Author: sujinyan

Covid-19: Differences Between China & the US

I’ve lived in Beijing, New York City, and Silicon Valley for most of my life.

I get very concerned when I look at folks trying to somehow gauge how China dealt with Covid-19 and apply it to the US.

Here’s why:

  1. Surgical masks. In China, as with other Asian countries, people wear surgical masks when they’re sick in an effort to keep others from catching whatever they might have. I would often walk into restaurants and see wait staff and bartenders wearing masks. Masks are also worn when people are concerned about getting sick. There’s no social stigma involved either way.
  2. There are legions of volunteers. They were on full display during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, and are heeding the call to service now.
  3. They have socialized medicine. Testing for Covid-19 is free. Treatment is free. Whatever you can think of paying a bill for in the US is, well, free.
  4. People are paid during time-off for treatment / self-isolation.
  5. There isn’t the religious fanaticism we have in the US.
  6. People aren’t anti-science (for example, anti-vaxxers).
  7. A centralized government means far less competition between levels of government.
  8. When homes and small businesses have air conditioning, it is usually on a per-room basis. That is, very little central air. So, someone can self-isolate in a room and not run as much risk in contaminating the household.
  9. Folks will largely follow orders to stay inside and not to leave a community. Indeed, many communities are cordoned off, with volunteers passing goods over barriers made of corrugated metal siding.
  10. Mass numbers of people (medical personnel, military, etc) can be deployed overnight.
  11. Temperatures have been taken en masse at airports for many years.
  12. Prefab hospitals can be setup in days.
  13. Sars. China was the hardest-hit country in the 2002-2003 Sars outbreak, with a reported 5,327 cases and 349 deaths. The general population takes talk of such outbreaks seriously.
  14. Obesity, and the underlying health conditions associated with it, is far less prevalent.
  15. Although the initial response to the outbreak seems to have been botched for, they didn’t have this:

    I’m going to stop there and revisit this post over the next few days. If you’ve lived in China, and would like to contribute, feel free to leave comments and I’ll add them to the post.

Two Masks

To heck with your puny N95 masks, we’ve got the real deal. Plus, we’ve got Okie’s American flag right behind us.

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On a serious note, an employee at one of the two Safeway stores we frequent tested positive for COVID-19.

We’ve been gloving and masking-up (regular N95 masks) for awhile when we head out to get food or supplies. And, with the shelter-in-place order, our trips have become far less frequent.

This Guy

So, I was working with a couple of other guys from NVIDIA breaking down the NVIDIA DGX servers used onstage by Jensen Huang for his keynote address at GTC 19.

I’d been hauling around my Nikon D5 camera, but put it down for this work… trying to move a 350 lbs server with a camera strapped around one’s neck is a bad thing ™.

Anyway, this guy, who I think is a lead for the union guys working at the hall, walks up, asks who left this expensive camera lying around (me) and if he could use it (yes).

Gotta say that his swagger reminded me more of someone from the Jersey docs than from San Jose.

In any event, this is one of the pictures that he took.

Note: A beer to the first person who can identify him and point him in my direction. I told him that what he shot would end-up on the web.

 
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