Tag: wuhan

• Wuhan is right now a driverless car capital

  Remember Wuhan? Well, it turns out that it is emerging as an important hub for driverless vehicles. Right now it is home to the largest fleet in the world:

  In Wuhan, 500 robotaxis, mostly run by Baidu, China’s rival to Google, recorded more than 730,000 ride-hailing trips last year. That compares with combined orders of more than 700,000 last year in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles, according to Waymo, the self-driving car developer of Google’s parent company Alphabet. Waymo told the Financial Times that it had “a couple of hundred cars” in each of the three fully autonomous zones.

  One of the things that is allegedly helping Chinese companies is that they have access to more data. The networks of cameras and other infrastructure that make Chinese cities the most surveilled in the world are, coincidentally, also good for training machine learning models.

  This has some industry experts speculating that China could reach an autonomous vehicle “tipping point” sometime around 2027. Meaning, the technologies will be significantly safer than human drivers (at least 10x) and ready for mass adoption.

  I don’t know if this is the right timeline. There have been many forecasts made over the years. But I do know that competition is good for progress and that having a rival can be an important motivator. And right now, this is yet another example of the US vs. China.

  2024.02.05

• Wuhan as tourist destination

  Seeing people out at bars and at amusements parks in this WSJ video about Wuhan, China is a little odd given that in this part of the world we are decisively in our second wave. But that is what is happening. In fact, the title of the video is, “Wuhan, Former Pandemic Center, Emerges as Tourist Hot Spot.”

  Over a recent public holiday, the city saw nearly 19 million tourists — the most of any Chinese city. And while tourist revenues are still thought to be down by some 30%, Chinese people are seemingly feeling confident enough to get back out and do things.

  Based on what the WSJ is reporting, this seems to be supported by a few things. International travel isn’t happening, so it’s becoming a boon for local tourism, which is not that dissimilar from what’s happening in other countries. (Domestic air travel is rebounding faster than international travel when you look at flight volumes across major airlines.)

  At the same time, Wuhan implemented what sounds like some pretty extensive testing, which is in turn supported by a national healthcare platform that presumably makes contact tracing easier. These things seem to have given people the confidence to go out again. And I don’t doubt that the same will eventually happen in the rest of the world.

  2020.10.17

• Leveraging mobile phone data during a pandemic

  Smartphone user data is hugely valuable at a time like this. Which is why governments all over the world from Israel to South Korea are using aggregated telecom data to try and track how their citizens are moving during this pandemic.

  Some are calling this a violation of digital rights. I don’t know enough to comment on that specifically, but I do know that the value to society as a whole is clear. It strikes me that if we knew (1) who was infected (you know this by doing widespread testing), (2) where people have been, and (3) where people are today, we would be in a much better position to contain the spread.

  To that end, Singapore’s Ministry of Health has been publicizing a surprising amount of information regarding its cases. And that data has been in turn made into interactive maps. You can see who is infected, where they live and work, which hospital they were admitted to, and so on. Is this an overshare? Or is this price of collective health and security?

  The New York Times has similarly gone and visualized the movement of people and the virus using data from major telecoms, Baidu, and other sources; though in this case it is more of a retrospective view of what went wrong as opposed to a proactive management tool. The argument they make is that Wuhan’s lockdown was too little, too late.

  

  According to the NY Times, 175,000 people left Wuhan on January 1st alone. Throughout the month of January, outbound travel from Wuhan accelerated as many started to fear a lockdown. About 7 million people left in January. Where they travelled to can be found here. Would it be too draconian to use this kind of mobile phone data to see who is obeying a lockdown and who is not?

  Images: New York Times

  2020.03.22

• Nurx announces home testing kit

  I have been debating whether I should continue writing about what is already on all of our minds, or if I should focus my attention on positivity and humor. The latter is hugely important at a time like this, which is why I have been trying to intersperse my thoughts, both here and on Twitter, with things like funny videos, dance music, and architecture.

  But the reality is that none of us know how this is all going to play out. As I mentioned yesterday, very few of us have a mental model for this kind of macro event. So it’s important for all of us to continue learning. Is our country taking the right approach? Are we doing enough? How long are we going to have to live like this and what does that mean for the global economy?

  The Financial Times published an invaluable story earlier this week about a small town outside of Venice called, Vò. With only 3,300 people, the town was supposedly able to test and retest all of its residents while the rest of northern Italy was growing as an epicenter for the Wuhan virus.

  In late February, they completed their first round of testing and found that about 3% of the town had been infected. But it’s important to note that about 50% of those that were infected were completely asymptomatic! However, because everyone was tested, the asymptomatic people got immediately quarantined.

  The town did a second round of testing about 10 days later and that point the infection rate had dropped to about 0.3%. Of course, if all those asymptomatic people had been out and about in the town of Vò, this would not have been the case. There now appears to be no new cases in Vò.

  It is for this reason that the WHO is urging diligent and repeated testing. But that obviously needs to be done in a sensible way. Having people line up — together — for hours upon hours is an obvious problem. Most people are not getting tested.

  Earlier this morning, San Francisco-based Nurx announced a home testing kit for the Wuhan virus. Supposedly it is the first of its kind in the US. (It’s not yet available in Canada — I asked). I don’t know how available it is to Americans or how accurate it is, yet, but I do know that something like this needs to become widespread.

  2020.03.20

• China is building two new hospitals in response to virus — should only take a few weeks

  

  This morning I got caught up on what’s happening with the coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, China, but that is now spreading quickly across mainland China. It’s unsettling. As of Saturday, there were over 1,287 confirmed cases in mainland China and 41 deaths. Right now, the belief is that the virus emerged from a seafood and meat market in Wuhan.

  The Wuhan virus belongs to a family of viruses known as coronaviruses, which includes the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that broke out in 2003 and killed 44 people in Canada alone. Typically, these viruses have jumped from animals (such as bats and pigs) to humans. The WSJ has a good summary of what is currently known about this coronavirus strain.

  All of this has overwhelmed hospitals in Wuhan and the videos accounts are heartbreaking to watch. The government has responded by vowing to build two new hospitals in order to fight the outbreak. But get this: the projected completion times are 10 and 15 days, respectively. The second hospital, to be called Leishenshan Hospital, is expected to house about 1,300 beds.

  I can’t even get a government signature on a single legal document within 10 to 15 days, and so it’s unfathomable to imagine building an entire hospital within that same period of time. Some of the media is calling this “infrastructure propaganda.” i.e. Look over here at all we’re doing for you. But there’s clearly a need and, if ever there was a time to move with a sense of urgency, now would be it.

  Photo by 海超 刘 on Unsplash

  2020.01.25