Coronavirus

I had to do a return for my wife at the mall today- yes, it was essential, it was like $500+ of stuff for a shoot last week that we really can not afford eating the cost on. It was...pretty much like any other Sunday at the mall. You’d never know something was going on. Same number of people. Apple and Abercrombie and Fitch were closed. Food court full of people eating lunch.

That is all about to change...I’m predicting national quarantine in 48-72 hours. Expect a total shutdown except pharmacies, grocery stores and gas stations which will have limited hours. Seeing how people were doing today, it has to be done.

My wife’s work has completely disappeared. She had a bunch of Turner stuff lined up for this month with March Madness, just gone. First blank production schedule she has had in like 15 years.

They're going to start enforcing everyone staying home except for essentials here in Manila. I'm not sure how that will be enforced effectively, since grocery stores will stay open and other things like trash pick up are supposed to continue. Glad we got some shopping done a couple days ago.

Gonna be a long month. Not that it isn't important, but man. Long month.

Michael Barnes wrote: You’d never know something was going on. Same number of people.

One of my wife's coworkers had cousins up from Georgia this past weekend that apparently kept teasing her about the amount of precaution everyone was taking up here in Maryland. They were so insistent that it's just another flu that the coworker needed to vent about it.

If I recall correctly you're from outside of Atlanta which is about as cosmopolitan as you're going to get. But I think it's pretty clear that up here in the most liberal state in the union we're reacting far more than most.

If it's "just the flu" (despite the current casualty rates belying that in the most obvious of ways (i.e. people dying; see: a comparison of obituary pages in the local Bergamo paper between 2/9 and 3/13 ), then:

We overreact and people don't die.
We underreact and people don't die.

But if it is a greater threat as BASIC FACTS have shown us:

We 'overreact' and fewer people die.
We underreact and...

Governor DeWine here in Ohio isn't fucking around. He ordered all the bars and restaurants closed, except for carry-out, starting today. The schools were all closed last Friday. State universities are online-only for the rest of the semester, and the kids are getting thrown out of the dorms.

I'm working from home full-time now, until further notice. It's not at our company level yet, but we're a relatively small remote site and our division head gave us the okay. I figure by the end of the week it will be company-wide. It should be - our main offices just stuffed three buildings worth of people into two buildings to save $0.03, and now employees that literally had offices are now four to a table. It's the new open office style; every day is a COVID party day now!

Starting this Wednesday, public schools in Minnesota will be closed until the end of the month. They are spending today and tomorrow loading up the students with homework and possibly coordinating some online learning. Traffic is lighter but far from non-existent. The gym was as busy as usual on Saturday. The nearest grocery store was hit hard on Saturday and many shelves were nearly bare by Sunday morning, though the grocery store workers were working fast to restock certain aisles. I rarely eat fast food any more, but still visit McDonald's once a year for a shamrock shake in March. To my surprise, there were four touch screens set up so people could place their orders before getting in line, but this was probably in place long before the coronavirus. Also, everybody working behind the counter was wearing plastic gloves, and that probably is a new development.

I think that the social distancing effort could help keep this virus manageable, at least in terms of holding down cases to a level where hospitals can handle everybody who needs intensive care. But the Trump administration has done a terrible job with the messaging. My best friend called from Florida, and I could tell by the background noise that he was hanging out at a crowded gaming venue. My sister is a nurse, and yet she was still under the impression that coronavirus is no big deal compared to the flu.

All bars and restaurants in Michigan closing as of 3 PM today. Should've been done last week, given that many of them were packed all weekend. Universities have been closed since last week. I was at Meijer (similar to Wal-Mart here in the Midwest, but far less oppressive) last night around 3 AM. It was a pretty normal crowd for that hour. I saw one person with an N95 mask and one person with a full-face respirator. I had gone at that time (when I was younger, that was routine shopping time for me, as an insomniac) to avoid the crowds and in the hope that a few more things would be restocked. I used latex gloves to return some cans, ditched the gloves, doused the cart handle in the sanitizer they have back there, grabbed what I needed, and then went through the self-serve line, putting a glove back on to use the keypad for paying with a debit card. That's pretty much going to be the routine for a while.

We've been told to move all our classes online on short notice. That is both the right thing to do and laughable, because moving classes to online pedagogy *right* is incredibly time consuming and takes a huge, huge amount of prep work. Accompishing that in a week isn't going to happen, so I think most people are just putting up a few videos and slapping online quizzes up to stem the bleeding. I'm making some videos for another class anyway, so I'll do them for this part of my undergrad class, but I'm basically not assuming they'll learn anything about statistics in my new class structure. tbh my students are probably at home worrying about their families just like I am so I think a ton of leeway is called for.

Gary Sax wrote: We've been told to move all our classes online on short notice. That is both the right thing to do and laughable, because moving classes to online pedagogy *right* is incredibly time consuming and takes a huge, huge amount of prep work. Accompishing that in a week isn't going to happen, so I think most people are just putting up a few videos and slapping online quizzes up to stem the bleeding. I'm making some videos for another class anyway, so I'll do them for this part of my undergrad class, but I'm basically not assuming they'll learn anything about statistics in my new class structure. tbh my students are probably at home worrying about their families just like I am so I think a ton of leeway is called for.

Read a tweet from a teacher, "That first video lesson I just made was perfect! Guess who forgot to hit the 'Record' button."

As for kids worrying, some are and some aren't. When I was my daughter's age I wouldn't have given a shit about it. My daughter is a little bit of a hypochondriac though, and she's the Quarantine Police.

ubarose wrote: In other news - we are trying to figure out logistics for getting my daughter and her dorm mates moved out. We may end up having 3 of them move into our home.

I have a UMBC student from Westchester County NY in my guest room this week.

From the Fantasy Flight Event Center facebook page:

Fantasy Flight Games Center
March 13 at 3:26 PM ·
The health and safety of our customers and employees is our #1 priority. In order to do our part to keep our staff and our customers safe we have stepped up our cleaning and disinfecting efforts as follows:

We are no longer refilling used customer beverage containers. To receive a refill, customers must utilize a new and clean cup from us.

We are increasing our cleaning and disinfecting efforts to multiple times daily, focusing on commonly touched locations such as door handles and tabletops.

If you would like to utilize a curbside pickup for either food/drinks or products you can call the store at (651) 379-3801 and select option “2” to speak with staff.

In addition to our efforts we ask the following of our customers:

If you are feeling ill in any way or may have been in contact with someone affected, please stay home. If you appear to be sick we reserve the right to ask you to leave for the protection of our staff and other guests.

If you are in the store, please wash your hands frequently, and cover your mouth and nose if coughing or sneezing. Please wash your hands after you have coughed or sneezed and before touching any products (for sale or out of our demo library).

When possible, please pay using your credit or debit card or phone.

Remember - the most effective way to fight the spread of COVID-19 is to wash your hands with soap and water for 20 seconds, but we have also added extra hand sanitizer to the store as well.

We do not currently have any plans to cancel any scheduled events, however we will be monitoring the situation and making any changes as needed. Please visit our Facebook page to verify cancellations.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please call the store directly or ask any staff person.

Michigan is putting a mandatory closing of nearly all public gathering and service establishments. Salons are exempt so far, but my wife is closing hers for the duration. Thankfully, we can eat the cost and it is only a small shop. My company has told everyone to work from home, so we are going to try to survive being in the same general area for two weeks. hahahaha

She'll get more done on her weaving, so that's a plus.

ubarose wrote: Latest development at my workplace (I am a State employee).

The Governor has relaxed the rules on working from home for Executive Branch state employees.

The Governor has no authority regarding employees in other branches of the state (i.e. my branch)

My union has been in discussion with HR trying to get the rules relaxed for work from home. HR's response has been a hard line NO. The reason - It's not fair to employees whose jobs can not be performed from home to allow other employees to work from home.

In the meantime, last week one of the people in my department requested a new VPN key, because his broke. He was told he had to wait because they had run out due to having received requests for VPN keys for all the top management people. So looks like the big mucky-mucks are preparing to work from home, because some people are more equal than others.

In other news - we are trying to figure out logistics for getting my daughter and her dorm mates moved out. We may end up having 3 of them move into our home. Still trying to figure out space arrangements and how we are going to move all their stuff.

They still use VPN fobs? Even my backasswards old company switched to a phone app several years ago; one less thing to break or lose.

Oh yeah, we still have roughly half of our remote workers on hard RSA tokens (the other half use soft tokens on their phones).