The Impact of COVID-19 on Tech

me and I hope are important to you. And I think it's past time that we have an episode about the coronavirus and the disease it causes. That would be COVID nineteen. And I'm sure most of you are tired of hearing about this, but the effects of the pandemic are immense, and the tech industry is definitely not exempt from those effects. So today we're going to talk about the virus itself, the disease it causes, how that's impacting

the tech industry and beyond. And there's some hopeful stuff in here too, as we look at how things are shaping up at the time of this recording, which I am doing on Friday, the thirteen March But let's start off with defining some terms, and will begin with the word virus, because heck, we've used that word to describe

stuff like malware, right, computer viruses. What we call computer viruses computer viruses because of how the malware can spread in a way that's analoguess, it's not exactly the same, but analogous to how something like the coronavirus spreads in the flesh and blood world. So what the heck is a virus? Well, viruses are actually something of a of a puzzler. They are small and simple, and people often refer to them as infectious agents. I used to know

an infectious agent. I won't reterm my calls now. But there was confusion over whether or not viruses qualify as life forms. It's an ongoing discussion in science, and that's largely because viruses are far more simple than most things that we would refer to as being alive. Uh. They require a host in order to multiply and to generate the energy that they need. In order to do this, like, they don't have that capability to do it on their own.

They first have to infect host cells and then hijack the host cells of capabilities in order to make more viruses. So for some people that's enough to dismiss them as qualifying as a living thing. And no, it doesn't qualify because it's unable to replicate itself without this host cell structure. But other people argue that it's not really as clear as all that, And ultimately it also depends upon how

we define the term life. As it turns out, some of these terms are a little trickier to define than others. But we can get past this. We can describe what viruses are in a more general sense, and viruses consist of a shell typically, and inside that shell is either DNA or RNA and some proteins. The DNA or RNA contained the genetic information unique to that particular strain of virus, and that DNA or RNA is also what will start

synthesizing the protein or proteins that the virus contains. Once the virus infects a cell, so speaking of that virus is attached to living cells to act as a host, and then they essentially inject their innerds that nucleic acid and protein into the host cell. The nucleic acid of the virus hijacks the host cell dedicates the cell's normal functions towards synthesizing proteins and nucleic acids to make more of the virus, and it continues to spread that way.

We typically divide viruses into those that can infect animals, bacteria, or plants, but within those classifications or viruses that have a limited range of potential hosts. So, for example, some viruses might be able to infect certain vertebrates but not others, so you can't necessarily have viruses transfer from one species to another. That doesn't always work. Viruses are one type

of infecting agent, but they're not the only one. There's also bacterial agents, and those can infect humans and make them sick, and bacterial infections are the kind that you could treat with something like antibiotics. Those are designed to kill the bacteria, but antibiotics are not effective against viral infections. UH. This is also why it's important to pay attention to the type of stuff you're using. When you're trying to

sanitize stuff. What you want is something that is labeled as antimicrobial or antiseptic, not just antibacterial, because antibacterial may not have the ingredients needed to get rid of things like a virus. So generally speaking, the rule for the coronavirus is, if you're buying hand sanitizer, you want stuff that has an alcohol content of at least sixty percent to act as an effective way to eliminate the coronavirus

on surfaces or to clean your hands. That's also why there have been some alcohol companies that have mentioned that, hey, don't try and use our stuff to clean your hands or to clean surfaces, because our alcohol content isn't high enough to guarantee that it actually eliminates the coronavirus from those surfaces, and you'll be wasting alcohol and you'll be getting sick anyway. This is also a good point to say antibiotics because they are totally not effective against viruses.

It's a terrible idea to request them or for doctors to prescribe them in the wake of a viral infection, because not only are they not effective, but the more we use antibiotics, the more likely we are to develop strains of bacteria that are resistant to those antibiotics. This

leads to what we call superbugs. A superbug is a type of bacteria or bacterium I should say, that is resistant to many of the ways we treat bacterial infections, and thus if it were to infect someone, it would be very hard to eliminate that infection because the stuff we would usually use would be ineffective. That's why we want to limit our use of antibiotics and not go crazy with them. Now. As I mentioned earlier, the coronavirus

actually refers to a family of viruses. It's not just the infamous one that causes COVID nineteen that's disrupting the world as I record this. That's the one that's now a pandemic. I'll define pandemic in just a moment. The virus family also includes stuff like SARS, another very scary virus, but it also has stuff like the common cold, which, while irritating, is not necessarily scary. It's more of an inconvenience.

When we encounter a new virus belonging to this family of viruses, we would call it a novel coronavirus, meaning a new one one that is uh now found to be a human infecting virus that previously we had never

really observed or identified. We've since given the name of this particular novel coronavirus as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus two or stars cove to cove would be capital C, lower case O capital V. Now I'm going to stick with novel coronavirus or just coronavirus or virus for this episode. Just know that when I'm using those terms, I'm referring to this specific viral strain, and people infected with this

novel coronavirus develop a particular respiratory disease. That's what COVID nineteen is. COVID stands for coronavirus disease, and then the nineteen is for two thousand nineteen, because that's when it was first observed, right at the very tail end of two thousand nineteen. And you might also hear another designation that means the same thing, which is two thousand nineteen dash in c o V. But these are all just ways of saying, we found a disease caused by a

virus that we previously didn't know about. It infects humans, it affects us, and it's part of the coronavirus family of viruses, and also we found out about it back in two thousand nineteen. That's what that name really tells you. Doesn't tell you anything useful about the disease itself as far as symptoms or treatment. It just tells you what

family it belongs to and when we discovered it. So if none of that gives you useful information as far as how infectious the disease is, or how dangerous it can be, or what you should do to avoid it, or what you should do if you suspect you have it, or anything like that, we got to look beyond that.

So let's get into some more details. And I promise I'm going to bring this around to tech, but I feel that as a person who has a platform that's capable of reaching people, I have a certain responsibility to share this information just in case you haven't encountered it on your own yet. So I apologize for those of you who have read up on this, or I've heard numerous other shows, or or you know, any other contact

you've had that's had a about this. But I want to make sure everyone has the information they need to kind of understand what this is and how to deal with it. Now, I'm gonna start by talking about the symptoms of COVID nineteen and how infectious it is and what the risks are as I think that's what causes a lot of anxiety in general, so it's best to cover it first. Now, the two basic symptoms for people who get COVID nineteen are a dry cough and a fever.

There's sometimes also a shortness of breath. That's the third one that's fairly common, and that's pretty consistent. Those are also symptoms that we tend to find in other diseases, so it makes it a little tricky to self diagnose. It turns out you might have the common flu, for example, and not COVID nineteen, so you can't necessarily be certain you've got one thing versus another when the symptoms are

so similar to each other. COVID nineteen is a pretty contagious disease, and it is most easily transferred when someone with COVID nineteen is already really sick. And that's largely because the sick person tends to cough, and as they do so, they propel respiratory droplets into the environment, and the virus is inside those droplets. That being said, as I record this, we're still learning about this particular virus.

Doctors estimate that the incubation period that would be the length of time between when a person is infected by the virus and when they actually start to exhibit symptoms of COVID nineteen can be anywhere between one to fourteen days, although most estimates focus on around being five days, so it's possible that someone can be a carrier for the virus but not yet exhibit symptoms for a couple of days.

People in close proximity or those who come into contact with surfaces that get those droplets on them, are in danger of catching this disease. This is why you hear so much about washing your hands and using hand sanitizer and not standing or sitting too close to people in general as well. All is why you're told not to touch your face, you know, not to transfer this virus to say, your mouth, or your eyes or your nose.

People tend to get infected after they touch surfaces that have these droplets on them, and then they end up transferring that to their face more often than not, so touching the face gives the virus the opportunity to infect a new person, and that just means that the virus can continue to perpetuate itself. Now that being said, if someone is sick, having them wear a mask can help them keep from spreading those respiratory droplets to surface around them.

So masks are really great for people who are already sick, but they have a limited usefulness for people who are not infected. If you are healthy, wearing a mask does not guarantee that you will stay healthy. It doesn't limit your exposure to the things that can cause the COVID nineteen disease. Uh. It might discourage you from touching your face, which is a big part of it that actually, so it may help in that way directly. The mask itself

isn't really providing super protection for you. It may just discourage you from doing things that could easily uh cause you to transfer the virus to your face. But it might also provide a bit of psychological comfort. And while it may not serve any real shield purpose for keeping you well, psychological comfort can go a long way too. I know a lot of us are feeling a lot of anxiety, and we're seeking out comfort wherever we can

get it. As long as we're doing it in a way that is not increasing our odds of getting sick, I'm generally in favor of that. If it does increase your odds of getting sick, not only are you not really helping yourself, you're putting yourself more at risk. So the disease spreads quickly. But then how deadly is it? Well, it's a respiratory illness, and it's more dangerous for the elderly and for those with respiratory problems or for those

who have compromised immune systems. If you are younger and generally healthy, catching COVID nineteen would likely be unpleasant, but potentially you could treat it through self care at home, essentially staying home, staying hydrated, and waiting for the disease to run its course, for your immune system to fight off the virus. But ideally a medical professional would make the determination that you actually have the disease, that you have a testing kit of some sort, and that they're

able to determine whether or not you have it. I don't recommend people just decide that they should do any sort of self care routine on their own without consulting a doctor or nurse or saying, oh, it's probably not

the COVID nineteen. I should be fine. Getting tested is the most important part, and that's something that the United States, as I'm recording this is currently trying to get a handle on because they were We were woefully unprepared, despite the fact that we had a little bit of a heads up in this virus as it was breaking out. Now that being said, the World Health Organization currently estimates the mortality rate for COVID nineteen to be three point

four percent. That means three point four percent of the people who have been diagnosed with COVID nineteen have subsequently died. By comparison, the seasonal flu typically has a mortality rate of around one percent. So that tells you that COVID nineteen, based upon this estimate from the World Health Organization, is

much more deadly. But that estimate doesn't necessarily reflect reality because we don't actually know how many cases of the disease there really are out in the world, and without knowing that, you can't really draw a conclusion about how

deadly it is. Because if the disease is far more widespread than we thought, and the numbers of those who died are still you know, what we believe them to be now, it actually means the mortality rate is lower, right, because more people have the disease, but fewer people have died up from it. So we can't really make a

definitive conclusion. Now, more than eight percent of those who have passed away from this disease where sixty years or older, and more than of those who have passed away had other health conditions like heart disease that likely played a part as well. So it is a very serious disease, but it tends to be deadly for people who are older or who have these underlying health conditions that can

also play a role. And as you've likely heard, this particular virus was first discovered in Wuhan, China in December nineteen. I'll talk more about that process in just a moment, but first let's take a quick break. Doctors in Wuhan, China noticed an increase in the number of patients who are seeking treatment for a respiratory ailment that was similar to pneumonia at the very end of and the Chinese government confirmed those reports on December thirty one, two thousand nineteen.

A few days later, Chinese scientists announced they had identified a previously unknown virus as the cause of the disease, and that they believed the outbreak originated at a fish and poultry market in Wuhan. The Chinese media first reported on a death caused by this disease on January eleven. This was right around a really large holiday in China in which lots of people travel, and that gave the virus a ton of opportunity to spread to new hosts in the process. And I'll talk about how this virus

spreads further in a bit. By January twenty, we started seeing confirmed cases of COVID nineteen outside of China. The first places to report their own cases where South Korea, Japan, and Thailand. On January twenty one, doctors diagnosed a man in Washington State in the United States as having COVID nineteen. The man had recently returned from Wuhan, China. On January twenty three, the Chinese government began to take some pretty extreme measures in an effort to contain the spread of

the coronavirus. The government shut down all traffic going in and out of Wuhan and suspended all mass transportation within the region. The World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of International concern on January as reports of the spread of the virus were on the rise. A couple of days later, on February second, a forty four year old man in the Philippines died after being infected by the coronavirus, becoming the first person outside of China to

die after being infected. One story that got a lot of press, understandably so, focused on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was returning to Japan after a two week trip in Southeast Asia. The Jevities government required the passengers, of which there were more than thirty six hundred, to go into quarantine. A week later, the number of people who tested positive for COVID nineteen on that ship were in

the number of two hundred eighteen people. That made the Diamond Princess the largest site of infection outside of China itself. Kind of incredible to think that the two leading places where people were sick with COVID nineteen where China and this cruise ship. On February, the number of deaths in China due to COVID nineteen surpassed the number of people who had died in the two thousand two and two thousand three Stars epidemic. The country had more than forty

thousand confirmed cases of infection by that point. On February, the Chinese government announced that the probable source of the virus outbreak came from the pernicious habit of eating wildlife. That's a quote from Chinese media. The initial outbreaks all seemed to stem from that fish and poultry market in Wuhan. On Ferry twenty feet, Iran announced that they there were two confirmed cases of people with COVID nineteen in that country.

Later that same day, the government announced that those two patients had passed away, and the outbreak in Iran would later become one of the worst that we've seen outside of China. Another place that had a really severe outbreak and continues to be dealing with that is Italy. In mid February, Italy had five confirmed cases, but by February the number had grown to one fifty, so it was

growing super fast, super early. By the end of February, cases in Europe were spiking as people were traveling from areas of infection back home, spreading the virus as they did so. On February twenty nine, the US media reported on the first death in America following infection, and the global number of cases had reached around eight seven thousand. The virus continue to spread rapidly, and on March twelve, twenty twenty, the World Health Organization proclaimed COVID nineteen a pandemic.

So what does that actually mean. Well, an epidemic is when you have a lot of cases of a specific infectious disease in a particular place during a particular time frame. So if a massive number of people caught the flu in New York City at the same general time, like let's say it's in uh, you know, January, then you would say there's a flu epidemic in New York City. It's kind of a way to describe the severity of

an outbreak. A pandemic is when you have epidemics of the same infectious disease, but they spread across countries or even continents. It's a way of classifying the scope and scale of the threat. And there's something else I need to talk about. So the spread of COVID nineteen is a huge problem. For one thing, it poses a real threat to the elderly and to those with other medical conditions.

So while a relatively healthy person like myself might be able to weather getting sick and then make a full recovery, I would pose a threat to others if I were to try and go about my normal routine. While I'm infected, my activities could lead to some vulnerable person becoming infected, whether directly from me or perhaps someone else I encounter, So I have a responsibility to do all I can

to make sure that doesn't happen. And the other thing to keep in mind is that the economic impact of the outbreak has been really dramatic on communities all the way up to on the global scale. This disease is disrupting businesses all down the line, from giant corporations to independent small businesses. So it's not an overstatement to say that the COVID nineteen pandemic is going to cause many businesses to shut down. That's something we can't really ignore either.

One way to mitigate the spread of this disease is through what everyone now calls social distancing. Sometimes they jokingly talk about social distancing essentially means that what it sounds like, you don't hang out super close to other people, and if it's possible, you don't really go into large shared public spaces with a lot of folks, like you don't go to a lot of big gatherings of people. And this removes people from areas where the virus can easily

spread from person to person. It decreases the length of the outbreak as a result, because the virus won't have the opportunity to spread person to person if people aren't gathering together. And that's what we've seen in China. The government imposed some pretty extreme restrictions in an effort to reverse the trajectory of this disease, and it worked. It was really extreme, but at worked. We started seeing the number of new cases of COVID nineteen in China go

down day to day as opposed to increase. So while there were still people who are catching the disease or exhibiting the symptoms of COVID nineteen are being diagnosed as having COVID nineteen, that number was decreasing day by day. That's what you want to see, you want to That's why they talk about flattening the curve. You want to get away from having a larger number the next day than you had the day before. And that brings us to the concept of teleworking, which plays very directly into tech.

Tech is one of the things that enables the possibility of teleworking for people. There's been a lot of companies that are offering at least some employees the option to tell a work. Some companies are mandating that employees stay home and tell a work. I think anyone who can tell a work should do it. Not just so that these teleworkers can avoid getting sick, but that is really important. I don't want anyone to get sick. But also there are millions of people who will not have this luxury.

They will not have the option to tell work. They there are companies that might not offer them the opportunity. They may not offer paid sickly, they may not allow workers to stay home and still collect a paycheck. And so the economic realities mean that many of these people can't afford to not go into work. If they don't go into work, they don't get paid. If they don't get paid, they can't pay their bills. A lot of

people are in this position. So for those of us who can tell a work, we absolutely should do that. In part to protect all the who don't have this option, we should reduce the chance that an already vulnerable population gets exposed to this virus. Stopping the spread of the disease is a collective effort. So those of us privileged with options have a responsibility to take those options on behalf of the people who don't have that choice. All right now, now I'm done being on my soapbox. Let's

turn specifically to tech. Meanwhile, there are chief information officers and chief technology officers and companies all around the world who are scrambling and working very hard to try and create solutions for employees so that one they can stay safe and too that the company can remain in business. I don't want to suggest that all companies are in their hearts, you know, deeply concerned about the fate of

their employees. I'm sure many of them are, but I'm sure there's some companies that are mostly concerned with how can we make sure this has the smallest economic impact on our business as possible, And that's how they're framing it. Either way, there are a lot of smart people out there trying to come up with solutions to let people work from home and not be around everybody else. So how has the spread of COVID nineteen impacted the tech

world in particular? Well, it's been pretty dramatic. I guess I could say there's some effects that are definitely very very visible, such as large conferences and festivals canceling or postponing until later in the year. But that's just part of it. We're going to start with that though, because they are high profile examples of how the coronavirus is disrupting the tech industry. And keep in mind, a lot of this is going to apply to industries as a rule,

not just the tech world. Lots of industries have canceled events, and we're seeing it go well beyond that now. Obviously, sporting events have been canceled, Musical festivals have been canceled,

so this goes well beyond just the tech world. But one of the earliest events to get the acts was the twenty twenty Mobile World Congress or m w C. The organizers announced that their decision in early February, at a time when some parts of the world, particularly parts of the United States, you had people wondering what the big deal was. You had folks saying like, I don't see how risky this is to me. It seems weird

that you would cancel this event. It was supposed to take place between February and February in Barcelona, Spain, but uh, it didn't got canceled. In The Mobile World Congress is a trade show that focuses on the mobile communications industry, so stuff like smartphones, which I would argue makes it

really really imperative to not hold that event. People handling a smartphone could end up passing the virus from one person to the next, or till lots of people because these smartphones would be handed around like craziest people are taking looks at the newest and latest and greatest technologies. That also reminds me that when you're cleaning your hands and stuff, you also want to occasionally really clean your smartphone, like really use an antiseptic cleaner to to clean that screen,

because that is a magnet for um for for bad stuff. Anyway, the g s m A, which is the organization that organizes the Mobile World Congress, called it off no pun intended after several high profile companies had already pulled out

the event out of concern regarding the virus. So in some ways you could say the g s m A was being really proactive, and otherwise you might say that they didn't have much of a choice because some very big, big companies had already said that they weren't going to attend. And at some point you have have to ask yourself, do I have enough exhibitors here to hold an event. Either way, they made the decision to cancel. It's not an easy one to make. We saw the same thing

happen to E three. That's a trade show that was supposed to happen later this year and now has been canceled. That video game trade show is the one that takes place in Los Angeles, California, each year, and that conference was already struggling after some changes to its format. There was a data breach scandal in which thousands of attendees, including developers and journalists, had their personal information leaked on

the internet. Some of those people ended up having to change their phone numbers and get new email addresses as a result of that because they were getting harassed, and essentially it was equivalent to getting docked. It was terrible, and there was also a general trend of companies declining to participate in E three in favor of holding their

own events, either in person or online. So the coronavirus was another blow to E three, and there was a lot of talk in the that, you know, the companies that were still planning on attending, we're starting to think about withdrawing. And so the e s A, the organization that throws Z three that organizes it, made the decision

to cancel the conference entirely this year. That's actually led to a lot of folks in the games industry and the game's journalism industry to wonder if E three will be able to recover from this, because again, it was already the subject of controversy and scrutiny leading up to the cancelation, So there's some people wondering will it come back for one or is this the nail in the coffin Sticking with games, companies like Sony and Facebook and

a few others pulled out of the Game Developers Conference or g d C, and as that name implies, this is an annual conference that brings together game developers from around the world. The g d C event typically includes an award show, some networking events, and some workshops where developers can learn new skills and share their expertise. The organizers decided to cancel the planned in person g DC event for and instead pivot into a virtual conference where

developers will be able to connect in online sessions. Then they later announced that they planned to hold an in person event in August in San Francisco as a sort of makeup date for the original g d C. Speaking of developer conferences, Apple has also canceled their in person Worldwide Developer Conference or w w d e C. That's

one of the big events that Apple holds each year. Now. Ostensibly, the w w DC is meant to give developers hands on time with Apple technologies so that developers can go on to make the next generation of OS and iOS apps, and that definitely happens, and it is a big deal. But Apple also uses the w w d C to unveil cool new products and features and technologies, so there is a big pr element to this event as well.

But then it's Apple. And besides, everyone does this now to some extent, so I can't really, you know, throw shaded Apple, because plenty of other companies like Google do the same thing. Like the g d C, Apple has moved its plans to an all online format. All the way that they pitch it sounds like that was the plan all along. It wasn't, but that's how it's coming

across in some of the the press releases. The Apple event doesn't happen until June, which when you think about that that this is an event that wasn't even scheduled to happen until June. You can realize that this is a nod to the fact that we really don't know how long it's gonna take for us to get a handle on this coronavirus outbreak, which is a sobering thought, you know, the possibility that we could still be dealing

with it as late as June. Of One enormous event that got the axe was south By Southwest in Austin, Texas. This ten day festival is famous for bringing in thousands of people into the city and has tracks of programming for the tech sector, for filmmakers, and for music, and the organizers had to make this tough decision to cancel the whole thing. And this was an enormous blow to Austin and to the folks who were banking on south By, as the cool kids say, as a way of getting

attention and investments. South buys where Twitter got its first serious attention, you know, before anyone knew what it was. It kind of got a splash at a south By. Numerous apps, some of them are worth billion of dollars today.

We're first really unveiled at a previous South Buy and filmmakers compete to have their works screened at this festival, and that's a big deal because if you land it, if you get a screening for your film at south By, there's the possibility that a distributor might pick up your movie and give it a wider distribution and then suddenly millions of people can see your film. So having the

festival get canceled means these filmmakers lose out on that opportunity. Now, all that being said, I think canceling the event was the right thing to do because we're in a pandemic, even though it means that you know, musicians would lose gigs. Austin is going to have a major setback because a lot of businesses depend upon South Buy for helping out

with their annual revenue. So it shows that just because the decision is the right one, because public health is most important, it doesn't mean that the decision is an easy one. And I don't want to say like, well, of course they went with this or that should have been the case all along. It's not that easy of a decision as it turns out. All right, I'm going to take another quick break because I'm getting tongue tied.

But when we come back, we'll talk about a few more cancelations and then other effects that the coronavirus has had on the tech sector. Okay, guys, we're not done with cancel culture just yet. And no, I didn't come up with that joke. That joke has been done a billion times. You're probably all tired of it, but I figured I had to get my version in there too. So Google has canceled both the Google News Initiative Global

Summit and the Google Io Developer Event. I O is uh the one where Google will unveil new products, new services and give developers sort of a boot camp approach to how to use Google technology to build apps and stuff like that. Facebook canceled a marketing of event and then went on and took a bigger step and canceled their F eight conference, So that's not happening anymore. IBM s Think Conference, which I have attended in the past, has also been canceled, although now IBM plans a digital

event in its place. I haven't heard more about that yet, but I'm excited to learn exactly what that means. Just before I came in to record this episode, I saw news that Microsoft has now canceled it's Build conference also for developers. That one was originally scheduled to happen in Seattle on May nineteen through the twenty one, and there are lots of others. There's the Adobe Summit, which takes place in Las Vegas at the end of March. Now

it's going to be an online only event. There's def Con China, which was supposed to happen in Beijing in April, but now that's being postponed. Uh. There's the Red Hat Summit twenty twenty that's been converted into an online event. The list goes on and on. Now there are a few conferences that, at least as of the time of this recording, are still scheduled. Some were already slated for later in the year, so presumably will be on the other side of the pandemic by then and it won't

be an issue. These include things like the Cisco Live event, which happens at the end of May in Las Vegas, which might be a bit ambitious, or the Oracle Code one event that's currently scheduled for September. By the time you hear this podcast, some of those details may have changed, so if you were planning on attending a specific conference or event or festival, make sure you look into it to see if it's still scheduled or maybe if something has changed. And of course the tech events again are

just one victim of the spread of COVID nineteen. Lots of other large gatherings, from music festivals to sporting events have likewise been canceled, postponed, or otherwise affected. So those are the big, big profile ways that the COVID nineteen disease and the coronavirus have impacted technology, but there are lots of other ones that may not be quite as

visible depending on where you are. For example, over in China, this was very visible if you were in China, stores were closing, some of them were closing before any sort of mandates were being listed from a government perspective, But we're coming from a corporate perspective. Apple, for example, closed its stores in Chinese cities fairly early on, but let

me get back to that a little bit later. And you also saw companies like Tesla, Samsung, Microsoft, and Google closing offices and manufacturing facilities in China, and an effort to mitigate the spread of the disease and this is

where we get back into the whole issue with supply chains. Now, I've talked about supply chains a lot in recent tech stuff episodes, but generally speaking, we're talking about the sequence of components and events that have to happen in order for us to get access to the X that we want, right, because different parts of those products are made in different manufacturing facilities, many of them, in fact, I'd argue most

of them are in China. So if you look at a smartphone, then a couple of manufacturing facilities are going to be responsible for the vast majority of all the pieces that come together to make that smartphone work. And while most of those facilities are not located in Wuhan, they're actually located in other areas of China. It was this disease was still impacting the whole operation of getting

those components manufactured and assembled into final products. So part of that was because the disease was, you know, going outside Wuhan, although China was doing its best to contain the disease as fast as possible, and that meant that companies needed to shut things down in order to prevent the spread from getting even worse. Another part of it is that Wuhan is part of the the shipping chain

for stuff coming out of China. So while it wasn't necessarily being manufactured there, a lot of the shipping goes through Wuhan, and with so much of the population essentially out of commission, that meant that it can no longer

really fill that role. The result for the rest of the world is that we either have seen or we will see shortages in certain products as we wait for this supply chain and shipping chain to ramp back up after the you know, the outbreak has sort of subsided in China, so it's kind of a on a delay timer if you think about it, because it's going to take a while for those effects to get to the point where we can notice them. And honestly, right now we've got other concerns on our hands which we should

be washing. But you get it right, like you could expect there to be shortages and things like computers or smartphones or tablets or other electronics because the places that are responsible for putting them together have been shut down for a couple of weeks. So that's one way that we've seen the impact on the tech industry. Um another is that a lot of companies have put in travel restrictions to parts of the world, including China. In fact, primarily China. That was more of an effort to prevent

the outbreak from expanding beyond China. Unfortunately, that didn't really matter because if you look at the timeline, there are there are tools online, by the way, where you can look at the spread of the disease as an animated map, and it's remarkable how quickly it spreads. So as it turns out that limiting employees traveling to China probably helps slow down the spread of the disease, but it didn't

stop it. I mean, it's everywhere now, and in fact, that's one of the reasons why I find travel bands at this point point to be a little um useless, not even counterproductive. It's not necessarily counterproductive. Maybe in some cases it is, but it's it's more like the saying of you shut the barn door after the horse has already gotten out. Well, that's saying, you know, summarizes it right. The problem is there. The problem. The problem is that

the horse is no longer in the barn. It doesn't help you to shut the barn door after the horse has already gotten out well. The disease is now worldwide, so banning travel to certain areas doesn't necessarily stop the spread the disease. Social distancing will do much more than just you know, trying to feel like that that you know, you don't go to China anymore, you don't go to Europe anymore. That's not going to be nearly as effective. Now.

I did say at the beginning that there's some better news, and part of that better news is that, as I said earlier, China has observed a decrease in the number of cases day to day, like a number of cases diagnosed day to day, and it indicates that the country has started to really get a grip on the disease outbreak and that it may be on the downside of an epidemic, and that as a result, some companies like Apple are starting to reopen their operations because the risk

of the spread of infection has now declined. We are seeing it kind of fade away, so that that's encouraging, not just because we're going to have our tech. I mean, that's kind of superficial to say, like, oh good, I will be able to get my smartphone or whatever. But more that we know we can defeat this if we take the proper precautions, if we take the right course

of action. Unfortunately, that means having to disrupt our lives in the short term, but it means that we decrease the length of time that we have to deal with

this in the long term. So if we do practice this social distancing, if we do practice good hygiene, if we do make sure that we sequester ourselves, if we if we pick up that we've got some symptoms and then we go get tested and it comes up positive as COVID nineteen, if we quarantine ourselves so that we don't infect others, we can slow down and stop the spread of this virus and thus reverse this course of action.

If we don't do that, if we continue to try and go on as business as usual, and we're like keep a stiff upper lip and you know, you go

to work even if you're sick. If we try and muscle through that, and some of us don't have the options of others as I mentioned earlier, But if we go with that route, then we're just going to see this outbreak get worse and worse until it gets about as bad as it possibly can be and while many of us, in fact most of us will be able to get to the other side of it after just being sick for a couple of weeks, a lot of people won't and that and that alone should be enough

for us to say, we need to make sure we're making the right choices so that we are not putting other people in danger. So that's what I wanted to really stress. And we're going to continue to see the repercussions of this illness throughout all of the economy, not

just the tech sector. But it's going to be something that is uh going to be felt for a long time because it's going to start companies having deeper conversations about what to do in these sort of events, to have kind of a disaster preparedness policy and play so that employees can remain safe and productive. If you don't have safe employees, then you can't do your business anyway. So even from a business perspective, if you just want

to be cynical, it makes sense. It also means that we're getting people discussing things like like healthcare policies here in the United States. That is a huge topic of discussion. As we are also in an election year, and in an election year, you've got candidates who are arguing about the best approach toward healthcare. This particular outbreak has highlighted

some let's call them deficiencies in US healthcare policy. And there's not not total agreement on what the right course of action is, but a lot of people say something needs to be done. An increasing number of people say that tech may play a part in that when we finally see some changes coming down the line. It certainly has the capacity to But ultimately, I want all of you guys out there to be safe. I want you

to be healthy. I want you to be as careful as you can be in an effort to not get sick and not to spread the disease to other people. And I want you to send me ideas for future episodes, things that maybe are a little more lighthearted or just something that you've always been curious about in the world of tech. So if you have a suggestion for a future topic of tech Stuff, reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter. The handle we use at both is text stuff h s W and I'll talk to you

again really soon. Tex Stuff is an I Heart radio production. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.