Major US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has revealed it has prepared a three-tier escalating response to the growing COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis.
According to a document shared by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, the company is preparing for the worst case scenario, and has a three-tier escalation response plan in place.
The escalating tiers will be triggered when the confirmed numbers of infected reach specific levels, or if authorities enact quarantines in the localities of Coinbase offices.
The plan looks something like this:
Phase 1: implemented when there is more than 100 cases of endemic person-to-person transmission (i.e. spreading in the ‘wild’). This will involve increasing frequency of office cleaning and restricting visitors to essential personnel only. Employees will also be given the option of working from home.
Phase 2: implemented when more than 1,000 cases of confirmed infection, or authorities have enacted quarantines. All visitors banned from offices, or an airport-style screening of visitors using thermal imaging, and no more meals provided on-site.
Phase 3: if containment fails, employees will be ordered to work from home. Offices will be essentially locked down, and essential personnel may be relocated outside the danger area.
Apparently, Coinbase’s offices in Japan have already moved to Phase 1, while offices in the United States, Japan, Ireland and the UK are monitoring developments but have not activated plans. Coinbase has also restricted business travel to China, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan and South Korea.
Armstrong emphasised he feels confident the risk to employees is low, saying:
“Our expectation is that the measured mortality rate (once low-severity cases are included in the overall count) will fall significantly and that we’ll see limited transmission in the west, where there will be fewer high density multi-generational housing situations.”
AYO.NEWS says:
It’s good to see a major company taking steps to ensure the continuity of business, and we hope Armstrong is correct about the mortality rate. However, it could just as easily be argued (and was, indeed, hinted at by the WHO yesterday), that the Chinese response has actually lulled the west into a false sense of security.
While the prevalent attitude among the mainstream is that the west has “better healthcare” and is better equipped to deal with a pandemic, many experts strongly disagree, pointing out that healthcare systems in the west have very limited, and in many areas zero, surge capacity.
They also point to the fact that the Chinese have vast military, law enforcement and state manpower and apparatus at their disposal, along with a compliant population used to doing what it is told. As we have seen with crisis ranging from hurricane Katrina to the 2011 London/UK riots – this is evidently not the case in the west.
Others point to the fact that the assumed mortality rate is largely based on Chinese figures, which are widely believed to be fabricated or massively underplayed – with plenty of evidence to suggest most of those dying at home are not being recorded on official figures, and many that die in hospitals are being recorded as ‘heart failures’ etc.
This virus is evidently highly contagious, and its long incubation period (the 14-day assumption has already been revised to 30 days or more), makes it impossible to stop.
What Armstrong clearly has not accounted for is that, when healthcare systems collapse under sheer demand, out just-in-time supply systems stop working, and civil unrest breaks out, the mortality rate could skyrocket.
But, all is not lost. Just as with the 1918 ‘Spanish Influenza’ pandemic, the virus could mutate into a very mild form and disappear as quickly as it arrived. Until we see that, things will be on a knife edge and, as the CDC said yesterday, people should prepare for things to be very bad, and should expect their lives to be severely disrupted.
Staying with the virus crisis, yesterday we reported the 32nd ENADA International Amusement and Gaming Show, scheduled to be held in Rimini, Italy, from 11th-13th March has been postponed due to the emergency.
AYO.NEWS says features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited.
All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020.
