117 Epidemic Observation | Yan Ning·Prin·Ⅱ

The storm is coming, New Jersey has a curfew~

Written by Yan Ning

On Saturday, March 14, the Biogen fire finally reached my village. Two people who attended the party on February 29 were diagnosed today (started feeling unwell on March 9, confirmed today), and the other is still waiting for the result. In the past week, the school has been preparing intensively. It was originally said to start on March 23, but now all undergraduates are required to go home and all courses are changed to online classes (the school is more humane, and some students who really can't leave are allowed to stay on campus); from midnight on March 15, all buildings will be locked all day and enter with their ID.

The school and the department send emails every day about the progress of the epidemic and the corresponding arrangements. Starting from Monday, alcohol hand sanitizer was placed at the entrance of the building. I noticed that at least twice a day, someone came to disinfect the door handles of the office and laboratory and the elevator buttons, which was quite considerate.

Each laboratory has a continuity list & shutdown list (a list of precautions for continuing scientific research or shutting down) and designates a contact person for the laboratory. Our department's laboratories are mainly in three buildings. We recommend that laboratories in different buildings form alliances and conduct cross-training with each other, just in case a positive case is detected in one building and everyone in the entire building goes home for quarantine. People from the buddy lab can come over to help with some basic support such as filling liquid nitrogen.

Although I had already bought $200 worth of food, I rushed to the Chinese supermarket yesterday. Speaking of this, it was really difficult for me. The only time to judge that the supermarket is most fully stocked, has the least customers, and is not congested is from 10 to 11 am. 10 o'clock? Getting up so early? How is it possible. So... I simply stayed up all night, went shopping directly and went home to catch up on sleep... This is really Yan Ning.

The supermarket has a complete range of everything, and my two favorite brands of snail noodles are back on the shelves.

There are all kinds of messages in the WeChat group. Anyway, everyone feels that their universities may soon be closed and their laboratories closed. Our professor group is worried about whether the research careers of some postdocs and doctoral students will be affected. Originally, we thought that everyone would be affected, so there would be no difference; but then we thought that the degree of damage to different disciplines is different, so many people will indeed become indirect victims.

I made a clever move to tease the students: If the research is interrupted, won’t the journals receive no submissions in the long run? Come on, bring me the rejected papers, and revise them and submit them back in two months. [Hints] Looking back, this idea was wrong, because too many people couldn’t do experiments, so they all started writing, and the reviewers were probably in a bad mood or read too carefully, so the rejection rate of articles has increased sharply recently.

Sunday, March 15: My experiences and mental journey over the past six weeks have been like this:

End of January: [Emotional] I want to go home, I want to be with my family, but alas, I can’t buy a plane ticket.

[Rational] Fortunately, I am not at home. My parents can eat simply by stocking up on food so that they can last for a long time. If I were at home, it would not matter anyway. My parents would still have to go out to buy groceries and cook, so this is fine.
February: [Watch the domestic updates every day] Outside Hubei, the epidemic is not that serious under China's strict control. Everyone, hold on. I video chat with my parents every day. I feel okay. I have adapted to staying at home psychologically. Come on! I look forward to the spring and the virus.
At the end of February: [Focus shifted to the United States] First, I found various excuses to postpone the various meetings that I had agreed to in March and April - but within two weeks, all these meetings were cancelled; I adjusted my work and rest schedule to a mode of staying up all day and going out at night; the food I bought twice was enough to keep me at home for three months.
March: [Carefully plan laboratory and personal work] to prepare for the possibility of school closure and forced closure of laboratories.
In the past week, although many friends half-seriously and half-jokingly advised me to return to China, I always responded like this:
Not to mention that as a laboratory PI, you can't run away at this time; from the most selfish perspective, what is China's greatest experience in controlling the new crown? Isn't it "isolation"? ! If everyone stays at home honestly, the virus will not come to you automatically; at this time, the most feared thing is running around. How many people will you come into contact with on the way back to China by car or plane? The virus has an incubation period, how do you know if the person you come into contact with is carrying the virus? Borrowing a sentence that was particularly popular on the Internet at the beginning of prevention and control: lying at home is contributing to prevention and control. This now also applies to foreign countries.
Of course, my postdoctoral students and I all have families, so we are not afraid to stay at home. After many schools were closed, what should the international students who used to live in the dormitories do? This is a particularly realistic issue. I hope that the Chinese Students' Association and consulates of each school can consider this issue and make proper arrangements.

Monday, March 16th I don’t understand why people would hoard toilet paper, but I do understand why the fastest thing I use up now is hand cream. Look at how this obsessive-compulsive disorder person goes out:

I kept tissues by the door and alcohol-free gel in my car. I used tissues to hold all the door handles outside my house, including the car handles. I made sure that the side of the tissue that I had touched would never touch my hands again. I folded it up and used it to open the door of the laboratory building. On the way to the laboratory, I made sure that the side that I had not touched was facing outwards, rolled it up, and threw it into the trash can. I went to the bathroom to wash my hands and used tissues to open all the door handles, both inside and outside. My hands would feel uncomfortable from time to time during work, so I would wash my hands again.

I don't usually wear a mask except when shopping because I basically don't see anyone. But today when I was refueling, I spoke to the guy through the passenger seat with the car window open. I suddenly got nervous. First, I coated the credit card he had touched with alcohol-based hand sanitizer twice, and then I kept the car window open for 5 minutes in the wind.

Although I always speak in a relaxed manner, I am really cautious in my life. I feel like I have picked up the experimental habits that I have abandoned for many years. The school has repeatedly suggested that the distance between people in the laboratory should not be less than 2 meters, and we are really strictly implementing it.

Tuesday, March 17 [in my lifetime] Starting last night, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut jointly implemented a curfew from 8pm to 5am (curfew, my xdjm in this village really knows me, and immediately sent me a message asking if I have to stay in the lab all night), entertainment venues including theaters and casinos are closed, restaurants are prohibited from dine-in, can deliver takeout, and prohibit gatherings of more than 50 people. Yesterday, the chemistry department next door closed the laboratory due to possible new crown cases, and today I heard that it was a false alarm.

I still like our department. Over the past week, we have been issuing warnings every day and making preparations for research continuity in an orderly manner. Even if we shut down, we will not be caught off guard. I feel that this is the right approach, much better than a sudden one-size-fits-all approach.

I feel like the world has slowed down. I am just thinking about the direction of transformation. I have trained so many PIs, and I will leave structural biology to them. I have to do something else in my lifetime.

Today, March 19, I read the news and read my WeChat Moments. What was quite heartwarming was that several major supermarkets set aside 1-2 hours of special shopping time in the morning for people over 60 years old, and called on everyone not to take food that low-income families can exchange for with shopping subsidies. This is quite necessary. Various calls for donations to medical and emergency personnel have also come out. Personal protective equipment such as masks and gloves are in short supply. Alas, less than two months later, the Earth's east-west mirroring is delayed.

The school's policies are also changing. There is nothing we can do about it. We are considering countermeasures at any time based on the development of the virus, but the basic points are always the same: 1. All classes are changed to online classes (previously, only undergraduate classes were required to be changed to online classes, because graduate students generally have small classrooms and can have larger distances between students. This time, all courses will be taught via Zoom); 2. Before the state government has a mandatory school closure policy, try to ensure research continuity; 3. Strengthen social distancing (more than 2 meters apart).

Tsinghua University Dean Wang said that the COVID-19 is another attack by silicon-based organisms to challenge carbon-based organisms. Look, carbon-based organisms are forced to be isolated and can only rely on network connections. Unknowingly, silicon-based organisms are slowly gaining the upper hand. When the epidemic is over, will online classes become a new education model? Speaking of this, I kind of hope that poor areas will also build developed network systems in the future, and the Ministry of Education will subsidize the Internet fees for children to take online classes. Maybe this can become a solution to the imbalance of educational resources?

Several groups are spreading the message that if you have a COVID-19 fever, you must not take Advil and Motrin (the main ingredients of these two drugs are ibuprofen). It is said that this will worsen the condition of young and middle-aged people, and the only thing that can be used is Tylenol (the main ingredient is acetaminophen). This is explained in Shi Jun's diary, but it seems that the causal relationship has not been established. But psychologically, I think that since there is such a saying, it is okay to switch to Tylenol. But for someone like me who can only take 5 antipyretic and analgesic pills a year, there is only a small bottle of Motrin at home. I hurried to buy it online, and found that it could be delivered the next day before. Now Tylenol will arrive on March 31st at the earliest. Sure enough, everyone is hoarding everything. But this can't be taken every day. If you really need it, you can borrow it by shouting in any group, so there is no need to panic.

A friend who works in an investment bank is not allowed to work from home and has to clock in every day. It's miserable, but not the worst, because at least he moved from the New York office to New Jersey. It is said that five colleagues in their other New York office have been infected, but because of the industry regulations of investment banks, they are not allowed to work from home.

Finally, I feel like my respiratory tract is being damaged by Clorox wipes, so I will try not to use them in the future.

On Friday, March 20, most postdocs with kids in the lab have been at home for more than a week, because kids are the hardest to control. I am grateful that my postdocs are very alert and have discussed working from home with me, and I happily agreed. This is also the different stages of PIs. If I were a young PI who had just started and had tenure pressure, I would probably go crazy during this period. But it is precisely because I want to transform and slow down, without so many routine things to constrain me, this is actually a great opportunity.

I am now suspicious for a long time because of occasional coughs and sore throats. I use an ear thermometer twice a day, but fortunately I never have a fever. In fact, at this time, the symptoms that I didn't pay much attention to before suddenly become very abrupt, so I really have to stay calm. My idea is very simple: the worst case scenario, I get infected. But if it's a mild case, don't even think about going to the hospital, so I still follow the old habits: get more sleep, drink more water, let the low fever burn, and take Tylenol for a high fever.

Today I saw an article discussing whether international students should return to China. I think as long as it is legal and compliant, it is everyone's own right, and some people have to return. For example, I mentioned before that some students lost their dormitories abroad and really had nowhere to go, so it is not appropriate to make a blanket comment. However, if you don't have to go back, but you want to go back, you must consider the risks: the risk of being infected in a closed space for so long on the road should be greater than the risk of staying in seclusion in the local area; the living conditions of 14 days of isolation; visa and travel restrictions after returning. At this time, the most feared thing is to make blind decisions under panic, so it is better to analyze your personal situation before making a decision. Moreover, many people are not actually worried about getting sick, but the possible anti-Chinese sentiment that will affect personal safety. This requires specific analysis of specific regions. You know it best in the local area. If you don't understand, ask those who have lived around you for a long time. Don't be confused by all kinds of messy news on the Internet.

Every day I look at the shocking figures in Italy. How did it get to this point? I don’t understand Italy, but for the United States, there are signs in the past month and a half. Because this year is an election year, in fact, until the news broke in Italy, the major media were most concerned about the candidate debates (think about how many gatherings there were), and there was not much news about the new coronavirus. The CDC’s warning for a long time was that "influenza is a more serious health threat." In addition, the United States decisively implemented a travel ban on China in the early days, so everyone thought everything was fine, but they still underestimated the cunning of the new coronavirus. But what I don’t understand is why there was no special travel ban on Italy when the outbreak in Italy was already quite serious, and it was too late when the ban was imposed on Europe.

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in our state continues to rank fourth in the United States. Hospitals are short of protective equipment, and everyone is calling for donations. In fact, I don't wear a mask except when shopping, because I really don't see many people, and these resources should be left to medical staff. Donate as much as you can.

I was listening to the radio yesterday, and the program discussed whether there would be child abuse at home. There are people who will deal with this situation. This is an angle I have never thought of. The awareness of protecting the elderly and children is great.

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