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Found a café in the States with WiFi that blocks everything from Russia.

I have flowers for breakfast

It’s like an age test

Excerpts from the press conference of the WHO Commission that returned from China + my comments (after //)

(English PDF of the presentation here

)

1. About 80% of cases are transmitted via droplets (close contact among family members). Transmission through fine aerosols over long distances is not the main cause of infection. Most of the 2055 infected healthcare workers were infected either at home or in the early stages of the epidemic, when precautions were not stringent.

2. About 20% of infected people require hospitalization for several weeks. China has a hospital capacity of 0.4% of its population size, other countries from 0.1 to 1.3%, and most of these spaces are already occupied by patients with other diseases.

3. About 5% of patients required mechanical ventilation. 15% required extracorporeal oxygenation (for several days). // Amidst COVID-19, Russia is currently purchasing 17 devices for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and 507 high-frequency ventilation devices to combat the coronavirus. One device – one person per week. In Russia, there were only about 350 cases of ECMO used in 2018.

4. On average, the illness lasts 3–6 weeks. Mild cases resolve within a couple of weeks. The number of patients and the duration of treatments far exceeded the capabilities of all hospitals (45 total) in Wuhan, of which 6 were for critically ill patients. 39 hospitals for seriously ill and for those infected over the age of 65. // no comments

5. It turns out that China is ready to produce 1.6 million testing kits per week. This allows testing everyone who goes to the doctor with a high fever. // Russia still doesn’t have these testing kits. The WHO states it will send 250,000 tests to 159 labs worldwide, but it’s important to manufacture these ourselves. As of mid-February, only about 3,500 kits had been sent to 34 countries (source:

6. The majority of those infected show symptoms sooner or later. The number of asymptomatic cases is rare, and most carriers become ill within a few days of detection.

6. The most common symptoms are:

– fever 88%,

– dry cough 68%,

– fatigue 38%,

– sputum production during cough 33%,

– muscle pain 14%,

– chills 11%.

Less common are nausea 5%, and diarrhea 4%. Nasal congestion is NOT a symptom.

7. The mortality rate is 3.4%. Heavily dependent on age, pre-existing conditions, sex, and, especially, the quality of medical care.

The younger you are, the less likely you are to get infected or seriously ill

age | infected | deceased

0–9 | 0.9% | 0

10–19 | 1.2% | 0.1%

20–29 | 8.1% | 0.2%

30–39 |17.0% | 0.2%

40–49 |19.2% | 0.4%

50–59 |22.4% | 1.3%

60–69 |19.2% | 3.6%

70–79 |8.8% | 8.0%

80+ | 3.2% | 14.8%

Women get sick as often as men, but the mortality rate among women was only 2.8% compared to men’s 4.7%

9. The first thing necessary is to aggressively contain the spread of the virus in order to keep the number of seriously ill patients low. The second is to increase the number of hospital beds. Also, care must be taken for staff and material provision.

10. China continuously tests treatment methods. The most successful ones are immediately adopted nationwide, reducing the mortality rate compared to last month.

11. The likelihood of falling ill among pregnant women is no higher than for others. C-sections were performed on nine pregnant women, which helped prevent the newborns from getting infected.

12. The virus is 96% genetically identical to a known virus in bats and 86-92% identical to a virus in pangolins. Therefore, the transmission of the mutated virus from animal to human was the most likely cause of the outbreak.

13. Since the end of January, the number of newly infected in China has gradually decreased, 329 new cases the previous day. A month ago, there were 3000 cases per day.

14. An effective way to contain the virus is to interview the infected about their contacts followed by testing of the identified potential carriers.

If you think about it, it’s not surprising that for Americans, in Russia, bears really do walk the streets and people in ushankas drink vodka, as that’s exactly how things happen approximately every five thousand miles from the border. And then, right at the “farthest end wall,” there’s something resembling civilization

Our harsh locales

Diabase mining.

Two thoughts:

1. If children in their early years are better at reconstructing language grammar on the fly than adults, is it possible to come up with a different task that their brain could solve better than an adult’s brain, if its formulation would mimic language?

2. Is it possible to devise a practical task (not a CAPTCHA) that, when broken down into many elementary components, could be solved more effectively by a group of specially trained/prepared people than by a modern computer?

Published the second part on the topic of load testing – about Tsung. This tool allows you to ramp up tens of thousands of virtual users from a single machine, many times more than JMeter. And it’s very functional as well. I discuss what it can do and how to prepare it. Tsung belongs to the category of good software, well-known in narrow circles, and with a pretty high entry threshold.

Large companies should have long ago started opening online stores where one can buy everything from branded cups and polos to branded backpacks with delivery to offices worldwide. Embroidery or printing can be easily ordered as an ondemand service in almost any developed country in the world. For the buyer, these should be free of charge, and the products should be discounted, which the company personally awards to employees for achievements or years of service or newcomers (up to 100%). For sellers and service providers – another sales channel, for companies – loyalty and free advertising outside the office, for employees – a feeling that they are valued and loved. Such a concept can be devised as a startup and sold to a dozen large companies as a ready-to-go service.

Published an article about Jmeter on hybrismart. It’s an old and reliable tool for load testing that can also be used for automating functional testing. It seems to have a GUI, but without knowing some specific commands, it’s impossible to implement the necessary scenarios for an online store (like logging in once, adding various items to the cart, proceeding to checkout). The article describes how to do all this.

This should especially be useful for those curious and close to ecommerce.