The Latest News Updates

Every once and awhile a news story captures your attention yet it doesn't seem that important to others. Fortunately we have the Internet that allows us to stay on top of the latest developments. That happened for me this week.

Two days ago, I received an e-mail from one of the sailing magazines I read regularly. They shared a story about a fellow sailor having problems off the coast of Mexico. He is in the process of bringing a record-breaking sailboat to Baltimore where he will begin to make some records of his own. Unfortunately he had some problems with his boat and is now considered lost at sea.

This is a story close to my heart as once I embarked on a trip from Honolulu to Los Angeles in a 37-foot sailboat. I left Hawaii a day or two after a hurricane came close to the Big Island. Once outside the reach of mobile phone service the only communication I had with my wife was via expensive satellite phone or e-mail using ham radio. One night early in the trip, she awoke panicked that my boat might be in danger and she waited anxiously for my daily e-mail. I'd spent 3 days sleeping off sea sickness and really didn't do much other than my 2-hour watches every 6 hours. Otherwise I was fine. 21 days after leaving Hawaii, I landed in Los Angeles and quickly caught a flight back home to Salt Lake. My whole family was very glad to see me.

Having crossed an ocean in a small boat, I know what Donald Lawson is going through as he tries to sail his boat on a vast body of water. Fortunately for me, I had 3 other guys on the boat with me and we all worked together well. Donald is alone and we don't know his fate yet. I keep an Internet search page open with several key words and update the search every hour to see if there is any news. I'm hoping he is still alive, as I'm sure his wife and family do too.

So far we know that the Mexican Coast Guard has found his overturned boat, which is a good starting point. The US Coast Guard has joined the search and as of several hours ago has confirmed they are also near Captain Lawson's boat. Unfortunately we don't know any more than that. I keep hoping there will be good news.

Normally I would go to major news networks like CNN to catch updates on the story. Unfortunately this is such a niche story, they are not even covering it. The Baltimore Banner has regular updates but they seem to keep repeating the same information over and over. They also have a cap on the number of free stories you can read from their site without subscribing. As this is the only time they will have a story I am interested in following, I don't feel the need to pay money.

I looked at the US Coast Guard's official site. They have a number of daily press releases but nothing yet on this story. I have also scoured Twitter without any luck. Usually they are a great resource for the latest updates and I use Twitter during ski season to find the latest updates on snow-induced road closures.

I sincerely hope there is a happy ending to this story. Unfortunately as each day passes, those chances diminish. I hope that when we do find the outcome, whether good or bad, it is not something that appears as a footnote instead of a headline, which it deserves. Until then, I'll be looking for updates.

Someone With One Watch Knows What Time It Is

I just got back from the local grocery store as I picked up dinner for this evening and what I saw surprised me. On an evening like tonight I have the option of a protein shake or a bowl of low-calorie soup. When I went to the soup isle, only a few cans of soup remained. Normally there would be hundreds of cans, if not thousands. I decided to head to the toilet-paper isle and as expected, not a single roll could be found. It looks like the Novel Coronavirus (officially COVID-19) has the general public in fear.

Unfortunately this is not a rational fear. At least not yet. Let's look at some numbers. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and according to this morning's report, there are only 62 people in the United States with the illness and no deaths yet. But wait a second, didn't we hear that 6 people in the state of Washington have died for COVID-19? Let's look at what the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has to say. They are reporting 43 cases with 2 deaths. How about CNN? They are reporting over 100 (102 as of this moment) cases in the US with 6 deaths. Which one is correct? This comes down to one of my favorite sayings: "Someone with one watch knows what time it is, someone with two isn't quite sure." Let's talk about why the numbers are different after we do a small amount of math.

Let's take the worst case numbers and divide the number of cases by the population of the United States (331 Million). That means you currently have a 0.000031% chance of getting the disease. Those are pretty slim odds. I know I wouldn't want to take any chances but buying up all available soup and toilet paper seems extreme.

Ok, so back to why the numbers are different. CNN has different numbers because it is a news agency and wants to report the latest numbers on COVID-19. Both the WHO and the CDC update their numbers on a less frequent basis. The WHO reports daily and the CDC reports Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. They also have different protocols between the 3 groups. A news agency will include suspected cases while both WHO and CDC have to wait for verification. The difference in the later two groups boils down to minor technicalities in how they verify if someone has the illness or not.

Any time you are looking for accurate numbers it is important to read all of the fine print. One source may be more lenient while another is more strict. Unfortunately it can be difficult to decide which number to use. In non-life-threatening cases, it may not really matter and a rough number is all that is needed. Should the number of COVID-19 cases jump to a million in the United States overnight, it will be important to have the numbers we are getting from both CDC and WHO be a lot closer in value than they are right now.

Pokémon Go in Japan

I am in Japan and have enjoyed being away from the craze of Pokémon Go as it is not yet here. I have seen one or two newspaper articles and CNN clips about how insane things are getting with the game back in the US. I understand that the relative quiet without the game in its homeland is about to be disturbed. Yesterday's international edition of the Wall Street Journal had an article about how McDonald's is partnering with the game developers to have virtual characters located at their restaurants here in Japan.

I wondered how long it would take before businesses decided to cash in on the success of the game. I figured that if you had a virtual character standing out in front of your store, people would come and visit your establishment as a course of playing Pokémon Go. One of my coworkers told me this might be a bad idea because game players would visit your store but not necessarily purchase anything. Real customers would then see the crowd and avoid coming in. I guess McDonalds doesn't feel that way. At least not here in Japan.