds of calls is awful.

So let's please _cancel everything_ :

[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronaviru...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-
cancel-everything/607675/)

------
alonmower
This is so sad, I really hope he pulls through.

My office is a couple of blocks away from Moscone and I was pretty surprised
by the fact that RSA didn't cancel. It seemed clear at the time that the
spread wasn't going to be contained and getting a bunch of people to fly in
from all over the world to sit in cramped auditoriums and shake hands with one
another was a really bad idea.

All of the restaurants, streets, and coffee shops around the conference center
were packed that week, and I fear that it will have made a material
contribution to the speed with which this virus will have spread.

------
QUFB
Meanwhile, CONEXPOAGG is on with 130,000 attendees:

[https://twitter.com/LasVegasLocally/status/12371489198988369...](https://twitter.com/LasVegasLocally/status/1237148919898836994)

~~~
allovernow
>Take THAT, coronavirus! :P

It's really hard at this point not to feel like people deserve what's coming.
The vast majority of regular Joes still don't care and think I'm crazy for
simply telling them to be responsible and buy some non perishable goods.

Meanwhile Mecca is shut down, Italy instituted a Nationwide lockdown
overnight, UK hospitals are running out of capacity, China shut down it's
entire industry for two months, Independent reports Trump admin may be
considering declaring a Nationwide state of emergency...I'm losing track of
all the clear, obvious evidence of imminently approaching danger from
literally all over the world.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
It seems pretty clear at this point that there's not going to be a shortage of
nonperishable goods. Everywhere that's been hit by coronavirus, food's still
available and stores are still open - the only severe shortage so far has been
ICU beds. People seem more receptive (although still not universally
receptive) to more helpful advice like "start washing your hands a lot more"
or "don't go to any big events".

~~~
allovernow
If there is an outbreak, you want to avoid going to places like stores - not
just for yourself but to minimize your chances of contracting the virus and
exposing others. It's the socially responsible thing to do.

~~~
meowface
I get almost all of my non-perishable items with Amazon and Amazon Fresh (left
at my door without human interaction).

Not sure how much safer that is, but I imagine it's less exposure in total, if
I'm careful about hand-washing.

~~~
rasz
Delivered by a robot? or minimum wage coughing worker?

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
It's about risk mitigation. It's not 100% guaranteed physically impossible to
pick up the virus from a delivery package, but it's a very low risk, much
lower than other infection vectors most people will be exposed to. Unless
you're planning to hermetically seal yourself into your home for the next 8
weeks, the risk is probably so low it's not worth thinking about.

~~~
rasz
>Unless you're planning to hermetically seal yourself into your home for the
next 8 weeks

Way ahead of you

------
Will_Do
It is breathtaking that conferences organized and attended by affluent tech
employees are not being canceled when conferences like SXSW and ComicCon __are
being canceled __.

It hurts the people behind SXSW and Comiccon much more to cancel their events
but they did it anyways. Is our industry really so much more unethical than
average?

~~~
selimthegrim
Austin pulled their permit; they were left with no choice (SXSW)

------
apaprocki
Headline just came across that there is a 2nd confirmed attendee...

------
uptown
If anyone is interested in donating, here's the GoFundMe page setup to help
the family of the engineer from Connecticut mentioned in the story:

[https://www.gofundme.com/f/xpcwgy-conquering-
covid19](https://www.gofundme.com/f/xpcwgy-conquering-covid19)

------
vsareto
The one year DEFCON might really get cancelled

~~~
weej
You didn't hear? DEFCON is cancelled. ;-)

~~~
forkexec
Let's play "spot the fed."

------
ej3
I'm not sure I need a tinfoil hat at this point to imply that the people who
are supposed to mitigate the effects of this pandemic have no objective
quantification of how pervasive the spread of this disease is already.

I'd be willing to wager that if there was a good enough historic and near
enough to realtime dataset of individuals entering the ER with pneumonia, and
this disease is actually atypical for the season: that the ramp actually
started more than a month ago in some regions.

Although I do wonder if the necessity of some pre-existing condition to
perpetuate the development of the disease might present some type of choke in
the significance of the anomalous nature of the thing..

Anyone know of any dataset like this? It would be really interesting to
consider.

~~~
Maxious
The Seattle Flu Study collects sample from people in the community, even
before they are sick. Those samples will now be retested to look for this new
coronavirus [https://seattleflu.org/updates](https://seattleflu.org/updates)

~~~
ej3
Yeah, I'm not entirely sure this is interesting. The media seems overly
concerned with 'COVID-19' specifically and I'm sure the backers of this
project like to see relevant keywords, but I think in terms of an outbreak it
would be more useful to consider specifically how this has immediately
contributed to deviance from normal.

"... we've found 19 cases of covid-19 in [insert place]", or "35 deaths from
coronavirus" deprived of context has nearly no utility.

