https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-amazon...
The HN link should probably be changed.
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?
It was a little weird at first, but I am willing to go through whatever hoops to make the grocery workers comfortable.
https://www.cochrane.org/CD006207/ARI_physical-interventions...
Is it ok to close the barn door now?
It is still late.
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.)
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.
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.
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."
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/amazon...
Labor organizing - it works!
anti-test perfectionism means the entire west is shut down. we only had so many perfect tests, so we tested almost no one.
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 wonder if this is because of shortages of masks.
The virus apparently doesn't do great on cardboard; you've got a day or so of transit time for it to wear down...
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.
It's not weird at all to me.
Amazon's treatment of warehouse workers and their treatment of customers are wildly different.
The hard part isn't testing the workers. It's giving them sick pay for not coming in to work while sick.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
That is, perfect (waiting for super accurate tests, etc) is the enemy of good (testing temperatures, wearing basic masks now).
[0]: https://medium.com/@Cancerwarrior/covid-19-why-we-should-all...
Assuming the guy who brought the package to your door isn't infected.
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.
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.
Do you have a reference for this? I've only ever heard of aerosolization primarily being a concern around people on breathing assistance equipment.
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.
N95 masks though, those can’t exactly be ramped up and made in your shop.
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.
Well ... they are certainly correlated.
The root cause is offshoring safety critical manufacturing:
https://www.wired.com/story/decades-offshoring-led-mask-shor...
These are all "perfect is the enemy of good" fallacies, not "debate".
Also, how does a bad mask increase aerosol? That makes no sense.
#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!
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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
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.
Masks are being sold to overseas buyers, so I assume they can resell them back to US entities at enormous markups.
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.
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)
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.
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...
I suspect they have no problem remembering your consent forever, it's just refusal that gets immediately forgotten.
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-...)
Even measures that are only partially effective can make a substantial difference, especially at a population level.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258525804_Testing_t...
"Guaranteed protection" does not matter at all.
Masks that only offer 99% protection are well worth wearing. As are 40% masks.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronaviru...
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.
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.
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.
Simple as that.
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.
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")
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.
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.
"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...
They're not monitoring the public, they're monitoring their supply chain system.
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?
Please link to research that backs up your claim.
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.
"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.
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.
This is a “false sense of security” because one can have the virus and be contagious without a fever or any symptoms at all.
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)
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.
[1] https://shouldiwearafacemask.com/static/images/uploads/masks...
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.
Probably not calibrated on Coronavirus transmission.
Note in particular that cloth masks were tried and failed during the Spanish flu epidemic.
Given that I can't find it repeated, I suspect that it may be misinformation on my part.
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.
* 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.
Sorry, it is my pet peeve when people assume that everyone living in the US is "American".
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.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/02/health/aerosol-coronavirus-sp...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronaviru...
I think there are many people who, despite having US passports, identify more readily as "Chinese" than "Chinese-American".
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.
To categorically say it always makes more harm that good seems entirely wrong!
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...
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.
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.
Paywalled articles are only allowed if there is a known, easily-accessible workaround, and someone usually posts this in the comments.
