Apple Stores in Beijing Screening Customers for Fever Amid Coronavirus Outbreak

[BuddyTronic]

alcohol kills bacteria, doesn’t affect viruses

Is that true? I think you are wrong about that.

 

[falkon-engine]

I am old enough to get that reference.......... but weren’t they Korean?

Fair point. But Beijing's apple employees would pronounce the phrase similarly.

 

[Duane Martin]

Friedrich Hayek warned us about the “pretense of knowledge” 45 years ago.

Coronavirus can be spread by people who don’t show symptoms, CDC warns

Coronavirus can be spread through people who aren’t exhibiting symptoms of the illness, the director of the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention said Thursday. Dr. Robert Redfield c…

nypost.com

This piece by Nassim Taleb and others explains why naïve empiricism is our biggest enemy when confronted by systemic threats. So put your abacus away, it won’t help anymore.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b68a4e4a2772c2a206180a1/t/5e2efaa2ff2cf27efbe8fc91/1580137123173/Systemic_Risk_of_Pandemic_via_Novel_Path.pdf

Or you could just go directly to the CDC website and read what is posted. The CDC is not going to get a lot of clicks without the hysterical hyperbole, though.

 

[ravenstar]

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?

I think you're right on. To be meaningful, the measurement would need to reflect the core body temperature. Extremity temperature can vary dramatically. Even an oral temperature can be affected by eating or drinking just before taking the temperature. I just don't see how a wrist worn device could possibly hope to be even remotely accurate, let alone detect a change in core temperature of a few degrees that would represent a fever.

 

[mi7chy]

New finding reports that carrier can be asymptomatic (not showing signs of symptoms).

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762028

 

[ravenstar]

New finding reports that carrier can be asymptomatic (not showing signs of symptoms).

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762028

By itself this single report isn't sufficient to say with certainty that carriers can be asymptomatic. (It's entirely possible, I'm not denying that, but translating "it's possible" to "it's definite" requires some caution.) Even the authors aren't making that claim in spite of the article's title. But it is a piece of evidence that can be combined with other pieces to establish asymptomatic transmission.

I would say the bigger concern comes from a footnote to the article that establishes an incubation period of up to 24 days. While only a very small fraction of patients like the one in the article experience such a long incubation period, it's well outside the current 2 week quarantine that being imposed and it'd only take a single carrier to cause an outbreak.