Unless you work in a customer-facing environment which provides a crucial public service or facilities that cannot be accessed remotely, you should be challenging your employer as to why they are contributing to the spread of a public health epidemic and not putting the welfare of their employees in the forefront. And even if there is a good reason that you need to be in the office, they should be providing guidance and provisions to prevent contagion as much as possible (though with apparent aerosol transmission those are probably of questionable effectiveness).
The old saw about opinions being like assholes applies here. The only people who have opinions worth listening to are epidemiologists, who are and have been saying since the this was recognized as occurring outside of the Wuhan provence that restricting unnecessary interactions–even among small groups or individuals–is crucial to blunting the incidence of the COVID-19 disease. Everybody else, from the postman to the President, doesn’t have enough information, experience, or “natural ability” to express an informed opinion.
Social interactions within a tight circle are inevitable, as are interactions to get essential supplies and services when they cannot be provided remotely, but once someone goes outside that circle, they are potentially infecting or being infected, and thus contributing to the spread of the pathogen. The mathematics of this are not complicated; if the R[SUB]0[/SUB] > 1, then the spread will essentially be uncontained and will be exponential until the spread is so wide that there are fewer uninfected than infected people, and it will either infect nearly all possible connected individuals, or be isolated within a subpopulation in which it ‘burns out’ and is no longer being shed. The goal, at this point in this public health clusterfuck, is to limit the rate of spread enough to blunt the peak of incidence of COVID-19 so that hospitals do not run out of respirators, beds, and especially essential protective equipment for medical personnel before they can be freed or distributed, and maybe to give enough time to find effective treatments for the most critical patients who may otherwise die.
Is your employer an epidemiologist? Employers make their employees do unsafe things all the time.
IIRC, you work for the government in a role that isn’t conducive for daily telecommuting. I work for government too, and I have a number of coworkers who have positions that don’t allow them to work from home all the time. Those employees who can work from home all the time are encouraged to do so to keep down the population density in the building, for the sake of the others. I don’t know if the coworkers who at the office are any more in danger than someone working from home. But it is undeniable that their risk level is higher.
My uber boss just told us all employees older than 65+ are required to stay home. For some folks, this means they will not be working because they can’t do their jobs from home.
I work in R&D. We run experiments and tests that cannot be done remotely. It often requires multiple people to run them. My employer has put all of that on hold because they are a highly socially conscious company that is supporting trying to stem this. It isn’t just customer facing jobs that require people to be “at work.” There are many jobs in many areas that require a physical presence. Many seem to be saying that we need to stem this regardless of other costs. How many will lose health insurance by being put out of work and will die because they’ve lost that? This morning’s news: 3000 people laid off by a local company. That is just a start. How many are not going to seek medical care for something unrelated to this because they are so fearful of being near a medical facility? How many are going to skip prescriptions or other necessary medications because they want to practice social distancing? Related, how much of a shortage of drugs and other necessities will we run into because the people that need to produce and deliver these goods can’t be within 6’ of each other? Thelmalou
Pascal’s wager in a different form.
This thing is, literally, deadly serious. But we make decisions every day that cost of whatever we do and elect to let people die as a result. I’m doing what I can to keep this at bay, but at some point this country, and the world, will need to decide what cost is too high.
The first rule of rescue is never to place yourself as the rescuer in the position of becoming another victim. Finding ways to use retired or at-risk personnel in remote applications (e.g. telemedical advice and diagnosis, dealing with paperwork and bureaucracy, helping with the logistics of getting supplies and information where they need to go) is valuable, but placing more people at risk is the absolute stupidest thing to do. Yes, people are dying, and more are going to die, and it is arguable to the point of certainty that at least some of these deaths should be preventable given time to free up and distribute resources and look for effective treatments, but making a panic move to deal with the immediate crisis that puts more at-risk people in almost certain hazard is criminally short-sighted.
As for the people hoarding eggs, milk, and paper towels: chickens are going to keep laying eggs, dairy cows are going to keep producing milk, and civilization somehow endured for thousands of years prior to the advent of the disposable paper products which given the amount of water consumed and carbon footprint produced in producing and distributing them should be minimized anyway. Our food productions systems are so automated that this point that we could lose half of the population and not really be impacted in terms of food availability provided that people in critical production roles are protected and distribution systems are reasonably robust.
The economics of this disruption are something different, and have exposed some fragilities that go very deep into our economy and health care systems. The very people dismissing the notion of universal basic income and ‘socialist’ support programs are, ironically, now promoting it as a stimulus measure to prevent recession (which is probably unavoidable, but like contagion, anything that can be done to blunt the effect is worthwhile). Hopefully, one good thing that comes out of this mess is a reevaluation of not only our preparedness for public health epidemics but also the absolute economic necessity of having at least basic public support services for people in need rather than assuming that ‘the market’ will take care of everyone who needs it and that everyone who is poor or has medical issues is a victim of their own personal failings.
Your employer has a profit motive. Their “opinion” on whether it’s ok to interact at work can be disregarded.
The upshot, however, us that it’s way more likely that you and the rest of your coworkers will be infected. Therefore, it is MORE important for you to limit other interactions as much as possible.
What you are addressing here isn’t a problem caused by the outbreak; this pandemic is merely exposing serious fundamental structural problems with our economy and the conflict between ideological decisions in governance versus actual reality. The reality is that beyond the immediate term, there is almost no real value that is being lost due to the effects of this epidemic, nor is there any real threat that food and medical production or distribution systems are going to spontaneously collapse. Most people, and particularly those of working ages, appear to be showing mild symptoms and recover relatively quickly. In the scope of major pandemics, this is a love tap, and if the industrialized nations of the world can’t withstand the comparatively minor impact of this, that is an indication of critical structural problems.
As for the loss of revenue and jobs, it just highlights just how poorly an economy largely based upon unregulated market capitalism is at coping with unexpected challenges and changes. Essentially having people who are non-essential to the supply and distribution of basic goods and services for two weeks work remotely or self-isolate just shouldn’t be that deep of a wound For the life of me I can’t figure out why the trading markets are still operating amidst errant and almost fact-free speculation, or why the obvious need to limit the spread of the disease isn’t immediately evident to major employers and governments. The businesses most immediately affected by this shutdown–restaurants, bars, and public venues–are the least able to weather this kind of fiscal storm, and yet many limited their access or closed entirely even prior to public directives to do so in the interest of protecting employees.
While it is true that we make decisions–both individually and collectively–that impact the health and welfare of at-risk people and society in general, it is rare to see a decision that is so positively clear-cut that it can be stated in indisputable mathematical terms. Limiting social contact as much as feasible, even at the cost of a transitory economic hit (which can be blunted by ensuring that people in need of medical service, basic necessities, and other supplementary needs) has tangible, quantitative benefits in reducing actual deaths and the resulting longer term economic impact.
Unless the people you are speaking to are health care experts or work for the CDC, I don’t think their “opinion” matters that much. Most of the guidance I’ve received by the people who supposedly know what they are doing has been “less interaction the better”.
As a practical matter, I can’t really socially distance from my family. And I still need to go to the store to buy stuff. But we aren’t engaged in any social activities at this time.
I always enjoy Stranger On A Train’s analyses, particularly his points about (1) the media not differentiating between mild cases of CoV and cases requiring hospital or critical care (more likely to be CoVid-19) and (2) the need to let virulent strains disappear since one prefers milder strains to become more contagious if this must be.
Epidemiologists don’t know the number of people in a group that increases the risk. Because of the mathematics of network analysis, a group of 250 will be riskier than a group of 50, 10, 5, 3 or 2. People and governments are often slow to take advice or react to crises. This is a very poor time to be booking vacations or be like the Canadian who “joked he had coronavirus” causing a plane to be turned round.
In defence of the OP, I think he does not fall into this category. I think he is concerned about coronavirus and its transmission. Perhaps it is a poor analogy, but lives would be saved by lowering speed limits to 20 km/h or objectively considering the science of climate change too. I think the OP should question social gatherings and diminish the frequency, but there are limits to how guilty one should feel for briefly shopping for groceries, say, though this and other things are not risk free. I agree with most of Stranger’s points which are well articulated and deserve more attention.
Your post is dead on and there isn’t anything that I can argue against. Mostly.
No matter what we do people won’t be allowed back to work in 2 weeks. The layoffs will come and there will be a huge number of people out of work at the end of this. The workforce will remain, as you said, but the jobs won’t.
So now there will be people like me. Unemployed, on the other side of middle age, WAY too young for medicaid and unable to afford insurance on our own and pretty much unemployable. Who wants to hire a 50 something engineer? And what happens at that point when we get sick? I won’t starve, but I won’t be able to afford anything beyond ibuprofen for treating anything.
The economic impact of this is huge. I’m not sure how that can be argued. Real people will die because we are deciding to shut down the country. We are the train switch operator, trying to decide which track to send the train down. The only problem is that we have no idea which track leads where.
Please do tell us what you decide. I know you’re getting slapped around here, but you’ve sparked some good discussion.
I don’t think anybody should feel guilty for doing what they NEED to do. I think people aren’t always so good at differentiating between needs and wants, however.
I was horrified to find mold on my parmesan cheese yesterday. I was expecting to use that in a number of meals. Do I need it? No. Do I want it? YES. But I’m not going to go buy more right now. I’ll wait until I need to go to the store for other things so as to minimize my shopping trips, and I’ll be putting off that trip as much as I can, and eat other stuff in the meantime.
Like I said above, we all should do the best we can (without going insane).
This. And I am not saying we are doing the wrong thing, not at all. But, for example, we called the cops the other day because a kid showed up at school beat all to hell–2 black eyes, back a mass of bruises. This is not the first time we’ve called the cops on this dad. This time, the kid was removed–he’s with a family member. But his younger sibling and his mom live with a monster, still–a monster who is now facing incredible financial and emotional stress. What do you think is happening in that household?
Remember Andrea Yates? We will have that happen. If you were half way to thinking the best thing you could do for your kids was to kill them, to save them from the world, and then you get locked in a house alone with them, while plague and earthquakes and locusts rain down? We have almost certainly already had mass suicides and murder suicides that just haven’t been found yet.
Thousands, tens of thousands of students will never make up for the educational deficit this will cause. I don’t know what the economic outcomes will be, because we’ve never had demand totally collapse all at once, while the fundamentals remained more or less in place. We may bounce back, pretty quickly, like fast forwarding the Great Depression WW2, and the post-war boom. Or we might have half the country drop into poverty and never recover.
I don’t know what the right thing to do is, or what the future will be like. I am terrified and clueless. But while it’s true I can walk alone and it’s true I don’t need to visit friends–I don’t, and I won’t–but there is no bottom to the list of horrible unintended consequences this will have.
Some neighbors decided it was Decameron time and organized a little karaoke party. I would say it goes to show you never know how people will react, but that sort of thing is 100% expected.
A lot of folk have said this sort of thing, but let me turn this around - how many posters here are health care experts/epidemiologists? As much as I respect Stranger, what are his bona fides?
Not intending to dis anyone, but most of us are in similar positions of trying to find, interpret, and apply the best info in the manner we feel appropriate. Not that it matters too much, but the cellist in our hotzone trio (name for a band?) yesterday, has a PhD in microbiology, as does her husband.
Good luck to everyone navigating these uncharted waters.
Oh, believe me - I’m going to quit my job, and my wife and I will isolate in different rooms within our home encased in Purell-filled body condoms. When the beans and rice run out, we’ll likely eat the dog.
Actually, I figured one approach would be to combine public safety with second amendment rights, and declare that if someone coughs in public, anyone who happens to be packing should be encouraged to shoot them!
Tell me about it. The woman in my county who became ill in Louisiana then traveled by plane through at least three airports to reach Wilmington, NC before she visited her physician and was tested positive for COVID-19 is a case in point.
She knew she was sick, but she either didn’t think it was COVID, or she knew it was and didn’t want to be quarantined far from home. Which wrong decision it was really doesn’t matter, it resulted in many people being exposed to a symptomatic victim.
Yeah probably not really 2 weeks and economic impact is already huge if you count something like stock market value, which while itself disproportionately affects the upper half economically (and the upper half within that half, and so on) signals it’s serious economically.
However and you might agree, I really can’t see an argument in favor of carrying on anything like usual in the social sphere, a few friends come over to listen to music…I would say don’t. Just walking around my NJ city yesterday going to the supermarket (a necessary risk at some point). Young parents with their kids (no school) in the park casually chatting, right up close to one another. I can’t understand their thinking. Right now only one in 10,000 people here is a confirmed case (though that’s far higher than national avg ) but as we all know we still need to get a much better handle on the real number of cases. Thing is, it’s quite likely we can get much better info on that in a matter of weeks (confirmed cases become a significantly better indicator of real total cases). In the long run we humans need social contact, but a few weeks of radical social cut back isn’t going to make the country go insane.
Back on the big economic picture longer term of course nobody knows. I personally feel it’s very unlikely this is the start of a long depression. That’s not to minimize the situation in the meantime or some people it might push into unemployability.
Actually, we do know where the track of not isolating right now leads; millions of avoidable deaths and the attendant costs on our health care and support systems, as well as a glut of non-fatal illnesses which will have a temporary impact upon our economy anyway, for which we have empirical evidence in Italy and South Korea (and soon, I fear, Japan, Britain, France, and much of central and eastern Europe). This is a quantifiable certainty if we do not take effective measures to attenuate the rate of spread of the virus.
On the other side regarding the economy, there are real proactive measures that can be taken now to prevent the kind of economic calamity that you fear, such as instituting some form of universally-accessible health care (whether publicly subsidized private care, “Medicare for All”, a hybrid system like Germany, et cetera), temporary income subsidy, tax/debt relief for impacted small business, contingent tax subsidy for larger businesses to maintain employees, et cetera. The economy is a very fungible system which, unlike a viral epidemic, will respond to fiscal measures and assurances to reinforce public confidence if done in a carefully considered manner. And wonder of wonders, the very people who were mocking Andrew Yang a month ago are now embracing and even expanding on his proposal to provide universal subsidy to help stabilize and give security for essential needs for the vulnerable members of the population.
I know you think that you are being cute, but you have been provided the information that you need to behave responsibly. This information is coming from the scientific community on how your behavior (you, not an abstract, you) can impact the health of others. Choosing to knowingly disregard that advice doesn’t make you funny, it makes you a bad person.
As much as I respect Stranger, what are his bona fides?