Amazon begins temperature checks and will provide surgical masks at warehouses | Hacker News Reader

Amazon begins temperature checks and will provide surgical masks at warehouses

reuters.com

265 pointsajaviaad213 comments

How is this just starting? Here in Singapore, employers have been required to do twice-daily temperature checks for months.

This is the lowest of low-hanging fruit.

>How is this just starting?

I wonder if this is because of shortages of masks.

Thermal guns are not affected by shortages of masks.

That said, we probably don't have sufficient supplies of those on hand either.

>Thermal guns are not affected by shortages of masks.

Well ... they are certainly correlated.

There is no shortage of masks, just issues of procurement.

Masks are being sold to overseas buyers, so I assume they can resell them back to US entities at enormous markups.

> How is this just starting?

This question bears repeating. A lot. I'm baffled.

Here's my pet theory: It's mostly about preserving companies' brands and not associating them with the crisis. Someone wearing a face mask is a very visible (literally in-your-face) expression of the pandemic. Companies don't want this associated with their various brands. Especially a service worker working directly with the public. [Company] fears that if the public starts seeing [Company] workers wearing masks, they'll associate [Company] with sickness. Remember the thread yesterday about hospitals. The health care workers that were willing to post anonymously suggested that their lack of protective gear was more about bad PR and image than a lack of supplies.

This is just like companies not wanting their ads to show up alongside porn or hate videos. They're trying to avoid a bad brand association. No company wants the public to see face masks all over their brand.

I asked the same thing over 3 weeks ago, and the general response on HN was interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22543327

This is quite interesting phenomenon, how did mainstream media manage to spread the same mis-information for weeks?

Did they have a meeting together and agreed to carry out the same lie for the greater good???

Are you under the impression that nine million people from 60,000 organizations got together to keep the same conspiracy?

They're not in a conspiracy or even in communication, they're applying the same world-view that responds similarly when presented with the same incentives.

This is why it doesn't help as much as you'd expect to provide better information, to expose a prominent member of the 'conspiracy' in a lie, or even to outright replace the public policy - the same culture and the same systems are still out there, resulting in a large fraction of the population reaching the same conclusions. Only education and cultural change (which are slow, operating on timescales of decades) can overcome this problem.

I want to print and frame this comment.

I think everyone is aware that America has a couple of structural issues that have existed and slowly gotten worse over the last decades. For example, the cost of healthcare and education keeps rising, while real incomes stay stagnant.

It feels like this is how we solve problems in America:

1. Organize a private think tank 2. Think tank recommends some targeted market or incentive-based intervention 3. Intervention is watered down through the political process 4. Problem finds a new equilibrium

We're culturally resistant to solutions that require:

1. Mass social compliance (e.g, stay at home) 2. Trust in higher authorities 3. Capping potential best outcomes (we are all temporarily embarrassed millionaires)

>how did mainstream media manage to spread the same mis-information for weeks?

By quoting our leaders.

well, this comes from WHO. i honestly don't understand why they're lying. maybe to stop people for buying al masks? but this is incredibly stupid, there are textile masks too that don't help a lot, but still do a little, as it limits the distance that the virus is expelled to (and if everyone wears them, everybody gets protected because the people with the virus will have a smaller air spreading area around them).

The US in general is very conservative about allowing people sick leave, and Amazon in particular is notorious for making people work while sick. They were already running their operation right on the edge of the health of their employees, e.g. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/11/18260472/amazon-ware...

The hard part isn't testing the workers. It's giving them sick pay for not coming in to work while sick.

That's one of the most frustrating things about the response to this. Even now we don't have measures like having everyone wear face coverings, having temperature checks, limiting the number of people in establishments, etc., and it doesn't seem like anyone in power is advocating them at the moment. The response seems to be to first shut down the whole economy, then spend a few weeks thinking about what to do next.

I can relate to the frustration. The one observation I would make is that the US is not Singapore. Singapore is a relatively small city-state, run by a benevolent dictatorship and with relatively recent experience with other corona viruses.

It's crazy that the only people in power talking about reopening the economy are the ones who advocate taking less precautions.

I hope the public conversation will shift towards a culture of wearing face covers and having temperature checks and that governments will mobilize to make it happen. The status quo can't hold for 18 months while we test the vaccines.

I think the "begins" in the title is misleading. I have been seeing plenty of reports on reddit from Amazon warehouse workers saying they have been doing temp checks (and other measures) for at least a couple weeks. I know in some jurisdictions it is required for any business that stays open to do temperature checks.

My guess is that some Amazon warehouses were doing it, but not all. This news seems to be about rolling out an Amazon-wide policy, but the headline makes it seem like there were no measures prior to this (which AFAIK is false).

Ultimately amazon is a very large company and is responsible for all the warehouses and laborers it makes use of. The problem is that these laborers are treated unfairly.

Who needs sick time should able to take it and it should be paid time off; Amazon workers are not well off people, they live paycheck to paycheck. By taking sick leave would leave them without a rent check, Some of them would think twice, some would just come to work sick. And why don't they do something like an incentive program for workers? To give protective equipment to their workers, give a bonus for working during the pandemic and charge more for shipping if needed. Yes we will be charged more, we would buy less but the numbers would balance out. And knowing those workers are human to, I wouldnt mind paying more for shipping just to mitigate their impasse.

There seems to be a lot of off-topic Amazon-hate in this thread.

How Amazon treats its warehouse workers seems relevant and topical to a thread about a change in how it is treating its workers.

The article notes: "Employees will also be provided with surgical masks starting next week, the company says, once it receives shipments of orders of “millions” placed a few weeks ago."

Companies have been trying to do whatever they can. But there are limits to what they can do. A warehouse only has so much room to keep distance while still satisfying the needs of customers. And PPE is in short supply. It makes sense that it would take weeks to source equipment at this time.

Everyone is complaining and protesting but the reality is the companies have already been doing what they can, by and large.

Singapore is run by competent people and the US is not.

Simple as that.

It's a cultural thing. In America, Asian Americans were wearing face masks starting around January (many wear them all year round). Non-asian Americans don't like to, for whatever reason.

A lot of actual Asians in the US, not just "Asian-Americans", are wearing masks too.

Sorry, it is my pet peeve when people assume that everyone living in the US is "American".

I mean, sure, but most Asians in the US are citizens.

What papers someone has is an administrative matter that does not perfectly correlate with what nation they culturally identify with.

I think there are many people who, despite having US passports, identify more readily as "Chinese" than "Chinese-American".

I doubt it. Most Chinese Americans hate the CCP and want nothing to do with China, since most are descended from the original chinese settlers of the west, not recent immigrants.

And plus, as an Asian american myself, I don't think that an American born person of Asian ethnicity is Asian, so please don't racesplain to me.

If they weren't born here, and became Citizens, they took an oath to support the Constitution and renounce any fidelity to any other nation. Being a Citizen is more than just a piece of paper.

American cars didn’t use to have seat belts. The thinking was, if your car is equipped with seat belts, it’s clearly not safe.

Singapore and much of Southeast Asia learned their lesson with SARS, so they have been prepared for a long time. Temperature tracking has not been uncommon in those areas prior to COVID-19. They understand the importance of monitoring and early action.

This response from Amazon is better than nothing, but given that recent figures show that up to 25% of people may be asymptomatic, might these temperature checks give people a false sense of security? They should have any employee with _any_ symptoms stay home and self-quarantine for longer than 3 days.

They should really focus on getting face masks for employees faster by using nonmedical fabric masks, which can help prevent asymptomatic transmission by blocking respiratory droplets from spreading. The article says the surgical masks won't arrive until next week. And they should really be using some alternative fabric mask, rather than surgical masks which should go to healthcare workers.

Each day that interventions are delayed makes a huge difference.

More thoughts at https://shouldiwearafacemask.com

(Edited to remove suggestion to close until they get masks with a compromise to use nonmedical fabric masks.)

anti-temperature perfectionism is what got us into this mess. having quick, imperfect tests and good follow up brought South Korea under control.

anti-test perfectionism means the entire west is shut down. we only had so many perfect tests, so we tested almost no one.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

My point isn’t that taking temperature checks needs to be perfect, but that they are focusing their intervention on symptomatic spreading rather than asymptomatic spreading.

They would benefit more with immediate action by giving employees nonmedical fabric masks and making them mandatory TODAY rather than waiting for surgical masks next week.

GP is agreeing with you. The phrase "perfect is the enemy of good" is a criticism of striving for perfection when you could be doing other good stuff in the meanwhile.

That is, perfect (waiting for super accurate tests, etc) is the enemy of good (testing temperatures, wearing basic masks now).

Ok, thanks for clarifying.

A lot of this going around lately. Just because you don’t agree with someone, their opinion isn’t the cause of this mess.

OP has a point and I’ve read the number of asymptomatic as high as 50%.

Other than creating more corporate control over employees, statistically how do temp checks improve the situation?

A better solution would be the 5 mins tests. Then you have a 99% certainty.

Many opinions have significantly contributed to the mess we're in. It's obviously impossible to go back in time and fix the mistakes of the past six weeks, but it's definitely worth calling out harmful inaction-memes when they're still being repeated!

> They should shut down until they can get face masks for all employees and make them mandatory. The article says they won't arrive until next week. And they should really be using some alternative fabric mask, rather than surgical masks which should go to healthcare workers.

And all the people ordering from Amazon? I would assume that on the whole, Amazon is better than every member of the public physically going out and shopping at a store.

I thought a fair amount of the contact work was done by robots, at least for the inner packaged items.

The virus apparently doesn't do great on cardboard; you've got a day or so of transit time for it to wear down...

Amazon has sponsored a picking challenge for a few years now, but I'm not aware of this level of automation being deployed in production. The last I saw, a Kiva robot would bring a shelf of items to a human picker, who transferred an item from a bin to a box.

The virus apparently doesn't do great on cardboard; you've got a day or so of transit time for it to wear down...

Assuming the guy who brought the package to your door isn't infected.

If they required masks for all supply chain jobs right now, most places would have to shutdown due to the lack of masks. People would go hungry. We need guaranteed supply of masks and hand sanitizer at reasonable prices. This where the government could step in.

And they get it from...?

They could force companies to produce it.

Hand sanitizer will be solved in a couple weeks. Every single distillery in my small town is pivoting to making it, as well as Bacardi and others, and I know this is happening everywhere.

N95 masks though, those can’t exactly be ramped up and made in your shop.

This crisis we are in has doctors wearing halloween masks so there are people making masks at home. They're not N95 rated in the slightest, but it's better than reusing a mask to see a non-covid patient after seeing a probably-covid patient.

Source of doctors wearing Halloween masks?

how about doctors wearing sex shop costumes? https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/28/medical-fetish-site-donates-e...

Masks can be made from cotton fabric and still be quite (~70% effective) (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258525804_Testing_t...).

You can improvise a mask from paper towel and tissues that is ~90% effective (https://www.bkreader.com/2020/03/07/heres-a-diy-way-to-make-...)

This is such a great website thank you! Sharing immediately with my family. I’ve been telling them any mask helps. They keep getting hung up on “N95 needed.” Although I was proud my Mom was the only teacher wearing a (lesser) mask when they had to go in for meetings this week. Well proud of her, appalled at the others and appalled the school thinks it’s ok to meet if “it’s less than 10 people at a time.”

I’ve been telling them any mask helps

Yesterday the mayor of Los Angeles said that anyone going outside at all should cover their faces with some kind of home-made mask.

I'm glad I saved all those free souvenir bandanas from the rodeos I've been to over the years.

Thanks, I designed it to share with friends and family! Please feel free to share it (https://shouldiwearafacemask.com) widely.

"False sense of security" is a frequently misapplied concept. Your post is such an example.

Something that reduces a risk (e.g. virus spread) by 5% provides very real security improvements. There is nothing "false" about it. Your concept of "false sense of security" would only apply if someone promised a 5% measure provided 100% security - and nobody is doing that.

The “false sense of security” I refer to is for employees who go to work and get their temperature checked and think they are fine since they don’t have a fever.

This is a “false sense of security” because one can have the virus and be contagious without a fever or any symptoms at all.

People have misconceptions about the virus regardless. Fever checks are not the cause.

Quite a few public health professionals have stated that asymptomatic individuals, while infectious, are a very low risk vector. They don't cough or sneeze and the primary transmission rate is through droplets. I can try finding a few sources.

Yet empirically there are symptomatic individuals showing up all the time, with no evident vector. So asymptomatic folk are assumed to be contagious, and not just a little.

This sentence stuck out to me:

"The company will also use machine-learning software to monitor building cameras and determine whether employees are staying at safe distances during their shifts, or whether they are often huddled too close together"

I can see that working in tandem with some kind of alarm or alert sounding when workers are too close together. The second order effect, would be some kind of Pavlovian response in Amazon warehouse workers even beyond this physical distancing period.

That's the kind of stuff you used to read in sci-fi novels.

In the same vein, it would be kind of cool if there was a wristband / necklace kit that vibrated aggressively if they were placed within close proximity. For example, most people touch their face between 2-3,000 times a day. The current CDC recommendation is to not touch your face, but people do this unconsciously.

So make two wrist bands, wear one on each wrist. Then also make a necklace of some kind, and if a wristband is brought within 1-2 inches of the necklace, vibrate the wristband somehow. This will alert the person that they are touching their face and after enough use, they will hopefully do it less.

I wonder if this could be done with a smartwatch alone.

Touching your face means that your hand is at a specific angle, and probably has some accelerometer and gyroscope readings that can be identified as "touching your face" vs "raising your hand" or lifting things or whatever else.

Dedicated hardware would be nice, but it's unlikely to be useful in time for the current pandemic. But an app that was like 90% accurate that could be released right now (or within a week or 2) might be able to make a difference.

We perfected behavior tracking on the web. Now it’s time to try it out in real life.

This is the premise of the Amazon Go stores, walk-in, grab-stuff, walk-out. No checkout. All ML based video surveillance. They probably use the same underlying technology.

They really should have been doing temperature checks a month ago. Amazon is pretty critical infrastructure right now. Many people would be up a creek if Amazon had to shut down.

I can see a parallel universe where the military shows up and "fortifies" critical supply chain locations like this, and they're the ones with the temperature checks and gate security.

Not sure we're there yet. But I keep thinking about how, "given the lag time in this disease, appropriate response should look like an overreaction."

> But I keep thinking about how, "given the lag time in this disease, appropriate response should look like an overreaction."

That's a great point. The impact of the virus is going to be much worse than it could have been because it's behavior exploits some of our cognitive biases.

At a manufacturing plant I'm working at the temperature checks have been in place for awhile now. Seems weird it took Amazon this long since I'm sure they have everything they need to do it in their warehouses. Just buy it from the seller and rip them open and start taking temperatures.

Our local grocery store chain (Wegmans) finally let workers wear masks last night, as well.

The Trader Joe's near me took the most serious steps so far. They are limiting to 30 people in the store at a time and setup 'lanes' six feet apart for carts to lineup for checkout. When you checkout, they take the cart and have you stand back while they ring up and bag your stuff. When it's time to pay they back up from the register and let you pay and take your own receipt. I say these are the most serious steps because the other grocery stores near me haven't changed much of anything last time I went to them.

It was a little weird at first, but I am willing to go through whatever hoops to make the grocery workers comfortable.

How does the process described help prevent the issue of an infected person placing grocery items in the cart while shopping, only to have the cashier touch them at a later point in time?

It doesn't, but it helps keep people separated. I did notice each cashier had their own bottle of hand sanitizer, so that could help if they used it after each transaction. Personally, I would still want gloves and a surgical mask if I were them.

Ahh gotcha, I see now. I definitely think something is better than nothing in this context and would help slow and/or reduce transmission in general! Just wasn't sure if I had missed something or what have you.

I'm not an expert, but, if in the described scenario the cashier doesn't touch their face and they frequently wash hands/change gloves, I don't think this method of transmission is as effective as close proximity transmission via the humid air coming in and out of your nose and mouth.

Comments like this are maddening.

No mitigation effort is perfect. Not even vaccines work perfectly.

The point is to reduce the average number of people that each infected person spreads the disease to. Not to get it to 0, which is impossible.

All of these steps have already been going on at my local Whole Foods for almost two weeks now. I don't know if it was a single-store thing or a broader Whole Foods thing, but it has been weird to me seeing people harp on Amazon's response to this when the Whole Foods near me has been the only business seemingly implementing any safety measures.

It was weird at first, but everything went smoothly after the initial weirdness of people obliviously walking past the line in front of the store and trying to go inside only to be told to turn around and stand in line.

I am hoping more grocery stores near me are taking similar steps. This was the first time I've gone to the store in 2 weeks, so it's possible others are doing the same as well by now. The last time I went to a bigger store near me (Marianno's) was 3 weeks ago and they weren't doing any steps like this or limiting items per purchase yet.

The Trader Joe’s that is 50 feet from me has been like this for the last two weeks as well. So likely fairly common across that chain.

> it has been weird to me seeing people harp on Amazon's response to this when the Whole Foods near me has been the only business seemingly implementing any safety measures

It's not weird at all to me.

Amazon's treatment of warehouse workers and their treatment of customers are wildly different.

Reddit has been plastered with reports from Amazon warehouse workers that they have had temperature checks and PPE (except for masks due to shortages) for weeks now. It doesn't seem to be that different.

It just seems to be on a case-by-case (or per location) basis, while the media seems to be just choosing the locations where there isn't such measures and extrapolating wildly.

Any sources? Or at least 1-2 subreddits where one can read Amazon warehouse workers public discussions?

https://reddit.com/r/AmazonFC

In Poland only 3 customers per checkout are allowed in the store(so if the store has 5 manned tills, only 15 customers can be in the store). Also all customers and employees have to be wearing gloves while.inside the store.

How are they so late on this? I thought Bezos was going to be all over figuring out how to keep people working safely, that's going to be a huge factor in the success or failure of businesses going forward.

It is funny you mention it. My SO works at a doctor's office and they only started that kind of monitoring two days ago. Best practices are only starting to emerge so I am willing to give Amazon some slack here.

It is still late.

The temperature checks and reviewing video are new, but they've been saying they will provide masks for a while but have been running into shortages actually procuring them.

If we assume most transmission is asymptomatic, this is largely a PR move that buys Amazon some time, but doesn't change much, except maybe the price they're willing to pay for masks.

Even if we assume most transmission is asymptomatic there's still a ton of value in cutting down symptomatic transmission.

They're late because employee protests forced their hand.

Private companies are reluctant to instate costly efforts on their own. They might be worried competitors will get an edge by not doing the same.

In a crisis, people look to the leadership above them. These companies are looking to government and public health officials for guidance and even official decrees. But those people are scrambling to make up for the month of prep work we lost. This pandemic has revealed our lack of planning for disasters. We're just now settling on the big decisions like stay-at-home orders and financial relief. Hopefully we'll get to the secondary decisions (like recommended protocols for businesses still open) while they could still do some good.

What is the accuracy of non-contact infrared thermometers sensors in detecting high body temperatures? If you use an off the shelf cheap non-contact thermometer then your will read ~32C when you measure your forehead temperature. As far as I can tell most health non-contact thermometers work by measuring the ambient temperature and using this to calibrate the measured forehead temperature. But there seem to be many factors in play: if a worker has just come from another colder or hotter environment, the size of a workers head, ambient air speed, hair covering, where the operator aims the device...

In the best study [1] I have seen using expensive ($25,000) equipment, the sensitivity vs specificity is too low [2] to suggest that they are useful outside of environments that can tolerate high levels of false positives. To catch 90% of the people with Covid-19 you will inadvertently turn away at least 10% of your workforce as false positives.

I would be interested in seeing studies from actual workplace screenings in terms of how many workers are turned away and how many feverish workers are actually detected.

[1]https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/16/11/10-0703_article [2]https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/16/11/10-0703-f1

For the sake of safety, I think it is better to err on the side of false-positives in this situation.

1. Everyone should wear surgical masks

2. Temperature checks everywhere

3. Testing needs to be ubiquitous and fast

4. Backtrace every outbreak and quarantine everyone that was in contact

This, 100% this. #1 is so easy that it hurts be that this isn't headline news. The CDC fucked up big time telling people masks don't help. Even if you don't have access to a surgical mask there are resources out there for how to make cloth masks or even use a T-shirt as a mask. This should be table stakes. Yes, you are going to get weird looks (I already have) but if it encourages even 1 more person to feel comfortable then it's worth it to me.

#2-4 are largely out of our hands (as individual citizens) but #1 we can all start doing TODAY.

inb4: I'm not interested in arguments about "false senses of security" (we already have people thinking that without masks) or that "they won't fit the mask correctly"/"wear it incorrectly" (you are letting good be the enemy of great and we just don't have time to get to "great").

Please reduce your contacts and if you have to go out wear a mask!

I agree in general with one change:

s/surgical masks/nonmedical fabric or homemade masks/

At this point there is a shortage of PPE for healthcare workers, so the general public should wear nonmedical fabric masks or homemade masks.

I can agree wholeheartedly with this. We need our best PPE on the frontlines. That said everyone should be covering their face when they go anywhere they could have contact with other humans (grocery, pharmacy, etc).

It looks like they're being sent home, not given sick leave. Amazon can absolutely afford paid sick leave for people they deem unfit for work.

At a question and answer session in my region (we have them daily) one question was about masks.

The doctor who answered said most (non medical) people don't know how to wear them properly. Another problem is taking the mask off without infecting yourself.

Do not wear your face mask like the gentleman front and center in the photo! Not covering your nose has become the source of many memes but it still widespread. Simply having the fabric on your face does not grant you a protective aura.

Sadly even professionals like dentists do this wrong sometimes.

If you don’t have an N95 mask, it isn’t ultra important. I figure the masks that aren’t stopping virus anyhow are at least reminders to not touch your face / be careful.

> I figure the masks that aren’t stopping virus anyhow

I don't agree with that statement. Even if it only blocks 1/2 of the viral load you are better off. Best case: you don't get any of the virus, worst case: you get a smaller dose which helps your odds.

Yeah from my limited knowledge the actual amount of virus you get injected with is very important, it's not a binary caught/not caught thing.

Agreed, from my research it's all about giving your body time to develop antibodies and due to how the virus replicates the smaller you start the more time you have to fight it before it really starts to take a toll on your body.

The primary purpose of everyone wearing masks is so that people who are asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic minimize the spread of their droplets to everyone else. If the mask also protects you from sick people, that is an added benefit but secondary. Only N95 masks worn properly can guarantee protection for the wearer.

That means covering the mouth is most important because even breathing releases droplets. And the nose should be covered too, but only covering the mouth does help.

[edit after re-reading parent comment]

This article offers some links and data on the effectiveness of even homemade masks at filtering particles:

https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/diy-homemade-mask-protec...

The link you posted is commercial (selling air filters), better to link to the original study from which this is based:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258525804_Testing_t...

Liability. Tell people that makeshift masks offer coronavirus protection, and hear the class action lawyers sharpening their quills from a hundred miles. Even if the masks, deployed at scale, help reduce the R factor.

Just have employees sign a waiver.

That's a good point. To complete: Just tell CDC to tell employers to have employees sign a waver.

Ah no any mask decreases the chances of your catching the virus. N95 masks provide complete protection so are important in hospital and health setting. Other masks might not provide 100% protection but if everyone wears them even 50% protection would bring the R to less than 1. People habitually touch their mouth and nose if it is covered they would not do that so that would help as well.

Yea, this is super important to emphasize. Even though surgical and homemade masks are only good at filtering out a portion of the larger respiratory droplets, that's still going to be a lot better than nothing.

This is the same reason the medical authorities have recommended these types of masks for healthcare professionals in areas where N95's are not available. It's better than nothing.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/ppe-strategy/f... (see "HCP use of homemade masks")

The 95 in N95 literally means 95%

But 95% of what?

Probably not calibrated on Coronavirus transmission.

Non-oil particles over 0.3 nm, of which droplets containing viruses is one of. There are P100 masks (oil+non-oil) as well, but they're more expensive and harder to breathe through.

> Only N95 masks worn properly can guarantee protection for the wearer.

"Guaranteed protection" does not matter at all.

Masks that only offer 99% protection are well worth wearing. As are 40% masks.

Only when worn properly, a 20% mask that you take off with your hands from the front and then don't watch your hands or any other uncareful behavior when using it is going to make more harm than good and for those it would have been better to not wear anything at all.

I can see how touching the mask can lower the protection.

To categorically say it always makes more harm that good seems entirely wrong!

N95 Masks do not guarantee protection, but they do vastly reduce one's exposure. Simple surgical masks do provide a very minimal level of reduction of droplet intake. Slightly better than nothing, but not far off from bandana-level protection.

Agree that covering the mouth is the most important thing. Hopefully this person just had it down while he was outside and not around others.

From the FDA:

"even a properly fitted N95 respirator does not completely eliminate the risk of illness or death"

https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/personal-protective-equi...

sadly, I think we all will get it. Apparently it is spread even by the infected talking or breathing. No way around it. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/02/health/aerosol-coronaviru...

"This letter responds to your question concerning the possibility that [coronavirus] could be spread by conversation, in addition to sneeze/cough-induced droplets," the letter states. "Currently available research supports the possibility that [coronavirus] could be spread via bioaerosols generated directly by patients' exhalation," it continues.

Neither does 6 feet. It's all safety theater.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronaviru...

Its not about guarantees. Its about reducing the infection exponent. Which all of these recommendations absolutely help with.

I think my point is being misunderstood. 6 feet is not enough, at all.

Yeah it's "more than nothing" but is that what we should be aiming for? Or a little higher.

Ok, sure. Its just that its popular to post rags on the recommendations like they don't matter. Without any actionable suggestions. Which is not very helpful.

What's the proper distance?

There may not be any safe distance in the same room/area with someone who is infected even asymptomatic without fever (yet)

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/02/health/aerosol-coronavirus-sp...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronaviru...

there's an element of "what will people actually do". 6 feet gets the idea across while not coming across as "don't be in the same room as other people", which people will ignore.

A bullet proof vest and a helmet don't offer perfect protection in a firefight either, but I'd rather have one than not.

They seem to have randomly stopped delivering some items for 3 weeks even though they have them in stock. It's very inconsistent; I need a new inner tube which will be delivered tomorrow but while I'm at it I could do with new tires too, but those don't turn up until 30th April even though they are in stock. Could they not just deliver the items all at the same time?

Everyone who is still working to provide essential services should be wearing masks.

There is a major shortage of PPE, so non-healthcare workers should be wearing nonmedical fabric masks or homemade masks. https://shouldiwearafacemask.com for a full explanation with the science.

I cannot find accurate information, but the duration of the illness for the people that do recover from mild cases is around 12-15 days; sending people home if they have fever for "minimum 3 days" does not make sense, you send them home until they have no fever for at least 3 days, so they are clean.

I'm sure there's a German word for "a company announcing a positive step that hurts its reputation because everybody thought they were doing it already". Closely related to the "software feature announcement that everyone can't believe it didn't have already".

I'm also curious about how they are dealing with the actual sent packages. From past videos I've seen, workers place the objects in boxes. So if a worker is sick, wouldn't they be sending contaminated items out? Is amazon doing anything about that in particular?

Imagine if we had a healthcare system like Singapore. Not like the one we currently have now, where the government interferes in the free market and as a result the cost goes through the roof.

Both Amazon, Facebook, and eBay should be sued for enabling price gouging. I report at least 20 ads a day on Facebook for overpriced face masks, there are still tons of masks and respisrators on eBay and other overpriced necessesities such as toilet paper, paper towels, and hand sanitizers. Amazon also allows a lot of crooks to sell stuff and never deliver it and now they blocked a lot of non-medical grade stuff for "governments and hospitals" like 2 oz sanitier gels and others. In addition, Amazon also now has all out of stock items as "Temporarily out of stock.", i.e. lying to you and tricking you to place an order and wait for it to be delivered... one day!

Love how Amazon staff will get surgical masks while doctors in America have to re-use theirs and use them for a whole shift.

TL;DR: starting next week, Amazon will start:

1) taking temperatures of employees, fever >100.4°F to be sent home for min 3 days

2) giving surgical masks to employees once it receives shipments of orders of “millions”

3) using machine learning-powered video software to monitor social distancing

(Shameless plug for a little site I made to help spread the word that we need #masks4all: https://shouldiwearafacemask.com)

> 3) using machine learning-powered video software to monitor social distancing

Ughhh... Never let a good crisis go to waste. How about we ban machine learning systems to monitor people's movement at scale?

This is Amazon's entire warehouse solution, in some sense. Pickers are "optimized" by software. It's probably relatively trivial to teach the system to keep people further apart, at the cost of optimal routing.

They're not monitoring the public, they're monitoring their supply chain system.

They are monitoring human movement, at scale. This is dangerous.

* video feeds + machine learning system for monitoring warehouse workers.

* video feeds + machine learning system for monitoring shoppers.

* video for monitoring entire neighborhoods.

Hmmm, I wonder what their business plan might be.

Would they have implemented any of these steps without collective action taken by employees and the threat of strike?

No, absolutely not and this is a trend in the media reporting on these actions. Companies are credited for implementing safety measures that were first demanded by workers organizing, often without any reference to that organizing.

Isn't covid still contagious before you even get a fever?

Yes! You can be contagious without showing any symptoms (asymptomatic transmission). Recent data shows that up to 25% of people who have it are asymptomatic!

Is there any reason you couldn't just write "Amazon"? I see people do this thing often on HN, for instance "At $DayJob, we do...". Is it like a sign of belonging to a tribe?

Edited. Thanks for the feedback. I used $AMZN to abbreviate it, but I can see how it is distracting.

Reminiscent of the Micro$oft days of yore at Slashdot.

Yes!!! :) I miss that Bill Gates borg image: https://lurkertech.com/bill-the-borg/

I like the site! One question - is the graphic of mask/no mask[1] correct? I've heard good arguments that this is correlation!=causation, and shouldn't be relied upon.

[1] https://shouldiwearafacemask.com/static/images/uploads/masks...

How are temperature checks useful? I thought I'd read that people are asymptomatic for up to 2 weeks, during which time they can spread it. If that is the case, temperature checks do absolutely nothing to stop the spread here...

It has been suggested people who are symptomatic are much more infectious.

Masks will help with the asymptomatic people and temperature checks will help catch the ones who are symptomatic. Don't let good be the enemy of great. Every bit helps.

I am seeing this logic a lot: “this preventive measure isn’t 100 percent perfect, therefore it’s completely useless.”

Even measures that are only partially effective can make a substantial difference, especially at a population level.

I get the feeling a lot of HN commenters would recommend against condoms because they're only 98% effective, and only if used correctly, therefore completely useless.

No, they would not recommend the day-after pill as one of the core measures. Taking the temperature means you find out something is wrong a week late.

Because in this case, the measure is 0 percent effective. People work together every day. This virus spreads super easily. Telling people to stay home once they show symptoms does absolutely nothing to stop communal spread. If it did we wouldn't have these social distancing rules, and the entire country wouldn't be shut down.

Lagging indicators?

I just hope Amazon has bulked ordered masks of sufficient quality that we ourselves can buy some from Amazon.com that are sold by Amazon.

We have to move to a mask culture until we get a vaccine.

Correct me if Im wrong, but even with temperature checks which you may not have you are still potentially a carrier? If so, I hope we can find a better detection system if a vaccine isn't created ASAP.

The point of mitigation measures is to reduce the spread, not to slow it to zero, which is impossible.

For those interested in reading the actual journalism, not a blog re-writing someone else's work:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-amazon...

The HN link should probably be changed.

For investigative journalism that makes sense. But for press release type content, if anything it's probably more ethical to link to the blogspam version than the original content. Otherwise you're just financially rewarding the "journalists" who only publish positive things about Bezos, the whitehouse, video games, or whatever, and economically punishing the folks we need to hold them accountable.

The link should be changed anyway - that cookie control thing is the worst ever, offering no control.

Perhaps, but given the number of articles on HN that are completely inaccessible due to being paywalled, that makes for a low bar of acceptance.

Inaccessible links aren't allowed on HN according to the FAQs [1].

Paywalled articles are only allowed if there is a known, easily-accessible workaround, and someone usually posts this in the comments.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

The one at Reuters isn't that much better. If you refuse, Reuters will immediately forget your "Managed Consent" and slam you in the face again on your next visit.

I suspect they have no problem remembering your consent forever, it's just refusal that gets immediately forgotten.

If you reject their use of cookies how are they supposed to remember your rejection the next time you visit?

If the law doesn't make a single exception so the webpage can store a boolean value into a cookie to know this user doesn't want to be bothered with any _other_ cookies the law is wrong.

Any single exception can be a privacy attack surface. The law is correct.

It does make exception for cookies used to make the site function.

No offense, but are you sure you grok the whole 'cookie' concept?

Techcrunch is stealing my back button too

Ok, we've changed to that from https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/02/amazon-begins-running-temp....

I thought here in the west that it was well-established that temperature checks and mask do not work against the corona?!

Unfortunately, it’s becoming more clear that the government-science bodies like the CDC and the WHO have been spreading inaccurate information.

What's clear is that the entire system has degenerated as the competence of the average person has been eroded over the last few decades.

Failures across the board. Federal government, state government, local government, hospitals, insurance companies - no one in positions of authority saw this coming in January? No one with clout or power had the foresight to stockpile masks or other PPE, just in case?

Why isn't a national emergency stockpile being maintained when we've seen a dozen potential global pandemics in the last decade alone?

Apparently even officials aren't immune to senseless groupthink.

I can't believe the U.S. Navy didn't implement a ban on shore leave, or allowing anyone new onto their ships, 6-8 weeks ago. Incredible incompetence.

>Failures across the board. Federal government, local government, hospitals, insurance companies - no one in positions of authority saw this coming in January?

People did see it coming. The administration ignored early warnings about the virus and publicly downplayed the severity of the issue in order to preserve the stock market and Trump's poll numbers in an election year. This after dismantling much of the infrastructure and firing the personnel needed to respond to this issue in order to cut costs.

This failure goes far deeper than Trump. There are so many people in so many positions of authority who could have acted - administrators allocating funds for emergency stockpiles, both private and public. Police, fire, everyone was sitting with their ass up their thumb waiting for what, big brother government to tell them to do something? The administration ignored early warnings about the virus and publicly downplayed the severity of the issue in order to preserve the stock market and Trump's poll numbers in an election year. This after dismantling much of the infrastructure and firing the personnel needed to respond to this issue in order to cut costs.

This is nonsense, if you presume the administration knew what was coming then they would have known that this would last up until election season, as it likely will. Unless you're implying that they waited deliberately for it to get worse so they could "fix" it. But you'd never prove something like that. In any case that still doesn't excuse the other tens of thousands of people for individually and collectively failing to act.

I started stockpiling mid January.

>This is nonsense, if you presume the administration knew what was coming then they would have known that this would last up until election season, as it likely will.

Here is an article pointing out that Trump ignored warnings about the virus from his own intelligence services as far back as January[0].

Here is an article about his efforts to downplay the effects of the virus, and calling it a Democratic hoax[1], also going back to January.

Here is an article about Trump's efforts to quickly scale back social distancing guidelines and ending the quarantine in order to get the economy going, again, for the sake of his reelection campaign.

Here is an article about the lies, minisformation and misdirection Trump has offered about the coronavirus[3].

> Unless you're implying that they waited deliberately for it to get worse so they could "fix" it.

I'm not implying that. I will imply that Trump assumed the problem would just go away, and when it didn't, his primary concern became political damage control. FFS he's said he only willing to help blue states with funding if they stop criticizing him[4] and during a press briefing on the coronavirus he boasted about being "number one on facebook."[5] Clearly he cares more about his image and his ego than he does the health of the country.

Notwithstanding whatever other failures have occurred, when the Executive branch is being run like this during a crisis, the result affects the entire system. It affects funding. It affects procurement and distribution of goods. It affects the way people behave, whether they even believe a crisis exists, and what actions should be taken. There's an entire "coronavirus truther" thing happening now resulting in people ignoring quarantine orders and that's directly a result of Trump convincing people the scale and danger of the problem has been overblown by the "liberal media" in order to attack him. That's directly his fault.

[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-intellig...

[1]https://www.vox.com/2020/3/18/21184945/trump-coronavirus-com...

[2]https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-trump-wants-to-r...

[3]https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/trumps-...

[4]https://www.vox.com/2020/3/25/21193803/trump-to-governors-co...

[5]https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1245476330193518596

You are far too eager to use this as an excuse to shit on Trump.

I'm not remarking in the incompetence and/or maliciousness of Trump and his administration. I'm pointing out that it's a failure across the board.

But you clearly are unable to look at things objectively. Again, I'm not here to flame about the president. Everyone screwed up. Tens of thousands of people with power failed to act. Including Democrats. That was my while point. Stop with the partisan politics, they have no place here.

I was trying to provide some evidence and context for the part of my comment you were calling nonsense, and you'll note I never actually disagreed with you, I just think we disagree on what share of blame goes where.

But fine, I admit I get a bit heated about Trump, especially lately, but it isn't partisan politics. I don't feel the way I do about him or his leadership merely because because he's a Republican.

The messaging on masks (CDC+WHO), the delay in declaring it a pandemic (WHO), beleving China (WHO), saying it's "not airborne" (in the technical sense it might not be but talking near someone can let it spread) are all abhorrent on their own. The total mismanagement and ass-covering will need to be paid for when this is over. The WHO and the CDC have lost a ton of credibility and need to be held accountable.

u/pacala's law: The competency of a government organization is inversely proportional with the size of the governed body. At 7B and counting, WHO is a sad joke.

China handled this quite a bit better than the US and has a multiple times bigger population.

That isn't at all clear. I expect the real numbers are much worse than reported. See, for instance, the recent re-closing of all cinemas.

Temperature checks don't seem to work particularly well if enough people carry the virus without symptoms, but if I'm to believe that masks don't impede the movement of sneeze droplets, then I'm the King of Finland.

The point of temperature checks, or any mitigation measure, is not to reduce spread to 0, but to decrease it.

Why don’t you think temperature checks work? Are you aware that even stopping 1/3 of transmissions would have a massive effect on the final outcome?

I have a hard time believing that everyone wearing a mask when interacting doesn't inhibit a disease transmitted via vapor in our breath.

There is actually a debate about this.

A bad mask (eg a bandanna) means less virus gets out, but it is more likely to get out in the form of a fine aerosol that hangs in the air for hours. On the opposite end it is a reminder not to touch your face (prevents transmission from your hands) but won't stop you from breathing in an aerosol.

Likely still a net win, but kinda a hard thing to do good research on.

There is no doubt that masks that are designed to block things the size of viruses help. Just issues about who is the highest priority to get them when they are in short supply.

Aerosol is not any more likely to get out than not wearing anything. And a bad mask prevents droplets from getting in as well.

I can't find the source on which I based my aerosol comment on, but the idea was that a large droplet which would have fallen gets trapped by the cloth. When it gets through, it comes out as a fine mist.

Given that I can't find it repeated, I suspect that it may be misinformation on my part.

> A bad mask (eg a bandanna) means less virus gets out, but it is more likely to get out in the form of a fine aerosol

Do you have a reference for this? I've only ever heard of aerosolization primarily being a concern around people on breathing assistance equipment.

I can't find the source I saw it in, but the idea is this. If you cough, large droplets coat the inside of the cloth, and then are forced through the weave of the cloth and come out as small droplets. The smaller the droplet, the better it hangs out in the air.

> Just issues about who is the highest priority to get them when they are in short supply.

The root cause is offshoring safety critical manufacturing:

https://www.wired.com/story/decades-offshoring-led-mask-shor...

Who is debating this? I haven't seen a reliable "con" side of this debate, they are all weird "people will take less care", "cloth masks are not as good as N95", "people will wear them poorly and the mask won't be as effective".

These are all "perfect is the enemy of good" fallacies, not "debate".

Also, how does a bad mask increase aerosol? That makes no sense.

See http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentar... for a reliable "con" side of the debate.

Note in particular that cloth masks were tried and failed during the Spanish flu epidemic.

My understanding is that the main transmission medium is respiratory droplets.

Given how infectious it is, even if these measures only reduce transmission by 10% that is very useful

I'm not sure if you're facetious or not, but that's not what I've read. Neither of those is foolproof for detecting/preventing coronavirus infections, but they are better than nothing.

Facetious.

I think our politicians should have started with stuff like this rather going full on North Korea.

Mask do not protect the person wearing the mask (unless you talk about the kind of masks used as PPE for medical professionals).

They do protect other people from the person wearing the mask spreading the virus. The consequence is that for masks to work at scale a large number of people need to wear them.

Any barrier in front of your mouth and nose will protect you from droplets[0], as well as protecting other people from your own droplets.

[0]: https://medium.com/@Cancerwarrior/covid-19-why-we-should-all...

CDC says that to the public yet in their information to doctors and nurses says a bandanna or scarf can substitute for an N95 mask but with less effectiveness.

> Mask do not protect the person wearing the mask (unless you talk about the kind of masks used as PPE for medical professionals).

Please link to research that backs up your claim.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. These measures aren't about stopping the spread but slowing it down.

An N95 mask (if you can get one) will keep you from getting infected and a surgical mask will keep others from getting infected by you. Temperature checks won't catch everyone but will catch some percentage of sick people.

N95 masks need to go to hospitals first. They don't really make sense for the general public to be wearing. They are difficult to fit properly, and not comfortable for continuous wear. They are believed to be primarily needed when dealing with patients on oxygen / ventilators / etc.

Surgical masks do make sense for the general public. They are much easier to wear, and they still offer a good amount of filtration for the wearer. Plus they have the benefit you mentioned of preventing the wearer from infecting others.

Where surgical masks aren't available, cloth masks still appear to offer some benefit. And there are designs that include a pocket for paper filters.

Please link research.

...because their workers are striking across the country:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/amazon...

Labor organizing - it works!

> Amazon has detailed someone measures its taking

Does techcrunch not have copy editors? Two errors in the first six words of this article. I was an editor at my high school newspaper and we would not have published this.

I wish we knew more about how much the virus is spread by asymptomatic workers in those settings. Otherwise it seems like closing the barn door after the horses have fled.

EDIT FOR CLARITY: I'm referring to the conditions specific to these Amazon fulfillment centers. Not only specific to the screening regime that Amazon is using, but also to the airflow patterns, specific surface materials, cleaning schedule, etc.

Last I checked, it was generally accepted that covid19 can be spread while people are still asymptomatic, even if they practice 2-meter spacing and are wearing masks.

Because even with those measures in place, persons can still contaminate their hands with fluids mucus / saliva / tears, and then go on to touch objects or surface that will subsequently be touched by others.

Therefore, while prohibiting employees with fevers or other signs of covid19 infection are undoubtedly a good idea, there's still some risk of person-to-person transmission even with those who pass that screening.

It's the probability of that kind of transmission that interests me. Because if it's non-zero, there are a few questions worth asking:

- Should Amazon take additional measures to prevent person-to-person transmission? E.g., run most products through an anti-microbial UV lamp? Tweak their AI camera monitors to also look for people touching their faces?

- If that can compare the transmission probabilities of (a) the employees who pass that screening system vs. (b) those who would not, and the probabilities are very close, is the world better off by allowing people in group (b) to continue working?

Aerosols. Masks are an efficient and low cost intervention for limiting such transmissions. Here's a review of 67 randomised controlled studies concluding that.

https://www.cochrane.org/CD006207/ARI_physical-interventions...

Is it ok to close the barn door now?

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