Sysadmin with EBOLA? Gartner's issued advice to debug your biz

Analyst firm Gartner has departed from its usual areas of expertise to issue advice on how to combat the Ebola virus. The firm's advice, which it says it is offering for free because “issues of public safety deserve broad distribution in the public interest”. The advice is so earnest that it almost sounds comical. For example …

[Voland's right hand]

No magic quadrant?

Where is my magic Ebola magic quadrant... Aaaaa... Aaaa... Continues to throw toys out of the pram.

On a more serious note - this advice is comparable in quality to their usual CIO advice. Nothing to see here, move along.

[frank ly]

re. "... scarifying fevers."

That would be a serious fever that you'd remember every time you looked in a mirror.

[Destroy All Monsters]

I thought all was sorted?

The left has declared Ebola inquiétude another tentacle of the vast right-wing conspiracy, Obama has appointed a political operator as Ebola Czar and we are even bombing Ebola somewhere in Eurasia. So why the Gartnerization?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re. Ebola hoarding

My missus already does that.

Vileda mops, assorted cleaning chemicals AND a big box of assorted gloves.

My nice clean electronics workshop looks like something off "Extreme Hoarders" as it is, don't

give her any more ideas!! <g>

Anon because she has a smartphone and knows teh internetz.

[qwertyuiop]

How do I "horde" something?

"...a recommendation to horde cleaning supplies..." - I suppose if we got everybody in the office to keep one item then that might count. How many people would we need to qualify as a horde?

</pedant>

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: How do I "horde" something?

I dunno but a horde generally only manages to hit one acolyte once before it breaks.

[perlcat]

Re: How do I "horde" something?

Every time I read where someone wants me to "horde" something, I print it, and save it with my stash of such things. I'm preserving a large collection of them. A "hoard", if you will.

[TechicallyConfused]

I love Gartner

Seriously these guys are magical. I read the article in question and it is something akin to putting a warning label that a product contains nuts, on a packet of peanuts.

Other useful things to consider: -

- Water makes you wet

- Don't drink bleach

- Never eat yellow snow

I'm sure I could drum up an article full of them if anyone fancies paying me £100 a pop for a copy.

[chivo243]

Re: I love Gartner

Other useful things to consider: -

Gravity isn't just a good idea, it's the law...

[Velv]

Re: I love Gartner

Much as you may mock them and the content, history has shown us time and time again that the world is populated with people who have no common sense.

So Ebola isn't really a threat. But as part of your business continuity plans do you have something written down on the measures you'd take for a bad flu? Thought not.

[TechicallyConfused]

Re: I love Gartner

Actually yes we do. It is one of the many scenarios covered in our play book!

[Do Not Fold Spindle Mutilate]

Re: I love Gartner. In Canada we had the SARS epidemic

Management asked our software group to consider what should be done if SARS started to spread through the town. Our group was able to define what could be done by working from home. We felt the biggest problem would be getting management to declare an internal emergency to focus on production support and stop all development. We hoped, assumed, that contract developers would be still willing to work from their homes on production support if they were still being paid.

[Allan George Dyer]

Re: I love Gartner

"a warning label that a product contains nuts, on a packet of peanuts"

I've been wondering about that… peanuts are technically legumes, so they should be harmless to nut allergic people, but do many people with a legume-allergy incorrectly label themselves because they believe a peanut to be a nut?

[Fungus Bob]

Re: I love Gartner

"- Don't drink bleach"

WHAT?! How long has this been going on?! All my life people have come up to me and said "Fungus Bob, does this look infected to you?" or "Fungus Bob, hold these bare wires." or "Fungus Bob, pull my finger..." But no one has ever come up to me and said "Fungus Bob, don't drink bleach."

[Anonymous Coward]

One they forgot....

...if someone (not matter how fucking unlikely) comes into your office and starts to shit and puke everywhere and you decide to clean it up without any protection, then decide to wipe you mouth or eyes without any proper cleaning of hands and clothes, you have bigger heath issues to worry about.

[Mr Spoo's Owner]

Pandemic preparedness plan

Buy real estate on Tristan de Cunha!

[jake]

OH KNOWS!

IT'S TEH RADIATION! IT'S TEH AIDS! IT'S TEH CELLTOWERS! IT'S TEH TERRORISTS! IT'S TEH GLOBAL WARMING! IT'S TEH IS/ISIS/ISIL/(::yawns:: whatever)!

And now IT'S TEH EBOLA! We're ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!111!!!!11

Earth to the .gov and .news: I'm not going to become afraid of your scare stories when they are based on scientifically inaccurate principles and/or logistically impossible scenarios.

I am not quivering in my boots.

HTH, HAND.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: OH KNOWS!

You better start quivering, do you want a visit by the party van?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: OH KNOWS! - quivering ??

This is Jake ... from what I have seen a citizen who lives off the beaten track in the USA. My guess is that he has enough military hardware to fully supply an insurgency in any small to medium sized African nation?

Just a thought.

[jake]

@ Titus Technophobe (was: Re: OH KNOWS! - quivering ??)

I'm not "off the beaten track", I'm in the Sonoma Valley.

The only "military hardware" I have are a couple of small "civil war"[0] cannons[1], handed down from my Great Grandfather. The rest of the bits and pieces are tools necessary to remove varmints from a functional ranch, and/or to put food on the table ... except the Barrett .416, of course, which is a meditation tool.

Technophobe indeed, it seems.

[0] There is nothing civil about war. Ever.

[1] 10 Pound Parrott & 3" Ordinance Rifle.

[jake]

@DAM: (was: Re: OH KNOWS!)

Party van? We have hundreds of them all over Sonoma & Napa counties. No, please, do NOT send another party van. The locals are fucking sick of them. Thank gawd/ess that tourist season[1] is (nearly) over ...

I'm still not quivering in my boots.

[1] If it's tourist season, why is it illegal to shoot them?

[IDoNotThinkSo]

Re: OH KNOWS!

News for Jake:

We are all going to die, I'm afraid.

I just can't tell you when.

[jake]

@ IDoNotThinkSo (was: Re: OH KNOWS!)

Of COURSE we're all going to die, eventually!

Did you bother trying to read mine for comprehension?

[LucreLout]

eholma

Let’s say Ebola hits London. The period you really need to miss is the first month; Get through that and the government will be ordering people to stay home. So my work-based survival strategy is simple: Stay home, work from there. If work don’t like it, I can get sick with another type of flu and just be laid up at home instead. Let the contractors go in instead, they’re paid for it ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: eholma

I've been working from home for a few years now .. Started when I got snowed in one winter and now I only go in for an occassional meeting .. funnily enough I only seem to get a cold (man-flu) a couple of days after a visit.

I find offices full of noisy, sick or annoying people and are therefore best avoided ... For me that is not hard to do as all the work comes in via phone calls or email anyway and most of my direct colleagues are in other countries.

I guess if the office was more like one of those advertising or googlesque 'play'/work rooms or a place that has seen more than just a lick of paint every 10 years, then I might want to go in more.

[TechicallyConfused]

Re: eholma

If Ebola hits London it's only going to take one infected and infectious person to sneeze it up on a packed rush hour tube to create a real catastrophe. It's bad enough not catching a damn cold when you are on the tube everyday in the winter.

That is where the danger is. That is what would be keeping me up at night. That one person traversing the tube network, only just symptomatic, slightly ignorant, just got a bit of a cold coming on. 2 days, 6 tube rides later (not to mention co-workers who go sneezed and coughed on) and how many more people are infected. Now try go track them down - which tube carriages was the person on at what time and who else was on it. Easy to track people on an aeroplane - not so much the tube.

[SrsHXC]

Re: eholma

It's not airborne, and you'd have to be insanely unlucky (or lucky, depending on personal preference or how lonely / weird you are) to end up with a fellow commuter's bodily fluids in one or more of your orifices on your way to work. I'm not sure you'd be able to catch it on the tube even if you tried, despite the amount of close bodily contact.

[TechicallyConfused]

Re: eholma

@SrsHXC

Have you travelled on the London Underground during rush hour much? It's that crowded and intimate people actually get pregnant without realising it. It is not all that unusual to get coughed and sneezed on directly. . . . just one of the things I miss no I don't commute to central London anymore.

[Alistair]

AAAAaaaaargggggggggggh.

so done with the ebola panic syndrome.

amongst all the other OMG PANIC crap that's been falling out of the mainstream media of late.

1) im in IT. If there's the remotest possibility that there is an actively infected ebola patient in my country that has NOT been diagnosed, I can work from home. If they HAVE been diagnosed, they will NOT be wandering about leaving a trail of infected zombie patients behind them.

2) SARs taught a good percentage of the population in my country about hand washing. (okay - not all but better than 10%.)

3) Once I'm out of the house I'm not in the habit of touching my face.

4) You have to get boogers, spit, blood, wee-wee or poop from the actively infected patient into your mouth, your nose, your eyes, or into an open wound on your body.

sweat has been dismissed as a transmission vector. Tears *might* qualify, however the saline and any exposure to UV closes that one down quickly - it is considered an equal risk, but unlikely.

Exposure in this case is not being in the same building/aircraft, but wearing someone else's bodily fluids. Most of us tend not to be comfortable with dismissing someone else's blood/vomit/poop/urine on our bodies, thus will be sufficiently aware of that risk, and likely to seek appropriate medical support.

YOU WILL NOT GET EBOLA BECAUSE SOMEONE SNEEZED ON YOUR AIRPLANE! even if he is one of the dumbest human beings alive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: AAAAaaaaargggggggggggh.

As regards sneezing - the nightmare scenario (read Tom Clancy's "Executive Orders") is if Ebola acquires the capacity for airborne transmission.

If someone sneezes right on you, or on a surface you then touch, surely that counts as transmission by bodily fluids anyway?

[Alistair]

Re: AAAAaaaaargggggggggggh.

"It’s important to note that in the tests where the virus lived for days, they were kept in the dark, at low temperatures, around 4 degrees Celsius, which helped the viruses survive."

At room tempurature or above, and/or any exposure to UV, the lifetime on a hard surface is *minutes* not hours. UV and standard chlorinated cleaners will shatter the exposed DNA of this virus. Hell, lye based soaps will do the job as well. Cloth or soft surfaces, once the material dries, there are no transmission vectors remaining.

As noted, getting vital fluids directly *on* you is the method. -- I'll conceded that someone sneezes directly in your face, transmission is possible.

There are a *crapton* of VERY bad news articles going around that misquote a study that found that the virus could live for *days* on hard surfaces. The quote above is the missing element.

Unless you happen to have been in western africa, or one one of the two flights between Cleveland and Dallas, you have nothing to be terrified about.

To be safe:

Wash your hands regularly and DONT touch your face when about in public. (its hard. try to count how often you touch your face in the day)

[Tom 13]

@Alistair

If it was as easy to kill as you claim, it wouldn't be the threat that it is, even in Africa. It certainly wouldn't have infected healthcare professionals in first world countries who were following Ebola protocols. And it wouldn't be killing so many healthcare professionals in Africa who are treating the disease.

There are multiple problems with trying to combat Ebola. For me the biggest is the Keystone Cops routine the US and especially the CDC have been displaying. Things might be better on that front in Ole Blighty. Next up is that when you compare flu symptoms the only flag you have is previous contact with someone who was know to have Ebola.

So yes, it is something to be concerned about. Not panicked, but not blase either. At least until the Keystone cops start acting like people who have a clue about stopping the spread of a highly lethal communicable disease.

[Securitymoose]

Re: AAAAaaaaargggggggggggh.

"As noted, getting vital fluids directly *on* you is the method. -- I'll conceded that someone sneezes directly in your face, transmission is possible."

Surely this can now be classed as 'assault with a deadly weapon'? Think on that you folks without handkerchiefs or tissues!

[TechicallyConfused]

Re: AAAAaaaaargggggggggggh.

What about an infected person that sneezed "ON" you while on a packed tube train? Or wiped their nose or coughed into their hand, grabbed the hand raid next to your hand which you then also crabbed right before you put your hand to your mouth or nose to cough/sneeze.

Hands up who has managed to commute for the last 3 years on the tube without blaming it for the cold they caught in the winter?

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: AAAAaaaaargggggggggggh.

We_just_dont_know.jpg

[Jay 2]

Cabin Fever

Am currently giving my company's remote setup a good testing as I'm housebound for a few weeks whilst allowing various bones to fix themselves. Plus it means I keep away from any nasty germs at work. So various VM/Citrix solutions to use plus IP Phone and mobile. Sometimes people don't even realise I'm not in the office. Though I'm not sure how the infrastructure would all cope if > 50% were trying to do the same thing!

[Swiss Anton]

The meek will inherit the earth

"... Sixty per cent? If there's even a hint of Ebola here at Vulture South, we're all OUTTA HERE! ..."

And this is what really scares me when it comes to Ebola. I can live without my daily fix of El Reg, but when the tanker drivers and supermarket shop workers stop going to work, a lot of people will go hungry. And in any case, won't El Reg go off-line when the power station workers panic!

The economy will collapse and hungry mobs will fight for any scraps they can find. These secondary effects will kill many more than are directly killed by Ebola. And after the infection burns itself out and we crawl out of our bunkers, what then? Will there be enough experts left to reboot the UK. If not, then where I can get a shire horse and a plough, and does anyone know how to use them? This could be the end of the road for the west, ironically though the poorest people's of the world, those who still hand cultivate their food, will eventually prosper.

[Tom 13]

Re: The meek will inherit the earth

The critical claim from CDC and WHO is that Ebola is only communicable after the infection manifests itself. If they're off about that, we're in a world of hurt. Just yesterday they admitted that while they're sure that's true, it hasn't been tested. I will grant that given what we know about infectious diseases, it warrants a 95% confidence rating. Is that high enough for a disease that is 50-70% fatal?

The real problem here is that if you get an outbreak in one of our major metropolises they will self-evacuate. Except in this case that will mean dispersal of the disease to more regions. So they HAVE to nip this in the bud. The only way to do that is to quarantine everyone who has had contact with each and every infected person. Even if that includes 100 people on plane that was only a 1 hour flight. So far the Keystone Cops on this side of the pond haven't been willing to say and more importantly, DO that.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: The meek will inherit the earth

No panic before elections, remember?

OTOH, I hear this:

If President Obama is serious about tackling Ebola, he should look to individual intiative, as Ron Paul has advised. He writes in his weekly column, “Firestone Tire and Rubber Company has successfully contained the spread of Ebola among 80,000 people living in Harbel, the Liberian town housing employees of Firestone’s Liberian plant and their families. In March, after the wife of a Firestone employee developed Ebola symptoms, Firestone constructed its own treatment center and implemented a program of quarantine and treatment. Firestone has successfully kept the Ebola virus from spreading among its employees. As of this writing, there are only three Ebola patients at Firestone’s treatment facility ... Firestone’s success in containing Ebola shows that, far from justifying new state action, the Ebola crises demonstrates that individuals acting in the free market can do a better job of containing Ebola than can governments.”

[heyrick]

Sixty per cent? If there's even a hint of Ebola here at Vulture South, we're all OUTTA HERE!

Maybe what is not being directly mentioned is that your 60% workers are the ones still alive.

The other 40%? They became zombies, thanks to the magical zombie flu that turns people into zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Janitors

You really think your minimum wage cleaners are going to show up to remove the bodies (or at least the effluvia) from the offices?