Working From Home - Impacts of Coronavirus

[PlainName]

but then they never told people not to go to work only to work from home if posible

So what was the furlough business all about? I can't imagine they would pay half the workforce to stay off work if it was just 'work from home if possible'.

[Simon]

but then they never told people not to go to work only to work from home if posible

So what was the furlough business all about? I can't imagine they would pay half the workforce to stay off work if it was just 'work from home if possible'.

No, people who can work from home do so. Those tat do manufacturing or work that cannot be done at home go to work where they should have adaptions to keep people apart.

But if an employer is loosing business and has no work for you they can put you on hold. The government in this case will pay 80% of your pay so you still have a job but your employer is not having to pay you but you are not left without money or made redundant.

21 where I work are furloughed.

[SiliconWizard]

but then they never told people not to go to work only to work from home if posible

So what was the furlough business all about? I can't imagine they would pay half the workforce to stay off work if it was just 'work from home if possible'.

No, people who can work from home do so. Those tat do manufacturing or work that cannot be done at home go to work where they should have adaptions to keep people apart.

But if an employer is loosing business and has no work for you they can put you on hold. The government in this case will pay 80% of your pay so you still have a job but your employer is not having to pay you but you are not left without money or made redundant.

Same thing basically over here. The number of people who have been put on hold is pretty large.

[Simon]

We all live in just in time economies, as soon as one cog pair has a wedge thrown in the whole mechanism grinds to a halt which is why they had to just draw a universal line under it for everyone.

[paulca]

Vox had an interesting video on the idea here:

[jeffheath]

In the US at least, it doesn't seem like the government actually did anything to force businesses to lay off workers- people stopping buying their products due to fears of the virus, so when they laid off workers due to lost money, they said it was to "protect our workers from the virus." It seems like all the government did was incite more panic than anything.

[james_s]

They forced businesses to close, that stops the income and forces them to lay people off. It's hugely expensive to keep idled employees around, you've still got to pay their health insurance and other benefits.

[paulca]

Where as in the UK they have tried at least to pay 80% of the salaries of workers who can't work and their company want's to "furlough" them.  As an aside I wonder if "furloughing" comes from farming where you plough the crop back into the field.

The theory is, it tries to put the economy on "Pause", rather than shut it down.  At great cost they are effectively saying "Sleep" or "Suspend" in Windows, rather than shutting it down.  They hope they can just poke it and it will fire back up.

I pay health insurance in the UK.  My work provides a group policy with Bupa.  It's about £120 a month and is taxable.  Basically I visit my normal NHS GP and if a condition is identified I can ask for a "referral" which allows me to transfer to private care.

Sometimes the private care is in the same hospitals and only the food is different, but it gets your much faster access to specialist consultants.

[cdev]

A huge downsizing and then outsourcing/offshoring of jobs now has been planned for a very long time to occur now. It has nothing to do with coronavirus.

Way back in 1986 (September 15-20, 1986) in Punta Del Este, Uruguay, what was then the GATT met and among the things they agreed upon was that they decided to outsource lots of jobs -they started the process to make services "tradable" which became the Uruguay Round and led to the creation of the WTO.

The service jobs which are framed as a "balancing factor" which means they give the countries leverage over one another they would not otherwise have. Oftentimes the leverage involves things that never see the light of day, like drug pricing or similar things not in the public interest.

This is why everything is being gradually privatized and globalized. To put those services into play. (Its refered to as a big game, with reports describing the state of play, etc.)

A vast deal between North and South that both props up the lower wage countries and helps the Northern countries be more profitable by allowing them to reduce wages, and shed jobs, which they frame as "efficiency gains". This is basically the economics of all trade in services deals and its promoted as if its carved in stone and the result of a democratic process, although its not as shown by the fact that actual people dont even know about it. We operate on assumptions of our leaderships having abilities to fix things which have not been true since the late 80s or early 90s. They deliberately put large swatches of policy space out of their own reach, putting them in the hands of the WTO and other global governance organizations. (which they control, however, in certain areas what they clearly want is an agenda thats very bad for most people, but great for the biggest corporations.)

[jeffheath]

They forced businesses to close, that stops the income and forces them to lay people off. It's hugely expensive to keep idled employees around, you've still got to pay their health insurance and other benefits.

These businesses (the big ones, anyway) don't seem to make it clear whether or not they are furloughing for monetary or government restriction reasons, but at this point it's a chicken or the egg problem anyway, as the economy is actually crap now. However, I did find that several governors are ordering small businesses to close, which seems odd to me as they just kissed their re-election goodbye.

[paulca]

I think pandemics like this put us firmly in our place.  I say it's enough of this "Earth was created for man" BS spun by religions.  Man is but part of nature, not the other way around.

No. No. The Earth was created for man, but by a God who is a real scumbag.

Don't pamper to their mass insanity with any grandeur or acceptance.  I don't think the concept that the universe was created for "Man" has the slightest bearing of truth, asides pure philosophy of consciousness.

[Simon]

the problem is that people only care for themselves so have to be told what to do for society and people only elect people that will benefit them personally in a direct way rather than indirectly by providing a better society to live in.

The British PM talks about "good old british common sense" the mere concept is a joke. He has done nothing but mince his words so that other get blamed for reality and his mistakes.

[Simon]

Yea OK cdev, remember what the topic is about. I know this is your "thing" but it will overwhelm the topic as it has in the past.

[cdev]

Around here (NE US) they actually did close most large businesses down. Many businesses are still closed.

And make no mistake about it, it is a genuine emergency around here, with lots and lots of people getting very sick and dying.

I personally would like to see less analysis of who is to blame and more activity to prevent people getting sick and ideally, cure them, in a way they can afford.

In the US at least, it doesn't seem like the government actually did anything to force businesses to lay off workers- people stopping buying their products due to fears of the virus, so when they laid off workers due to lost money, they said it was to "protect our workers from the virus." It seems like all the government did was incite more panic than anything.

[Bud]

the problem is that people only care for themselves so have to be told what to do for society and people only elect people that will benefit them personally in a direct way rather than indirectly by providing a better society to live in.

The British PM talks about "good old british common sense" the mere concept is a joke. He has done nothing but mince his words so that other get blamed for reality and his mistakes.

Maybe if he used a hair comb in the morning, people would take him seriously.

[EEVblog]

I've had to clean up recent posts this thread. Please stay on topic.

[Electro Detective]

Post Impacts Of Corona Virus:

When this blows over or downgraded till the next wave,
are there any laws or regulations, in any countries with a few grams of integrity left,
that will prosecute profiteers that milked the situation,
as well as clamping down on all the exaggerated and or unsupported reporting and comment by news media, politicians, medical authorities etc
after giving them a fair go to prove beyond any doubt they had solid data to support what was going on,
rather than just rolling with what was and still is going on.

i.e. loads of networking and cash for comment parroting on this deal, why should they be allowed to do a runner with pockets full,
holding cushy well paid positions during the entire ordeal,
while the rest of us are left to man up and 'join together to rebuild'
or what they really mean is, to put it bluntly, 'do it tough and stfu'

The lot of them need to be rounded up so that this never happens again, or on such a grand scale,
and that includes the idiots that started the entire fiasco playing with test tubes,
apparently containing bat droppings that somehow got into some downstairs party finger food..?    or some variation on the 'story'

Please...   

[PlainName]

The British PM talks about "good old british common sense" the mere concept is a joke.

At risk of Dave treating this as expendable, despite it going to be about returning to work (and when he allows the off-topic rabid trolling from ED)...

I think Boris is trying to play a straight bat. Sure, people want rock solid rules to follow, but the situation doesn't really allow that. The plan would be to get people back to work to save the economy, but at the same time not making things worse at a health level, and I don't think you can be very precise about that.

Suppose he says, Right, from Monday the cafes can open. We know what would happen - come Monday 00:01 they will be chokka with people who will risk getting infected because they can then blame Boris for opening up too soon. The kind of questions he was asked demonstrated that mindset. If you're talking to your mate from 2m away in the park and you both see another mate, can you talk to him to? The obvious answer is to use your common sense. Why do you think you are standing 2m away, and how is another mate 2m away going to be different from a shopping queue? That shouldn't be a problem, but obviously a bunch of you going to the park for a conflab would be.

I think we either accept that given some basic guidelines we use our commonsense to fill in the gaps as they turn up, or we require micro-managing. The first option means we can go out sunbathing so long as we keep our distance. The second means they can't risk letting us do that (give us an inch and we want all eight) so it's 1 hour of exercise within half a mile, once a day, etc.

Now translate that to the business thing where we're not talking about a single thing like being out in a park, but there are many different types of business with different requirements. A couple of brickies working outside next to each other probably isn't as bad as two office types sitting 10 feet apart in a closed-windowed office, but try to explain that on the TV news and imagine the headlines the next day. And the silly questions.

At some point we have to get back to business and it is going to require some commonsense to make it work. I think it's reasonable at this point to more or less say, well, we are doing good enough to think about getting back to (the new) normal so let's give it a try, but be prepared to back off some if it starts going titsup. And by being less precise about what, who, where, when we get a gradual drift instead of massed ranks.

[DrG]

Pretty decent information about risk of infection. Particularly relevant in these "opening up" times. Written by an immunologist. With references. A 12 min read and no video. From 5 days ago (but updated since). Worthwhile in my view.

The Risks - Know Them - Avoid Them

https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them?fbclid=IwAR0

[james_s]

These businesses (the big ones, anyway) don't seem to make it clear whether or not they are furloughing for monetary or government restriction reasons, but at this point it's a chicken or the egg problem anyway, as the economy is actually crap now. However, I did find that several governors are ordering small businesses to close, which seems odd to me as they just kissed their re-election goodbye.

I'm not so sure about that. I don't want to see businesses forced to close without good reason but it is important to try to slow the spread. Here in the Seattle area they've succeeded in dramatically flattening the curve and while I was not exactly a fan of our governor in the first place I think he has done a reasonably good job and his approval rating on handling the pandemic was around 85% last I read. In this area which is a hotspot of education and wealth people overwhelmingly support the efforts that have been taken, there is quite clear evidence that it has worked.

My hope is just that the numbers don't spike back up because we really do need to get things opened back up. It's frustrating to think that a complete coordinated lockdown for just a few weeks could have stopped the spread.

[EEVblog]

My hope is just that the numbers don't spike back up because we really do need to get things opened back up. It's frustrating to think that a complete coordinated lockdown for just a few weeks could have stopped the spread.

But even in full lock down you still have something like 40% of the workforce still out there and deployed in essential services.
When you are locked down at home it seems like everyone else is locked down too, but they aren't.

[EEVblog]

The lot of them need to be rounded up so that this never happens again

LOL. Not going to happen, humans will continue to do selfish/stupid/*insert whatever term you want* human things.

[james_s]

But even in full lock down you still have something like 40% of the workforce still out there and deployed in essential services.
When you are locked down at home it seems like everyone else is locked down too, but they aren't.

Well it was more hypothetical than realistic, although I'm sure they could have locked down a lot more people than they did and with the benefit of hindsight it would have been much better than dragging it out.

While politically constitutionally difficult in the US, we could have closed borders of states, counties or some arbitrary divisions early on to isolate it to those areas. Not that it matters now, it's spread all over.

[nctnico]

But even in full lock down you still have something like 40% of the workforce still out there and deployed in essential services.
When you are locked down at home it seems like everyone else is locked down too, but they aren't.

Well it was more hypothetical than realistic, although I'm sure they could have locked down a lot more people than they did and with the benefit of hindsight it would have been much better than dragging it out.

While politically constitutionally difficult in the US, we could have closed borders of states, counties or some arbitrary divisions early on to isolate it to those areas. Not that it matters now, it's spread all over.

Well, most countries in the world seem to be in 'controlled burn mode'. Staying locked down until there is a vaccine is not really an option although I assume this is what China is doing at the moment. But at least they seem to have contained Covid19 for now. They can't resume international travel until the majority of the Chinese is immune through vaccination or has been through a Covid-19 infection.

[Electro Detective]

Don't hold your breath waiting for a vaccine 

Decades later they are still working on magic cures for the common cold, re-badged flu, hay fever, winter morning sniffles,
and everyones favorite no go demise app, cancer

i.e. corona/covid better take a ticket and get in the queue..