fire drill
A company-wide e-mail came through half an hour into the workday this morning, with a video from our CEO attached. We’re on a work-from-home “trial” starting tomorrow and effective for a week… I think longer. The idea is that we’re to use this week to learn how to work from home in case we find ourselves in a situation where we have to. Like a fire drill.
“During this temporary test, your schedule, availability and responsiveness should mirror your typical workday. We ask that you maintain a focus on your role in our mission, employ a solutions-oriented spirit and continue your results-driven approach despite any disruption of your routine.”
Whelp. That’s it for productivity for the rest of the day. A colleague and I had planned a hike to a site inspection for a weird event in the mountains. We’ve got time today, so we’ll leave at 2:30 p.m. to do that. Until then, not much to be done while we wait out this strange situation. I keep joking that it’s “the end of days.” I don’t believe it, but it definitely does feel like these are extraordinary times.
I’ve sneezed a few times since coming back from Palm Springs this weekend. Do I have a flu? Do I have the virus? Allergies? Or maybe I just had to sneeze.
In the news: there’s been a cruise ship stranded in the harbor outside San Francisco. Early in this crisis, last month, there was an outbreak on a ship that docked in Japan. Infection spread rapidly, despite a confined-to-cabins quarantine. There weren’t effective protocols. People did what they could for the passengers, but it seriously felt like those passengers were just being condemned to die aboard. Finally, officials figured out a way to let them go and quarantine them without putting too many people ashore at risk. Now there is another cruise ship here in the USA and nobody is offering solutions.
The president told the media he didn’t want to let those California passengers off because “I don’t need to have the numbers [of confirmed U.S. coronavirus cases] double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault”… This is not leadership. I feel sorry for those passengers and staff who have gone from jovial vacation adventure to being trapped on a petri dish, confined to their cabins and just waiting. Today, they were finally given permission to disembark in Oakland to quarantine facilities.
Seattle was the first place in the USA to be dealing with this in a real way. There’s a nursing home with active cases and people aren’t allowed in or out. People are congregating outside and talking to their elderly relatives through the windows. Washington State ordered a state of emergency — whatever that means. And it looks now like new cases of “community spread” are spreading in San Francisco.
This thing started in China, but Italy is the real tragedy at this point. They have more patients than hospital beds. Trump said Wednesday he was sharply restricting travel to the United States from more than two dozen European countries. That’s a declaration that raises more questions than answers and several clarifications later, it appears that travel is being restricted but that citizens of the US will be allowed to come home. And the UK and Ireland are exempt (for some reason).
The virus’ spread has officially been declared a global pandemic, now. And it hasn’t escaped me that just last weekend – which seems a very long time ago now -- I was busy worrying about the time change.
I can’t deal with any more of this. I’m going for a hike.
