Coronavirus: Miles away from ordinary.

I’m familiar with them. They’ve been in our factory before since insects are constantly shipped across the world, all our steel is Nippon and once a year or so one of these hummingbird-sized things flies out and scares the piss out of everyone.

A weakness they are not mentioning in the effect climate has here on invasive insects. Some adapt, but for many like bees, wasps and flies it fucks with them and they can’t operate properly, often dropping dead at random moments.

The thing is with insects is some adapt furiously, some not at all. This could become a thing, and that thing could be a serious problem. It IS to early to predict anything, but the news boasting “MURDER HORNETS” and using a blanket “experts” statement without any references (The idiots who appear on Shark Week are “experts”) during the most heightened state of panic since 9/11 is distasteful to say the least.

 

Guys, this is all really interesting, but what does it have to do with the virus?

 

I’d like to hear how work is going for everyone.

What industry are you in and how’s business?

I’m in trucking, just moved to a new company at the beginning of 2020, and it’s terrible.

If it was hard maintaining business with a current book of business, it’s damn near impossible bringing on new customers in this climate.

Only hope is that the economy starts moving again in the coming weeks.

Two of my buddies- One a journalist and one a sheet metal fabricator, both were furloughed this week.

I’d like to think we’re at the tail end of this, but who knows. Especially now that the death rate prediction in the US bounced back to 100k.

 

Preschool. Thankfully I work with a lot of very smart, very passionate people, so we were not only able to weather the initial brunt and keep all the schools open, but also keep everyone employed without a single layoff or furlough. Now that more people are returning to work, parents are returning in a major way, but that's secondary right now to keeping everyone safe, with a guaranteed paycheck, and staying open for the parents who desperately rely on us.

I help in the curriculum dept occasionally and we've been able to quickly adapt to the distance learning to help them with that. Major shift for parents and they largely have no clue what to do. Not their fault, not their territory -- but we have the experience and resources, so we just adapted our current curriculum to assist with what the various public school districts are doing. Of course we've also had to alter our classrooms, schedules and events in order to maintain best practices with sanitation, group sizes, etc. Not sure what next school year is going to look like, but it's going to be interesting regardless. Best thing we've learned is to not make any plans we can't adapt at a moment's notice.

Sadly a lot of schools have gone out of business during this, many permanently. A lot of laid off people. A LOT. I'm in charge of hiring for our schools and it is downright depressing seeing all the applicants coming in, and which industries they're coming from. Service sector mainly. A lot of medical offices with elective/cosmetic procedures.

 

I'm in construction. Other than changing the PPE requirements, social distancing and solving the logistical issues of material coming from States that were shut down; things are relatively normal. We are tracking our original WIP (Revenue) forecast that we set in December of 2019. We lost roughly 50 guys net for a little less than 60 days, who took a layoff to collect their unemployment check and then they came back......nothing we can do about the Union mentality. Roughly 30% of the projects we have nation-wide shutdown or slowed down from COVID-19, some were furloughed but most were transferred to other projects for the time being. We have clients who are still accepting bids and still executing contracts to start preconstruction on new work, which is a good sign. It is unclear if it is occurring at the same rate as anticipated but I would guess not. I do get the feeling that they are looking to cull some of the heard in the Business units to eliminate some of the deadwood and replace them with the star players who were furloughed elsewhere, to date there has only been one add to my program but people are bringing up names and asking how things are going with them.....people on the bubble.

Long term, I'm hoping things bounce back quickly, that is what is best for everyone, including my industry. Locally, I am assuming Orlando will be one of the Metros hit hardest and longest by this. I am guessing there isn't going to be a lot of tourism domestically or internationally for some time to come, that is kind of Orlando's thing. For my industry, the best barometer is the Architect's billable hours forecast. That gives a good indication of where construction is going, when that slows down, construction slows down behind it.

 

Software. Working from home. Not a whole lot has changed other than the amount of sudoku I play during work hours.

 

Banking. Mortgage Lending specifically. We're the one sector of the bank that's actually increased in revenue over the past couple of months. People still gotta buy houses and for those that can afford it, with rates still being so low, lots of refi business on the books. I was already working from home 2 to 3 days a week since I work on the back end systems design part of the company and not actually directly with customers, so being full time at home is pretty much no difference. And even though our state is starting a slow ramp back of opening things up, my team at least has been told to expect to continue working remotely until at least July at a minimum. Which means I need to buy some more athletic pants and shorts. I can't be doing laundry every other day.

 

This is my biggest fear. Could we just have kept high risk people at home and concentrated on social distancing, hygiene, and masks from the beginning and not put our economy in the toilet?

 

just because you’re not high risk doesn’t mean you don’t live with, or regularly interact with at home, someone who is. Or maybe someone who doesn’t know they are because they have an undiagnosed health condition?

just by way of example, one day I was working 10 hours, the next I was in the hospital fighting for my life after they found a brain tumor that took up a quarter of my head. No clue I had it before. Replace “brain tumor” with “heart problem” and you have a recipe for disaster in a world in which COVID exists.

 

That's why THEY stay at home, and you don't visit them until this blows over.

 

down here the public schools are talking about *when* they come back, making it a non-traditional school year calendar, either reduced hours or a partial week there and partial at home/distance learning. Obviously nothing set in stone yet. I'm getting a lot of apps from public school teachers right now. We normally get a lot around this time, extra money during the summer break, but most of them are very unsure what their jobs are gonna look like next year or if they're gonna have them. A lot of uneasiness in the public area. Just to give you a heads up about what might be coming down the pipe. The beast you know I figure.

Bus drivers are amazing. The good ones are every bit as much teachers as the classroom ones. They care just as much about the students, sometimes more.

 

High school coach/teacher; we’ve been off since Spring Break. Our district is one of the largest in Texas, and they kind of set the tone for a bunch of the smaller, surrounding ones. After spring break, we just kept canceling school in 2 week interments, in hopes of returning. Now that school is officially cancelled for the rest of the year, the same is going on in regards to summer and next year: planning to return, but always having contingency plans ready to adapt. I’m blessed in that I still receive my regular paycheck and can work remotely from home, and even at that, just a couple hours a week. The things you take for granted - small conversations in the office, being able to see kids grasp an idea and be proud of themselves, etc - are what I miss most.

 

Things are beginning to open back up here in Aussie, I've been part uber eats, part baggage boy in a five star hotel for the last week or so as people coming into the country are still under quarantine for 14 days after touchdown. First few days I was in Sydney it was amazing how quiet it was but foot traffic is starting to pick back up again. Interesting to see that if you have enough money your business si considered essential, I saw a Gucci store open the other day.

Never thought I'd be able to take a photo of the Sydney opera House with no people in front of it.

 

I work for FEMA. It's been weeks of "hurry up and wait". My military colleagues tell me that's what their experience in Iraq/Afghanistan was like. So, it's been a lot of 12 and 14 hour days, but those days are interspersed with calls that only take 10 minutes, or hours-long gaps of waiting for some work to get turned around. Half my team is deployed to the National Response Coordination Center (think the big, busy room with the giant tv and people shouting "find me this!" in all the movies), one of them has been there for 2 solid months of 12-hour days.

The biggest change for us is in deployments: we're doing everything virtually for the first time ever. There have been two events that hit my home state of SC, as well as disasters in PR, TN and OR that normally I or my staff would have deployed to assist. Not being able to do field work means a lot more work for us, but less work for inspectors and y'know...field teams.

It's been incredibly frustrating, and I've had a few friends in the Agency tell me that once this is over they are quitting. I haven't gotten to that level (yet), but I sympathize with that feeling.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/draft-government-report-projecting-a-surge-of-covid-19-cases/2b35321d-3977-41f5-9a78-50da7cafbe06/?itid=lk_inline_manual_1

Here's my (relatively) simple take on this circumstance:

The math is simple: the number of people who have (or had) the virus divided by the number of people who could get the virus. Until that results in a pretty huge chunk (say 20%), we're not seeing light at the end of the tunnel yet, because the danger is still massive. The critical issue is we can't test enough to get that math beyond a sample we know is flawed (ie, we're skewing it by telling people who should get tested and it's not representative). The opposite, where the number of people who have the virus is shrinking simply hasn't happened and I have seen no credible reason to believe the virus spread will stop completely anytime soon.

We're at 68,000 deaths right now. There are issues with that number, but it's not likely to decline or be revised down based on data problems: it's more likely we find more deaths attributable to COVID-19, and that number goes up. The excess mortality studies are extremely important, because for some places there's a tipping point where it's more dangerous for them to remain closed. Also, dying from the virus takes a LONG time...again, there was a study of the NYC patients that suggested the majority of people going on ventilators die. You can be on a ventilator for quite a while, so the timing isn't as straightforward as "get virus day x, contagious for days y-z, die on day A".

The biggest question regarding hitting 100,000 dead is when, not if. The second biggest question is will there be any issues in reporting that data accurately. Pick an endpoint, say 200,000 or 300,000 dead. Assume current trends will continue or accelerate as re-opening occurs. Between now (68,000) and 100k, 200k, 300k etc. and a rough daily rate of 1700-2500 dead, what changes to lower the death toll? What countermeasures, medical interventions, etc. come online in the next 30/60/90 days? At a daily rate of 1700 dead, we'll add 100,000 new fatalities in just under 2 months. So, from May 5th, to July 5th, what comes online to slow the spread, reduce the death, etc.?

I genuinely do not know of anything coming in the next few months that will prevent this outcome. And the converse, where it accelerates, is starting to seem more likely as places open back up.

At minimum, we have over 1m cases, and 68,000 dead. We are shut down because we didn't contain initially. We are re-opening in parts because the perceived risk is lower (some places haven't been hit as hard, we have a better supply chain and mobilization, and the spread rate is likely lower with personal countermeasures). We can't get better than perceived risk (like, ideally "measured and confirmed risk") because of lack of testing.

The reality is we have no reason to believe people are safe, the threat has been averted or the danger of this virus spreading exponentially is over. There's been a lot of confusion around antibody tests that are misleading, or at best difficult to verify/replicate, with high margins of error. There's been a lot of high promises made about cures, treatments and vaccines, but no silver bullet has manifested yet. The places opening back up seem to be doing so for economic reasons, and that will come with a human cost. The economic impact of this is dramatic, there is massive long-term damage and it's going to get worse. Much of the economy is driven by consumer confidence, which has to be an all-time low. All the proclamations and power of the various government entities cannot address the risk of the virus spreading, therefore it's hard to believe consumer confidence will be restored any time soon. In short, unfortunately, all of us wanting this to be over very badly isn't going to make it so.

To borrow a sports analogy, we're probably in the 2nd inning of this. The only thing that will accelerate this is a vaccine or similarly powerful medical intervention, and while promising steps have been taken, I have no reason to believe that there is an imminent (within the next 90 days) treatment for this.

All of that said, my personal take:

I get that we need to get back to work. I understand the pain, I truly do. I support counties that have few cases, and can slowly expand regular activities. If you can get back to work, please do.

Also, the excess death is not a minor consideration: there are likely places where the lockdown killed more people than the virus. We all need to get to a new normal. Some places likely didn't need to be locked down, because the virus hasn't made it there yet. Some of the pain with the lockdown was avoidable, there was no way to know where was safe and where was not. The lockdown didn't fully avert the crisis, it did successfully (somewhat) mitigate it. Against prevailing wisdom, we are going back to work and assuming the risk.

The fundamental question is: whose risk? I'm a believer in "don't ask your followers to do something the leader won't do". That's a big divide: lots of people are agitating to get back to work, but who is going to sit there uninsured and bag groceries, or cut hair, or sling burgers with the rest of us? Who is putting their own families, their Nana and Paw-paw, at risk by getting back to normal? Who can predict with a degree of certainty high enough to bet people's lives that they will remain safe? I think a simple criteria is: If you're telling me to get back to work, bring your ass down here and shake my hand when I do. If you won't because it's too risky, then I say fuck you: don't risk my life when you won't risk yours.

The people who claim their liberty in this situation is worth dying for, I simply write off. The belief that the risk is theirs alone, or that they alone suffer the consequences of their action is mistaken. I think these people are short-sighted, selfish and silly.
I think there are people who genuinely can and should get back to work, and I trust them to soberly assess the risks confronting them and make the right choice for them. I think people trying to unduly influence them with bullshit studies, proclamations about liberty or other nonsense need to be silenced. Free speech and all, sure, but to me, this kind of speech is the same as yelling "fire" when there is none. It's lying about danger, when the person running their mouth doesn't suffer the consequences.

There needs to be a single source of truth, and unfortunately, the best information we have is complicated. I implore people do not trust the easy answers, there are none. The scientific truth of this is complex, constantly evolving and HARD AS FUCK to understand. We need to keep that in mind: the expertise here is not shallow, the mountains you have to climb to do this for a living are incredible and the experts working on this represent a tiny sliver of the best and brightest. Go grab an organic chem or molecular bio book if you don't believe me: that kind of knowledge was the start of their journey, not the peak.

Worrying about the rent is a benefit of the living. It's not fun, but it does beat the alternative, and while that risk varies and is difficult to quantify, it is undeniably present. Also, it's not binary: people who don't die have extremely troubling impacts. Survival for some of us means being disabled, crippled or irrevocably damaged. For some of us, it means astronomical medical bills, medical bankruptcy or a lifelong disability that decimates a person's ability to earn a living. The vast majority of us at the highest risk of getting this virus are working in jobs that offer them few protections.

There is a lot of anger, and it is justified: we, as a nation, have been failed. The people in charge of making sure this never happens failed. The country where this originated failed the basic test of honesty. I think it's important now, more than ever, to hold these people accountable. It's not a red/blue thing, it's a "you failed to prevent thousands of Americans dying" thing. It's not an us vs. them thing, it's a human vs. virus thing. This is should unite us, and the leadership that uses it to further divide us is complicit in that failure. It's us, motherfuckers, all of us. We're in it together. That's not the same thing as United Airlines saying it, it's "we the people". I'm working my ass off for YOU. I'm trying to find ways to help US through this. I hope you are too. I understand if you don't. We all need to do better by one another to get through this. I say that, because we need to figure out a new normal. We can't put this back in Pandora's box. This has changed us, and just like all change it's an opportunity. This opportunity already has an incalculable cost, so we damn well better make the most of it.