Welcome to pay attention to Hangpai engineers, an interesting and in-depth technology story number

Writer | Yunxi

Dictation | Coco&Peter

Picture source | Internet and respondents

Ma Yun said: "Because we are all in a burning forest today, a glory may not be all glory, but a destruction will definitely destroy everything. This war will take away the lives and health of countless people. Humanity is facing an invisible But a fierce enemy. "

This invisible but fierce enemy is COVID-19. It is as far away as it is. The United States is so powerful that it is still deeply buried in mud.

As of April 4, US time, a total of more than 17 new crown patients were diagnosed in the United States.

In the face of this disaster, only cooperation, mutual assistance and solidarity can overcome it, and technology is the common weapon of mankind against viruses.

In the darkest moment, Alibaba efficiently dispatched materials, free open computing power, developed health codes and digital epidemic prevention systems around the world, allowing the world to see the kindness, bravery and responsibility of Chinese technology companies.

In view of this, American technology companies have also joined the forefront of anti-epidemic.

Seattle, Washington, was the place where the first patient and the first outbreak in the United States were discovered and the headquarters of technology giants such as Microsoft and Amazon.

Seattle is no longer the stage for the vulgar love bridge, and it has become the vane of the US anti-epidemic technology.

We found an engineer in Seattle to tell the story since the outbreak.

The following is her readme:

 

Coco PhD, University of Washington, Microsoft Engineer

 

1

 

From the end of February to now, I have been quarantined at home for more than a month.

As a Chinese living in the United States, I have paid special attention to domestic information since the day the city was closed in Wuhan. When the domestic epidemic was brought under control, the United States began to break out again. I feel like I have experienced two disasters in a row.

Although Seattle is the origin of the new crown epidemic in the United States, this is the headquarters of technology giants such as Microsoft and Google. During the epidemic, these technology companies did a lot of things, so everyone still feels safe.

1月21日，西雅图发现了第一个确诊病例，当天亚马逊上面口罩和消毒水就断货了。我花了20美刀买到20多个N95口罩和几瓶消毒液。

 

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) immediately held a press conference, saying that it is preventable and controllable, and there is only one case, and everyone slowly relaxes.

 

On January 1, the city was closed in Wuhan, and there was a shortage of domestic materials. Overseas Chinese are unable to sit still, and have organized donations and donations, and some have also opened various channels and checkpoints, and chartered flights to deliver materials.

 

The largest relief item on our side is the 14 tons of materials raised by Seattle Ami TV, a total of more than 6 sets of medical protective clothing and more than 1700 N95 masks, which are sent to China through the rookie of China Southern Airlines and Alibaba.

 

At that time, I never thought that the country would start shipping materials to us again a month later. The reality is really magical.

 

After the first case was confirmed in the United States, although several cases were added one after another, but there are traces to follow, so the news media and the American people feel that everything is under control and there is no panic.

Until February 2, a Seattle nursing home broke out with a group infection.

 

2

 

It was a nursing home called "Life Care Center" in central Seattle. 55 people were infected, including medical staff, and some of them were diagnosed after 6 days of death.

The most frightening thing is that these 55 people are not directly related to the first patient. This means that the virus is entering the United States in a way unknown to humans and spreading wantonly.

Until then, American talent began to panic, feeling "It's everywhere" (viruses are everywhere).

Microsoft and Amazon responded quickly, immediately sending emails to notify employees to work from home, and also cleaned and disinfected the office building for a week.

Before the outbreak of the U.S. epidemic, coco (back row) organized a Chinese "wonderful story" in Microsoft

 

The quick response of technology companies has played a good role model in the United States.

At that time, most Americans were careless, thinking that the new coronary pneumonia was a "big flu", so they didn't pay much attention to protection, didn't wear masks, and still had dinner and work, and the school did not suspend classes.

I remember an Uber driver said: "some people say it's serious, but others say it's nothing." (Some people think it's serious, some think it's nothing)

This sentence highly summarizes the attitude of the American people to the epidemic.

At the beginning, CDC in the United States also advised everyone not to wear masks, because the incorrect use of masks will increase the risk of infection. Moreover, it is not recommended to seek medical treatment if the symptoms are not serious.

Later, I learned that the government said this because of shortages of materials such as masks and testing reagents. I was afraid that people would flood into the hospital and cause run-off. After all, resources should be inclined to medical personnel in special periods.

 

 

3

After entering March, the epidemic in the United States began to grow explosively, from an initial daily increase of more than a dozen cases to hundreds of cases, and there were also deaths. The government began to pay attention to it and recommended that citizens isolate it at home.

During this period, the incident of "robbing toilet paper" broke out. Let me clarify here that Americans did not naively think that toilet paper can be used to replace masks to resist viruses, but they were bought by accident when hoarding goods after the outbreak.

By March 3, the number of diagnoses in the United States had soared to more than 22, and the number of deaths exceeded 3. The Governor of Huazhou issued a stricter home order, requiring everyone to stay at home except for necessary activities (seeing doctors to buy supplies, etc.). Police on the street also started patrolling and fines.

Still can't stand the turbulent epidemic. A week later, on March 3, the number of new crown diagnoses suddenly exceeded 30.

But the American people are not afraid and are relatively calm. They feel that the mortality rate of the new crown is not high, that is, a more severe flu. Even if it is infected, it is not too painful. Isolate it at home and reduce social contact.

People all over the United States began to hoard supplies. Online shopping became a rigid demand in isolation, and Amazon immediately optimized inventory and logistics, and recruited 10 new employees. Amazon fresh service, Amazon fresh, was not used before the epidemic, but now people around me are using it, similar to the Alibaba box horse in the domestic epidemic, which guarantees people's daily needs.

 

Under isolation, the empty streets of Seattle

 

 

4

In addition to masks, the United States now has abundant supplies.

I knew a doctor in Seattle. She said that the hospital had already received 168 patients. The doctors lacked masks and protective clothing. They did not get any government funding.

Technology companies have started to donate money.

Twitter创始人捐了10亿美金；比尔.盖茨和他的基金会捐了100万美金；微软援助了华盛顿州本地医院24万个防护口罩、1.5万副护目镜、2000盒消毒纸巾以及3.5万瓶洗手液。

When masks are in short supply, the government encourages people to make their own masks, as long as the cloth covering their mouths can be worn.

Fortunately, technology companies have played a greater role.

Microsoft developed the Teams system, which is used in telemedicine, shared data, and key information. St. Luke ’s University Medical System in Pennsylvania uses this technology to conduct remote consultations for patients with new crowns.

Italy, Spain, and Sweden, the countries with severe epidemics, use the online system that Microsoft and the government cooperate, similar to domestic nails.

My friend Peter is also involved in the development of a new feature on Bing that can view and track the global epidemic in real time.

 

5

 

Peter is an engineer at Microsoft Bing.

At the end of February, their department manager said that they would do an epidemic tracking function: "Let's put down everything else and do this with all our strength."

This is quite rare in Microsoft. Because our work has always been planned, temporary changes are rare.

The epidemic tracking function is built on the Bing homepage. When people query the new coronavirus, the distribution of cases in various countries and regions is clear at a glance, and the number of confirmed cases, cured cases and cases to be treated, and the trend chart of case changes are listed in detail.

 

Official data from the US Department of Health must be updated every night. Prior to this, Americans wanted to understand the epidemic situation by logging on to Johns Hopkins University and the "one acre three points" website. On one occasion, when referring to the number of diagnoses made by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), "one acre and three points of land" hit three more zeros. As a result, the public felt that the CDC data was fraudulent and deliberately concealed the report, causing a lot of disputes.

 

This is the common mentality of mankind in the face of disaster. Longing for authoritative information, but doubting everything, and then spread rumors.

As the epidemic in the United States becomes more and more serious, there are more and more rumors, and it is difficult to tell whether the information is true or false. Peter and colleagues are working overtime and want to get the function online soon.

There is no technical difficulty in developing this function itself, the complex is data cleaning. The data from each country, each state, and each website are different.

For example, using a Wikipedia chart, once the format of this table changes, the referenced position will be wrong; there are various website data, which must be filtered according to weight ...

The data is very complicated and there are many sources. They really took a lot of work.

In addition, Bing itself is a very large system. In order to take into account the loading speed and user experience, you can't use the ready-made framework when developing, you must write from scratch, and also consider the access of each port.

A week later, the first version came online, and iterate every day thereafter. Before that, it would take 2 to 3 months for Microsoft to go through the normal process.

The epidemic accelerated everything.

As engineers, they can do something to fight the epidemic, but they are still happy for them.

 

6

 

The most important thing for epidemic prevention is to find out the radius of activity of the diagnosed patients, and then isolate the people from contact.

Although the United States has been shouting "resuming work", it has never found a feasible measure.

There are currently hundreds of thousands of cases in the United States. All the people are isolated at home. Once the work is resumed, if the potential risks cannot be controlled, the outbreak will continue.

Isolation also depends on the consciousness of the people. When the governor met, he could only exhort, "You may not die if you are infected, but you will kill your grandfather and grandmother, and the children at home ..."

However, if the work is not resumed for a long time, the economy will shut down.

Except for takeaways, the service industry in the United States is now closed. Many waiters lived on tipping, but now they have almost lost their source of income. Although the government has paid $ 1200 in relief, how long can it last?

Therefore, whether to resume work or not, Americans are very contradictory.

Some high-tech anti-epidemic measures in China have begun to be valued and learned from by the United States. There is a health code in China, which makes it possible to control the epidemic prevention and resume work, and the epidemic situation is effectively contained.

On April 4, Apple and Google announced the development of the US version of the health code, which can establish a contact tracking network based on the premise of user voluntariness through a short-range Bluetooth system.

 

 

The US government health department can access these data, and the diagnosed person can also actively report. A suspected patient is diagnosed, and those who have had close contact with him a few days ago will be notified.

At present, Android and IOS have 30 billion users. If this project is completed, it is possible to achieve close tracking of one-third of the world's population.

I believe that if this product is successful, it will provide a good solution for the resumption of work in the United States.

 

7

 

In addition to technology companies, American universities, research institutes, and pharmaceutical companies have also been at the forefront of the fight against epidemics.

For example, the University of Washington, where I work, has the world ’s number one public health major, and is good at studying the spread of infectious diseases.

A professor at the University of Washington's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Trevor Bedford, published a report on his homepage, comparing and analyzing the viral sequences of the first new coronavirus in the United States and patients one month later, based on the rate of mutation The number of potential infections in Seattle proved that there was community transmission at the time. These studies provide useful information for CDC.

Now, Americans are not worried about the virus and firmly believe that the epidemic will be overcome. They are worried about unemployment and economic collapse.

During the outbreak, many US companies will cancel interviews and withdraw offers.

However, technology giants such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon did not lay off employees and announced that they would keep their salaries. Google also canceled performance evaluation. Facebook also announced a new paid vacation plan last month, providing employees with 30 working days of vacation.

Our school union also sent an email to tell everyone how to protect their rights and interests, very nice.

 

8

 

Finally, let ’s clarify that Americans are not generally hostile to the Chinese, thinking that the Chinese brought the virus.

In fact, they are very sensitive to racial issues and sometimes prefer to give in rather than step on the line.

Facing the common disaster of human beings, everyone donated money and materials, encouraged each other, and held groups to keep warm.

When the domestic epidemic spread, Microsoft also sent masks to employees in China. Microsoft CEO also wrote an email to all employees in China.

Among them, the sentence that moved us the most was: "The health and safety of our employees and their families is our top priority." (The health and safety of our employees and their families is our top priority.)

 

After the outbreak of the United States, Chinese restaurants on our side will give free meals to doctors in the United States, and domestic shipments of materials to the United States will also begin.

American doctor receiving free food in Chinese restaurant

 

In front of the virus, race and skin color are too narrow.

 Reprinted from: Hangpai Engineer