Coronavirus Tales

poke to follow thread.

I work as a lab tech for a hospital in the RDU area. Things are still mostly calm here aside from the runs on grocery stores, but the hospital is screening patients and visitors and isolating the former and denying the latter if the register a fever pending whenever we get our in house testing up and running (estimated end of the week)

I'm the director of a college library. Our students are on spring break and have been told to stay home and take classes online starting next week. We just made the decision to completely close the library starting Friday. The task now is to figure how best to support online classes (we're a residential liberal arts college, so there is no precedent or real infrastructure, so this rings particularly true) and to try to make sure my staff are busy and can work from home as much as possible. We distributed chromebooks to everyone yesterday and did some training on remote access.

My wife and kids are home for two weeks. My wife works as a massage therapist at a nice resort. They kicked all the guests out yesterday and are paying everyone their average pay for the next two weeks.

Wegmans wasn't too bad. I went over there last night, got a gallon of milk, some fruit, some overpriced hamburger meat, and some sodas. The bread was torn apart, only a little whole wheat and specialty breads were left. Though they did have three people directing people to registers (much like how a commissary operates, funnily enough). I walked up to the self-checkout and got out fairly quickly. I'm thinking the panic buying around here is at least lightening up a bit. Last week was like a warzone.

I’m home from work today with a bad cold/mild flu. My 2 teens are home as well. School closures. In a few minutes I’m going to brave the grocery store. I’ll get there at 8:30 am which is probably too late.

I don’t even want milk and bread. I just want to live in a place where it’s available for purchase. Or to be more specific, I’m longing for that boring, normal town that I worked my whole life to afford to live in.

I tried amazon fresh a few minutes ago. When I got to the check out phase the ‘confirm purchase’ button wouldn’t work. That would have been nice to know at the beginning of my attempt to buy stuff.

I work in Home Health Care. It is a tricky business. We are to continue to see folks if they want to be seen while at the same time minimizing risk to ourselves and the patients. Fortunately, my office is fully stocked with all forms of PPE. wipes and hand sanitizer. Many of the patients and the assisted living/group homes have asked us not to come for the next week or two. It is an interesting time.

Amazon has cancelled all deliveries except for stuff like medical supplies, I understand.

It is a bit complex

Amazon Suspends Third-Party Fulfillment on Anything but Medical Supplies and Household Staples

Amazon will stop independent third-party sellers on its platform from selling anything but medical supplies and household staples in the United States and the European Union. Amazon made the announcement to sellers through an email sent Tuesday morning and mentioned that “other high-demand products” will also be allowed.

“We are seeing increased online shopping and as a result, some products such as household staples and medical supplies are out of stock,” an Amazon spokesperson told Gizmodo via email.

“With this in mind, we are temporarily prioritizing household staples, medical supplies, and other high-demand products coming into our fulfillment centers so we can more quickly receive, restock, and deliver these products to customers.”

It’s not immediately clear what those additional “high-demand products” might include. The new rules will be in effect until at least April 5 and will only apply to sellers who ship their goods to Amazon warehouses before they make their way to customers. Sellers are free to continue listing third-party sales on Amazon, they just can’t do fulfillment through the tech giant. Any goods currently in transit to Amazon fulfillment centers will still be accepted, according to an Amazon spokesperson.

Sounds like they don't want ordinary stuff to delay priority stuff.

Which is good but the message needs to be a bit clearer so that people don't panic.

That horse done left the barn, I think...

Robear wrote:

Sounds like they don't want ordinary stuff to delay priority stuff.

They aren't telling third party sellers they can't sell ordinary stuff, they're just saying they won't help ship it out. Ordinary stuff Amazon sells itself isn't affected.

When you sell stuff on Amazon, you're given two options: ship it yourself, or Fulfillment by Amazon.

If you ship your stuff yourself, you list your product and hang on to your inventory. When it sells, Amazon sends you the buyer's information, your cut of the sale price, plus whatever the buyer paid for shipping. You mail it directly to them.

If you go with Fulfillment by Amazon, you list your product and then ship it to Amazon. They store it in their warehouse, and when it sells, they ship it to the customer and give you your cut of the sale price. (This is how third party sellers make their products Prime eligible, if you were curious.)

This second option is what Amazon is shutting down. You can still buy and sell stuff on Amazon, they're just not managing other people's inventory for them right now.

So I work at an opticans. Yesterday the British government asked for all over 70s to start to self isolate (as in try and stay at home for all but the most urgent of tasks) so of course it was full of over 70s today. Quote of the day "Oh I know I'm not meant to be out, but I 'm not taking it too seriously" ffs.

Also my colleagues were making jokes about the whole social distancing thing as I tried to explain it too them and why 5 of them shouldn't be standing around a small podium, including one of the managers. Oh and also the pubs still had folks in them. Britain is doomed unless the government stops giving advice and starts making laws.

I'm sure they will agree on an covexit deal within a year or two.

Madagascar Closes Ports.

Seriously. They actually did it, although just to cruise ships so far. It's just a throwaway observation in this middle of this article about Africa in general, but I found it pretty funny, despite the gravity of the situation.

Also, they've done it with zero known cases, so it's just like the game. Stupid coronavirus player should have known to start there.

Probably first time they play. Next year they will know.

Next year (heck, autumn) is actually a depressing thought... even if this thing turns out to be seasonal. Likely won’t have a vaccine by then.

PITA. These days I'm as much admin work as billable. The Board is shooting everything down and essentially ignoring that this could be a potential for major disruption, beyond the acknowledged disruption of ~ 'these pesky employees asking questions about fake news'. The only weak-sauce measure they've approved: a two part questionnaire asking (1) do you have access to a computer and (2) do you have internet at home. Only half of the folks have even responded at this stage. Everything is print, distribute, and watch the Class A folks frown and dump the paper and comment about the level of inappropriate discourse around the office and how hiring millennials has infected the morale of a once robust workforce.

Wow. My work has shut down campus for the remainder of the spring semester. I'm wfh until May at the earliest. They even canceled the spring graduation ceremony.

While I was out taking a walk after lunch today, one of my former co-workers (she still works in my building, just on a different project) emailed me and called someone else looking for me.

Apparently one of our mutual friends at work went home yesterday not feeling well, and was out today. I heard that there were people sanitizing his desk later in the afternoon, hopefully just out of precaution and not because my friend is sick and they aren't telling us.

I of course traveled with this mutual friend the first week of March (from NJ to LA and back).

My wife works at a university, and she is working from home for the foreseeable future. Likewise my two youngest kids (one in HS, one in college) are home for Remote Learnings.

Schools are closed until April 28th at this point. I'm back to work after spending two days home with the kiddos. My wife is starting her pre-planned spring break time off tomorrow, but it sounds like one of her clinics will be temporarily closed pretty soon. I'll work through spring break to keep some extra funds coming in. Will be interesting once she goes back to work. We're covered on childcare for the next week and a half, and I figure we'll alternate weeks from there.

On a selfish note, it's looking like we're going to have to eat the cost of our spring break trip. We were looking forward to the break.

Shadout wrote:

Probably first time they play. Next year they will know.

Next year (heck, autumn) is actually a depressing thought... even if this thing turns out to be seasonal. Likely won’t have a vaccine by then.

It isn't as depressing as you might think. Vaccine probably won't be here by this time next year, but they are working on a lot of positive treatments to reduce symptoms and save those that are infected. Obviously I wouldn't count on them (with as much misinformation out there, this too could be misinformation) but I wouldn't give up hope either.

My work has come up with a brilliant plan (/s) to infect us all. If a person who works here gets it, everyone goes home, they "deep clean" the office, then we all come back. They haven't realized that all that does is let the people infected by person A bring the virus back into work with them an infect everyone who missed out the first time. The virus only lasts 2-3 days on hard surfaces, and less on others. If they were to do what they're supposed to do and send everyone home to quarantine for 14 days, any traces of the virus on surfaces at work will be long gone by the time we get back, but that would mean 14 days of lost work instead of just 1 or 2 so they couldn't even contemplate that. Let alone contemplate that our entire business is based on people going out to stores to buy lottery tickets, and should have been suspended entirely by now.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Wow. My work has shut down campus for the remainder of the spring semester. I'm wfh until May at the earliest. They even canceled the spring graduation ceremony.

I don't understand. How do you interact with the internet if human resources aren't available to take the 'copy' requests for your review of content? Who loads the paper into to your printer? Who hits the buttons to override manual feed? Who delivers and organizes the white, ivory, canary, mint, beige (color coded by date of print) stacks at your desk? How do you even engage in paper commerce if nobody is down the hall to exchange your stack with? If nobody is there with you, what poor runner takes the brunt of your frustration when you sigh and explain you only let your digits grace premium bond paper (100% cotton or GTFO, please and thank you).

And most importantly, once the above process is satisfied, who do you dictate your transcription requests to so that someone can type your words into the keyboard thingie from the generated transcript?

;-P WFH... talk about heads exploding [here].

Yesterday at the grocery store I was able to get everything I needed except eggs and tissue. Then Mrs Rawk’s mother brought us a 10 pack of tissue boxes that she procured from a back alley pop up dry goods market in downtown Santa Ana. Or maybe it was the local Costco. It was one of those two, I’m sure.

I’m one of those people who have personal space issues. At the grocery store, I was surprised at how many people were attempting to encroach upon my invisible boundary that hovers about 2 feet around my body. I thought for sure the fear of contamination would have most folks observing the 3 foot rule.

I just called the local book store and they are not open for browsing but will take phone orders and curbside pickup.

Prederick wrote:

I'm back in the office on Wednesday. Back in New York City, back sitting on a bus, back taking the subway, back in an office. And I want to help, but at the exact same time, honestly, I'm scared to sh*t.

Discussed it with my family and decided I'd use my parent's car to commute for the foreseeable future. They're certainly not going anywhere.

RawkGWJ wrote:

I’m one of those people who have personal space issues. At the grocery store, I was surprised at how many people were attempting to encroach upon my invisible boundary that hovers about 2 feet around my body. I thought for sure the fear of contamination would have most folks observing the 3 foot rule.

That was really annoying me yesterday. I saw far too many people not even making the slightest effort to give everyone else a little distance.

Well my office has started a test run of mostly remote work. i am mostly remote but have to go in a few days alternating with a couple other people as a bunch of stuff still has to be mailed, copied, ect. This way at most 2-3 people are in the same couple offices at the same time.

Working remote is way too quiet.

Stealthpizza wrote:

Working remote is way too quiet.

Not when you have kids.

My eight year old, every 90 seconds...

Mr Bismarck wrote:
Stealthpizza wrote:

Working remote is way too quiet.

Not when you have kids.

My eight year old, every 90 seconds...

Oh god I can't wait for my kid to get old enough that her incessant questions make that much sense.

While you are there answering questions I am trying to figure out the correct genre of music to start with for my end of the world mix. I am assuming alt rock or punk is a solid starting point.