NASA Is Worried About Infectious People Returning From China
Keith’s note: The following is being added to all of the NASA advisory group meeting notices such as the one for NASA Advisory Council Human Explorations and Operations Committee Meeting: “Note: As a precaution, individuals returning from China will not allowed into NASA Headquarters until the 14 days of observation and self-care period has expired, and they are determined not to be infectious. Attendees to the NAC Human Explorations and Operations Committee meeting who are returning from China should only participate virtually through the provided dial-in audio and WebEx, until the 14 days of observation and self-care period has expired.”
You’d think that NASA would be just a little more explicit as to what “infectious” means i.e. identify the specific reason – like “Coronavirus” or “COVID-19”. Reading/refering to the actual CDC guidelines might be useful. NASA is simply treating all persons who have been in China as high risk. Oddly there have been no such warnings issued for other NASA meetings. And the concern amongst experts now is that the threat is no longer limited to people who have been in China. When agencies and organizations are inconsistent on things like this people simply get more confused. Just sayin’
My university issued such a warning over two weeks ago and indicated it wouldn’t fund any travel to China until further notice. You have to wonder why NASA was so far behind the curve on this.
Also what about the new hotspots in South Korea and Italy?
This could (should?) spur a boom in teleconferencing.
I think it’s pretty clear Mr. Bridenstine can personally do better video conferencing, with his cell phone, than the official NASA support people usually manage. The track record isn’t encouraging. (Although I just got off one video conference which went quite well, but handled by a NASA contractor rather than NASA itself.) If NASA tries to get through a quarantine by teleconferencing, it’s going to be a mess. With luck, it will be the sort of mess which is just annoying but annoying enough to get senior management attention.
Probably the new hotspots will be handled in the same way China has been. The original travel warnings and restrictions were for Hubei, not China as a whole (in general, I don’t know about NASA specifically.) So expect something similar for northern Italy and south-eastern Korea. I think Qom is already off the table for NASA travel, since Iran is a listed country. How effective those sorts of travel restriction will be is probably far off topic for NASA Watch.
If only NASA had a good place to quarantine people.
They actually used to…. back in 1969 they had that special trailer that quarantined the Apollo 11 astronauts (looked more like a customized Air-stream). Maybe they ought to get that back from whatever museum has it. (Of course now, it may get rather crowded.)