Faults in Post Office accounting system led to workers being convicted of theft - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50747143 <comment><USER3> The insistence that a machine is perfect when that's impossible is also key in some of the cases Ross Anderson has looked into where banks insist that their customer is a crook rather than a victim so as to avoid compensating the customer.

Here's one about a government "watchdog" blithely accepting that something doesn't happen because the banks say it doesn't, even though victims say it does: [https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2015/07/29/fca-view- on-u...](https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2015/07/29/fca-view-on- unauthorised-transactions/)

Ross and his team did lots of work on flaws in EMV (Chip and PIN) either in implementation or design oversights - and there are a bunch of cases where a court is told the only explanation for the evidence is that the accused is committing fraud, only for Ross called as expert witness for the defence to say something like er, well, that's true if say your Random Number Generator actually generates random numbers, but here's a sample from a real EMV terminal like the one in this case: 49051, 49052, 49053... those don't seem very random to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Whenever I hear about large outsourced IT project disasters in the UK I go to check 'computer weekly', and sure enough, they've been investigating this for well over a decade

[https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252475310/Post-Office- se...](https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252475310/Post-Office-settles- legal-dispute-with-subpostmasters-ending-20-year-battle-for-lead- claimant#Timeline)

It's the same large IT contractors whose names seem to come up again and again in these public cases

<comment><USER5> Who are these IT contractors?

<comment><USER6> There's Raytheon, who the government fired after they fell way behind schedule on e-borders.... and the government had to pay £220 million to fire. [1]

There's CSC, who were paid £10 billion for a failed NHS IT project [2] - <USER2> Accenture and Fujitsu who made billions from the failed 'NHS Connecting For Health' project [3]

There's HP Enterprise, IBM, Accenture and BT who have so far made £12 billion on the Universal Credit IT system which was supposed to cost £2 billion. And it's still beset by problems, of course. [4]

Obviously, there's a complex set of problems and incentives at work here. For one thing, these contractors are often paid by the hour - so they make more money if a project is late or unreliable. For another, there aren't any companies big enough they could offer a fixed-price contract without going bankrupt. For another, the government generally can't provide a specification that's succinct, clear and watertight because things like benefit systems are so complex, figuring out the requirements is 70% of the work on such a project. For another, most other sectors can lock out customers who are expensive to serve - good luck using Amazon if you're illiterate, or don't have a bank account, or don't have an address - whereas state health and benefit projects can't.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/18/uk-bill- ebor...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/18/uk-bill-eborders- contract-termination-raytheon) [2] [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs- records-...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records- system-10bn) [3] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- politics-24130684](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24130684) [4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Credit#cite_ref- guar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Credit#cite_ref- guardian-20180720_6-0)

<comment><USER7> To add to this: a common problem with these projects is that, even though the requirements are vast and extremely hard to pin down, stakeholders insist on pinning them down up-front anyways because that's how it's always been done.

This is then compounded by a procurement process that sets these requirements in stone as fixed deliverables, as opposed to offering both sides the flexibility to reassess after interim sprints / milestones / etc.

Fortunately, groups like GDS [1] in the UK, CDS [2] in Canada, and 18F [3] in the US are helping shift this mindset slowly but surely. That's where you get initiatives like agile procurement [4]. Procurement aside, these groups are also at the vanguard of introducing modern tech stacks / tools, user-centered design, and agile project management to the public sector. (Yes, these things exist in government, and these groups are _really_ passionate about making sure their adoption goes beyond mere buzzwords.)

Side note: many of these groups are continually hiring, and they've been around long enough by now - and had positive enough results - to gain some clout. If you're tired of selling eyeballs to advertisers, there's never been a better time to use your skills in service of the public good. It doesn't have to be a "lifer" thing - CDS, for instance, has a number of 2-year rotating positions.

Source: I'm an ex-fellow with Code for Canada who's continuing to work in the public sector :)

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government- digit...](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-digital- service) [2] [https://digital.canada.ca/](https://digital.canada.ca/) [3] [https://18f.gsa.gov/](https://18f.gsa.gov/) [4] [https://www.canada.ca/en/shared-services/corporate/doing- bus...](https://www.canada.ca/en/shared-services/corporate/doing-business- with-us/agile-procurement.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds be so much of the novel The Trial by Kafka. The sinister feeling of a machine beyond anyone's control or comprehension was a commentary on authoritarianism and bureaucracy but it fits just as well, if not better to our age of computers making decisions in ways that will become increasingly hard to scrutinise. I hope this outcome finds its way into case books worldwide as a warning about placing too much faith in computer testimony over old fashioned human character witness and jurisprudence.

<comment><USER9> Software is now in the walls, it is the infrastructure. If we don't have an answer for how to make it safe and reliable by the time regulators ask how to fix the industry anything could happen. We have spent way too much time on the speed of release and nowhere near enough on accuracy over the past decades.

<comment><USER10> I've worked with Fujitsu in the UK. I consider them pretty terrible and I highly doubt said software was written to anything that would be considered a good standard.

But it's not the software that failed to notice substantial amounts of "theft" after implementing a new IT system, it's not the software that put the outcome of peoples lives on the line, it's not the software that chased repayments and conviction, and it's not the software that completely failed at introspection and I'd alleged swept this all under the carpet.

If this is actually all true and the world was perfectly just, we'd likely be seeing charges against Post Office management of the time, setting an example for the rest of them going forward, but I'll believe it when I see it.

<comment><USER11> Precisely so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find this so amazing from a physiological point of view: 1 sub post master committing fraud seems entirely possible. But surely someone in the post office or the cps, or the police or the courts should have thought "weird how dozens and dozens of people, all the same rank, all committed fraud and all deny it even when caught and we never recover the cash from their accounts. I wonder what it is about the post office that makes their employees 10000 times more fruad inclined than any other business.".

I mean, it was clear their systems were broken just because it was apparently so easy to commit fraud, long before anyone actually appealed etc.

<comment><USER13> I don't think the CPS had anything much to do with this - these were private prosecutions by the Post Office themselves. Which also meant that they could get away with things like requiring people not to criticise the Horizon software in order to avoid going to jail.

Also, it's not just that they thought hundreds of people, all of the same rank, all committed fraud despite never working out what actually happened. The larger Post Office branches are directly owned and operated, employing a number of staff. They are equally convinced that none of those staff did the same thing, even though there's apparently a whole bunch of unresolved accounting discrepencies around those branches and their controls seem entirely inadequate. The difference is that sub-postmasters are basically liable by default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This has been an ongoing story in Private Eye (UK investigative/satirical mag) for years.

It's shocking that there has been nothing done about it, they can hardly claim they didn't know.

<comment><USER15> Came here to post this. It's been known about for years, and just allowed to bubble and simmer, while Fujitsu et al continue to profit

<comment><USER16> Isn't this more the fault of the justice system than Fujitsu?

<comment><USER15> I'd say it's more about regulatory capture, going with the lowest bidder in tenders and non-experts making decisions

<comment><USER10> Non-experts and bad people to boot. Where are the ethics?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Generally, IT systems cannot be inspected or audited. Because they use the wrong data architecture.

One of the core problems is the notion of single source of truth, meaning database records are updated in place. IT needs to adopt an accountant's bookkeeping worldview.

The Correct Answer is to model organizational behavior as events, capturing state changes in an event log. What accountants call ledgers.

Oversimplifying:

Ban use of SQL UPDATE, only permit SQL INSERT. (Translate to equivalent operations for your persistence engine.)

Do not use separate "Truth" and "Historical" (aka Audit) tables. Unify them into a single table.

Do query (SELECT) for what is assumed to be the single best record (SBR). Rather, query for all relevant events (records) and reduce to determine correct answer _at this time_.

\--

Forgive me for not articulating these ideas very well. My team worked through all these issues in the healthcare space. What seemed obvious to us, like banning SQL UPDATE, was considered radical by pretty much every one else.

If any one else is writing about these ideas, please share.

And, sorry, no, the new cupcake frosting Event Modeling (Event Sourcing?) is not what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER18> All good advice. A hybrid can also be useful.

In some accounting systems they have the ledger table (a list of every transaction) and also a balance table (a running total)

The balance table gives you fast access to a total (by account, branch etc) without having to add up the ledger (which may be very large), and upon inserting the ledger entry it is UPDATEd in place by the same amount. If this is done inside the same transaction it should be safe.

There is then a periodic audit process to lock the transaction ledger, add it up and check it against the balance.

This gives the user a full sight of the transaction history and the fast response of totals.

<comment><USER17> So the balance table is like a cache. I'm okay with that strategy.

On my To Do list is mash up a JDBC frontend for ehcache.

<comment><USER18> Yes, mostly up to date, mostly correct, fast to access, easy to prove, not the source of the truth.

A pretty good analogy. In paper days you would add up your various ledgers (perhaps each in its own book, sales, purchases, cash etc) at the end of each day and check that the whole thing balanced. You didn't get to go home until it did!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Terry Gilliam nailed this well in Brazil. [https://youtu.be/6OalIW1yL-k](https://youtu.be/6OalIW1yL-k)

<comment><USER20> "Tuttle? His name is Buttle. There must be some mistake"

"We don't make mistakes"

The problem is when these aren't verified and no support for bad data decisions.

When it is combined with authority and security it is even scarier in a dystopian way like _Brazil_ or _Idiocracy_.

There will be mistakes, there needs to be a pathway for support and verifying this data. Almost like a right to trial but for data decisions made about you. And not the trial Not Sure got in _Idiocracy_.

We already have bad situations like this in credit tracking and identity theft, it gets worse when enforcement and oversight is favoring data over detective work.

Recourse on data decisions or algorithm decisions would be an excellent addition to the Bill of Rights in a much needed "Right to Data" amendment.

<comment><USER19> This clip contains the actual "mistake", ironically a bug: [https://youtu.be/XGge4rj4v_Y](https://youtu.be/XGge4rj4v_Y)

Edit: idiocracy is a great film. However watching these dystopian films as a software engineer is somewhat stressful :)

<comment><USER20> Yeah love _Brazil_ and Terry Gilliam flicks. _The Zero Theorem_ calls out the life of a developer pretty well and has some great satire and fantasy on our current technology and data driven world. Gilliam is strongly anti- authoritarian and comedic so it lends perfectly for satire of modern technology.

Mike Judge being an engineer went on to make lots of great satiric and really truthful comedic views of technology in _Idiocracy_ , _Office Space_ and _Silicon Valley_.

Gilliam and Judge have an excellent knack for nailing the biting areas of this and making fun of it fantastically with satire.

All you can do is laugh knowing how scary it can get, knowing how little say engineers actually have to be ethical and how unethical and incorrect some of these systems pushed can be.

We should take decisions by systems as we do foreign policy: "Trust, but verify". This is more difficult when verifying the decision process of an algorithm is unclear. At least giving someone a required speedy chance to deal with a data/system decision that affects their life.

<comment><USER21> I don't think they're one bit funny but very scary and likely better at future prediction than most think tanks.

<comment><USER22> If you can predict the future, you'd be rich.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > "Financially it really wiped me away. I had to declare bankruptcy. They said > if I didn't pay it back they'd take me to prison. They said I was the only > case," he said.

Were they the first ones, or did the Post Office investigators lie in this case? And if they lied, why are they not in jail for, I don't know, fraud (lying to coerce payment), obstruction of justice (his mother was convicted), or some sort of tampering with evidence?

They shouldn't get to just settle this kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER24> If anyone is interested in a more in depth view of this story, Nick Wallis is a freelance journalist who has been covering this for years. He crowdfunded full-time coverage of the trial and posts over here: [https://www.postofficetrial.com/](https://www.postofficetrial.com/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me of the Phoenix fiasco from Canada of a similar magnitude.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_pay_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_pay_system)

<comment><USER26> Worth noting that the UK Post Office was privatised in 2013 - though I have no idea whether this had any bearing on the events covered by this article.

Edit: My mistake - I was confusing Royal Mail and the Post Office!

<comment><USER27> This shit show started years and years before that and whether it's private or public seems to have no effect, it's large organisations in general who outsource, whether they answer to shareholders or the electorate seems to have no affect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A few additional details on the system in question in this 2017 Financial Times piece (archive.is copy): [http://archive.is/8RzKm](http://archive.is/8RzKm)

The system was "Horizon".

The vendor, Fujitsu.

Horizon warrants its own Wikipedia article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_(IT_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_\(IT_system\))

Fujitsu have their own set of propaganda^Wwhite papers on the system:

[https://www.fujitsu.com/uk/Images/postoffice-customer- experi...](https://www.fujitsu.com/uk/Images/postoffice-customer- experience.pdf)

[https://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/WWW2/UKpostoffice2.pdf](https://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/WWW2/UKpostoffice2.pdf)

[https://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/WWW2/UKPostOffice.pdf](https://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/WWW2/UKPostOffice.pdf)

An excellent and detailed bit of coverage in this blog (see meta/soapbox below):

[https://becarefulwhatyouwishfornickwallis.blogspot.com/2013/...](https://becarefulwhatyouwishfornickwallis.blogspot.com/2013/08/post- office-2nd-sight-report-into.html)

Nick Wallis (himself a BBC presenter and journalist) spins out the Post Office / Horizon story into its own site: [https://www.postofficetrial.com](https://www.postofficetrial.com) There are several posts on the settlement, one of which looks at just what the claimants are receiving for decades of injustice -- it works out to an average of £47,101 each.

[https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/12/further- questions.ht...](https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/12/further- questions.html)

Details on the trial:

[https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/03/horizon-trial- day-8-...](https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/03/horizon-trial-day-8-going- postal.html)

The Register, biting the hand...

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/10/subpostmasters_prep...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/10/subpostmasters_prepare_to_fight_post_office_over_wrongful_theft_and_false_accounting_accusations/)

The Horizon system was audited in 2013, by Second Sight, though the UKPO denied the report's findings:

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/20/post_office_deny_pr...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/20/post_office_deny_premature_litigation_horizon_it/)

Note that the BBC itself covered the interim Second Sight report, a fact it entirely neglected to mention in TFA for this post. See:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-23233573](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-23233573)

Computer Weekly, from 2013:

[https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240175402/Post- Office-a...](https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240175402/Post-Office- admits-that-Horizon-system-needs-more-investigation)

(Also a timeline of reporting _dating to 2009_ : [https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252475310/Post-Office- se...](https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252475310/Post-Office-settles- legal-dispute-with-subpostmasters-ending-20-year-battle-for-lead- claimant#Timeline) ... more below.)

The Horizon system may be replaced, possibly by an IBM project:

[https://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500249009/Post- Office-l...](https://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500249009/Post-Office- looking-to-replace-controversial-Horizon-system-says-MP)

________________________________

Meta:

There are several schools of thought regarding reportage and how to report a story. The BBC's piece here is heavy on the human impact / human interest elements of the story, which are a relevant _element_. However it covers this aspect virtually exclusively, neglecting to identify the timeframe or previous history of the case, _including its own reporting_ , but also of the relevant system and company names involved. This strikes me as shoddy practice.

Listening to a recent podcast (which doesn't much matter), a guest quipped regarding the decline of newspapers that they would often hear from people who would complain about the poor quality of newspaper coverage, but who didn't subscribe to their own paper. This strikes me as an extraordinarily shallow dismissal.

If you go through historical newspaper coverage, at least some of it (usually national coverage, though also many major city papers) was, at least at times, exceedingly good. I do a significant amount of historical research and can attest to this. I also live in a household which, not on the basis of my own support, _does_ subscribe to a major city daily paper. Whose quality is absolutely abysmal. (The publishers themselves are something of an international joke.)

It's almost certainly a self-reinforcing situation, but when front-page coverage is a mix of human-interest and international newswire coverage, when what little actual news that _does_ exist is also largely hidden on inside pages and _also_ almost exclusively news wires, when entire sections consist of graphic-illustration front pages and syndicated-content filler (Business, Homes, Living, Arts & Entertainment, Autos, etc., with Sport being a possible exception), the value proposition becomes exceedingly questionable. The exclusive realm of semi-original coverage is opinion and column pieces, though those too are lagely void of any material significance.

And when the writing style itself becomes so larded with stylebook syntactic candy that the reader must wade through hip-deep lakes of the stuff to find a single salient factual or contextual element ... what's the use? That's above and beyond the near-total human-interest (or in politics, horse-race) elements of the reporting, rather than providing _any_ level of background or context, let alone focusing on it.

All of which is well-illustrated in this BBC piece, nominally among the better journalistic sources remaining.

It's sources available online -- blogs, interest sites, occasionally relic holdouts of higher-quality journalism (FT is ... pretty good, though even it was light on details in the item cited here), or often-mocked (with some justification) sites such as The Register, which actually deliver meat. As well as the odd industry-specific outlet as with Computer Weekly.

One of the simplest, easiest, and most effective practices is simply to _list previous coverage on a topic._ This is something _some_ news sites do, but many do not. The BBC should absolutely adopt this practice.

Computer Weekly _does_ , as noted in another comment on this thread. See:

[https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252475310/Post-Office- se...](https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252475310/Post-Office-settles- legal-dispute-with-subpostmasters-ending-20-year-battle-for-lead- claimant#Timeline)

(I'll note that HN's own moderators often step in to add not only previous coverage of perennial topics and posts, but previous mentions of larger / developing stories, something I appreciate about the site.)

That rot in jouralism and the news sector is to a huge extent self-inflicted injury. And could be addressed, if there was awareness and will.

</soapbox>

<comment><USER29> These types of projects typically have dozens or hundreds of consultants involved. Given all the media coverage, I'm surprised there was no whistleblower who came forward with evidence of poor software quality, etc. Certainly it must have been known that even basic reports on the system do not reconcile. So innocent people went to prison and the consultants continued to stay quiet about bugs?!

<comment><USER30> > _" I'm surprised there was no whistleblower who came forward with evidence > of poor software quality, etc."_

A lot of people know that the takedown of Enron was precipitated or at least in some way aided by a whistleblower, but what a lot of people don't know is that the whistleblower went to the CEO, not the government, and went back to work at Enron for a few more months after confronting the CEO and receiving assurances that he'd look into the matter. The Enron whistleblower, whom some have argued wasn't really a whistleblower at all, seems to have been primarily concerned with losing her job rather than taking down the corporation for being a fraud.

So you've got a company with tens of thousands of people, probably hundreds of whom might have seen or heard something wrong, yet despite that the sole whistleblower was hardly a whistleblower at all. The incidence rate of whistleblowing has historically been very low. It seems that few people riding gravy trains make an earnest attempt to derail them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The settlement seems to be quite low (~£100K/victim) in proportion to the damage inflicted.

</comment><comment><USER32> The terrifying power of "computer says no". The computer could never be wrong, right?

<comment><USER33> the best quote I have is, a computer makes very fast and accurate mistakes.

fortunately it is not as often as some think it is, but delegation of tasks still does require those delegating the work to verify it is done correctly, whether by machine or man. in all cases any project should have documented means of verification anyone can act upon.

what tends to break this is having too many responsible parties to where no one is responsible for any single point of failure and this insulates the the whole. (the old too many cooks)

<comment><USER34> > _the best quote I have is, a computer makes very fast and accurate > mistakes._

The thing is, a computer doesn't generally make mistakes. Not unless some hardware failure happens, or a photon flips some bit in an unfortunate moment. It's always humans who make mistakes - computers are just executing them blindly. They're very good and fast at it.

Now I know it may sound trite, but I don't think it is. The problem isn't people thinking computers can't make mistakes. The real problem is that people are thinking that the output from the computer is something else than it is. Taking m0xte's example[0]:

"Well the thing that returned the state of the asset did a SQL join on the history and returned the top row's state without sorting by date."

The mistake number one is, the function that did this was probably called "getCurrentAssetState", or something else which implied it's getting the _current_ state of the asset. Some programmer made a mistake here. Then that description was taken at face value and the problem traveled all the way to end-user level, probably to some label with "current status" on it.

But that's not the only type of mistakes that can happen. Another possible mistake: the data in the database was wrong, or stale. Another: eventual consistency. Another: configuration error. Etc. And regardless of that, the computer was always doing the thing it was told to, without any error: SELECT state FROM asset JOIN asset_history ON asset.id = asset_history.asset_id LIMIT 1;.

My point is: once the discussion stops being about whether or not a computer can make an error (generally, it can't), people can start to appreciate that they're dealing with large systems designed by humans - and both in the large and in the small, these systems do something resembling what they were designed for, but never exactly that.

\--

[0] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21795557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21795557)

<comment><USER35> The computer automates mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> There's a long running court case which you can find here: [https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/bates-others-v-post- offic...](https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/bates-others-v-post-office/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Anyone know technical details about the software? What language, what hardware, clustering, etc?

<comment><USER29> Not to sound mean, but why would that matter? This entire affair is a failure of Justice, failure of Quality Assurance, and failure of Outsourcing Governance.

It could have happened with any language and any hardware. The problems were people problems.

Side note: I'd hate to associate this affair with a particular software language, as it would just be media fodder, imagine headline: "Python Software Puts Proles in Prison"

<comment><USER38> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21796117](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21796117)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Reminds me of this: [https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133](https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133)

</comment><comment><USER40> tldr: Incredible.550 long-suffering ex-Postal-workers -- many had their lives ruined -- have won a court-case and will be splitting £58m.

This 20-year-old problem in the UK Postal's $1billion computer system was so bad it has its own Wikipedia page. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_(IT_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_\(IT_system\))

<comment><USER41> The equivalent of I'm guessing three years pay for a multi-year life-ruining experience that spawned mental health problems, relationship breakdowns and other long-lasting effects:

> But "a decade of hell" later, he had suffered a mental breakdown which led > to him being sectioned.

The point of me reinforcing the above isn't just the low compensation. It's that it's low compensation and avoiding the root problem. Software gets trusted more than people.

This shouldn't be allowed to happen again. Safeguards need to be in place to prevent ruining lives over software bugs. Programmers don't trust computers to be right all of the time. We suspect a bug when it isn't human incompetence... Yet rulings like this don't tend to make that angle willing to be explored by anyone.

<comment><USER42> Aside from all the pain and suffering they experienced, they are being awarded _less_ money than the government already stole from them in fraudulent claims.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The post system needs to be eliminated. There is no reason in 2020 to burn a huge amount of diesel to cut a tree down, make it into paper, ship it across the ocean, print it, ship it again, the use delivery trucks to put it in a box, to be thrown away, to be picked up by a truck and put into a landfill.

The government is having trouble getting consumers to cut carbon. Why not start with cutting the government's emissions?

</comment><comment><USER44> @mods In headlines like this, it'd be great if the location could be specified. Otherwise it's not clear unless you read the article. Eg, "UK Post Office" or "US military"

Can we make this a guideline, perhaps?

<comment><USER45> One guideline is that an article from the BBC, that does not explicitly specify a country, is likely to be about Britain.</comment></comment>


How anxious should I be about heeding Apple's advice and trusting Malwarebytes? - <AUTHOR> Two simultaneous malware scans, one using Malwarebytes and the other using fs protection for Mac, ran on my MacBook Pro. The programs reported very different sets of detections:
Scan #1: Malwarebytes, in its usual, unnerving ~15-second "comprehensive scan" duration, prompts a false negative: "Congratulations, you are clean!" [disclosure-in-jest: operating on the assumption that it's referring to my computer being clean, not me personally—though the results of my recent blood test posit the same]
Scan #2: fs protection for Mac detects that I'm about to get Locky'ed out of my computer (reporting 8 VBS/Locky.AF file instances stored locally as email attachments)
Here's a link to a screenshot of the whole mess: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/97467p/how_anxious_should_i_be_about_following_apples/?st=JKT19O4H&sh=bf1d0a57
Though I included a couple (terrible) jokes, this is a serious post and the scans were under the stated  conditions. Any help/advice would be appreciated. Thanks. <comment><USER2> Do you have stuff on your Mac that would run VBScript? Did you open the attachments?</comment>


CDC declined to test new coronavirus patient for days, California hospital says - <AUTHOR> https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/484903-cdc-declined-to-test-new-coronavirus-patient-for-days-california-hospital <comment> m-i-l Is there any particular reason the US is testing so few people? They've only tested 445 people in the entire country so far[0], which is a tiny number for such a large country (contrast e.g. with the much smaller UK which has tested 7,690 people[1])? Wasn't that one of the lessons from Italy - the numbers of confirmed cases seemed to shoot up from 21 Feb mainly because that's when they started testing.

[0] [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in- us.html](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html)

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus- covid-19-information...](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus- covid-19-information-for-the-public)

<comment><USER2> The test-kit that the CDC sent to local labs had a faulty reagent, so all test requests have to be sent back to the CDC.[0]

Local labs could develop or purchase their own test kits, but during an a public health emergency, they must get FDA authorization before launching such a test.[1]

This seems to me like a giant institutional and bureaucratic screw up.

Hopefully the FDA may be finally getting its act together and fast-tracking approval of local tests: [https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/12330216819181936...](https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1233021681918193664)

[0] [https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/20/cdc- coronavirus-116...](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/20/cdc- coronavirus-116529)

[1] [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1231944326827081729.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1231944326827081729.html)

<comment><USER3> In all seriousness, why should a non-invasive diagnostic test require any sort of approval (particularly during an outbreak)? This is just RT-PCR if I understand correctly - there's nothing particularly novel going on here. Just publish the primer sequences and let the biotech industry handle things.

Edit: Oh hey they did publish an RT-PCR protocol [1] plus sequences, [2] along with a disclaimer not to use them directly on human subjects. This is just silly (IMO).

> These procedures and/or reagents derived thereof are intended to be used for > the purposes of respiratory virus surveillance and research. The procedures > and reagents derived thereof may not be used directly in human subjects.

[1] [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/rt-pcr- detecti...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/rt-pcr-detection- instructions.html)

[2] [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/rt-pcr- panel-p...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/rt-pcr-panel-primer- probes.html)

<comment><USER4> Maybe false negatives or even false positives could be a liability issue?

<comment><USER5> Type-1 and Type-2 errors... :-)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors)

Medical testing is very, very murky. There was a time a routine medical test for me came back, indicating I possibly had Lupus. It turns out; this test has a false positive rate of about 5%.

I am a white male, and the rate for lupus for my group is astronomically low. The rate for the worst group (black females) is like 500 in 100,000. There's some evidence the rate around white males might be six times lower.

Had I known any of this at the time, or had my doctor explained it, I wouldn't have spent weeks worrying.

The fact is, medical tests just update the probability you're sick or well. And this is why they have to be well understood.

<comment><USER6> I had a problem a couple years ago where my test showed that I had hypothyroidism. My doctor wanted to immediately put me on sythetic thyroid hormone to adjust this. The problem is that I'm thin, athletic, and have no other indicators for risk of hypothyroidism.

I said no to the doctor, and had them do another test, which said I was just fine.

<comment><USER7> The story is not so remarkable: there is no harm from taking synthetic thyroid hormone, and your TSH is monitored while taking it such that I think the mistake would have been discovered later.

<comment><USER6> >there is no harm from taking synthetic thyroid hormone

Where are you getting this crazy idea? Have you ever known anyone who took it? I have two relatives (not biological) on synthroid and even small changes in doses have massive effects on their metabolism, tiredness, etc. Taking thyroid hormone when you don't need it is not harmless, just like any drug or hormone.

<comment><USER7> Hm, okay. Apologies for the misinformation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a South Korean citizen it is jarring that other countries including the US and Japan isn't really trying to test people. Japan has people that died due to COVID-19 and they don't know how it was spread - the US didn't even test everyone that came from Diamond Princess! Why aren't those countries tracking down how the viruses are being spread?

I don't like conspiracy theories, but seriously it looks like they are trying to lessen the numbers on the paper instead of really trying to find the patients. Compare the numbers that the countries are testing[0], US is less than a thousand and Japan is about 1300.

Edit: Just for people who are curious in how things are working in South Korea, we test everyone who has: pneumonia symptoms, or has been in the same place with already discovered patients for free - and anyone who is concerned can test with about $100 - which is refunded if one turns out to be positive. We track every COVID-19 patient's routes and test everyone who was in the same place; which means that the government (mostly) knows exactly how the virus is being spread. Based on data that was announced 10 hours ago[1] (we announce data and roadmap twice every day), we have tested 66,652 people with 1,766 cases found, and currently 25,568 tests are on-going. 1,727 people are being quarantined, and 26 people have fully recovered from COVID-19.

Second Edit: Okay, I'm not really skilled in English; if this felt like bragging how South Korea is well handling this situation, that is not my intent - we have a lot of complaints of how the government should handle this. My intent was asking why the US/Japan is not doing at least this much, considering that both countries are much powerful & richer than Korea. Both countries are basically the Korea's wannabe-countries; and everybody here is pretty shocked (literally - there is a lot of news/SNS posts/internet memes on how Japan/US is handling the situation) that they aren't doing well.

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/BAROczt.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/BAROczt.jpg)

[1] [http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/tcmBoardView.do?brdId=&brdGubun=&data...](http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/tcmBoardView.do?brdId=&brdGubun=&dataGubun=&ncvContSeq=353203&contSeq=353203&board_id=&gubun=ALL) (Korean, sorry :-()

<comment><USER9> >As a South Korean citizen it is jarring that other countries including the US and Japan isn't really trying to test people.

It's apparently quite expensive here. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, while one reported cost [0] for the test is:

>$3,270 two weeks after his test. He will be responsible for $1,400 of that bill.

That's almost 10% of my annual gross before insurance and I have almost 14 years at my job. For someone working a minimum wage job that's more than 11 week's gross income. I imagine they are limiting the number of tests on people that could have any number of other things and waiting for symptoms to strongly point towards the virus due to the simple fact that the tests cost so much. If a patient can't pay, whatever hospital has to carry that cost for potentially years before the patient can repay them (or not get paid at all if it pushes someone to bankruptcy).

Until the government sets aside money to subsidize the tests, I imagine the testing rates will remain low.

[0] [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronaviru...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus- test-medical-bill-china-us-miami-osmel-martinez- azcue-a9358146.html?amp&utm_source=reddit.com)

<comment><USER8> Hmm, I'm not really familiar with US's medical system... so some questions:

* Does that mean someone who gets minimum wage (which probably doesn't have an additional health insurance except for a default one) needs to pay for $1400 to test? (If true, that's insane - why does the government only take cares of $1700 and not something like $3000?)

* Does people who come from Wuhan/other places where COVID-19 is spreading (lets say an american that comes from Daegu - the district with the most patients in Korea) also have to pay the high price to be tested?

<comment><USER6> The US medical system is a complete disaster. Basically, the government doesn't pay for anything; only private insurers do. And they try to avoid paying for as much as they can get away with. On top of that, the actual cost of care is far, far higher than in other developed nations for the same procedures, due to many systemic problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> _" Basically, the government doesn't pay for anything; only private insurers do."_

That's not true. Poor people can get Medicaid, old people can get Medicare, and there are also various other ways of getting one's health care expenses subsidized by the government if you're poor or have medical reasons for not being able to work.

Just to be clear:

I'm for 100% state-funded medical care, but it's simply not true that _" the government doesn't pay for anything; only private insurers do"_. The government does pay for quite a lot, even if many people in the US don't qualify for such aid.

They absolutely _should_ qualify for such aid, in my view, but my opinion doesn't change anything. Some people qualify, some don't, and the government _does_ pay for some, and private insurance does not pay for absolutely everything in the US. These are just facts.

<comment><USER10> You're focused on the trees, not the forest. The prior commenter is right: Unless you are very poor (and get Medicaid) or old (and get Medicare), most Americans receive no government assistance for healthcare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can only imagine that there is a large amount of requests for COVID-19 tests from hospitals across the country right now. Without some kind of guidelines, the request for tests would overwhelm the current capacity and the most likely subjects would not be identified as soon. There has to be priorities.

I expect the CDC will update their testing criteria when it makes sense.

<comment><USER12> There aren't any meaningful criteria. The symptoms look exactly like those of the regular flu, they just have a worse distribution of outcomes which manifest long into the infection.

Just like China, the rest of the world does not have the capacity to test anywhere close to every suspected case. This is also why even good-faith stats are guaranteed to be underestimates. There are no easy answers here, individuals should look after their own wellbeing.

<comment><USER13> > individuals should look after their own wellbeing.

I don't understand how I'm supposed to look after my wellbeing when I'm employed and need to go to work and need to be in close contact with hundreds of people. CDC should advise businesses and should advise everyone to WFH if they can. My boss didn't even hear about this at all, think about that for a second.

<comment><USER14> Many best practices can be done in that context:

1\. Wash your hands frequently

2\. Especially wash your hands before eating

3\. Practice not touching your face. In particular eyes, mouth, nose

4\. Keep distance from people. Aim for 1.5 feet. Double that if person coughing or sneezing

5\. Don't shake hands

6\. Avoid large gatherings

7\. If sick, take sick days

8\. Watch out for objects many touch but which are infrequently cleaned. Doorknobs, pens, elevator buttons, etc. Using your elbow or sleeve is better than your hand. Once community spread starts, wear gloves.

More here. If everyone did the above the R0 would drop.

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/25/wuhan-coronavirus- safet...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/25/wuhan-coronavirus-safety- china/)

<comment><USER15> One problem I suspect we'll see is that the sick people most exposed to others won't take sick days, because they don't get paid sick leave.

There are a lot of hourly workers in the service economy that don't get sick time, and they still need to pay their bills. I'm not personally worried about the people in my office since I can avoid close contact. I'm worried about the people stocking shelves at grocery stores and pharmacies, working checkout counters and the like.

<comment><USER14> It's a real concern. But keeping your distance, washing your hands, and not touching your face will nonetheless greatly reduce risk.

Maintaining a decent (though not extreme) amount of supplies at home will also help you avoid shopping at time of greatest spread.

I say "not extreme" as hoarding can cause problems on its own. Basically just forward your own purchases a couple weeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> South Korea tested more people for COVID-19 in one day than all the testing the CDC has done to date.

<comment><USER16> +4000 tests within a couple of hours in which they identified another 70 cases: [https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1231972534612119557](https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1231972534612119557)

US total tests so far: 445 (source: [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in- us.html](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html))

<comment><USER17> The numbers on that page are over a month old

> * This table represents cases detected and tested in the United States > through U.S. public health surveillance systems since January 21, 2020.

<comment><USER16> no. right above the table the report says:

       Updated February 26, 2020

and it clearly says the data is _/ since/_ Jan 21st.

see archive how their numbers evolved over time: [https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru...](https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases- in-us.html)

there are also inconsistencies/errors in the report (e.g. 21st Feb they claimed 479 total tests): [https://web.archive.org/web/20200221040933/https://www.cdc.g...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200221040933/https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases- in-us.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Flying into LAX from Asia last week, I had expected to spend a few hours at the airport before officially entering, but alas, it was worryingly expedient only being asked "did I travel to China in the last weeks?"

<comment><USER19> I came japan -> SF on 2/1 (prior to major outbreaks) but they didn't have temperature scanners, no one asked if I'd been to China, and with the mobile passport app I was through immigration in <30 seconds. Kind of crazy.

<comment><USER20> What's the mobile passport app called? I have a global entry card, but just got it so I'm not too familiar with my options.

<comment><USER21> "Mobile Pass", blue and white icon. Takes maybe 10 minutes to configure the first time, but is really useful.

<comment><USER20> Thanks, do you just use the free version? Looks like there's some subscription plans inside.

<comment><USER21> I personally have only used the free one. To me it isn't even entirely clear what the paid version gets you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > "Since the patient did not fit the existing CDC criteria for COVID-19, a > test was not immediately administered," the statement added. "UC Davis > Health does not control the testing process."

That seems fair enough to me - testing is currently limited, and likely under high load.

The concern, rather, is this:

> Experts raised concern that the CDC's narrow testing criteria could mean > that there are more cases circulating among the general public that have not > been identified.

The narrowed testing criteria hasn't managed to just exclude false positives (the intent) - it is now excluding positives that need to be caught.

<comment><USER23> > testing is currently limited, and likely under high load.

How can it be high load if its not being tested ?

approx 400 tests nationwide ? If thats high load, the CDC is in for a big shock soon I think.

<comment><USER22> They've distributed around 200 test kits, that can each run 700-800 individual tests. [0]

Unfortunately, a number of these kits have turned out to be faulty, a discovery only widely noticed a few days ago. [1]

It'll take time for them to redistribute the kits.

[0] [https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0206-coronavirus- di...](https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0206-coronavirus-diagnostic- test-kits.html)

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/25/cdc- coronav...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/25/cdc-coronavirus- test/)

<comment><USER3> I'm actually a bit puzzled by this. This is RT-PCR based, so why can't off the shelf lab supplies be used? Oligo synthesis commonly has next day turnaround at this point, so primers can't be the issue... Is this purely a regulatory bottleneck?

Edit: It's purely a regulatory bottleneck, they've published a protocol along with the primers and probes. ([https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/rt-pcr- panel-p...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/rt-pcr-panel-primer- probes.html)) FFS how are we this incompetent.

<comment><USER24> It's an unintended side effect of FDA regulation. This thread by the previous FDA commissioner explains it.[1]

1\. [https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/12319443268270817...](https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1231944326827081729)

<comment><USER3> Interesting read. It doesn't explain though why "the people in charge" haven't issued a blanket authorization by now for basic RT-PCR based diagnostics using a particular primer sequence at facilities meeting some minimum criteria.

Other countries have managed to authorize and implement drive-thru testing stations [1] by now; it really seems like we're demonstrating our ineptitude here.

[1] [https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1232685500806225922](https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1232685500806225922)

<comment><USER24> The FDA is a big slow bureaucracy. Also, all of their incentives are to block new things. If they approve a new medical treatment or diagnostic that ends up harming people, they'll get tons of bad publicity and the individuals who approved it could lose their jobs. If they block things, few seem to notice (see everyone in this thread talking about CDC funding being cut).

For example: The FDA took a decade longer than the rest of the world to approve the first beta-blocker (timolol). That caused around 100,000 deaths. The FDA is also the reason why epipens are so expensive (along with countless other generic drugs).[1]

That said, it looks like they'll approve a standard covid19 test soon.[2]

1\. [https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse- voxsplaining-d...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining- drugs-vs-chairs/)

2\. [https://twitter.com/davidalim/status/1233032552056807426](https://twitter.com/davidalim/status/1233032552056807426)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Perhaps a basic question, but what is actually required to test for COVID-19? I've seen mentions of "testing kits", but what's actually in them? For comparison, US medical facilities regularly test for any number of viruses and can essentially turn them around indefinitely. Is this because they _know_ they'll continue to need to test for them, so they are well-stocked in the test kits?

<comment><USER26> The most sensitive test is polymerase chain reaction PCR, which multiplies tiny remnants of DNA of the virus

It can take up to a day to get results, a team of four can only do roughly about 100 tests per day

Then you have serology test, which checks for antibodies against the virus, The signal is strongest after the peak of the disease

The Koreans are working on tests which can be applied at home but I don't know details

<comment><USER27> nit, but it's an actually amplifying the RNA (it's an RNA, not DNA based virus), using RT-PCR (which basically converts the RNA into complementary DNA -- and then amplifying DNA)

I'm not sure per se what the CDC does, but here's a good overview of a testing method: [https://www.broadinstitute.org/files/publications/special/CO...](https://www.broadinstitute.org/files/publications/special/COVID-19%20detection%20\(updated\).pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Folks, I think it's time for as many bay area workers as possible to WFH. Let's get ahead of this.

<comment><USER29> I've been turning this around in my head for the past few days. If things keep getting worse (and there's no signs they'll get _better_ soon) I'll bring it up with my co-founders. Seems silly to worry too much, but on the other hand, what is the upside if we are all on our computers 99.99% of the time anyway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Everyone involved in the decision not to test the person should be removed from their position. End of story.

In a time of crisis we need the best people in control of important decisions not bureaucrats.

</comment><comment><USER31> _The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initially declined to test a California patient for coronavirus because of narrow testing criteria, delaying the identification of a new possibly pivotal case, according to officials at the hospital treating the patient._

Seems pretty reasonable to me.

There are limited resources for doing the Corona virus test. If the CDC tested everyone who got a fever, they'd have a massive backlog.

The risk is reasonable if any suspected case is quarantined.

<comment><USER32> > If the CDC tested everyone who got a fever, they'd have a massive backlog.

The problem with that argument is that's not what anyone was asking for. The patient went through an extensive triage before doctors identified a significant risk of coronavirus and requested a test. The CDC overrode that judgement.

Note that amount of CDC resources directed toward coronavirus so far is minuscule, so we should be no where near their capacity to respond.

In the face of a burgeoning pandemic where there are many cases with uncertain origins, it doesn't make sense to override the medical judgement of the doctors on the ground because the case has an uncertain origin.

<comment><USER31> The point is, the CDC came up with guidelines on when it's appropriate to test a patient and this patient didn't qualify until 4 days later.

That shouldn't surprise anyone that they do this.

<comment><USER32> Guidelines would be ok but these weren't guidelines so much as inflexible rules.

Surprise doesn't really have anything to do with it. We want the CDC to take the coronavirus seriously and disregarding doctors working directly with coronavirus patients is not taking it seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> No offense, but I remember couple weeks ago, people in here are keep mention that China gov lying about the truth/numbers etc. By saying that, I am not argue fro the China gov. The Wuhan gov actually tried to hide something in the very early days, until the central gov noticed this.

I just feel this's interesting.. \--- Disclaimer: I am Chinese work in US. I don't agree everything China is doing, but also don't like people blindly hate it.

</comment><comment><USER34> It has been mentioned in a number of threads that there are likely a significant number of underreported cases, e.g. John Hopkins study. However, if cases are underreported and it is implied that these are more mild cases, would that mean that these more mild cases are less likely to infect others? I ask this because if there's a hidden but significant fraction of cases, it seems to be beyond the scope of nearly every quarantine (i.e. asymptomatic people going about their day) and if the transmission rate is equal I would think we would see a lot of uncontrolled spreading. Perhaps Italy and South Korea are an example of this, although I would've imagined far more Western countries with deep distributed infections if are so many high transmission, light or asymptomatic carriers around.

Concurrent to this, I am surprised the original dozen set of infections in the US seemed to have not infected nearly anyone else, assuming close contacts were appropriately monitored.

<comment><AUTHOR> In China, where the overwhelming amount of cases in the John Hopkins study came from, deaths were also likely to have been underreported or miscategorized as not being caused by COVID-19.

We're not sure to what extent that has happened, but it could also alter estimates of disease mortality rates for the worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> UC Davis is 20 minutes from the capital of California, the largest state in the union. Davis Medical, one of the top-5 hospitals in the state, has specialists in 150 fields, and is the referral center for 33 counties. It took them 3 days to get a Covid test.

How long 'til we get serious?

</comment><comment><USER36> And we thought only China was suppressing disease counts

I see from the downvotes that everyone thinks this is just a glib cheap shot. But the point is profound: no one wants to admit to this happening. Everyone in power[1], everywhere, still thinks this is "probably not going to be a big deal". So they deliberately avoid looking for those early cases, because they're sure they're just rare outliers. And that makes the eventual outbreak inevitable.

And it's happening here too.

[1] Also a lot of people not in power, like a distressingly large cohort of posters here who seem to be taking their cues from political sources.

<comment><USER37> It's fascinating how universal "saving face" is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Here's the appropriate level of threat response to the virus, as seen by other countries:

0-30 cases/day (covid is being imported in via travel)

\- put temperature detection check points at airports for all passengers on international flights

\- voluntary or enforced self-quarantine measures for those who have fever

\- tighten or ban travel from certain areas of the world

30-100 cases/day (you've isolated individuals with covid in your population)

\- put areas with confirmed COVID cases on high alert - hospitals in those areas should be required to check fever for COVID virus

\- Follow up with patients who have COVID by tracking down and checking their recent social circles

100+ cases / day (containment, not prevention, becomes the main goal. There's groups who contracted the virus / the virus cannot be traced to an entry point)

\- Put the entire region on high alert via policy - mandated work from home and limited social gatherings

\- Suspend school and other high traffic institutions

\- limit travel, request everyone to stay at home. Put up temperature checks / road blocks in major crowded areas.

\- ask population to take extreme precautions with their health by washing hands and wearing masks. Wearing masks is an amazing marketing tool to get people to treat the pandemic seriously, even if it doesn't actually help limit the spread that much.

1000+ cases/day (treatment is the prioritization to limit deaths)

\- build makeshift hospitals to anticipate the increase in load

\- remove as much red tape as possible to allow immediate treatment of critical condition patients (approve funding, get the right tests, mobilize health professionals, allocate hazmat suits / quarantine spaces)

This implies that you are testing patients that have suspected corona symptoms and reporting them upwards.

The US should have been taking border protection more seriously, but it's probably already too late for that. COVID is likely to spread regardless of how much effort you put into border control now.

</comment><comment><USER23> What the hell is wrong with the CDC right now ?

[s]It just seems to be ran like a startup or something. Jesus.[/s]

How can more people not be outraged by the govmnt lack of readiness?

<comment><USER39> The Trump admin fired much of the CDC pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs. [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic- team/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/)

> _In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government's entire pandemic > response chain of command, including the White House management > infrastructure._ [https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china- > trump...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump- > united-states-public-health-emergency-response/)

CDC to cut by 80 percent efforts to prevent global disease outbreak (2018): [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your- health/wp/2018/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your- health/wp/2018/02/01/cdc-to-cut-by-80-percent-efforts-to-prevent-global- disease-outbreak/)

<comment><USER40> This is partisan misinformation: [https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104](https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104)

<comment><USER39> I strongly disagree. The articles I linked talk about _2018_ budget cuts and eliminations that went through. The article you linked talk about proposed _2020_ budget cuts, and how they came up at this week's democratic debate.

They are not the same issue. Taken from the FP article linked above:

> _In the spring of 2018, the White House pushed Congress to cut funding for > Obama-era disease security programs, proposing to eliminate $252 million in > previously committed resources for rebuilding health systems in Ebola- > ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Under fire from both sides of the > aisle, President Donald Trump dropped the proposal to eliminate Ebola funds > a month later. But other White House efforts included reducing $15 billion > in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting > operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government's $30 > million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated._

> _In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC's entire global health security unit > shut down, calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and > dissolution of his team inside the agency. The month before, then-White > House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer's DHS > counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor > DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. The global health section of the CDC > was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the > number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10. > Meanwhile, throughout 2018, the U.S. Agency for International Development > and its director, Mark Green, came repeatedly under fire from both the White > House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And though Congress has so far > managed to block Trump administration plans to cut the U.S. Public Health > Service Commissioned Corps by 40 percent, the disease-fighting cadres have > steadily eroded as retiring officers go unreplaced._

In 2018, 80% of the staff working at the CDC global health section were let go because of Trump budget cuts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm wondering if confirming COVID-19 with a test now matters much from the perspective of a patient and doctor. At this point, with public-to-public transmission known to be occurring, if an MD assesses a symptomatic patient and suspects COVID-19, they'd likely isolate the patient immediately.

Does the treatment regimen differ much between severe flu and COVID-19?

</comment><comment><USER42> I've read that as a respiratory disease such as the flu it should die down in spring naturally. Is that true?

<comment><USER43> Well, I'd keep an eye on Singapore which has cases and is currently 88 degrees Fahrenheit and 70 miles from the equator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> If any given country is declining to test for whatever reason, but the virus kills ~2% of those infected, wouldn't the mortality rate seem much higher than 2% in those countries?

(assuming testing uncovers cases post-homously and numbers are not suppressed outright)

<comment><USER45> I'm not aware of any country doing posthumous testing while there are many orders of magnitude more living and symptomatic people who need the tests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I wonder sometimes about the future of the human species. I can't find an apparent reason for it other than cost and even that should not be an issue in this case. Ignorance is bliss and no one wants to cause panic?

</comment><comment><USER47> the test result shows it is flu, why panic

</comment><comment><USER23> I've heard there are budget cuts being done, they've completely gutted the staff of the CDC.

Morons in charge seems to be a leading factor.

<comment><USER48> It is an election year. One says says Trump cut needless dead weight and there is still plenty of staff. The other side is going to play this crisis and call it a gutting.

<comment><USER49> There's no sides here, and the particular reason for failure doesn't matter. This is a disease that will kill people. Letting people go untested out into the wild is not going to help.

People fuck up, that's what people do, leaders catch and acknowledge failure early and try to fix it. Unfortunately, at this point, people will die that didn't have to. And that's going to be because:

1\. Tons of people weren't tested that should have been.

2\. People can't afford to get a test because of the health insurance situation in this country.

Aggressive no cost testing would help, I'm sure trump is going to announce that here any minute for a problem that he doesn't think is real.

<comment><USER50> I find your post really interesting and am having trouble unpacking it. It seems to me that there are many contradictions, but perhaps I missunderstood.

You say that there are no sides, but end by railing on trump.

You say that the reason for failure doesn't matter, but provide a list of reasons.

You claim that health insurance is the cause of no testing, when the article stated that the CDC refused to conduct or approve testing.

If you sentiment is that this is not the time to focus on partisanship, I wholeheartedly agree. If you sentiment is we should be solution minded, I wholeheartedly agree.

The focus should be on determining what we can do NOW to save the most lives. There will be plenty of time later to assign blame and discuss long term fixes.

<comment><USER51> > You say that there are no sides, but end by railing on trump.

He means it's not a partisan thing. Trump is still the person calling the shots.

> You say that the reason for failure doesn't matter, but provide a list of > reasons.

I think you're misunderstanding here on what the reasons he's referring to, which are why we're in this situation - those don't matter. The reasons that he provided are the reasons why this is an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> As european, don't count on Europe neither. Italians are already backing up in their statements as they clearly see they are the only fools that were willing to make any sacrifice to try to contain it.

Another instance of pathethic european leadership.

<comment><USER53> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22434997](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22434997).

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> The corona virus has to be tariffed before get into united state

</comment><comment><USER54> Something something the blindness of a non-authoritarianism (Chinese version of The Atlantic).

<comment><USER55> China's response in the beginning was exactly the same. Only people who had been to Wuhan seafood market and had fever got tested and we had testing kits shortages too.

But US have the advantage of hindsight. Why they are repeating Wuhan's mistake is beyond me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> We have had the sequence of the COVID-19 for over a month. Are you guys, on hackernews, are telling me there isn't a single startup - not one - that could develop a more effective test to fill this gap? The virus when it comes, will not discriminate between Republican and Democrat. But developing a better test could save lives.

<comment><USER57> There are plenty of startups giving this a shot. There's a huge amount of money in being the first to develop a test or vaccine. Just look at the unbelievable growth in $CODX, $NVAX, $GILD, $MRNA, over the past week.

A quick Google shows:

Feb 16 - Israel races to find solutions for coronavirus [0]

Feb 17 - Corporate Japan rushes to devise quick coronavirus tests [1]

Feb 25 - Nanotechnology Startup Develops Quick-response Lateral-flow Test for Coronavirus [2]

Feb 26 - Biotech company Moderna says its coronavirus vaccine is ready for first tests [3]

Feb 26 - Novavax to Begin Clinical Testing of Coronavirus Vaccine by Late Spring [4]

Feb 27 - Drug companies race to test coronavirus vaccines

[0] [https://www.israel21c.org/israel-races-to-find-solutions- for...](https://www.israel21c.org/israel-races-to-find-solutions-for- coronavirus/)

[1] [https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Corporate- Japa...](https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Corporate-Japan-rushes- to-devise-quick-coronavirus-tests)

[2] [https://statnano.com/news/67501/Nanotechnology-Startup- Devel...](https://statnano.com/news/67501/Nanotechnology-Startup-Develops- Quick-response-Lateral-flow-Test-for-Coronavirus)

[3] [https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/25/business/moderna- coronavirus-...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/25/business/moderna-coronavirus- vaccine/index.html)

[4] [https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/02/26/novavax-plans- clin...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/02/26/novavax-plans-clinical- trial-coronavirus-vaccine.aspx)

[5] [https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/27/investing/coronavirus- vaccine...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/27/investing/coronavirus- vaccine/index.html)

<comment><USER56> Thank you for this list! This is great

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> They were too busy sending their thoughts and prayers to perform any scientific evidence based tests.

<comment><USER59> Are you suggesting that the people in their PR department should be doing the tests?

Or, do you think that they shouldn't _have_ a PR department, and be solely composed of doctors? When a large point of their organization is to talk the public into doing things for their own safety?

Without sarcasm, now: people need to stop thinking of organizations as amorphous talent pools of generalist ubermenschen, where a "trivial" task would distract one of these do-it-all people from doing an "important" task. Maybe on HN, people forget that not everything's a startup and not everyone's a cofounder.

Big organizations like the CDC are composed of departments; each department is a separate talent pool. The PR department making (trite) announcements is not "getting in the way" of anyone receiving a shot. Likewise, the management of an organization changing hands doesn't _usually_ † "get in the way" of boots- on-the-ground doing their day-to-day jobs.

† Management can explicitly interfere by introducing hindering policies. But—especially with doctors—it's been found many times that the people doing the work will just _ignore_ dumb executive policies if they get in the way of treating patients. This is why there's not much point in a "private hospital" attempting to run at a profit by cutting costs: the doctors won't cooperate, and will just treat patients the way they would in a public hospital, using all the same interventions they were taught were best-practices in med school.

<comment><USER60> I think the grandparent was referring to GOP politicians who tweet their "hopes and prayers" after every mass shooting instead of doing something effective to stop the epidemic of gun violence.</comment></comment></comment>


Thunderhub: "What happens if you give commit access to absolutely anyone?" - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jeresig/thunderhub

<comment><AUTHOR> "What happens if you give commit access to absolutely anyone? Let's find out!" - <http://ejohn.org/apps/thunderhub/>

<comment><USER2> Change the link in the article title to that

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I added a gh-pages branch and found that GitHub pages is enabled.

<http://jeresig.github.com/thunderhub/>

</comment><comment><USER4> you get pugs at its zenit</comment>


Show HN: Blind dating app to find your soulmate - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cartegan.giddy <comment><AUTHOR> Giddy is an app to find your future partner who we would match you with based on myers-briggs type indicator. Our algorithm finds the best possible personality type for the users based on current location and radius range.

We strive forward to favour on constituting relationships that is based on common interests and mental chemistry rather than idealization of attractiveness. How we achieve such a goal is by creating an hour long session between the matched users and prompting the user profile after 45 minutes of conversation.

Hope you guys give critical feedback on the idea

<comment><USER2> Curious if you have any data that MB helps in long term relationships? I know it seems obvious, but I suspect certain MB types clash.

I have often wondered if adding friction to the whole dating process is the solution to the problem. Slow down people and they are going to be less likely to immediately dismiss on the basis of looks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I more of a mental chemistry kind of guy and it was often harder for me to find somebody who had the same mental wavelength similar to mine. I suppose MB could be a way forward to achieve such a goal.

I have been thinking to integrate AI to derive personality and make the user experience lot better rather than using a form for MB.

<comment><USER2> I am not the best person to comment on this as I have been married for 20 years and so have never had to live through the whole modern dating scene, but I think the problem with your idea is that MB personality types are not equal distributed between men and women. This is likely the reason why you have trouble finding someone on your mental wavelength.

The bigger problem in my opinion is crazy/damaged people. If you could find a way of screening out the crazies via AI you would have a major hit.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think screening can be done once a user chats with an AI agent. That was what my initial idea was, to converse with an AI agent to derive who you are and what you personality is. I needed to make something quick that's why I went with MB.

I suppose achieving samantha (from the movie her) level AI could be done in the near future if I put my work to it</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


FarmLogs Raises $4M Series A To Further Advance Farming Into The Age of Apps - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/15/farmlogs-raises-4m-series-a-to-bring-farming-into-the-age-of-apps/

<comment><USER2> 5% of farms in the U.S. are using Farmlogs! That's insane!

Congratulations to two of the nicest founders I have met and their team :)

<comment><USER3> Absolutely impressive. I'm an investor in an agricultural (non-software) startup and what people may not appreciate is the sales process required to make in-roads in this industry. Farmers can be very skeptical (rightly so) about anything that may disrupt their ability to yield crop. It can also be a very high-touch industry in which you need to give face time to your end users. The corollary to this is that once you've proven yourself -- your competition has a deep moat to overcome to take you out.

<comment><USER4> Would you have interest in a tractor drawn, in-field mobile hemp decorticator that is being developed by Canfiber in BC?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I live on a small farm and know quite a few farmers socially. The 5% number seems hard to believe.

According to Wikipedia[1], there were 2.2 million farms in 2007. Since the number of farms is decreasing (land development, consolidation, etc), let's say today there are only 2 million. At 5%, that's 100k farms on FarmLogs. That's impressive. I wonder how many of them are paying customers?

Especially given that most farmers I know are older (think Baby Boomer age) and are barely competent using the Internet never mind an app/SAAS like this.

1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER6> The number of farmers is essentially meaningless because of the way the USDA counts who is a farmer. Anyone with sales of over $1000 per year is considered a farmer and that is how they get the 2 million farmers number.

[http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm- household-w...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-household- well-being/glossary.aspx#.UtbSeZ6wI7s)

What is more meaningful is to look at farms with sales of $250,000 per year or more. They're 9% of farms but account for 80% of sales. There are roughly 125,000 farms in this group.

<comment><USER5> Sure, you're making my point exactly. The soundbite "5% of farms in the US are using Farmlogs" sounds impressive doesn't really mean much without further qualification. In fact, I find it misleading. So did you, evidently.

There are two (at least) different definitions of "farm." One is large commercial business often utilizing a thousand acres or more. I suppose these are FarmLogs' focus?

The other is family-operated (except for seasonal help perhaps), typically less than 250 acres. I live in Lancaster County, PA where farms average 78 acres. The farm I live on (and operate) is ~50 acres and has crop & animal revenue far less than $100k. But it's still a viable farm.

Average revenue per farm in Lancaster County is $183k. That's another almost meaningless number without knowing the distribution. I'd guess 10% of the farms I know are much more than $250k.

[http://www.lancasterfarmlandtrust.org/heritage/farming- lanca...](http://www.lancasterfarmlandtrust.org/heritage/farming- lancaster.html)

<comment><USER7> Hey Lancaster county, Berks county here. I'd love to hear about how much tech you use on your farm, and if you're active in moving to use more. Are you a generally tech minded person? A developer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how much the Climate Corporation acquisition did to boost investor interest in ag tech startups? Also glad to see success from a Midwestern startup. Congratulations FarmLogs!

</comment><comment><USER9> One thing I've seen before, but never quite understood, is how a company like this can exist, but have a position for "Lead Engineer" open on their jobs page. Is it usually the case that their previous lead engineer moved onto something else, or that they bootstrapped a functional version until this point, and now they need someone with more experience leading a team?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is simply that our CTO is mature enough to recognize that process and engineering management isn't his strong suit and that he needs to be able to double down on architecture. A great lead engineer will help stay efficient as we add more amazing people to the team. We already have really great hackers on the team and are looking to add more.

<comment><USER9> Gotcha. Didn't intend for my question to come across as critical (if it did). Think I first read about you guys from Inc. Seems like you're positioned to accomplish really great things. Thanks for your response, and congratulations on the new funding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this is such a neat business. The farmers I've met are fairly savvy business-people and will probably be very happy to have better information about their business in a way that Quickbooks and Excel can't easily provide.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sounds very similar to Nokia Life Tools which launched in India back in 2009 - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Life_Tools](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Life_Tools) "The agricultural part of the service consists of localized information including weather conditions, advice about crop cycles, general tips and techniques, as well as market prices for crops. Farmers in the pilot scheme said getting daily prices on their phones reduced their dependency on agents for basic information, enabling them to negotiate with greater confidence."

</comment><comment><USER12> From a tech savvy farmer friend:

> Yep it is USA only but it's interesting. Especially the market watch on > grain price. Farmers never have a notion what the worldwide price for barley > is even thou they sell it.

> Also the farm log on field performance is something that would work on a > smaller irish scale.

> There would be a definite appetite for something like that.

I don't understand why apps such as this are limited to US only? There are plenty of early adopters in the rest of the world.

</comment><comment><USER13> The ironic thing is if they had written FarmVille, they'd have raised $4Bn. VC priorities are crazy.

</comment><comment><USER14> The article has a bit of an error when saying current offerings all require PCs. Some of the big companies in Ag have serious websites that do not require PCs that help track finances, crops, fields, and even let farmers sign contracts on the web.

<comment><USER15> It might just be some poor editing, I think they are talking about the leading large farm software, which I believe is this: [http://www.fbssystems.com/](http://www.fbssystems.com/) \- written in VB.net and Windows based.

<comment><USER14> I'm more inclined to think its poor research and I will bet that the reporter did not try to contact the big ag companies to find out about competing offerings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Congrats Jesse, Brad, and team!

</comment><comment><USER17> It seems a bit like you're doing to farming what PetroFeed is doing to Oil & Gas. Great work!

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow, huuuuge congrats to FarmLogs! This should be a very exciting year for you guys!

</comment><comment><USER19> Congrats to Jesse and Brad and the rest of FarmLogs!

</comment><comment><USER20> Congrats Jesse and team! Great group of guys.

</comment><comment><USER21> Congrats, and a great pursuit that may not be SnapChat famous, but may have an easier and much needed value proposition. Modern farm machinery is pretty-well wired, but it's also believable that the systems to organize and make use of such data could be improved. Modern combines are fun to ride around in...like a truck, except relatively safe to watch movies while driving given the speeds involved.

<comment><USER4> Identifying and creating efficiency in agriculture is one of the backbones of civilization :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Big congrats, guys! :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Congrats, Jessie! :)</comment>


3M to cut 2K jobs globally, lowers 2019 profit outlook - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-3m-results/3m-to-cut-2000-jobs-globally-lowers-2019-profit-outlook-idUSKCN1S11EI <comment><USER2> Anecdotally, 3M seem to suffer more than I'd expect from fake products flooding the market place.

I've lost count of the number of reviews of products I've read which advertise "3M tape / adhesive" or alike, where it turns out to be something cheap with a 3M logo on it.

Likely a drop in the ocean of 3M's business, but every little helps, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER3> Given the prodigious use of sticky notes involved in Agile transformation, and the apparent commitment to 3M's bottom line, perhaps this is a leading indicator that agile consulting is in decline? /s

<comment><USER4> I think you're right - that and the security industry convincing the vast majority NOT to write passwords down on sticky notes..

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 3M is a staple in American Industry. I wonder if this is foreshadowing anything broader for the USA.

<comment><USER6> The housing market is starting to feel like 2007 again. I've been trying to sell for 6 months. Prices are stagnant (or slowly falling), nobody's buying.

<comment><USER7> Are you sure it's that and not because you've been trying to sell your house during the off-season? Most of my real-estate friends barely make any, if any, sales during fall-winter and make most sales in late spring or when kids are out of school for the summer.

<comment><USER6> I put this sucker on the market in the fall (bad time, I know). I got a great job offer I couldn't refuse and had to move.

Unfortunately, I have yet to "realize" my new, higher salary because I'm paying double for housing until the old place sells. It's a nice house, not too old, large, pool, etc., in a good neighborhood but it's not getting many showings.

<comment><USER8> Have you lowered the price? A house properly priced will move in any market.

<comment><USER6> I listed it for exactly what it was listed for when I had bought it... about 7 months prior (and at that time it drew multiple offers within 2 weeks on market).

It really was an unexpected situation.

<comment><USER8> Markets can change rapidly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Typically, when companies are having trouble generating top line growth they cut costs. And, unfortunately, since people are often the highest component of costs, they are among the first to be cut.

Also, it makes sense that the amount of people being laid off is at an all time high, there are more people working now then ever before.

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/192356/number-of-full- ti...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/192356/number-of-full-time- employees-in-the-usa-since-1990/)

In other words: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

</comment><comment><USER5> Does this mean they will move more of their production out of the USA?

<comment><USER10> They still have production in the US? they started moving out in the early 80s. My dad was involved in the re-assembly of the pipework for a specialized glass production facility (specialized lenses etc) physically disassembled & moved from the US to Xian china in '86\. Even in the early 90's, most of their mech engineering was contracted out. Surprised they have 2000 employees to lay off tbh.

<comment><USER11> Yes of course they do. They just don't employ that many people to do it. With the kind of materials they handle there's not much for humans to do except run machines and more and more of that becomes automated at time goes on. Highly automated production like that is one of the few kinds of manufacturing it still makes sense to do in the first world because getting factory set up here is still cheaper than doing it half way around the world and if you're highly automated the downside (high labor costs) is not an issue. Of course they product stuff in China, India, etc. as well. They're a global company with a diverse portfolio so they have the ability to locate different things in different places in whichever way makes the most sense.

Whether they have their engineering in the US is a different story (though I'm sure some of it is).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is 3m still a solid company? I've been wanting to invest for ten years but the pe has always been too high.

<comment><USER13> I think they've been steadily hollowing themselves out just like the every other American / global company that makes stuff. They don't spend on R&D like they used to, instead they've tried to acquire new products and technology.

It feels like the culture of innovation they built is lagging, and like for many American companies losing their way, I wish they could make a case for a real reinvestment in research with a 10 year payback instead of a next quarter result. This is anecdotal and I've only worked with one division of 3M in the past, but i've seen changes in how they support companies downstream. It may just be how everything is changing everywhere.

They still make good products, and they're consistently very good but always premium priced.

<comment><USER11> Why do research when you can spend the same amount of money just buying small companies that have researched and innovated?

I'm honestly asking. It doesn't seem like there's any substantial pros to doing the research in-house for a big company like 3m. A top down directive to make use of $new_acquisition's tech every now and then seems easier than fostering a culture of innovation at all times.

<comment><USER14> I am no expert, but one reason could be that there are certain avenues of research could only be viable for a company with large resources and funding not to mention patience (An example is pharma companies that spends billions and a decade developing a new drug).

<comment><USER15> It's funny that you say that about pharmas - I'm not terribly informed but I've sure read a lot recently about big pharma following that model quite a lot actually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Did anyone read the article at all? It cites dismal performance of the Chinese market. If anything, it's an indicator that China's growth is slowing, not the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER17> Better than 2K cutting 3m jobs.

<comment><USER18> That would indeed be concerning... given that they (2K Games) only have ~4,500 employees.

<comment><USER19> However, the reverse is not true: 3M doesn't employ 3 million people (nor 2,998,000 ;))

<comment><USER20> 3M cutting 2K jobs is the reverse of 2K cutting 3M jobs...

<comment><USER21> What is the reflective property

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I struggle to see how this can be seen as a bellwether of the economy. 3M sells things that should be reasonably recession-proof: people don't stop buying scotch tape in hard times.

<comment><USER10> Pretty sure scotch tape (or any other consumer product) is a tiny fraction of their business. Their main gig is selling industrial solvents, additives, adhesives & abrasives to mining & manufacturing concerns.

Building up production facilities for others & the engineering involved in all that is a lucrative line as well.

Patent licensing too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> How can this happen? I thought Trump's tax cuts were guaranteeing prosperity for all?</comment>