Coronavirus: First case confirmed in Santa Clara County

From the article:

"the man never became sick enough to require hospitalization, has had contact with few people and has been “self-isolating” at home since returning, leaving only left to seek outpatient medical treatment on two occasions. "

The number of reported cases in China is pretty much unanimously understood to be dramatically undercounted because there is simply a tremendous shortage of testing kits. There are videos showing nurses in Wuhan hospitals bemoaning this and social media posts suggesting this, patients are being turned away unless they are dying to go home and self isolate and rest, in some cases receiving injections daily but otherwise being told to return home.

Firsthand accounts by local journalists are one of the best ways we have to understand what's actually going on behind the Great Firewall of journalism.

One of the best is this semi-celebrity lawyer/journalist in Wuhan who is leaking video to YouTube visiting the outbreak hospitals (he's also pretty much a wanted man at this point by Chinese authorities), you can turn on subtitles for English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AI3R41dGnU&ab_channel=Coron...

And if that were true maybe it should be downplayed since the ultimate catastrophe will be impact on medical unfrastructure, perhaps economic.

Something else to keep in mind is the importance of frequent hand washing, as skin contact is how these viruses spread in the absence of coughing and sneezing.

Hands should be washed for 20 seconds, all the way up to the wrist.

Frequent hand washing could cause skin dryness and cracking, so you might want to only use mild hand soap. I've found that the soaps with the fewest ingredients work best. You could also try applying moisturizer to your hands afterwards.

Interesting idea, it would only help if those people actually stayed home rather than working from a nearby coffeeshop or otherwise going into a public area.

I wonder what percentage of the population would have to work from home in order for this to impact the spread rate.

2 weeks is probably not enough, right? Assuming that it would be feasible for everyone to stay home for 100% of the time, that would still leave everyone in contact with N (avg number of people per household) minus 1 people, so for the isolation period to be able to eradicate a disease, in the worst case of each of those N people getting infected one after another instead of in parallel or all at the same time, that period would need to last for (N - 1) * (incubation time + period of possible infection), or something along those lines.

EDIT: grammar

I doubt this would be really possible - utility services are definitely much more automated these days, the same thing with industry, but it's really far from everyone involved being able to control the whole operation remotely.

Also many industrilk processes are continuous, with any interruptions being costly & dangerous if abrupt (eq. if the skeleton crew messes something up and there is no one to help them).

Many jobs can't be done "remotely." What about food service, cooks and waiters? Delivery people? Doctors, surgeons?

Randel Munroe of XKCD fame walks through this scenario in his "What If" book.

Link to sample on books.google.com

https://books.google.com/books?id=tgZIBAAAQBAJ&printsec=fron...

Well let’s hope that means something. Restaurants also have health rules they are required by law to follow set up to help save lives from things like food poisoning yet I can go to my local health authority website and look at the violations from all the local restaurants. My point is if we are relying on people to self isolate I am less then hopeful. How did he get to that doctor? Did he use effective isolation techniques the whole way along? I know from working in the hospital the gown and gloving procedure before entering and leaving an isolation room is something I had to train to do and took reading and thought. Does this guy have that training? Let’s hope.