I wonder how many companies will still want all the physical office complexes once they really see that a lot of work can be done from home.
There’s still value in face-to-face meetings, but that doesn’t mean people need to be in the office M-F. I get emails now from co-workers no more than 100 feet away. It’s often the preferred method for communicating even when a quick chat in person would do.
I think a lot of it is simply distrust on the part of management in the workers. They think if workers worked from home they’d goof off, etc.
There are so many plusses to working at least some of the time from home that I hope it becomes more common.
The downside is that when your home is your office it can be harder to get that needed separation between work and personal life.
Dejin
5553
I don’t know if this is an accurate measurement of how much work can be done from home. I know I’ve been wasting a lot more time reading the news and just generally being anxious than I normally am when working from home.
I often work from home, but right now my productivity is definitely lower than normal.
[Edit] By way of context, I’m in lockdown in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Tim_N
5555
We will be more accustomed to governments telling us what we can and can’t do, where we can and can’t go, and that elections will sometimes be cancelled. I hope I’m wrong.
newbrof
5556
I don’t get it, the numbers for Germany are 15000+ infected, 44 dead. If I look to France or South Korea, or US, they have way more dead. With our numbers, I would expect 100+ dead. We are totally outliers.
I wish there was a good reason for it, like our hospitals are better equiped than other countries. But I fear, that the true reason might be that not all dead were tested for the virus…
Or that you are testing a lot of population like SK.
As others have said, we are at the point case numbers are becoming an useless metric. It seems mortality along age cohorts is pretty stable along countries, perhaps doubling in case of collapse (SK vs Italy). So overall critical patients per population and overall deaths seem the better measures.
newbrof
5558
no we are unfortunately not testing like SK. I would not know where to go for a test, my doctor is on vacation until end of month. I read only people in the health services, hospitalized patients, people coming from high risk regions are being tested. Or if you belong to group of people with history of health issues at a certain age. So we do not have general testing.
It makes me mad, I have this cough and headaches for 2 weeks and it could be anything. A guy went to a doctor, had fever, got tested, but had no Corona virus. The corona virus is already in our head everywhere.
Man, I’m ashamed of being Spanish. We are doing it worse than Italy, they still have more infected, but our curve is more pronounced, in one week I believe we will surpass them. So, it seems to me we are going to be on the top 5 of worst managed countries for the pandemic, when this clears out and we can compare and contrast.
There’s a good two orders of magnitude freedom in the infection mortality rate (deaths per infected) - we won’t know this until we have antibody testing, and it will depend a lot on how badly healthcare systems are overwhelmed.
The case fatality rate (deaths per confirmed case) will depend hugely on the scale and biases involved in the testing regime, which is why you’re seeing different numbers across all sorts of countries.
Soma
5561
All the technology and bureaucracy used to contain the virus in China can be used to exert even more control on the Chinese population. 1984 isn’t fiction, it is reality in China, and CCP is Big Brother. That is fucked up.
Yes, I think that once we are past the main health crisis (and I doubt that will require anything like 12 months), this is likely to be our next big problem.
There is this sense that bad times bring us together, but there is a stronger tendency that to include authoritarians using a crisis to unite people around shared suspicions and scapegoating.
I’ve already seen some of that around me, although certainly plenty of people are being great.
Alstein
5563
People will revolt after 6 months of this, you’ll see mass civil disobedience, and in the US, they’ll vote in politicians pledging to stop it, even if they disagree with everything else. We’re too social to keep this up for too long. At a certain point the death toll will become acceptable.
One thing I’m seeing is that friends of mine who are agroaphobic are becoming stressed from everyone else living the same lifestyle now.
Being one of the first countries where it broke out free, we are going to be one of the worst managed, I have no doubt. The later the spike in cases the earlier most countries are doing lockdowns (even the US at an state level). Asian countries don’t count, they play with field advantage with all that collectivism! (I kid, I wish we were Asians).
But we are not spiking faster than Italy. You need to look at deaths, not cases. Cases are useless now.
We are pretty much in the same curve as Italy, 8 days behind.
In terms of response of some countries:
Italy: Lockdown March 8th at 366 deaths. However, they did an earlier localized lockdown.
Spain: Lockdown March 14th at 196 deaths. Measures taken earlier that week in Madrid and the Vasque country.
France: Lockdown March 17th at 175 deaths.
Germany will maybe lock down this weekend at far lower deaths. The UK and the US have already started some lockdowns (even if not at a national level). I am doubtful those measures are enough, but they might help. They seem ready to step up, probably at comparable casualty levels.
The right response was China and Korea, but no western country was ready to take those measures, probably because we haven’t dealt with potential pandemics as much.
Next time I think everybody willbe much faster.
The UK is fucked
As I mentioned on the UK thread, one of the largest national BBC news radio shows, favoured by the elderly, is platforming a far right wing Brexiter figurehead who are telling everyone to go down the pub (he owns the biggest chain) and carry on as normal
Thanks for that, I shared it with one of my colleagues who has contacts in at Western Australian Health Dept.
Alstein
5567
talk about a misleading name.
Let me guess: three weeks paid is mandated by law and/or less than the company’s responsibility for unemployment claims?
Alstein
5569
There’s zero mandated by law. This is NC.
Man, Romney has really found his inner Karl Marx.
