Clive Robinson • March 14, 2020 10:27 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

Apparently, DoD really is paying attention.

Not realy suprising, also the “local leave only”.

People should understand that,

The military especially soldiers are the “insurance of last resort” for a nation in any national emergancy.

It takes a little while to get your head around the implications of that statment, because of the depth to which they go. Specifically that they are there for “the good of the nation” not “the good of the citizens”.

Even though soldiers are poorly payed they are highly valued as a “National Resource” at such times. Like any other “force multiplying tool” they are effectively agnostic to use, including their own survival. They are there to serve the whims and wishes of “the directing mind” who ever or what ever that may be.

That is why two things are important,

1, Obayance without question to the chain of command.
2, Preserve above all others the chain of command.

When you see things through these two rules you will understand why those orders have been issued in the way they have.

@ Curious, ALL,

With regards,

“Here’s How The National Security Agency Will Protect Itself During A Pandemic”

Err nothing realy new there since my days back last century, when providing for “stay behind in place/situ” or “prepared place”.

It’s also why a couple of weeks ago I was talking about “90 days” of ready to eat food that does not require cooking or rehydration and is heavy in fats and protein.

I Also gave the rational for such a length of time in a pandemic which is three to five times the time for longest virus surface viability incubation and infectious time[1]

But basically for “in place/situ” your calorific and dietary needs are less so you need 1kg of such no cook no rehydrate (basically canned) food per person per day. Preferably these foods should be high in fat and protein as these reduce appetite or high in micro nutrients such as canned tomatoes spinich. You also need vitimin D supplements as you won’t see sunlight in issolation, and some zinc and vitimin C, along with “brewers yeast extract” (marmite) for Vitamin B-3 / niacin, which can also be found in lesser quantaties in peanut butter, and beer, which stops the development of pellagara or “share croppers disease”. There are other micro nutrients but there are some “whole foods” that cover many of them such as potatoes and avocados

But food alone is not the only thing you have to worry about in a pandemic. Two things come in from infrastructure which is energy and water and two things go out human waste and garbage. You need to also prepare for the loss of these, because most involve humans for them to run effectively, and they too could be sick or in quarantine, thus these services can and eventually will fail.

Starting with water, as you die in 3-7days without it. You need 2kg of safe pottable/white water to survive “in situ” which when you multiply it out for a family of four is 4 x 2 x 90 ~= 720kg or ~3/4ths of a ton as a bare minimum for nothing else other than drinking.

However the CDC indicates you need upto another 2kg of pottable/white water per person as a minimum. This is for two basic reasons, the first is if you are going to rehydrate foods like rice and beans or flour and cook them to make them safely edible (which also requires the storage of considerable fuel). The second is if you are going to do hard physical labour or be in a non temperate zone you will need an extra 1-2kg per person a day. Which is why the CDC talk about 1 US gallon (~3.8kg) per person per day minimum or 4×3.8×90=1368kg or 4/3rds of a ton.

But you also have to have pottable water left over for cleaning cookware and eating utensils around 1kg per day for a family of four (90kg). If you add in minimal personal hygine of a flannel wash every day at 0.25kg and a minimal “navy shower” at 2kg once a week you are looking at 193kg say 300kg for both.

So say with a spillage alowance 1.1x(1400+300)=1870kg of pottable water for a family of four for 90days. Or nine 55gallon (210ltr) drums/barrels or if using a 1000kg tote/bowser two of them, just for the very basics of living.

However there is little point in cleaning your body if your clothes are in an unsanitary condition for various reasons. Unfortunatly cloths washing is very water and energy consuming… Even very small load portable/camping washing machines need around 20-30kg of water and 46watt hours of energy peaking at 250-300watts.

With the portable / camping washing machines you can actually recycle much of the water. That is rinse water can become wash water and light wash water can become heavy soiling first wash water. However a “load” for such a machine is about 4 sets of teeshirts, undies and socks. so 140-210kg of water a week unless you recycle the water. Importantly water for washing cloths does not need to be pottable or even fully clear, just filtered and lightly steralised (few drops of bleach an hour or so before use). As drying kills bacteria as does sunlight and time for viruses.

Also if you add a small quantity of bleach to the waste cloths wash water to kill any bacteria etc, you can store it in “settle” tanks and “filter” it back to almost potabble water with the resulting water either being used to wash clothes again or flush toilets, or feed a solar still. It can also be used to spray plants as an insecticide if you wash cloths with “soap” not “detergents”.

Further in times past people wore loose natural fiber clothing especially underware such that you could wash them rather less often. Outer clothing if hung to air and rotated daily can go 10-50 wearings befor they need to be washed, certain natural fibers such as wool can be much less frequently washed (some all wool jackets etc made from the likes of Harris Tweed never get washed neither did blankets etc). Some fully synthetics can be washed with very little water as they do not absorb sweat thus hold smells or pathogens. In the case of socks heavy wool socks can be worn over very light poly-cotton socks, with the poly-cotton being changed/washed daily and the wool only occasionaly. In some armed forces in the past recruits were taught how to use their wooly socks as a flannel to wash their bodies with when having a “navy shower” and also tread wash their underwear in the water that ends up in the container they stand in, whilst I would not suggest anyone go to those extreams it does show how water can be recycled with a little thought.

As for water in it’s also used for flushing human waste out very inefficiently. That is you need between 6 and 9kg of water per flush which is over twice your other daily water usage. Most of this water is actually used not in the house but as a “hydrolic bolus” which acts like a plunger or ram to drive the waste down pipes with small incline and transport it miles away. Which is why you need to think about the use of non potable or grey water (rain water and waste washing water) instead as well as significantly reducing the number of flushes… (the old “if it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down” saying).

Further think about fully seperating liquid and solid waste. The U-bend in a toilet holds about twenty times the amount of clean water a urinal does and the U-bends real purpose is as a vapour or gas trap. likewise when you look at the design of earlier urinals they were often just a funnel at the end of a pipe into a soil trap that alowed the liquid to drain into a “wet” cess pit, the only water used was when they were cleaned daily with a chlorine or caustic solution, and there was a reason those old outside toilets were called “thunder boxes” as all they were was a box with a hole in the top over a “dry” cess pit which actually barely smells if you add a couple of handfulls of sawdust or compost over what you have produced. The modern equivalent which has been developed for third world countries is “Humanure” systems, which are entirely waterless and I will let people look them up if they are interested… You can also look up the US army field medical handbook that has all sorts of usefull information about hygine and waste from all aspects of an encampment of soldiers “living in the field”…

Which tells us that for each soldier the combined waste average is about 100lb a day… Which sounds like a lot but includes all sorts of “garbage” that needs disposing of including from vehicle repairs etc. Most household garbage is clean and can be stored away as it does not attract vermin. However food containers will attract vermin if they are not cleaned. It was pointed out to me years ago that if you make a meal from tins, you can using a little hand hot water, clean one tin into another tin and so on and the resulting liquid go into the cooking pot where you could thicken it with a little flour or a crushed up digestive or similar biscuit. This advice was not for “cleaning the tins” but in part a simple measurment system for recipies but also getting maximum flavour/nutrition from the tins in times of hardship and making the food feal more than it was to go that little bit further. However the result is clean tins, which with a little squirt of diluted bleach and then air drying will not attract vermin when bashed flat and stored.

This leaves the issue of energy, which is a complex issue in it’s own right. Lets put it this way you don’t want to be storing flamable fuels indoors especially those that are gasses or volatile liquids. Also you don’t want to burn fuels in modern homes that lack suitable ventilation to deal with combustion products like carbon monoxide. Even candles and oil lamps for emergancy lighting represent real dangers, cooking considerably more and as for heating just scream and run out of the room atleast you will be alive in the morning… If you must do cooking and heating either install a proper stove and flu or build a rocket stove or similar outside and put a long coil in it’s upper chimney to heat water in a propper storage tank that can then be close circuit pumped or gravity pumped into radiators. Yes there are ways you can use “in tent camping wood stoves” indoors but they have short flues which can have real spark and creosote issues over and above the fact the flues get hot enough to set things on fire, so unless you realy know what you are doing don’t go there. Also “space heating” your home is very inefficient you get better effect with a blanket or duvet and a hot water bottle or two even when sitting in a chair. A rocket stove running on twigs can heat a litre or two of water in just eight or twelve minutes put that in hot water bottles in bed will keep you warm all night even if the inside temprature is below the freezing point of water. When winter camping I found hot water bottles and a good nights sleep much preferable to getting up every couple of hours just to put more wood in a small wood burning stove, abd that was before you factored in finding dry wood cutting and chopping it etc. That “wood warms you twice” saying is much over rated, trust me on that one.

Oh the reason I give measurments by weight rather than by volume especially for water is “storage” two tons of water and nearly half a ton of canned food is quite a weight, that you can not just “put in the spare room” you need carefull thought about not just reinforcing floors for structural strength but how you access things thus the weight of shelving and stacking boxes etc, then there is light, temprature, humidity and most importantly pest control. These were all things our great grandparents and grand parents implicitly understood back in WWII and their parents and grandparents lived by as “pantry living” when there was no universal refrigeration back over a century ago when we had our last world wide pandemic.

So diging out a 1900 or earlier “Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management” or later “garden to kitchen” manuals and reading them will give you an idea of just how “convenient” our modern food, water and energy infrastructure has become in just under a century and a half.

[1] We need to note that this is a virus with characteristics we have not seen befor and breaks the 21day or less virus/bacteria behaviours we most frequently see and have previously planned for.

Currently we think for SARS-CoV-2 the time for longest virus surface viability, incubation and infectious but not syptomatic, and symptomatic untill recovery or death times are 9, 27 and 28 days. So with full medical care a maximum of 36 days in community prior to 14-28 days medical issolation. However without medical care we beleive the 95 percentile times are 7, 7-12.5 non symptomatic and 7-14 days symptomatic which gives 21-32.5days. Either way gives a minimum of 98-108days issolation or if things drag out for various mismanagment reasons a max of 180days, by which time in situ issolation becomes untenable. However the max very very rarely happens and if it does normally a “second infection wave” will get cut short very hard and quite brutally. More importantly is the question of “resupply” in all but an existential threat senario –in which case it does not matter– the governing forces will have stabilised re-supply or re-location to those it deems “of worth”. So 3months or 90days is likely the longest in situ for those “of worth”. If however you know you are not “of worth” or are planning for existential type threat issolation then you are looking at a minimum of four families and 2 years with half a year at 2kg of food per “working person” a day as you will be digging around four acres of ground and planting seed, tending crops and praying hard there is both a harvest and no predation by creatures or marauders (so guard duty as well). Oh and get used to the idea your protien source will be rodents and larger predating vermin because they will come to you and you can trap/snare/cote them rather than you wasting calories hunting larger game…

Clive Robinson • March 14, 2020 11:37 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

See any new side channels?

Where would you like me to start on this “Oscar Sierra”[1] plan.

I know lets talk about efficiency.

In electrical circuit theory there are two things you can do with energy,

1, Disipate as heat in a resistance.
2, Store it in a reactance (inductor or capacitor).

The idea with a SMPSU is to turn your AC input wave form by rectification into a DC voltage on a capacitor as efficiently as possible. Thus you use a rectifier with very low impedence and very low turn on voltage, and you use a capacitor with a very minimal ESR (effective series resistance). You can get this up to some quite high efficiences, and the higher the AC voltage the more efficient it is (as the turn on voltage is proportionally less). Likewise the less current you draw the more efficient it is as there is less voltage drop and dissipation in the impedece of both the rectifier and capacitance. So far so easy…

Now to generate another voltage what you do is pulse width modulate this DC voltage into an integration circuit which is basically an inductor and capacitor as a lowpass filter. This is effectively the same as a “Class D amplifer output”.

Now without going into lots of mathmatics the higher the frequency you switch at the more efficient the lowpass filter is, however as the switch has a finite switching time the higher the frequency less efficient it is (it’s the same as with CMOS logic gates in the CPU chip the power disipated thus the heat and inefficiency goes up with frequency).

Thus there is a “technology sweet spot” which gives a frequency window for optimum efficiency.

However there is a secondary issue which is what happens when the “load” on the PSU output changes?

Well that is dependent on several things, one of which is the nature of the load in terms of impedence and more importantly it’s effective reactance. But the upshot is “the higher the loop bandwidth” in the PSU output the more efficient it is.

Now a high loop bandwidth makes the the the output switching more transparant backwards towards that capacitor and rectifier.

Which means the SMPSU on the motherboard close to the CPU will put much more of the CPU noise on the power supply line and at much increased frequency and rich in harmonics. So the track on the motherboard back to the connector will act as a better antenna to such signals and their harmonics.

So yes, I expect there to be,

1, Higher bandwidth.
2, Higher frequencies.
3, Greater harmonics.
4, Much more efficient rasiation
5, Much greater cross talk.

All of which means “more noise”, but this is not “random noise” but “determanistic noise” that carries significant information about the running process.

So yes I expect to see Technion University in Israel making their “Pita Bread loop” work at a much greater range. So I predict yet another paper comming from there, as well as lots of “compromising eminations” comming from Intel’s new “Oscar Sierra” technology designed into new motherboards, with a focuss on greater efficiency”.

It’s now over a third of a century since I started warbing about the big issue of “Efficiency -v- Security” I guess somebody did not get the memo 😉

[1] Oscar Sierra, is the international phonetic alphabet saying of “OS” however in the armed forces it’s a short hand euphemism for “Oh 5h1t” used as a “portent of doom”. So why Intel included the “Oscar” might well be a portent in it’s own right 😉

Clive Robinson • March 15, 2020 7:02 AM

@ Sherman Jay, SpaceLifeForm,

Neither of those seem to generate much noise.

The noise we are talking avout, is not from the regulator it’s selfe but from the Intel CPU which unlike the Broadcom chip in the Pi is a realy thirsty beast with excessive power swings.

It’s why I said “determanistic noise” rather than “random noise”

The passive solution to “noise problems” is use a very low series impeadence capacitance across the EM band “From DC to near daylight”[1] as close to the noise source as possible, and feed it through a low impedence inductance from the power input side. Thus if you draw up the effective reactive impedences at any given frequency as resistors you see what is a simple pi attenuator from the signal source (CPU) going back to the bulk low impedance capacitance just after the rectifier.

However on computer mother boards designers are pushed for space which means any effective passive filtering components will be kept as small as they can or actually smaller thus active techniques are used as well, which causes other problems[3] for security.

All of these problems are made worse because Intel make power hungry CPU’s with all their “go faster stripe” marketing specmanship circuits that have to run at the same speed as the ALU. These “go faster stripe” circuits are the very same circuits that cause the likes of Meltdown and Spector, that either can not be fixed, or only partly fixed by partially turning off the go faster stripe technology. Either way the result is you loose the marginal performance gains but not so much of the power consumption.

Bringing in “stringent higher efficiency” legislation is actually a bad move, because after a certain point you are “just moving the problem” from power consumption during use to more power consumption in manufacturing.

A point legislators realy don’t care about because it takes the problem out of their “back yard” and dumps it in somebody elses back yard… It’s the same issue as poor EPA legislation causing toxic waste problems in third world and other nations.

[1] A sensible RF design engineer going back a few decades would actually use several capacitors of different types, a low ESR electrolytic, a polycarbonate, a silva mica and ceramic were used their values chosen to give filtering across the bottom GHz or so of the EM spectrum. This is because all capacitors are imperfect and have internal inductance thus are in effect tuned circuits and past resonance look inductive, so you need a lower value of capacitance to compensate and so on.

[2] Whilst design engineers still try to do passive filtering where they can, they are constrained by size and price. In surface mount devices some capacitors are more expensive than chips likewise inductors… Thus when it comes to price sensitive “Fast Moving Consumer Electronics” (FMCE) they are very much built to use the minimum of passive components… So to get below the regulatory “noise masks” for EMC compatability they resort to “cheating the test” by using spread spectrum clocking of primary oscillators that spread or “whiten” the harmonics and subharmonics across the band[3] thus reducing the power density at any given frequency over a period of time rather than actually reduce the peak RF energy.

[3] As I’ve explained in the past the use of spread spectrum, might bring the peak RF energy down at any given frequency, it is a reversable process if you know the “chipping sequence” and can synchronize to it. If you do use spread spectrum whitening you are in effect turning the signal source into a Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) transmitter which used to be used for “covert transmissions” to “hide the signal below the noise floor”. The thing is “whitening” uses a very short well known “chipping sequence” from a Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR) which is very easy to synchronise to. The net result is you actually make the range of any “covert side channels” considerably greater, and the old trick of hiding the privacy sensitive computer in amongst non sensitive computers not work any longer.

Clive Robinson • March 15, 2020 4:46 PM

@ Sancho_P,

So what about recovery, what does it mean? Immune?

It’s a good question and needs to be looked at from two angles at least,

1, In terms of the patient.
2, In terms of those around the patient.

With a fly in the ointment called “mutation” into a new strain (which we know has already happened in china which is why there is what is assumed to be the original “S” strain and later “L” strain which is may be both more virulent and more transmissible).

If we look at the patient for each virus they go through a number of stagest from infection to either death or recovery. With a “novel” or “new to you” virus you have absloutly no defence except by very small chance of genetics. Therefore in most cases your immune system has to recognize there even is a pathogen this starts happening as the replicating virus starts destroying cells in your body, the process is a little involved but you end up with an antibody system, which as part of it’s process causes cytokine to be produced which in turn effects the hypothalamus which is your bodies regulator, it signals for more white blood cells to be produced and also for your body temorature to rise, the way it does this as I know only to well is first you get the chills and even rigor which causes your body temprature to rise as even a slightly elevated temprature has a disproportionate effect on the viability of a virus.

Part of this process is the virus replication. Initially when a virus replicates it remains in the host as there are sufficient cells for the virus strands to invade. Eventually there is so much replicated virus it comes out of the hosts body via a process called “virus sheding” and this is when you become infectious to others. When this happens is variable with SARS-CoV-1 it was as you developed a fever thus you were easy to spot and contain thus get on top off before it became a serious problem. However with SARS-CoV-2 you are infectious before you develop a fever or any symptoms at all, worse your symptoms might be so mild you may not notice them. The question thus arises as to when does the virus replication inside you slow and stop as this obviously changes hou infectious you are, as far as I’m aware this is still a bit of an unknow.

But eventialy the antibodies you develop will attach to the virus and drag it to white blood cells that scavenge it, at some point there is no more virus inside you and any fresh infection gets scavanged before replication causes any issues. At this point you are immune and you are also not infectious.

There is a complicated series of formulars that predict how many uninfected hosts can exist in a population of people that are a mix of,

1, Uninfected thus viable hosts. 2, Infected and thus infecting.
3, immune thus nolonger infective

Without becoming infected. As they do not get reached by an infectious person. From various models this appears to be between 15% and 40% of the general population “in year one”

This is supposadly the notion behind “herd immunity” which some totaly moronic politicians think is the way to go as it does not involve them making decisions that involve diverting resources “to the social good” rather than to “the effective criminal benifit of the few”.

Thus from other figures we know that such behaviour will neither contain or delay the spread of the virus.

But these models assume only a single strain, and we know there are atleast two strains in China… Which is where things get both complicated and unknown…

Usually you either have atibodies to a particular strain or you don’t, which is what the models are for. If however there are two or more strains the following can apply,

1, You have no immunity to second strain, thus you become infected and infecting just like any person who has not been infected by either strain.

2, Your antibodies work effectively against the new strain so you do not become infected or infecting.

3, Your antibodies only work partially against the second strain and the white blood cells get coopted into replication, thus your immune system fails horribly

Look again at option three, this means that people who had no, few or minnor symptoms the first time go directly to “critical medical support” which means the “at risk group” expands to all those that have already been infected by the first strain. Thus rather than the 17% that need hospital care with the first strain it may well rise to more than 50% for those that then get the second strain…

So appart from the “unknown” factor this potential for a now wastly increased CFR is making people extreamly cautious of making comment.

But the current pressumed single strain figures are also making people less than honest about the potential outcomes… To see why consider the following,

With an expected 17% to +20% of those infected requiring medical support for “oxygen therepy” that can only be given in hospital, the hospitals will quickly become saturated. The result of which is the Case Fataliry Rate, or if you prefer the numbers “at risk of dying who do die” will rise rapidly. That is with timely medical intervention for all, the CFR is likely to be significantly below 1% of hospitalized population. However without medical intervention it’s going to be higher than 5% possibly north of 10% if the figures from Italy are anything to go by, and most of those who do die will be in those over 45 with the bulk of deaths being 55-65 year range.

So with some saying 80% of the population are expected to get infected, of which 20% are expected to need medical intervention of which 10% will die…

Thats 0.8 x 0.2 x 0.1 = 1.6% of the general population mainly in the upper 20% age range of the population dying. So 16,000per million. Or a little under a million deaths in the UK and probably 5.28million in the US.

However some people are saying that the infection rate in the US will be higher due to,

1, People fearing job loss if they take time off sick.
2, The cost of a Dr’s visit being a day or mores take home wages.
3, An ER visit being upto a third of what they earn in a year.
4, To get a COVID test the FDA requires all other potential illnesses to be ruled out first.
5, The cost of these ruling out tests the patient has to pay for.

Even though the COVID test might be free according to some politicians. Compare that to South Korea where you just go to a “drive in” and get the results within 48hours resulting in a very low CFR.

Now I don’t live in the US and I don’t work in a “zero hour gig” minimum wage or less job that has no healthcare etc. Likewise living in a nation with a National Health Service “for all citizens” I can not tell if the above barriers to healthcare are accurate or not. But if they are I pitty everyone that lives there the next three to six months are going to be rough realy rough.

Because look at it this way that 1.6% of total population is realy 8% of the 20% of the population over ~45 years old irrespective of income or healthcare plan…

I don’t know how the older readers on this blog feel about that but that’s what the information we have so far is telling us… Hence the reticence by many to say what it is we know, and cross their fingers that some existing drug is found to work against SARS-CoV-2 or that the drugs companies rather than hold out their hands for Government money before they get into vacine testing will just get on with it (which I realy think they will not when they can hold out for a big tax funded pay day…).

Clive Robinson • March 16, 2020 2:16 AM

@ JonKnowsNothing,

Is there any connection with sudden death from heart related issues and the virus?

There are no peer reviewed or other papers to my knowledge even discussing let alone attributing heart problems with the virus. But then I would not expect there to be as it’s “novel” to humans and has only been around for a very short time.

But one thing to remember is that long prior to the viruses existance sudden death by heart ceasing to function is not exactly unknown. That is something like 40% of near fatal and fatal heart attacks have no attributable cause… and happen in otherwise healthy people. A friend who is a bit of a fitness and proper eating nut and has been since their early teens and did long distance running and cycling as hobbies had their first full on heart attack in their mid twenties and has had two subsequently. Despite extensive tests no attributable cause.

Which brings us to,

I recall reports of people falling over in the middle of the streets, people who were supposed to be healthy otherwise. I remember some MSM images purporting to be of folks that keeled over with no warning.

That’s something that you could say is “close to my heart”…

I used to be very physically active walking 20miles a day or cycling a hundred and more at weekends, as well as playing a couple of very active sports I had thigh measurments of 29inches each which was more than my then lady friends waist measurment of 20 inches. When I was in my early twenties I collapsed for no apparent reason I was fine one moment and less than thirty seconds later deeply unconcious on the floor, finally waking when an ambulance crew arived. When having a significant Medical a couple of years later, on the excercise bike I was bending and breaking, my heart rate went up from a resting 45bpm as expected to around 80 then as I carried on giving it everything the Drs were supprised to see my heart “shift gears” down to just 40bpm and then climb back to around 48 as I continued to put ever increasing amounts of power into the bike, my breathing also changed becoming slower and much much deeper (I had a very large lung capacity and actually broke an expensive piece of medical measuring eqyipment…). The Drs considered it “odd, but one of those things”. Not much happened untill my mid thirties when very early one saturday morning in a hurry to get a report out I’d been working on over night, suddenly it felt like my heart was “break dancing” it’s way out of my chest. I tried to stand but instead colapsed over the computer keyboard, I got myself to hospital much later that morning where blood enzimes suggested I might have had a “cardiac event” (or damaged a muscle excercising). Another decade passed and I passed out again, this was the start of an increasing in frequency series of such events. Which with other medical complications due to a damaged immunes system, I was spending one week in five in hospital. All sorts of tests came up negative, they put in a set of stents and six months later another set of stents. They did “tilt table tests” and all sorts of neurological tests including sticking near 200volts across my body. Still they had no clue and things carried on. Eventually unbeknown to all the heart must have started to deteriorate. I actuall passed out in hospital on one occasion but due to somebody not setting the equipment up correctly for me and the design engineers of the equipment screwing up, the data for the eppisode was lost, all they knew was that my heart rate dropped below fourty and my blood preasure likewise fell to very low values all below “alarm values” unfortunatly a software error ment that what was logged was not the actual values but the alarm values… Another half decade passed and I ended up face down in my local supermarket, an ambulance arived and I was hooked up to an ECG that showed I had AF which is a potential killer which I had demonstrated to me in the hospital resuscitation section of A&E where I had two “cardiac events” in very quick order. I can assure you that being concious when you “crash” is a somewhat interesting event I was just joking about not being a horse with the consultant when they were about to inject me with ketimin prior to trying an inversion when the beeps stopped and that flat line wail came from the machine by my head. I tried to sit up but having the bed smash out flat and drop a foot or so in free fall, then being pushed flat hard and having a fist smashed into my chest chest by a consultant in her thirties whilst shouting at nurses to inject various drugs into the IV line was shall we say a bit memorable. I had kind of recovered my composure and said I desperatly needed to go to the toilet when the beep beep stopped again and we all looked at the machine as that flat line wail started again… This time my heart just started again by it’s self having stopped for ten seconds or so… The consultant decided to stabalise me and call in the big guns, whilst I was still alive. I ended up on the cardiac critical ward wired up like some chicken in a crazy lab experiment about five yards from the nursing station, each heart beat was skipping and jumping in my ears and it was like a mad house Chinese water tourture and everybody waited to see what would happen… Nothing very much did, the drugs and vitimin supliments got the heart managable. The result I’ve still got AF and that break dance pulse rate but at the time they stuck a “reveal device” in my chest, and I decided that “taking it easy” was my number one priority. Then one day there was an urgent message to get my carcus upto the hospital as fast as I could. The reveal device that talked to the hospital via mobile phone had recorded a series of cardiac events. Put simply my heart just stopped for 5-12 seconds and then started again for no apparent reason and did this several times. Anyway I presented myself to the hospital around lunch time I was immediatly admited and the following morning it was down to theater to have a pace maker fitted that kicks my heart if it trys to go below 60bpm… And no they still have no idea why my heart behaves this way… The joke I have with the medical techs is which is going to last longer me or the battery, their money is on the battery 🙁

Any way as an RF design engineer having a pace maker fitted realy realy limits what you can do… As the likes of a 1kW transmitter with a slow pulse output down below the MF band can get into the pace maker likewise so can just a few watts from a GSM base station antenna… Just as well I’ve got communications security design as a second string to my bow. The idea of “early retirment” or retirment at all horrifies me, because in my head I still feel like I’m in my twenties…

The point is such events happen rather more frequently than most people are aware of.

But I do remember the details of a couple of the Chinese medical staff deaths. Due to a lack of PPE they were not eating or drinking on shift and working twenty hour shifts with only a few hours rest in between for days on end. It’s entirely possible that they got dehydrated and this caused clinical shock and blood clots in organs.

As a side note, atleast on researcher is putting together evidence about the high death rates in Iran and Italy. Their hypothosis is the use of Steroids and NSAIDs respectively to do “fever managment” is alowing the virus to behave much more aggressively.

If the hypothesis is valid, then it might be the deaths in some Chinese health care works might also involve the use of NSAID drugs as well. As I’ve mentioned in the past few weeks I’ve been wanting to know what advice there is over “anti-inflamatories”. Especially as none has been comming forward it was becomming a concern. It might be that my concerns over some anti-inflamatories and the effects they have on the heart and blood supply have been validated…

Clive Robinson • March 16, 2020 9:52 AM

@ Bruce, ALL,

One of the problems with a “stressor” like COVID-19 is it quickly shows up systems and processes that lack resiliance,

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/16/21181300/microsoft-teams-down-outage-europe-remote-working-coronavirus

Put simply the underlying issue is the same mentality behind “JIT” and “LEAN” in physical supply lines (which back all ICT systems).

The upshot of this is if the “cloud” and similar systems you rely on for your “Plan B” or “Plan C” become stressed then your “emergency plans” become only so much ink on pieces of paper, or worse bits in a “bag of bits” system you can nolonger access.

As I’ve pointed out several times in the past and more so currently “Nature has been around for many millennium prior to mankind, and in that time overly efficient system have become extinct” it’s a lesson MBA courses should teach Wanabe C-suite types.

What I have also pointed out in the past many times is that puting vital infrastructure systems into lowest cost mode to maximise short term profit is a very bad idea.

I know as do several others that many “social distancing” plans by companies to get staff “home working” just to keep the company on “life support” let alone functioning are all based on the likes of Microsoft “teams” and equivalents from AWS and Google.

Those who designed these plans made several assumptions,

1, The claimed performance of such systems are not resilient under sudden changes of use, so SLA’s are worthless under stress.

2,The providers of such systems are 100% dependent on very long “supply chains”.

3, The providers of such systems have “optomized their work force to the bone”.

Thus the suppliers can not respond to a step change in loading or other stress. But it goes further.

4, The suppliers of such services are aware of their potential legal liability to their staff, so they to have been switching over to “home working”.

5, The limit of responsability of such service providers is the “demarc” in their communications suppliers box in the basement.

6, The communications supplier is in exactly the same state as the likes of the service provider.

7, Both of those are dependent on the supply of energy.

8, Whilst a service provider and comms supplier might have back up systems, the likes of fuel, for generators etc has it’s own long and complex supply chains.

9, Nearly all these supply chanes are dependent on communications service providers to keep the chain running.

10, Due to depressed oil prices what might have been “spare capacity” to up the resilience of the supply chain in bulk transport tankers, has been leased out to oil producers as emergancy storage capacity so they can keep oil pipelines and refineries functioning (they effectively die if they stop).

I could go on but you can see a “perfect” “thousand year storm” building…

The only ways to stop this storm are,

A, Remove the stressor.
B, Go on a “war footing” to ensure the right things happen in the right way at the right time.

Untill a week or two ago only China and South Korea took anything close to the necessary steps to stop the stressor. With one being a “dictatorship” and the other a “democracy” it kind of proves the point it is not a “political ideology” issue but one of “competant command” The US, UK, and most of Europe were lementably absent from the “field of battle” against SARS-CoV-2 and containment did not happen when it should have. In essence the political structures abdicated on their duty of care and responsability to lead, and protect their nation states. Some European Nations have now switched up their responses but still too few are behaving reactively not proactively. As for the US and UK I don’t think that the respective political leaders know how to lead and show direction, just “in-fight”. Thus this pandemic will almost certainly become endemic this year, not just in the third world but the first and second worlds as well, because unless you can contain the virus to rob it of hosts it will just carry on “oportunisticaly” crossing any and all boarders physical, economic or mental.

Further I realy don’t think a vaccine will be forth comming unless the major industrialised nations do go on a war footing. Because the drugs companies know making vaccines is a long expensive process with very little profit in it unless a disease is endemic. So it’s in the drugs companies interests to “hold out” for very large slices of the tax take and alow the virus to well and truley become endemic (think about flu shots). I’m also sure BigPharma would think a vaccine should be between 100-200USD per dose if it’s not likely to become endemic. Hiwever what they would rather do thoug is develop not a cure like a vaccine but drugs that boost the immune system as we see with HIV. So letting SARS-CoV-2 become endemic and having 30% of the Western population pay 200USD/month or more for five to twenty five years would be way more profit, thus a better option for them.

That’s the joy of a “free market” view point, and realistically the only way to do what is required is legislatively, with a “war footing” being the way most likely to stop SARS-CoV-2 for those in “young middle age” and older.

Clive Robinson • March 17, 2020 2:46 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

“Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”

I think this has been clearly known for around four weeks.

I know this upsets a few people because they look at it the wrong way around…

That is they reason along the lines of,

This is a near perfect bio-weapon, such perfection is unlikely by chance, therefore it has to be man made.

Which is the same problem we have with a lot of forensics, that is they are arguing back from “perceived effect” to their choice of very many causes.

Part of the problem is evelotion is actually not random it favours certain mutations which over a few generations looks like it is being “guided by an unseen hand”.

Clive Robinson • March 18, 2020 1:11 AM

@ Anders, ALL

Regarding perfect bioweapon – this would be COVID infected Syrian refugees
bursting towards EU.

Yes, it’s something that has been on my mind even befor COVID-19.

Such a humanitarian disaster as the Middle East has become is not just a National Security issue for the nations in conflict but those around them in ever growing circles, stopped only by “insurmountable boarders” be they natural or created by man.

Basically this is why Turkey has upto 4million Syrian Refugees in camps, it does not want and the refugees want to take up “Mummy Merkel’s” offer of a good life in Europe (and is one of the causes of Brexit).

It’s known that refugee camps like prisons are an almost perfect breeding place for all kinds of communicable diseases. It’s a virtual certainty that SARS-CoV-2 will get into those refugee camps, and that at the very least will create panic and hysteria.

Turkey’s healthcare system although modern is not realy sufficient at the best of times and various political events have not made that any better. Throw 4 million refugees into the mix and it’s a disaster about to happen.

The only real question is “where it will happen?” the EU commission has it’s head up it’s ass over “free movment” they are trying to close the EU external western boarders so they can keep the schengen zone open. Whilst ignoring what is happening in the south around the Mediterranean…

The Greeks have repeatedly had their requests for assistance to maintain the Greek-Turkey boarder strengthened, turned down by the EU Council of Ministers, who basically want to begger Greece to further “asset strip it”. Realistically there are not many ways this idiocy can end, and one of them is with machine guns and mass graves…

It’s been reported that Turkish Troops are already shooting at Greek soldiers on boarder patrol. I’ve no idea if it is true or not but history shows this sort of thing happening quite frequently in many parts of the world.

So yes I can see Syrian Refugees getting infected with SARS-CoV-2, it’s almost a certainty.

Yes I can also see panic starting in the Turkish refugee camps.

As for the next couple of steps to infected refugees ending up in Greece or other parts of Europe yes I can see that happening as well. The question is augmented to “How many and where?”.

As we now know it would only take a handfull or two of infectious people traveling to have significant infective ability. If you think back to the British man who contracted it in Singapore and spread it in France and Britain he infected atleast eleven people directly. With the “doubling rate” across Europe currently 3-6days in part due to “free movment” it’s not difficult to see just how dangerous this can be.

Especially as both the US and Russia are playing the old “proxie war” game in the Middle East creating ever more homeless people thus insanitary conditions with little or no healthcare, people quickly become refugees as the only way to survive thus further fueling the problem.

It may well become the most over-riding security issue of this generation, making any form of ICTsec or Surveillance pale into insignificance. As the Ancient Chinese curse has it,

May you live in interesting times.

This time I don’t see us having any choice but to…

Clive Robinson • March 19, 2020 4:35 AM

@ Wael,

There’s an abundance of worthy newspapers for the task.

And soon to be worthless “paper currency” that no one will want to touch with any part of their body.

Near wortless as the UK bank notes are, they are atleast made of easily sanitized plastic…

Clive Robinson • March 19, 2020 9:39 AM

@ Curious,

With regards,

“Netflix urged to slow down streaming to stop the internet from breaking”

Not at all surprised, you realy don’t think “people working from home” for the first time in their lives are realy going to be that disaplined to make a “work” rather than “home” environment for themselves.

Also it’s not NetFlix that’s “Breaking the Internet”… No it’s all those crapy colabaritive working systems designed for LAN’s or at best uncontested WAN’s that are causing the issues.

Whilst work places might have “contingency plans” they have either never done a full scale test, or if they have it’s been when the Internet was quiet.

I’ve mentioned the issues of the Just In Time (JIT) and LEAN mentality as used by C-Suite types. They have exchanged “resiliance” for “short term profit” “cost and maintainence reduction”. Such systems are not in the slightest bit resiliant in their own right, worse any resilience they have is based on verly long supply chains that are now effectively decimated by the close down of international travel. And worse yet the other end of those supply chains are in countries with their own “National Security” considerations and eminent domain[1] laws. We’ve already seen India do the “Our drugs are for our Hindus” export restrictions, and whilst China has not said they are applying export restrictions they have made it clear that the increased manufacture of Personal Protective Equipment is a necessary requirment to get China back on it’s feet. Which in a way is actually a good idea because only when their industry is back to the point where they are producing surplus to their requirments can they go on to supply the rest of the world.

However there is a major major issue that is about to explode all over the place, which is food…

I’ve been “advised” to go into self quarantine for 120days… Obviously before I or the many others who have been “advised to” on medical or age grounds, need to get 130-150 days of food in call it 21weeks worth.

However as those that saw Donald Trump and his “feel good adjectives” speech should have realised when he urged people not to get more than one weeks food in at a time, there is an issue…

And that issues is what will eventualy be called “the supply line crisis”, we just do not have the capacity or the ability to create the capacity for people to effectively self issolate for very long.

Which means “containment” of the virus can nolonger happen even if there was the political will and guard labour to do it. All we can do now is try and “flatten the curve” such that the cases stay within the capacity of the health care system.

The problem is that some places have good health care and others do not, thus there is a very significant incentive for people to migrate as “health refugees”. Trying to stop such movments of probably highly infectious people can only happen in two basic ways,

1, Ensure they don’t have a reason to emigrate.

2, Total boarder lockdown, enforced by the military with “no mercy” orders.

The first is probably now imposible to do, and the second will stop those long supply chains that keep us alive…

A bit of a Security conundrum without a doubt, hopefully we will all live to see it successfully worked out, but the odds are not good.

[1] Eminent Domain or Sovereign Rights can be best described these days as “Naked theft by Government” always comes into play in emergencies or disasters, sometimes at the point of a gun or other coercive tactics by “Guard Labour”. Such things can escalate easily as history shows with the likes of “Water Wars” and we are almost certainly likely to see it, especially when backed by religion or ethnic differences. As the modern saying has it,

When you have nothing left to loose, you loose it.

Which equates to social unrest in the short term and upheaval in the long term with the old hierarchies broken and those who were at their top disposed of. As an older syaing that Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter[2] when he was in France,

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.

[2] The letter written in Nov 1787 has other parts that are equally deserving of being better known, and infact describe the issue of what is and is not known,

[C]an history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The past which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.

You can read more of the letter at,

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/105.html

Clive Robinson • March 19, 2020 4:37 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

neil_ferguson tests positive

It’s a shame, I hope he only gets it mildly.

As I understand it the Cardiology Dept at the Royal Free Hospital (RFH) North West London has been in effect closed due to the number of staff that are symptomatic. The Cardiology Wards at the RFH are on the floor below the only infectious issolation ward in London…

Oh apparently the policy is that medical staff “are not to be tested” just stay at home with their families… Apparently this is a “command from the Dept Health” or “the political wing of the NHS” so that any sick or dead medical staff won’t be added to the UK statistics…

On with the bad news,

The fact that the virus in Thailand is spreading easily, suggests as Thailand is “tropical” that the virus is unlikely to be very seasonal if at all.

By the time you read this World Wide deaths will have crossed the ten thousand mark, and recorded cases will be over the quater of a million mark.

The figures for the US are growing very rapidly and the more than 2500 new cases today bring it up to around 12,000 cases in total. Most experts think this is at best only a 20th of those actually infected. Also scenes of youngish revelers in Florida and California on TV has caused comment from several places and the President has expressed his displeasure.

And some good news,

Cruise liners have become named yet again as “floating Petri dishes” and one that has been rejected by many nations has been alowed to dock in cuba and the passengers flown home. Cuba is a small place but they are known to punch above their weight when it comes to medicine and international emergancies.

In the new world epi-center Italy, China has flown in experienced medical personnel to assist, lets hope they can help Italy get ontop of the infections quickly and get them under control and back within the Italian healthcare systems ability to handle the sick who need medical support.

In Manchester UK hotel owners have got together and cleared their hotels of the public, and they are making their rooms available free of charge to city front line medical staff so that they won’t have to travel home each day thus potentialy infect their families or fellow travelers.

And to all those out there giving a helping hand where you can I wish you well and thanks and hope you inspire others to do likewise.

Clive Robinson • March 19, 2020 5:31 PM

@ JonKnows…,

Dry runs of course, worked perfectly…

Ouch a colission of choppers would not be pleasant…

A few years ago a chopper flew into a building site crane in Vauxhall in freezing fog just a very short distance from a major railway interchange and bus station, and MI6’s little place at Vauxhall Cross on the south side of the River Thames… The bits went every where and it created chaos in the morning rush hour. It was only that it was just before 8:00AM that more people were not killed or injured.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauxhall_helicopter_crash

To put it simply helicopters do not play nicely together…

Clive Robinson • March 20, 2020 1:28 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm, Wael, ALL,

People are freaking out. Gallows humour is how people are trying to cope.

True, but I’m thinking that “Gallows” is aiming a little high and what you might call “midden” humour is better 😉

Which leaves open the opportunity for “rock bottom toilet humour”[1], hence my link to you a little while ago to Charles Sale’s[2] “The Specialist”,

https://www.toiletrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Specialist-by-Charles-Sale.pdf

It’s a short read, and yes I have a copy on my book shelf.

[1] Especially if we get a few “under the bridge” types come through.

[2] Oh you might want to look up what the word “sale” means in French, sometimes, life is full of coincidences sometimes not.

Clive Robinson • March 20, 2020 8:28 AM

@ Wael,

nomen est omen

It’s a dirty job but somebodys got to do it 😉

Clive Robinson • March 20, 2020 2:14 PM

@ Anders,

So far the deaths recorded today are ~1200 with 627 in Italy and 212 in Spain with most other Western European nations reporting deaths like 40 in the UK.

If we look at the US figures, if you believe them they are about a week and a half behind Western Europe.

There was a radio news item about the Govenor of California indicating that unless the Federal restrictions were removed there would be 22million Californians infected within a month…

So we are moving into “Joe Stalin” territory of “One death is a tragady a million is just a statistic”

The point few appear to be grasping is that the disease spreads from person to person not by magic but close contact. Further that even in the best medically provisioned countries in the world, resorses are finite and the difference between CFR of no medical assistance and medical assistance is about 50:1 at the moment and it’s only going to get worse as case numbers carry on rising exponentially.

@ ALL,

With regards panic buying and hording, have a think about the mixed messages you are getting told.

1, Quarantine, if you show signs of infection you have to stay in quarantine untill seven days after the signs of infection have cleared and a further seven days for those that live with you untill either you’ve all been ill and recovered or no other infections have started in 14 days. Realisticly that means 14-28days for many families when you are not alowed out.

2, You should only do a “normal weekly shop”…

Well the two are obviously in conflict unless you can live off of fresh air for 14-21 days.

But it gets worse, it’s no secret that those with any knowledge of disease spread are talking about things getting worse and staying that way for a year or more (Spanish Flu hung in for three years).

3, Due to Just In Time (JIT) and LEAN methods there is generally only three days food in the supply chain and possibly two more in warehouses.

4, As supply chain side staff sicken as they will capacity will fall.

5, As mobility bans come into place supply chains will suffer further.

6, Much food these days comes from abroad with international flights plumeting the cost of air transport has risen 500% in some places. So it’s not cost effective to move food, thus shortages will occure.

7, Switching from air freight to sea freight is going to take upto a month and a half and have a lag of two weeks atleast.

So food supplies are going to be quite scarce for two months if not more and the price of food is going to rise significantly for anything other than normal bulk cargo shipped.

Which is why politicians are having emergancy “closed door” meetings with those who are involved with all aspects of food supply. The politicos will have been told what I’m saying and worse, and it’s going to happen for six months or more. What they don’t want is the crime and riots that go with food shortages, as they are the ones who normally become the targets of such attacks unlike the Disaster Capitalists who most people don’t even know who they are or where they live or how they protect themselves.

You can be sure that “Disaster Capitalism” will be in those meetings pushing the prices up and plans of doing it way higher by manipulating supply and demand in the weeks to come. Because they are alread not just talking about closing stores and laying everyone off unless they get a half year or year “rent / land tax” etc holiday, they are demanding it as a condition of staying open even next week. They can after all quite easily create civil unrest just by deciding which stores get resupplies and those that don’t, and what they get resupplied with.

You can also guarentee that with “Disaster Capitalism” riding high any price rises will be fast and that if they fall it will be very slowely at best. Thus any sensible prices could be two or three years out.

Other businesses want the Government to give them 75% of their wages bill or they will lay staff off rather than have them Working From Home.

Any sensible person would realise that,

1, The price of food is going to go up a lot in the next six months and stay that way for some time.

2, They are not likely to have a job in the next few weeks for six months to a year or more. Even if they keep their job they will not get pay rises even close to covering the price increases on food.

Now ask yourself what would you do if you had a little spare money now?

But also consider those that for various reasons can not cook where they live, store fresh/frozen food or even wash dishes. These people are dependent on fast food and similar.

Fast Food is going to be closed not for a few weeks but months. Most fast food places can only survive a week or two at the most without income… Because whilst big retailers have “clout” and can demand all sorts of payment holidays, these little places will almost certainly not only get no assistance, they will be looked at by politicians as a “piggy bank to raid” to make up for losses from those with clout…

Remember you can sleep on stacks of tinned foods, and you don’t need to cook the contents to eat from the tins, so you don’t need pots etc to cook with or even plates to eat off and clean. It might not be hot food but it will put something in you belly…

As the old saying has it “First walk a mile in another mans shoes…”.