Apple Stores in Beijing Screening Customers for Fever Amid Coronavirus Outbreak

[Dave-Z]

Apple recently provided its retail stores, authorized service providers, and carrier partners with an enhanced cleaning guide that recommends that demo Apple products be cleaned at least twice per day.

Wait... the enhanced recommendation is twice a day? What was the non-enhanced? Once a week? A month? I know it's a lot of work, but given the traffic in these stores it really should be one person's job to just go from device to device sanitizing because, from what I've seen, Apple Stores are really busy.

There for it is crucial that alcohol based cleansers be used on both surfaces and hands repeatedly in any areas with traffic.

And that's pretty consistent with everything I've read about preventing the spread of every other form of infection.

alcohol kills bacteria, doesn’t affect viruses

[emphasis mine] That is not consistent with information I've read in the past and a quick Google search for "What does rubbing alcohol kill?" resulted in multiple web sites that stated it kills both bacteria and viruses.

 

[sirozha]

I suspect sales are going to be much lower in the stores they are opening given the shorter opening times, less people allowed in store and less people out and about in general. Opening these stores seems an unnecessary risk to staff. Tim should go to the stores and tell the staff that he's not putting them at risk.

Tim should go to China and work as a store employee for the next two months. He has no kids, so if he dies, no one will be orphaned.
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Stop with the nonsense...

No. You stop with your nonsense.

 

[8CoreWhore]

That the stock prices hasn't dropped like a bag of wet laundry is testament to how deluded people are about this viral threat.

 

[I7guy]

I suspect sales are going to be much lower in the stores they are opening given the shorter opening times, less people allowed in store and less people out and about in general. Opening these stores seems an unnecessary risk to staff. Tim should go to the stores and tell the staff that he's not putting them at risk.

How long should the entire region be shut down?

 

[RogerWilco]

How long should the entire region be shut down?

What if 20% of the people you know today were hospitalized, extremely ill for over a month, and 2% of them eventually died. Now answer your own question.

 

[I7guy]

What if 20% of the people you know today were hospitalized, extremely ill for over a month, and 2% of them eventually died. Now answer your own question.

Obviously the answer is, start to open for business.

 

[smirking]

Following the COVID-19 outbreak, I could see Apple decide to get involved in this area of health, perhaps looking into how their current & future technologies could be brought to bear on identifying or tracking diseases of this nature.

None of the common smart devices right now track temperature. I'm really curious about why this is. I don't think the Apple Watch ever did, but some earlier generation devices like the Microsoft Band and other ones that have since been discontinued did have a temperature monitor.

Anyone know? Is it that temperature tracking at the wrist is so erratic that it's not worthwhile or is it that there's just no way to separate the device temperature from the wearer's temperature?
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There for it is crucial that alcohol based cleansers be used on both surfaces and hands repeatedly in any areas with traffic.

Even in a normal year, I try not to go into places as crowded as an Apple store around cold and flu season and if I do, I only touch the things I absolutely need to touch. I seriously wonder how they manage to have enough healthy staff to stay open throughout the winter on some weeks.

I went in a couple of years ago when we had a very bad cold and flu season and the whole place was so packed that they might have been breaking fire codes. Quite a few people were coughing and everyone was grabbing devices and playing with them. Those poor employees.

There are viruses that are easier for Mac owners to catch than PC owners. They just don't affect your computer.

 

[Shanghaichica]

Where'd you get that information? Last I heard this morning from more official sources than some random place off the Internet it's at best not known whether it's transmissible without symptoms. Given the relatively small number of cases compared to say the flu, I highly doubt its transmitted 14 days before showing symptoms.



Where the employees being paid while the store was closed? Why assume it's shareholders who are pressuring the store to open? I haven't heard one word about concern over retail stores being closed from shareholders. Most people recognize that making your customers ill isn't good for business.

The Superspreader infected 5 people in the French Alps before he was showing any symptoms.

 

[I7guy]

The shareholders must be horrified at the potential loss of profits, so I'm sure Apple is being pressured to reopen ASAP.

Greed has no boundaries.

Hyperbolic opinion followed by a fact based conclusion?

 

[smirking]

The Superspreader infected 5 people in the French Alps before he was showing any symptoms.

I think one thing we all have to keep in mind that even with something as mundane as the common cold, a lot of us react very differently from one strain to the next. When my house gets a cold, usually I have a hard time telling if I have a cold or not and my wife is very noticeably sick. Once in a while the tables flip in a big way. The few colds that get to me, really really get to me and I'm sick for weeks and quite violently for one of them whereas my wife ends up with just another cold.

Until we know what we're dealing with, extra precautions aren't a bad idea and extra precautions are pretty easy to do. Wash your hands often (wash them well) and stay home if you're sick... you know, those things you're supposed to be doing anyway (but probably aren't).

 

[RogerWilco]

Hyperbolic opinion followed by a fact based conclusion?

Try your bravado on these people:

 

[I7guy]

Try your bravado on these people:

Anectodotal. It's happening regardless of what any MR poster says.

 

[Charlie.sheen]

Even though people are dying, they still want you to keep buying..... Pslam 02:2020

 

[RogerWilco]

Even though people are dying, they still want you to keep buying..... Pslam 02:2020

“A sickly season," the merchant said,
"The town I left was filled with dead,
and everywhere these queer red flies
crawled upon the corpses' eyes,
eating them away."

"Fair make you sick," the merchant said,
"They crawled upon the wine and bread.
Pale priests with oil and books,
bulging eyes and crazy looks,
dropping like the flies.”

"I had to laugh," the merchant said,
"The doctors purged, and dosed, and bled;
"And proved through solemn disputation
"The cause lay in some constellation.
"Then they began to die."

"First they sneezed," the merchant said,
"And then they turned the brightest red,
Begged for water, then fell back.
With bulging eyes and face turned black,
they waited for the flies.”

“I came away," the merchant said,
"You can't do business with the dead.
"So I've come here to ply my trade.
"You'll find this to be a fine brocade..."

And then Tim Cook sneezed

 

[Septembersrain]

I feel like a crazy person. Cleaning them twice a day? When I worked in retail, I was wiping down stuff every hour. Sometimes half hour if I'm noticing things getting touched more frequently. I've been told people would eat off my floor at home.

I'm constantly wiping down my devices too. I think I singlehandedly keep a shareholder for Clorox well compensated.

I would be under extreme duress if I was a worker at that store right now.

 

[ravenstar]

The Superspreader infected 5 people in the French Alps before he was showing any symptoms.

I'm not finding any real evidence that he wasn't showing symptoms. A couple of news reports (both apparently derived from the same source) make the claim, but I don't find any medical sources backing that up. It's nothing more than an anecdote. The more informed opinion of experts is that the virus is more likely transmitted by individuals whose symptoms are mild enough that they don't recognize they have the disease. There's plenty of evidence that not everyone who's infected becomes seriously ill.

 

[smirking]

I'm constantly wiping down my devices too. I think I singlehandedly keep a shareholder for Clorox well compensated.

There was a survey that was released recently that polled people about how often they cleaned their devices. 60% of people said never. I know a at least one person like that. I cringe whenever he hands me his phone. It's just completely crusted with dirt, grime, food, spittle... you name it.

 

[mi7chy]

Seems reckless considering a person can be infected without symptoms.

"2019-nCoV infection can range from mild, with no symptoms or minor symptoms, to severe or even deadly. The symptoms usually start between 2 to 14 days after you get infected."

 

[FelixDerKater]

alcohol kills bacteria, doesn’t affect viruses

That really depends on the type of virus, and whether its outer layers are lipids or other material.

 

[Septembersrain]

There was a survey that was released recently that polled people about how often they cleaned their devices. 60% of people said never. I know a at least one person like that. I cringe whenever he hands me his phone. It's just completely crusted with dirt, grime, food, spittle... you name it.

Some humans are positively gross. My husband is one. Love the man to death but it's a full time job cleaning up after people like that.

I wonder if too much hygiene or too little makes the spread of things like this worse. I was always told that cleaning too much lowers my immune system but I've never had the flu. So I don't know.

 

[FelixDerKater]

Close them down and force online purchases until the threat has passed.

 

[AustinIllini]

Seems reckless considering a person can be infected without symptoms.

"2019-nCoV infection can range from mild, with no symptoms or minor symptoms, to severe or even deadly. The symptoms usually start between 2 to 14 days after you get infected."

We don't truly understand the mechanism by which the infection spreads asymptomatically. However, overall, most cases appear to be spread symptomatically.

I get why people want to generate outrage, but the Chinese government wants everyone back at work and the economy coming back.

We can't expect these Apple Stores to be closed for the entirety of this outbreak. That could be months.

 

[Jakexb]

It does little good to check for fever since people are contagious 5-14 days prior to fever. It doesn't hurt, but this is security health theater solely to calm people.

I can see them perhaps finding later that if my normal temperature is 97.6, in the 5-14 days prior to a traditional fever my temp was 98.5-98.9. An Apple Watch that knows your individual normal temperature and the same information from huge populations could perhaps be a good diagnostic tool in a few years. If it ever measures body temp.

It's not just theater though. If checking for fever detects half of cases, then that's 50% better than not checking. Doesn't have to be perfect to be an improvement.

I do love the idea of the Apple Watch as a pandemic monitoring tool. If Apple can use some of it's anonymized data collection so that the CDC could identify hot spots in real time, that could be huge. It might not be good enough to spot individual cases, but if the average body temperature in a geographic area goes up by a small but significant amount, that could be a really important signal.

 

[smirking]

if the average body temperature in a geographic area goes up by a small but significant amount, that could be a really important signal.

Apple Watch doesn't detect body temperature. I don't know of any common smartwatch on the market currently that does. The Microsoft Band used to do that and there may have been others, but they're either gone or dropped that feature.

 

[[AUT] Thomas]

That the stock prices hasn't dropped like a bag of wet laundry is testament to how deluded people are about this viral threat.

Right, but on the economical side, we should be really glad that there's no panic on the markets. That would make the situation much worse than it already is.

Personally, I feel this should be the time companies like Apple, Samsung, Garmin,... should put some efforts in getting equipment ready to potentially detect infections.
Also, even as someone who really is into maintaining privacy -in that case it's secondary. Generally, there's way too much privacy in medical data. I'm sure many illnesses could be detected using deep learning long before they reach a stage in which actual medical care would be needed (i.e. they could provide early detection). Holding back that data yields comparably little privacy to the individual, but really hurtys AI based diagnostics. Personally, I would see it as an investment into everyones future if we put health data to work in big data analytics. (That doesn't stop us from anonymizing it as far as possible)