by ezs | Apr 6, 2020 | evilzenscientist
Weekend – sunny and blue skies. Would be a perfect start to spring break in any other year. 10k deaths in UK hospitals, UK projected to be worst hit country in Europe. NHS frontline staff are sick. US hits 20k deaths and a long way to go.
Huge lines across various food banks across the US. Millions of jobs just disappeared in March.
Baked bread Saturday, foccacia planned for Sunday.
Friday – the kids are responding as well as can be expected to the news that school is out until September. Missing friends, missing social interaction, distance learning is not the same. Zoom sucks; Teams is better (their words). A proliferation of websites and logins for each class.
Almost 1000 deaths in 24 hours in the UK. Trump want’s to “reopen the US” – which will mean another massive spike.
Thursday – workday 26 at home. Routine. Without the rhythm of the office every day seems quite similar.
Noticeable differences: no planes in the sky, no contrails because of that, less roadnoise, you can really hear birds and the occasional barking dog.
1.5 million cases globally; that’s 500k new cases in six days. Log curve of new is flattening – but a long, long way to go.
Wednesday – 7000 hospital deaths in the UK. Good to see hospital vs home called out here. Still a shocking death toll. 938 deaths today. US sees 1800 deaths on Tuesday. 100 Days That Changed The World.
Tuesday – Boris still in ICU. Lots of conjecture on how ill he is.
Monday – multiple BBC websites are throwing 404 errors. Looks like a problem with their content system. 51k UK cases, 5.3k deaths. 331k cases in US, 9k deaths. The wave is yet to break.
Wearing of masks is “strongly recommended”. New cases and deaths (leading/trailing indicators) falling in Italy, Spain and WA state.
Boris in ICU. WA state triage exercise from 2018.
No school until September.
Local and global coverage for future reference.
by ezs | Apr 3, 2020 | evilzenscientist
Sunday – hopefully another sunny day. Time for some gardening, fresh air and sun! US has around 25% of the total global cases of COVID19 that have been reported.
Good longer read from The Seattle Times on the early days of the pandemic in WA.
It is exactly one calendar month since I worked in the office. Kids came out of school on 12 March.
Saturday – shopping for groceries and some manure for the garden. Sun is out. Shortages, empty shelves, rationing in the stores and distancing everywhere. About 50% of the folk out are now wearing masks.
That daily increase chart 100k new positive cases globally. Today. That’s more cases reported today than reported by the whole of Hubei province.
Friday – 684 deaths in the UK. Over 1000 in the US. This is a numbing scale of death. Nightingale Hospital London opened. The Queen will address the nation on Sunday.
Thursday – head down and working. Today the total global cases ticket over 1 million. 240k in the US. WA DOH still have no updated data.
Wednesday – WA DOH are getting heat about data ingress and reporting. No updates. PowerBI is updated, table view is back. Data is now three days stale with issues from the previous week.
883k postive cases reported globally. 190k in USA. Trump pivot to “240k dead by May“. 563 deaths in UK today.
Tuesday – back into the rhythm of work from home. Calls, lunch with the kids, talk about the day, dinner.
WA DOH data hasn’t been updated for days. Power BI move seems to have stalled at 28/March.
The Department of Health is committed to continued data transparency.
We are working to ensure daily numbers are posted on time. Here’s some context about recent challenges:
The Washington Disease Reporting System (WDRS) is used to report notifiable conditions.
Outside a pandemic, only positive results would be reported.
WDRS is now tracking negative results for COVID-19. This volume is overwhelming the tool.
We have worked with the vendor supporting WDRS to increase capacity.
We are also investigating additional solutions, which may include:
o A separate reporting tool for negative results (roughly 93% of the data at this time).
o Automating deduplication work performed manually each day. One day last week, more than 2,000 duplicate results were removed to ensure accurate, reliable numbers.
DOH will share additional updates if this problem persists. We cannot provide an estimate for the next release of numbers, but are working diligently toward that goal.
This week, DOH made several new data points available. Our website now includes visualizations showing confirmed cases, the epidemiological curve, cumulative case and death counts, testing numbers, and demographic information. Also coming soon is hospitalization data.
We are working closely with Microsoft to optimize the user experience for this data, including for those without a high-speed connection or those working from a mobile device.
NHS sees extreme shortages. 381 deaths in UK today.
Monday – the start of the fourth full week of isolation and work from home. At some point there are two items of housekeeping I need to do:
re-order these posts so they read in reverse chronological order (newest at the top, oldest at the bottom)- re-work the WA DOH model that I have, to use PowerBI and also align the data boundaries to the new midnight cutoffs coming from WA DOH.
WA DOH data still has gaps – I think the new visualisation and reporting will make this more consistent – but there are a few days of holes:
Kids are still home. There are pitchfork mobs ready for Issaquah School District – there are some awful folk on social media. 1284 deaths in the UK.
Local and global coverage for future reference.
by ezs | Apr 1, 2020 | evilzenscientist
Maintenance night – SLES 12 SP5 updates on Azure.
zypper patch-check
zypper migration
Nice and easy.
Side note – if products somehow get unregistered:
zypper pd
SUSEConnect -p sle-module-legacy/12/x86_64
by ezs | Mar 26, 2020 | evilzenscientist
Sunday – Fauci predicts 100-200k deaths in US. WA DOH moved to PowerBI – looks to be developed by Microsoft IT – which is nice.
Saturday – “Best case, 20k deaths” in UK. 50% survival in ICU however. Closed borders, Brexit – no one to pick fruit and veg. Military field hospitals being built in Seattle.
Will need to head out for groceries later. Ended up travelling to Vashon Island to get car license plates done. Empty ferry and curbside pickup for food.
Friday – Boris has the COVID19. Took the car in to the dealership. Was told a story of “police checkpoints” in Issaquah. Mailed the mayor – it’s obviously complete BS. US at 97k cases and skyrocketing. 969 deaths today in Italy. $2T stimulus coming.
Thursday – the scale of pandemic in the US is becoming clear. Visually seeing the spread, county by county is chilling. NY state has 31k cases, 285 deaths. There is no PPE. 3.3 million file unemployment.
WA DOH finally got test data out for today. Gaps in total tests for Tue/Wed – which doesn’t help the trend analysis.
ExCeL exhibition center in London being fitted out as a 4000 bed hospital “NHS Hospital Nightingale” – NEC next. Tomorrow is three weeks of enforced working from home. NHS tributes are moving.
Wednesday – Prince Charles tests positive. Home testing kits for the UK. JHU dashboard! 100k cases in two days (compare below with above). $2T stimulus passing.
Tuesday – JHU dashboard jumped from ~365k to over ~415k. The global growth is huge; most from the US. NYC is hot. Work from home/school from home is settling into a rhythm. Up on time, breakfast, work/study, lunch, freetime for the kids. Having lunch together is really helping as a keystone of the day. WA DOH data missing the negative test data again.
Monday – @wsdot_traffic updated the message boards on the major highways. Traffic is exceptionally light. Watching the unfolding NYC horror.
The JHU dashboard looks to have an update – showing US counties now. Also looks to have removed the China/ROW from the confirmed/increase charts. US spread is explosive – major metro areas, small outbreaks following the interstates. New cases at >30k per day now. Italy new cases rate is dropping. South Korea new cases lowest in weeks.
It took 67 days from the first reported case to reach the first 100,000 cases of Covid-19, but it took only 11 days for the second 100,000 cases, and just four days for the third 100,000 cases, WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said.
UK FCO calls for Britons to return home – there may not be commercial flights within “days”. UK now in enforced lockdown.
Local and global coverage for future reference.
by ezs | Mar 23, 2020 | evilzenscientist
With everyone home – and working on the internet – I’ve made some changes to the QoS to make sure things keep working well.
Video streaming gets bumped down; behind VOIP and work VPN traffic. That should help a bit.
by ezs | Mar 22, 2020 | evilzenscientist
Sunday – FUD and misinformation spreading on WhatsApp, more rationing at the shops, distancing, empty shelves. Federal major disaster declared in Washington; unlocking funds and resources.
Saturday – no shelter in place for the state, Everett issues stay at home, folk are out at beaches and parks – so shelter in place must be coming soon. Similar around the world. A real lack of PPE for hospitals. Still ten days behind Italy – where another 800 died. Some brutal reports coming in from NYC and NOLA.
Friday – calls for food rationing in the UK (looks like a combination of JIT stock management and a move from eating out to eating at home), tax deadlines pushed out. CollegeBoard announced that AP tests will be short and online. That’s a relief here.
Washington confirmed cases per million is slowing – looks like a week of the slowing trend. This again from Mark Handley. Still ten days behind Italy.
Thursday – empty shelves in stores, rationing. US State Dept basically tells US citizens to come home. UK schools opening for kids of key workers.
Wednesday – US/Canada border closing for non-essential crossings, Eurovision cancelled (!), UK stores limiting quantities of food and cleaning products. UK schools closed indefinitely and exams cancelled.
Tuesday Mark Handley is now breaking out US State data – this from 16 March. WA is 10 days behind Italy right now – and still ahead of most of the rest of the states. It’s going to get bad, quickly.
Work from home has been extended from end of March to “foreseeable future”. CA and KS schools probably closed until the new school year (KS schools closed earlier, agricultural heritage).
Monday was more productive. I ventured into the deserted office on Friday to pick up a docking station – and now I have my work laptop connected to dual 4K screens – which means I can use all of that screen real estate, write and research more effectively.
Canada closed the borders to most (looks like US citizens are still allowed), Bay Area moved to shelter in place, UK Gov sent out ventilator blue prints to manufacturing (Rolls Royce, Airbus, etc).
Local and global coverage for future reference.
by ezs | Mar 20, 2020 | evilzenscientist
For a short while the WA DOH were not reporting test numbers – now the data is back; interpolation using data from the COVID Tracking Project – caveat that the test totals may not be exact due to reporting times. The CTP pulls data at 1pm Pacific/4pm Eastern; WA DOH have been publishing numbers later and later in the afternoon.
At first glance the number of tests performed is growing at around 3000 tests per day. This seems to be the limit of UW Virology and other testing labs. Caveat – I don’t know whether this is a limit on tests requested, tests physically able to be run at the labs or a limit on the number of test kits available. I’m sure it’s a varying combination of the three.
The number of positive tests is growing; the rate of growth seems to be slowing.
In addition the percentage of positive tests is trending downward.
Nate Silver (538 fame) has a good commentary on this.
by ezs | Mar 15, 2020 | evilzenscientist
Washington State DOH have been reporting confirmed cases since early February – and analysis shows this is exponential.
Update: 18 March – data up to 17 March shows that the rate of increase is slowing. This could be a net positive; or just a limiting factor of tests and testing capacity. Time will tell.
Data from WA DOH – collected daily.
Log trendline shows some 10,000 positive by around 22 March, 100,000 by 29 March. Staggering numbers – and likely to be depressed (i.e. delayed) by the lack of testing kits and testing capacity. UW Virology as an example has been running flat out and maximum capacity testing local and national samples.
Global and regional trends are available at the ever excellent JHU dashboard and this from Mark Handley at UCL.
by ezs | Mar 15, 2020 | evilzenscientist
Work has been ok – I’ve been used to working remote, from home and using the technology for decades. Some coaching on best practices for the larger team – but it’s been ok. Certainly less productive – but ok.
A few folk started drifting back to the office; that should be discouraged. I travelled in early on Friday 13 March to pick up a docking station to be most productive. Traffic was exceptionally light.
Local businesses are struggling and closing. Seattle restaurants and bars are closing – for at least the spring. Many will probably not be back. Events have been cancelled for the foreseeable future – soccer, concerts, school events – everything. Public libraries in Seattle and King County closed on Friday 13 March. Large gatherings of more than 250 people across Washington state have been banned.
I discussed pulling the kids out of school early in the week. My personal preference would have been earlier – but they started the isolation on Thursday 12 March. Most of the local school districts started announcing full closures on Thursday 12; Issaquah School District declared on Thursday afternoon. There was significant pressure from local parents to close schools. The Governer announced a limited area school closure on Thursday 12 March – and extended this to statewide on Friday 13 March.
Continued coverage from The Seattle Times.
March 8
March 9
March 10
March 11
March 12
March 13
March 14
March 15
by ezs | Mar 15, 2020 | evilzenscientist
March 1 – 7
Most of this week I was in the office, running an architecture workshop in a closed conference room. Certainly no social distancing.
There was a slow build up of coronavirus news. March 2 – 18 cases locally, March 3 – 27 people locally tested positive. Most of these were centred on a care home in Kirkland. There were a couple of school closures based on early positive tests. Kirkland and Redmond saw a cluster of first responders with symptoms after responding to the care home.
March 2 also saw the Governer of Washington, Jay Inslee, declare a state of emergency.
From the afternoon of Friday 6th the decision was made to work from home; this was initially somewhat voluntary and quickly morphed into a mandated request to work from home and distance.
Continued shortages and panic buying – with long lines reported, and bare shelves for toilet paper, hand sanitiser, bleach and the like.
A local, Issaquah, nursing home had more residents test positive during the week. This is in addition to one reported last week (March 6).
The Seattle Times made all coronavirus news free and not paywalled. This will become a useful archive and reference for the realtime local news.
March 1
March 2
March 3
March 4
March 5
March 6
March 7
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