March 25, 2020: Asymptomatic COVID-19 Cases; WFH and Documentation
Good morning,
Hopefully you all have settled into WFH routines by now. I’d love to hear what yours looks like, feel free to leave a comment on the website!
On to the update.
Asymptomatic COVID-19 Cases
Caixin writes:
According to a member of the infectious disease prevention and control team in Wuhan, every day the city continues to record “several or more than a dozen asymptomatic infected individuals,” which are people that have tested positive for Covid-19, but do not feel ill and are excluded from published numbers.
More evidence of asymptomatic cases, but not yet much evidence of those cases causing transmission.
The article continues:
But the infectious disease prevention and control team has stayed behind, after Hubei’s provincial Covid-19 task force on Friday ordered it to remain until central authorities say otherwise, Caixin has learned.
It sounds like the authorities are still a bit spooked about something, possibly these asymptomatic carries. Good thing everyone in Wuhan (and the rest of Asia) seems to be wearing a mask.
Speaking of masks, in Monday’s newsletter:
If [mask-wearing really contributes to the prevention of spread], I would expect the social isolation measures in Italy and the US to be less effective than equivalent measures in Asia. And we may also see reduced transmission rates in communities that have widespread mask use, like in Asian enclaves of US cities.
Italy has now posted two days of decreasing daily infections (Monday and Tuesday). Perhaps this is evidence refuting my speculation about mask-wearing. Time will tell.
WFH and Documentation
Ripping ourselves away from the drip of coronavirus news, I want to talk about the excitement-inducing topic of documentation. (that was my sorry attempt at humor)
When an employee is in the office and they have a question, they’re likely to ask a colleague, especially if they are well connected with other people on their team. When that same employee is WFH, this can fall apart:
They can’t simply turn to a neighbor and start a conversation.
The “right” person might be offline at that moment.
There are fewer natural opportunities to ask the question, like during lunch.
They may not know their coworkers as well.
Documentation can help, but of course, time spent documenting is time not doing other things. So how much to document? Consider these levels of documentation:
An address book to know who to reach out to for categories of questions (e.g. “Sally built the website, talk to her if you have a question about the website”).
How-To guides that explain how to do various processes, like setting up a laptop for a new employee.
Detailed system information, designed to get all of the knowledge of an individual out onto paper so that individual could disappear (e.g. to a new job) and everything would be fine.
I recommend at least doing level 1 documentation for any project you work on. Then, if you find yourself answering lots of questions, write a level 2 how-to guide. Level 3 can be reserved for mission-critical systems where it would be catastrophic if you were unavailable.
That’s all for today!
See you tomorrow,
Andrew