The National Quarantine Center, this nation’s only federal quarantine facility, sits on a single floor of a new building on the campus of the University of Nebraska Medical Center west of downtown Omaha. It holds 20 beds, 15 of which are occupied by patients exposed to the novel coronavirus, or SARS-CoV2, including several passengers from cruise ship Diamond Princess.
A couple of blocks away sits the UNMC biocontainment unit, the largest of its kind in this country, which takes up part of an upper floor in a large inpatient-care facility. Ten beds, with a 35-bed surge capacity. Two pressurized entrances providing constant negative air pressure via a HEPA airflow system, and decontamination autoclaves for waste disposal. Currently four of the beds are occupied by contagious COVID-19 patients. (“COVID” means coronavirus disease.)
The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What’s Coming
LARRY BRILLIANT SAYS he doesn’t have a crystal ball. But 14 years ago, Brilliant, the epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox, spoke to a TED audience and described what the next pandemic would look like. At the time, it sounded almost too horrible to take seriously. “A billion people would get sick,” he said. “As many as 165 million people would die. There would be a global recession and depression, and the cost to our economy of $1 to $3 trillion would be far worse for everyone than merely 100 million people dying, because so many more people would lose their jobs and their health care benefits, that the consequences are almost unthinkable.”
Now the unthinkable is here, and Brilliant, the Chairman of the board of Ending Pandemics, is sharing expertise with those on the front lines. We are a long way from 100 million deaths due to the novel coronavirus, but it has turned our world upside down. Brilliant is trying not to say “I told you so” too often. But he did tell us so, not only in talks and writings, but as the senior technical advisor for the pandemic horror film Contagion, now a top streaming selection for the homebound. Besides working with the World Health Organization in the effort to end smallpox, Brilliant, who is now 75, has fought flu, polio, and blindness; once led Google’s nonprofit wing, Google.org; co-founded the conferencing system the Well; and has traveled with the Grateful Dead.
We talked by phone on Tuesday. At the time, President Donald Trump’s response to the crisis had started to change from “no worries at all” to finally taking more significant steps to stem the pandemic. Brilliant lives in one of the six Bay Area counties where residents were ordered to shelter in place. When we began the conversation, he’d just gotten off the phone with someone he described as high government official, who asked Brilliant “How the fuck did we get here?” I wanted to hear how we’ll get out of here. The conversation has been edited and condensed.
Berlin’s Checkpoint Daily now in English
Freiburg: First Large German City Under Curfew
“I don’t give a damn about Corona”, said an acquaintance at a recent gathering. That was exactly two weeks and two days ago. It sounded crude and nonchalant but not absurd. Now this is a sentence from another world. The tragedy is that many of the presumed main carriers of the virus –young adults– carry on living by this motto.
March Morning Scenes amidst Covid-19
Explore the world with amuz. iOS and Android.
Kevin Hundley, via a kind email from my Father:
Almighty God, we come before you to plead for your protection and guidance. We acknowledge that nothing takes place on this planet without your observation and control and that even natural disasters and dreadful diseases are known to you. According to your will and ways, spare us and those we love from the discomfort of the Coronavirus and especially from its more serious consequences. Give wisdom to health agencies in our community, our nation, and the world to work together to slow the spread of this disease, care for its victims, and discover a reliable cure. Move the forces of government to assist those affected by the disease and to coordinate a calm and fitting response. In your good time restore common sense among us and return a spirit of order to our society.
Gracious Lord, we believe that you use disasters and diseases to remind us and our world of your sovereignty and significance. Let people everywhere acknowledge that we human creatures are not in control of life and death and that there is a divine power under whom we live and breathe and have our being. Bring us to our knees as we recognize your power and our sins. Then let Christian messengers around the world share the healing power of the gospel so that souls may be directed to your life-saving love in Christ. During this troubling time lift our eyes to the cross of your Son to see your wisdom, power, and love and may that cross lead many to repentance and faith. We pray through Jesus Christ, Our Lord.
Coronavirus Tech Handbook
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The Sun Sets on the Airline Fee Splurge?
“That will be $25.00.”
I’ve been blessed to travel extensively. Events, weather and other issues may arise and require changes. For decades, one could often make a call or an in person request and a flight or schedule update was made.
The $25.00 fee for me, was the beginning of the end.
Up until a few weeks ago, airlines seemed to master fees for everything from a boarding pass, assigned seats to schedule and price changes and of course additional fees for frequent flyer tickets.
That $25.00 moment remains etched in my memory. Delta’s customer service agent delivered it quickly and professionally. She responded to my request for waiver with “those fees pay my bonus”. I marveled at the organizational skills required to make the fees for everything business model stick.
Yet, I wondered when the airline fee house of cards might crumble. The organizational, training and software complexity required to support fees for everything is substantial. Increasingly cramped planes have further reduced the air travel allure.
Today, zoom’s (video communication app) market capitalization is $29.7B, exceeding Delta’s 24.55B, United’s $10.32B and Southwest’s $21.35B.
There is no substitute for face to face meetings, imho. That said, augmenting experiences and relationships with FaceTime, zoom, amuz and other digital services is here to stay.
Perhaps we may arrive at a more citizen friendly balance between fees for everything air travel and pure digital services.
Possessive Posturing: Mine is Yours and Yours is Yours
Federal electronic medical record data sharing rules have been released, many years after the $38B+ federal taxpayer backdoor subsidy, which promised “interoperability”.
Rick Pollack, CEO of the American Hospital Association, said in a statement Monday that the final ONC rule fails to protect patient information. “The rule lacks the necessary guardrails to protect consumers from actors such as third-party apps that are not required to meet the same stringent privacy and security requirements as hospitals,” he said.
Nick Hatt, a product designer at Madison-based health care data-sharing company Redox and a former Epic employee, said Epic “didn’t really get very much in the final (ONC) rule. The content did not change substantially, so it was kind of a win for the patient-access side.”
The rule requires full exports of patient data, beginning in three years, to patients or hospitals if requested, Hatt said. “You’re being asked to develop something that helps your customers switch from your software to someone else,” he said.
Also, screen shots of electronic medical records will become more public, which Epic didn’t want, Hatt said. “They really don’t want to have screen shots of their software out on the internet, and now essentially it’s illegal for them to put those kinds of clauses in their contracts,” he said.
But the scope of data that must be shared will be limited for two years, and companies such as Epic will be able to warn patients about the dangers of sharing data with third-party apps — changes that were in Epic’s favor, Hatt said.
The rules apply to scenarios such as patients wanting to share clinical data and check lab results with Apple’s Health app, Hatt said.
Epic has said the proposed ONC rule could threaten patient privacy and intellectual property, and increase health care costs. CEO Judy Faulkner urged customers to support a letter in opposition to the rule. More than 60 health system CEOs, including those at UW Health, UnityPoint Health-Meriter and Gundersen Health System, signed the letter sent in February to HHS Secretary Alex Azar.
Related:
1. Paying – Repeatedly – for Epic’s Walled Garden
2. Airdrop trumps $40B Taxpayer Medical Record Subsidies.
3. Madison’s Property Tax Base Growth; $38B+ Federal Taxpayer EMR Subsidy.
4. $37,920,077,070 in Taxpayer Electronic Medical Record Subsidies: 2009 – January 2018
5. Epic Electronic Medical Record Implementation: $100,000,000 for Stanford Hospital in 2005.
6. Epic Systems Clearing Storm Landscape Images.
7. A failed 2007 attempt to use Wisconsin taxpayer funds for electronic medical record subsidies.
7. More notes and links on Epic Systems and its founder: Judy Faulkner
8. Federal electronic medical record data sharing rules: 474 page pdf.
Through apps, not warrants, ‘Locate X’ allows federal law enforcement to track phones
Federal agencies have big contracts with Virginia-based Babel Street. Depending on where you’ve traveled, your movements may be in the company’s data.
U.S. law enforcement agencies signed millions of dollars worth of contracts with a Virginia company after it rolled out a powerful tool that uses data from popular mobile apps to track the movement of people’s cell phones, according to federal contracting records and six people familiar with the software.
The product, called Locate X and sold by Babel Street, allows investigators to draw a digital fence around an address or area, pinpoint mobile devices that were within that area, and see where else those devices have traveled, going back months, the sources told Protocol.
They said the tool tracks the location of devices anonymously, using data that popular cell phone apps collect to enable features like mapping or targeted ads, or simply to sell it on to data brokers.
Simple Systems Have Less Downtime
Ships contain simple systems that are easy to operate and easy to understand, which makes them easy to fix, which means they have less downtime. An important quality, considering that “downtime” for a ship could mean being stranded thousands of miles from help.
Take the ship’s steering system, for instance. The rudder is pushed left or right by metal rods. Those rods are moved by hydraulic pressure. That pressure is controlled by a hydraulic pump. That pump is controlled by an electronic signal from the wheelhouse. That signal is controlled by the autopilot. It doesn’t require a rocket scientist or a naval architect to find the cause of and solution to any problem:
All Your Favorite Brands, From BSTOEM to ZGGCD How Amazon is causing us to drown in trademarks.
Maybe it’s cold, and you need some winter gloves. You know the brand of your favorite coat and remember who made your warmest sweater. Gloves, however, have always just been gloves, purchased without too much thought. So you open up Amazon and search: “winter gloves.”
On the first page you might see a brand you’ve heard of before, like Carhartt, whose W.P. Waterproof Insulated Glove, priced in my search at $24.37, has been positively reviewed thousands of times. Scroll a bit further and you might find the venerable Isotoner offering another popular basic glove.
Mostly, you’ll notice gloves from brands that, unless you’ve spent a lot of time searching for gloves on Amazon, you’ve never heard of. Brands that evoke nothing in particular, but which do so in capital letters. Brands that are neither translated nor Romanized nor transliterated from another language, and which may contain words, or names, that do not seem to refer to the products they sell. Brands like Pvendor, RIVMOUNT, FRETREE and MAJCF. Gloves emblazoned with names like Nertpow, SHSTFD, Joyoldelf, VBIGER and Bizzliz. Gloves with hundreds or even thousands of apparently positive reviews, available for very low prices, shipped quickly, for free, with Amazon Prime.