Keeping calm and carrying on

[petrea_mitchell]

After all that drama about quarantining people on cruise ships and travel bans and so forth, it turns out the new virus has been circulating for weeks in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon's first confirmed case is in isolation at the nearest hospital to me; it's estimated that a few hundred people around here probably have milder cases and don't even realize it.

I figure that there's not much I can do except be more careful about hand-washing and putting my hands near face. I don't have much case to panic, as I'm under 50 and my underlying health condition is well-controlled. In fact, the way my last couple of colds have gone, I think I should be more worried about becoming one of the asymptomatic spreaders. At least I don't have any regular contact with sick or elderly people.

Game Storm is coming up at the end of the month, and the convention is still on, because they don't have any choice. (See this timely article for all the details on force majeure, but basically unless the US government starts actively discouraging mass gatherings, no fan convention is going to be able to afford to cancel.)

At work, thankfully we have no conspiracy theorists and no panic. All business travel did get cancelled, and we've been expecting that we'll all be told to work from home for a while at some point. We've been ordered to work remotely if possible on Friday as a test to see if the company VPN can handle it.

Comments

[athenais]

Yeah, it's here, it's impossible to contain, although that's no reason to stop trying. But I expect John to start working from home soon as SLAC stops holding meetings he needs to attend. Me, I have no choice but to be out and about during the day. I don't have a lot of contact with people, however!

[rattfan]

I hope everything is okay for you. Here in Perth I think there's one or two patients in hospital, been brought down from the quarantine camp up north. They had been evacuated from that cruise ship Diamond Princess. But the way everyone is hoarding and fighting over toilet paper, you'd think the Black Death had descended.

I could work from home if I had to, if they'd just let me. All I'd need would be a foot pedal machine [I am a court transcriber]. It would be entertaining to see whether the computers and IT could handle it, same as you describe, or whether everything would fall in a heap as they sometimes do with this company :-)

[delosharriman]

I fully expect that the hysteria (panic-buying of toilet paper & hand sanitizer, et cetera) will have died away long before infections hit their peak. I'm guessing that will be mid-April, & the whole thing will have passed over by June.

[petrea_mitchell]

I'm certainly hoping that infections will be receding by May. There's a convention we usually go to that month which skews heavily toward over-50 people with health issues.

[csadn]

Given the sort of people those con-goers are: I suspect precautions are already being taken....