I’m so sorry to hear that. I’m lucky: as a technical writer I can work pretty much from anywhere, and today our CEO told us that if we CAN work from home, we SHOULD work from home.
I’m in a high risk group, so I’d already planned to do that. The only reason I was in the office today was because I needed pictures of a device I’m documenting. As soon as I got those (they’re not great pictures, but I’m not a photographer and my phone is … a phone. I have trouble holding it still and getting things aligned properly), I headed out. I’ll need to work an extra half hour or so a day to make up the commute time, but that’s small potatoes.
Also, I scored a 10lb bag of basmati rice on the way home. Not my preferred brand, but it’s good filler.
We are still cruising here in NZ - only 11 confirmed cases in the country, all of which have either come in from overseas or were family transmission after returning from overseas. No cases of non-family community transmission at all, at this stage.
Overseas arrivals are required to self-isolate for 2 weeks after arrival, so overseas visitors have gone way down, and I am noticing a significant reduction in aircraft overflights over my house.
Work is fine - head office in the US is encouraging home working, and I am taking my laptop home more, but I’m still happy to take the train in to the office every day. It’s not like there are many people coming in the office to make me get infected. On the other side of the equation, we are all very busy - my employer sells remote access solutions which I support, and a very large majority of our customers are scaling up from some home working to everyone home working, and putting stress on their equipment and back-end infrastructure. Busy times.
I also had a company event to attend overseas in May - it’s been postponed till next year.
My wife works in a low-socioeconomic area high school (i.e 13-18 year olds). The current thinking is that it will have to remain open, even if things kick off - it’s better that the kids are in a controlled and structured environment even if they are at risk of illness: leaving them at home or to their own devices is likely to cause more issues. But my wife may have to step back if the risk of infection gets too high - she would fit the category of higher risk.
We are just being careful, and will make decisions about family weddings, church attendance and shopping trips on a week by week basis. Fortunately, modern technology makes it easier to touch base with family and grandkids without too much running around.
Bull-shit. I have had absolutely no problems going anywhere. I have not heard of any travel issues.
I’m in NE - Wis. My tech school class was cancelled along with the rest of the tech school. But since it is all lab work, we are back on. My son at the same school is on an extended 2 week spring break. He will have to do some type of online study when they get back. Not sure yet.
My work schedule has not changed. I expect hours to be cut later on as we make the deep fried cheesy stuff for restaurants. Otherwise corporate is really enforcing the “clean and sanitize hands every time you walk through any door” policy.
My wife may have to volunteer to be quarantined at work. She works assisted living where none of the 20 residents ATM is under 80. Most of her co-workers have young children so we discussed that she is capable to stay at work for a few weeks if needed. Just negotiate a live-in pay scale. Also need to get 2 or 3 others to stay. Staff is 4 FT and about 6 PT.
Oldest son said his workplace is picking up for their normal summer peak period. He makes grilling meats. Daughter’s high school is shutting down after today until further notice. She is a senior and had qualified for state FBLA. Now that is most likely not happening. Nor is any of the other spring time school stuff like prom. She and youngest son had planned on a week long spring break trip this week but they cancelled it Saturday. Mom was pleased.
Church had cancelled everything not called worship service. Now it sounds like that is done also.
BTW, we picked up a Costco megapack of TP last moth to get ahead of the rush. As long as power is on we easily have 3 months of food and water and we can always get more grillin’ meats. And as for more TP, a neighbor works at the Charmin plant.
Oh, my gosh, drive-through daiquiris saved my sanity last summer when I was down there to help during a family crisis. And dozens of flavors! On days like today, I’d probably just make a continuous circuit through one of these drive-ins.
I’m finding it impossible to schedule a slot for my next Walmart Pickup. Not sure what’s going on exactly, but I assume it’s related to everyone else wanting to get their stuff via Pickup too.
I’m retired and relatively healthy so it doesn’t affect me as much as it does many others, but the availability of household staples is a potential concern. The odd thing around here (southern Ontario) is the inconsistency among grocery stores. Last time I was out, last Thursday, the closest grocery store was completely cleaned out of TP, but another store down the road was completely normally stocked and even had their normal open hot-food bar and salad bar operating.
Today, panic buying had clearly set in. Parking lots were fairly crowded everywhere. TP was nowhere to be found, hand sanitizer was out of the question anywhere, and most stores were either completely out or almost out of liquid hand soap. I couldn’t even get isopropyl alcohol at the drugstore, which I use for multiple cleaning purposes and thought would make a good disinfectant, because apparently in desperation people are buying it up to make their own hand sanitizer! I’ve never cared for wiping goopy stuff all over my hands, but getting enough liquid soap was important and I managed to scrounge up enough for a comfortable supply. TP was never an issue as I’ve tended to buy it in large quantities whenever it’s on sale, but I pity those who are actually out. I guess that’s why Kleenex supplies are also running out!
But the inconsistencies between stores continues. One large grocery store – about the size of a football field – had a lineup just to the self-checkout that stretched nearly halfway across the store. I guess a lot of cashiers were staying home. Another big store had no lineups at all. Schools are closed, the Canadian border is closed to non-residents, and commuter traffic is much lighter than usual during typical rush-hour times. The store that looked so normal last Thursday now has a very limited hot bar where everything is pre-packaged, and ditto for the salad bar and store-made baked goods. Shortages seem imminent. This particular store makes my favorite pre-grated Parmesan cheese, and I got two small packages out of three that were left. I attribute that to a staffing shortage.
In the worst-case scenario I have adequate food, although much of it is refrigerated and most of it frozen, so og help us if the fridge fails. There is a limited supply of canned goods, but in the worst case I have enough jars of excellent pasta sauce and boxes of spaghettini to last a year – although the meatballs depend on the freezer being operational!
I see a feedback loop developing here where a lot of workers staying home – particularly those in the manufacturing and transportation industries – are going to make it difficult for stores to replenish high-demand supplies.
I am (was) taking a class in American Sign Language at the local college. It was a short course - 8 classes. We got halfway thru. They tell us class will resume in May. We shall see.
My daughter is a teacher. She’ll be home now, so my child-care presence won’t be as much in demand. She is supposed to monitor her student’s work on line, and she’s also taking an on-line class herself, but mostly, she’ll be here. So far, we don’t know if or how much it’ll affect her husband - he works on the local Navy base.
The main effect on my husband is worry. He’s supposed to have spinal surgery on Apr 28. We have no idea if it’ll happen or not. And, of course, we worry about his parents. They’re 90 and 89 and for as smart as they are, they’re being kinda stupid. “We’re thinking about going to the movies…” :smack: but they live 800 miles away, so we can’t do a lot for them.
The grandkids were on spring break last week, then the school district announced no classes for at least the next two weeks. So I was already planning on working from home at least a few days over the next couple weeks to do kid-sitting. But then I got in to work Monday and saw an email from corporate saying that anyone who can work from home, should, for the next two weeks. So I packed up my monitors and headed home. No way I was going to WFH for two weeks on a tiny laptop screen.
Or not… for me, kid(s) at home = few opportunities for getting it on.
As for domestic donnybrooks…true that. My 9-year-old kid said yesterday, “Dad, you’d better stay in your home office and work, so you and Mom don’t drive each other nuts.”
I went to the dispensary over lunch yesterday and stocked up on flower. There were only three or four customers in there, and I jokingly asked the budtender if they were expecting a run like the grocery stores were experiencing. He said that they are in the middle of a run, but that most people showed up at night. They still had some flower, but he said they were just about out of edibles and concentrates.
Welp, my law firm is closed for three weeks. They’re still working out the details of how pay and benefits will work, and will email us later today. I’m about to drive out to see if my gym is closed, which it probably is. If not, maybe I can get one more workout in.
We got word yesterday that our library system would close at 5 pm today for two weeks minimum. Still awaiting word on work-from-home requirements, payroll & leave time during the shutdown, etc. I took home a project I can reasonably work on from home yesterday, but Mrs. ToKnow’s job isn’t really work-from-home compatible, so that’s why we’re still a little unsettled.
A planned meeting of my flying club was cancelled – mostly because we meet at a restauarant and MN restaurants are closed (except for take out / delivery)
Got my login dongle yesterday – will atttempt to work from home tomorrow (though there are maybe a dozen folks in the office)
This pandemic has really illustrated how intertwined everything is. Before it happened, I had scheduled a couple of trips. One was to go to California to visit my mom who had a couple of minor strokes in December. That trip was supposed to be this week, but I cancelled it on Saturday. We’re all healthy but I didn’t want to take a chance of infecting her or getting quarantined far from home. So all those travel accomodations were cancelled and most refunded: air, car, 2 hotels since we planned to have an extra night to ourselves in San Francisco before coming back, and a very nice restaurant.
I also have a small online retail business that I’m currently running out of my house (thank god) and can’t yet afford employees (THANK GOD!). I can tell my sales are down from last week to this week, but I am hoping to weather the storm. The second trip I mentioned earlier was for this: an annual weekend social/shopping event where I vend in person. I just found out today that they had to cancel it. They cited the fact that all of the local businesses that supported the event had to cancel due to lack of business and their staff being quarantined, attendees cancelling, some vendors cancelling, and basically the whole event fell apart. This one hurts the most (emotionally) because it’s an extremely well-organized event that has historically brought me the most sales. I did this year’s budget based on the high amount of expected revenue from this event.
Well, it hurts but it won’t put me out of business. But if this pandemic keeps getting worse and people stop spending money on non-essentials, it will go out of business. Oh, and I had to cancel my hotel reservation for that weekend. We’re all adjusting and reacting and hurting each other’s businesses, even though we don’t mean to. It’s just an untenable position all around.
DH and I are both self-quarantined in our house, but working from home so that’s a goodness. I had planned to retire in the coming year or two but since the market crashed it looks like I’ll be keeping that day job for about another 5 years.
First day of our shelter in place. The TV traffic report showed the roads leading to the Bay Bridge nearly empty during rush hour - emptier than weekends, more like Sunday morning at 5 am.
BART is running but with low ridership, and they say it is easy to do social distancing on the trains - which is sure a change from normal.
Just canceled the critique group meeting I was going to have at my house on Thursday. Might try skype meetings if the others can handle it. I’m the kid of the group at 68.
I still get to do my walks though - that is permissible according to the guidelines.
I came in to work as usual this morning. Then a site wide email went out a little over an hour ago saying that everyone who can do so is strongly encouraged to work from home. I think most people went home after that. I still hear a few people around, but things are eerily quite around here. It’s kind of creepy.
I was thinking I would at least stay here for the rest of the work day since I’ve already here, and work from home starting tomorrow. But like I said, it feels kind of creepy being in a mostly empty office. I’m debating following everyone else’s lead and going home now. There’s a meeting in 10 minutes (over Skype) to go over directives from management on this. I’ll see what comes out of that.
I don’t really like working from home, but we are being told that we can take our docking stations, monitors, and keyboards/mice home with us, so that will make things a little easier.
I, personally, was not affected by this latest development in Beijing; however, I will relate what just happened to one of the foreign teachers at my school upon his return from Europe.
Effective 00:00, 16 March 2020, all persons returning to Beijing from outside China must go into a centralized quarantine center (the returnee is sent to a center in the same district as their registered address) for 14 days.
The fun part, as the teacher related it, started when the plane landed in Beijing. Nobody was allowed off the plane immediately. Immigration officers boarded the plane and took people off four at a time. It took approximately five hours to get everyone off the aircraft. So, if you’re planning on returning to China anytime soon, you might want to adjust your plans accordingly.
Processing through immigration and customs was delayed due to the temperature check and a call to the neighborhood committee to verify that one does reside at the registered address. This last is because when one leaves China, even for a short vacation, the Immigration officer who checks your passport is supposed to collect the “accommodation registration form”, but not all Immigration officers do so. If the traveler was lucky, they still had their form and the call to the neighborhood committee was skipped.
Then it was off to the designated quarantine center. The teacher concerned has been in lock-down for two days now and will post updates when he’s sprung.
I wasn’t personally affected by it much until yesterday. Hoo boy, that changed fast.
My wife’s right ankle is a mess. She was scheduled for surgery this Thursday - day after tomorrow - to have tendons repaired, ligaments replaced with an artificial ligament, cleaning out some loose fragments of bone, and fixing anything else they found while they had her open. The recovery was going to be long - six weeks in an immobilizing boot (not taking it off at all the first 12 days, then another 30 days where she could take it off to wash, but at no other time), then six weeks with a brace - but at the end of it all, her ankle might work more or less normally for the first time during the decades I’ve known her.
Yesterday she got the word that the hospital was canceling all elective surgery. Including hers.
Now we’ve got to wait for who knows how many months before they’re free enough from COVID-19 patients to do this again. I’m guessing we’re looking at early next year.
