Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

Published a new article on Performance Testing. This time – about testing with Python scripts. Python’s flexibility allows for constructing very complex test plans, and I share how to use Python correctly for this purpose, and how not to. Also sharing a sample code for a load testing utility (asyncio+await/async). Furthermore, I demonstrate the benefits such testing can bring through showcasing concurrency issues in the SAP Commerce Cloud Integration API. There, I create twenty-five parallel updates of a single product, and everything goes awry.

It’s interesting that there are screws and bolts that by design are only for screwing in, not for unscrewing. Search “one-way screws.” There’s also something called an over way sex bolt – quite intriguing based on the name http://www.tamperproof.com/products/One-Way-Sex-Bolt/

I found some interesting statistics. It turns out that in the USA during 2017-2018, “flu-like” diseases (influenza) affected 45,000,000 people, and 61,000 died from the flu. Thus, the death rate was 0.13%, and the incidence rate was 13.7%, or 13,700 per 100,000 people. In Russia, according to Kommersant, the incidence rate is 703 cases per 100,000 people, which equates to 1 million people across the country, or 0.66%. Thus, just looking at flu and similar illnesses, the official statistics show a 20-fold difference between the USA and Russia. As for flu deaths, according to the official Rosstat statistics in Russia, 87 people died from the flu in 2017. Compared to 61,000 in the USA. There’s no genetic barrier against the flu in Russia. Just something to note, for those who count and those who do not.

In the case of COVID-19, the death rate among those infected is 3.3%, which is certainly high. On the other hand, in the USA, 30 million people suffer from heart diseases and 647,457 deaths, which is 2.1% of the sick, but only among the sick – every tenth person. In Russia, 47% of all deaths (about 700K per year) are due to cardiovascular diseases. So, the statistics show that if a patient already has heart disease, the probability of dying from COVID-19 greatly increases. Obviously, if you already have it, you can’t just get rid of it, but it’s definitely time to think about health.

So, the best advice for non-elderly people to survive the era of “coronaviruses and others” – move more, get plenty of sleep, and eat right; and for the elderly – all the same, but try to do all this away from sick people.

And for children – not to worry at all. So far, out of three thousand, no one under 9 has been affected, and the age group “up to 45 years” has a death rate of 0.2% among registered cases. This also looks scary until you consider the number of unregistered cases and recovered individuals. For instance, if it suddenly turns out that traces of the virus are found in an additional hundred thousand healthy (already) people, the percentages will drop very quickly. The problem for now is that testing is still expensive and complicated.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm

No, no one is going crazy, they’re just stocking up basements and second fridges

I’m a bit confused. So, does this mean that Moscow civil servants (and not only them?) can now officially skip work for two weeks if they have just returned from China, South Korea, Iran, the USA, the UK, Spain, Italy, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, or France? How else should I interpret Sobyanin’s decree?

And what if they head off to Norway for a couple of days over the weekend, will they get another two weeks off? There’s no restriction there, right? How many times can they do this?

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