In Germany a friend of mine refused to go to a meeting at a client's office where someone tested positive and HR threatened him because he was violating his employment contract.
EDIT: I realize that this response is easier to do for SAP than for the average company since we are all working in front of computers anyway the entire time, with only 1-2% of tasks tied to physical objects (paper forms, server hardware etc.).
So yes, just business as usual.
The WHO reports "Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died".
If 50% the population gets infected, and if it's not 3.4% but "just" 3% mortality rate, that's already 1 million dead.
And according to some experts, even 70% infection rate is predicted.
Second, this 3.4% percentage of deceased patients, is at the early stages, with fewer patients and preventive measures (so that most patients that needed hospital treatment got it).
A 10% or more of patients of COVID-19 will need hospital treatment and ICU. As the number of patients rise, there wont be as many ICU units (and doctors are getting infected themselves at an alarming rate).
In Italy with ~ 7000 cases, "hospitals are scrambling to increase the number of beds available in intensive care units. Some have closed entire wards to dedicate them to severe coronavirus cases. Others have transformed operating rooms into intensive care units. Doctors are working grueling shifts to cover for colleagues who fall ill".
Let's put it this way, they have 9,172 cases and 463 deaths.
Now imagine with 100,000 or 1,000,000 cases -- still very far from the predicted 70%.
But ok, the source is your own calculations. Thanks for confirming.
That's not how epidemics work when they are contained quickly.
Europe has done a bad job at this.
Epidemics in the past have killed many times as many as the percentages above.
First, using the total population as a basis is just wrong. Some will certainly be immune to a certain degree while others are simply lucky.
Even very aggressive pandemics, hitting totally ill-prepared societies didn't infect every single person. Not even the black death managed to do so. So why do you think COVID-19 would end up doing that?
And using the 3.4% is another issue. Because you have the Wuhan rate, which is much higher than the rate eslewhere. And this thing is a moving target because testing was rather limted earlier. South Korea seems to be the best source to get mortalitiy rates due to their aggressive testing.
south korea is an outlier and most of their cases are not resolved, they may have a lot of false positives
time to act was weeks ago.
Feel happy now about the ad-hominem?
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/11/up-to-150-million-americans-...
Countries have to overreact to the circumstances that they are confronted with because in a week the situation will be much worse if they don't. The only options are to overreact when everything seems fine or to overreact when the hospitals are full past capacity.
The choices here are to overreact before the virus gets past the border; overreact when the first cases appear; overreact when the first cluster is identified or overreact when people who can't breath are being turned away from hospitals. We have yet to see what happens past that point because so far everyone has instituted a quarantine then. Germany is at the clusters developing stage.
In line with what you are saying, a problem, is that the proper reaction, if works, looks like an overreaction later. So, politically, there is an incentive to do nothing.
Or if you don't like my turkey reference, let's stay in the realm of technology. Pop quiz: who said "Only the paranoid survive?"
Nobody is suggesting people should quarantine themselves in Berlin, but avoiding crowded spaces, not touching your face and frequently washing your hands doesn't seem at all unreasonable.
EDIT: According to officials, one county in germany is considered high risk (link in German): https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus...
Risk matrix example: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kevin_Fleming3/publicat...
Assessing risk the way you do has one big issue (it actually has multiple but let's stick with one). When you put Corona in the disastrous category you habe to provide reasons for doing so, otherwise it is just a gut feeling. And by classifying it as disastrous, you run into issues when classifying stuff like Ebola for example. Over-classifying has that effect on measuring systems, that's why you need teams of experts from multiple disciplines to do it properly. And would have to do so at multiple sub levels for each criteria. The whole purpose is to take gut feeling and emotions out of the process. Doing it alone makes the whole exercise pointless.
Now, take that whatever way you want.
Conversely, had they recommended more aggressive contention measures, how many trips would have been avoided? How much slower would the virus come to Europe? If sirens were ringing 4 weeks ago by the WHO "experts", perhaps Italy wouldn't need to be in lockdown now.
> When you put Corona in the disastrous category you habe to provide reasons for doing so, otherwise it is just a gut feeling.
Not really. We put in the disastrous category because we don't have enough information to claim that it is not a mass-extinction event. In the face of a threat of unknown risk and the potential impact is unbounded, we got to treat it as the worst and prepare for the worst, cost-analysis be damned!
But if you prefer to ignore me and refer to experts, please listen to Nassim Taleb, who may know a thing or two about risk analysis: https://www.academia.edu/41743064/Systemic_Risk_of_Pandemic_...
And no, that is exactly not how risk assessment is supposed to work.
It doesn't have to be a literal mass-extinction event for this type of thing to lead to some catastrophic events affecting people you know and care about. If it were to happen (I honestly hope it doesn't) to someone you care about, I am sure that "the experts told me things were fine" will be of little consolation.
How about dropping the sarcasm and word-thinking and start to put some thought into the questions I made regarding the WHO recommendations up until some weeks ago? I bet if you could go back in time to Italy just three weeks ago, you wouldn't be telling people to just "listen to the experts", would you?
Now a slightly longer one. Guidelines on how infection risk can be minimised are very consistent. And they make perfect sense. So yes, that's the advice I give my two kids, my parents (both of which fall into the high risk age groups, luckily they are following that advice already without me), and the advice I follow myself.
WHO recommendations are based on the best available picture to them. I prefer to trust someone changing his opinion when data changes over someone who paints a worst case scenario from day one on.
And yes, if someone from my family ultimately dies, which I really don't hope, having done everything experts told us to do to prevent it would be the only consolation there is. The alternative being fear mongering, panic and paranoia. In which any infections happening toy loved ones (assuming I am the only factor behind there behaviour, which I am thankfully not as my family thinks pretty well for themselves) would be to a certain degree on me.
And the experts have assessed the risk. Hence the advice they give. But you do you, ok? As long as you stop spreading stories about mass extinction and stuff like that.
Also you are being disingenuous. I said
>the risk impact of not quarantining as significant to disastrous and the likelihood as very likely.
which means I would classify it as very significant.
Regardless it doesn't change the risk rating.
I'm close to Hamburg. We've had two or three confirmed cases in the county. Patients are quarantined at home and stable. Schools have been temporarily closed, but reopened now. The administration is taking it very serious and people are stocking up on everything, including cake.
This is in NRW, however, where we have by far the most confirmed cases in Germany. Might be different in other places.
Actually Covid-19 cleaning solutions would be a temporary business to get into.
depending on how long friend is employed by this company, the resulting leal case could be rather expensive for the employer. Your friend would still have to look for another job, so...