COVID-19: who’s going full doomsday prep on this?

[hifiandmtb]

Our work is scrambling to get work from home set up for critical staff. The network could not cope with the increased demand.
We have more than a few staff that need constant supervision in the office and we are about to give them work from home access

It's taken them until now to organise this?

 

[Haakon]

It's taken them until now to organise this?

The government departments in Canberra have been running the line internally that “we are needed to keep delivering for the government” or something. I’m not convinced... I felt uncomfortable being there yesterday - maybe paranoid, or maybe just aware of how crap Australia is at getting emergency responses right.

I can work from home, so I will I think. Worst case is I have to duck in to grab my dual monitors if my spreadsheet work is too annoying on a single iMac screen. But the IT systems support it, we have skype for internal chats etc etc.

 

[ashes_mtb]

Seeing a weird mix of reactions in my community.

• work is scrambling to make arrangements for work from home or to spread the admin staff across multiple locations, although seem to want a min 50% coverage regardless of whether staff are essential or not. Could easily have 80% working from home the majority of the time. At least all face to face meetings have been stopped.
• my daughter's sport (form of dancing) are pausing training and comps for a month. Bizarrely have decided to have one last training session this weekend so the girls can farewell each other. Still haven't made the obvious call that national championships in July won't happen.
• my son's sports moved pretty quickly to cancel training and games for an extended period.
• I work in a region that is a retirement destination and therefore has a big elderly population. Most of them seem to be cramming into the major shopping centre to see each other for coffee/lunch or to take advantage of current sales. Can't help but think it'll go full Italy there very quickly.
• kids parties are still happening. I guess it's hard to say to young kids your party is off. Shitting bricks at the prospect of taking my 7 year old a party at Macca's this arvo. It's his best mate but feels like an incredibly irrational decisions (especially considering we've pulled kids from school).

 

[hifiandmtb]

Yep. We've had WFH policy for weeks now, most have taken their hardware home with them. For critical staff. rolling one week on one week in the office, social distancing, nightly office cleaning, constant hand washing, etc.

We've recently moved to MS Team but the concall option doesn't support remote desktop microphone so we're workarounding for the time being.

I'm permanently assigned to a remote office site (limited staff allowed) and can WFH whenever I like, so me & my local colleagues are playing it by ear. April will be when COVID19 goes into full crisis mode, I'll probably bunker down in a week or two.

They talk about lockdowns for a few weeks or a month or whatever - it will be for way longer than that, rest assured.

Check out Bondi Beach yesterday:

There's the people that have a fucking clue and the rest of the population who are going to fuck it up for all.

 

[hifiandmtb]

• kids parties are still happening. I guess it's hard to say to young kids your party is off. Shitting bricks at the prospect of taking my 7 year old a party at Macca's this arvo. It's his best mate but feels like an incredibly irrational decisions (especially considering we've pulled kids from school).

Why not just listen to the experts & not take him? Noone has a gun to your head (not meaning to be disparaging).

What is it that makes people act irrational when being asked to do rational things?

Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said people should be practising social distancing whenever possible by keeping 1.5 metres apart from each other.

 

[Haakon]

A teacher asks her class to come up with a sentence that contains the word "contagious."

Amy stands up and says "Last week my auntie had the Corona virus. Mummy says it’s very contagious."

"Very good," says the teacher. "Anyone else?"

Becky stands up and says "a long time ago the bubonic plague affected a lot of Europe and because it was very contagious a lot of people died."

"Very good," says the teacher. "One more?"

Little Johnny then stands up and says "my next door neighbour recently started painting his house with a 20mm brush. My Daddy says it'll take the contagious

 

[beeb]

Our work is scrambling to get work from home set up for critical staff.

Luckily they're actually trying to get it setup. The business I work for isn't even trying to. I could work from home, but they're doing sweet-FA about preparing for the possibility that we might need to. We've only been asking for the last week. Two of the guys already have laptops and mobiles and still aren't being allowed to work from home. The mind boggles.

 

[hifiandmtb]

The president of the Australian Medical Association’s NSW branch, Dr Kean-Seng Lim, has issued a statement urging people in the state to stay at home...

Lim said on Saturday morning:

The novel coronavirus is something we need to take seriously but not panic or be complacent about. That said, we are at a stage now where we need to be doing everything we can to slow the transmission of this highly contagious virus. So, with that in mind, if you can stay home, please stay home.
As doctors, it’s distressing to still see people undertaking non-essential recreational activities.
The time for that is passed – it’s time to stay home. The more people who practise the physical distancing that has been requested, the slower the virus will spread, and there will be less overall risk for health workers like me, who have to go to work. This is especially important if you are in an at-risk group or have close contact with people in an at-risk group.
If you’re feeling sick, don’t visit elderly relatives, for instance. If you have been asked to self-isolate or otherwise meet criteria for self-isolation because of risk of infection with COVID-19, then you definitely need to stay home.”

 

[hifiandmtb]

Everyone should read this!

https://medium.com/@megan.higgie/wi...care-beds-between-7-and-10-april-59f83b52756e

Without serious action, Australia may run out of intensive care beds between 7 and 9 April

The exponential growth of COVID-19 cases in New South Wales (NSW) as modelled below has a very high level of confidence (R² > 99.5%), and is shown here as the black line with a 95% confidence interval shaded in blue. The red line is taken from the NSW row of data in Table 1, that is the number of COVID-19 cases before ICU beds are full. From this we can then project the dates that NSW will run out of ICU beds:

 

[ashes_mtb]

Why not just listen to the experts & not take him? Noone has a gun to your head (not meaning to be disparaging).

What is it that makes people act irrational when being asked to do rational things?

Well aware we're under no obligation. We've decided to go with a few final things this weekend (the party and daughters final training) before scrapping pretty much everything (except for grocery shopping and my work).

Like most things in life, I'm seeing people responding rationally to the degree it suits them.

Just sharing what's happening in my particular bubble, good or bad.

 

[hifiandmtb]

Like most things in life, I'm seeing people responding rationally to the degree it suits them.

Choosing to be irrational in the face of rationality you mean? What's one more day of irrationality in the face of this monster. You don't get to choose what's rational & irrational, that's for facts to choose.

(not having a go at you, just the general population)

 

[ashes_mtb]

Choosing to be irrational in the face of rationality you mean? What's one more day of irrationality in the face of this monster. You don't get to choose what's rational & irrational, that's for facts to choose.

(not having a go at you, just the general population)

I'm judging myself over it as much as you are. Happy for everyone to speak their mind.

We're being fairly pro-active and low-risk in our approach to this. Kids out of school before most (we're in the very fortunate position to be able to do so), no direct contact with grandparents etc. This is the one thing thing we're doing that is more an emotional decision than a rational one.

 

[hifiandmtb]

Endgame A, B or C.

I choose C, but I don't get to choose for the rest of us:

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...thing-and-restarting-when-coronavirus-is-gone

The UK seems to have made the brave Endgame C choice. Fuck me I hope we do too.

 

[Mr Crudley]

#wheresmy29

#TheRealQuestion

Off to the nearest Giant Experience store today no doubt.

 

[beeb]

Endgame C is so obviously logical answer.

Government mandated suspension of mortgages and rents for the duration of the shutdown, the pick-up where we left off just with closed border thereafter. I'm sure everyone could cope with a coordinated multi-week lock-down if you knew it was actually going to deal with the issue. The current approach is like walking out onto the beach when the water has diasppeared before a tsunami. It might be interesting times but it's going to overwhelm us very quickly...

 

[Mr Crudley]

Yep. We've had WFH policy for weeks now, most have taken their hardware home with them. For critical staff. rolling one week on one week in the office, social distancing, nightly office cleaning, constant hand washing, etc.

We've recently moved to MS Team but the concall option doesn't support remote desktop microphone so we're workarounding for the time being.

I'm permanently assigned to a remote office site (limited staff allowed) and can WFH whenever I like, so me & my local colleagues are playing it by ear. April will be when COVID19 goes into full crisis mode, I'll probably bunker down in a week or two.

Most telco folks I've spoke to this week are all at home for an indefinite period.

I have Teams, Zoom, VPNs and a bunch of IM clients and doing a trial for a Taiwan customer next week from home. My support guys and a wiser colleague from Phoenix will also drop in the ZOOM config sessions. I haven't been to the city office since the Christmas party.

Zoom is great overall and sure beats Webex. I haven't used MS teams for much more that internal chatting.

Document sharing is also pretty good with the newer MS products. You can edit Word or Excel etc in groups at the same time even down to the single cell level. It is finally what it should have been all along and you no longer need multiple versions of the same documents floating around as email attachments and managing changes.

Very fortunate to have continuity and feel for all impacted by Covid19.

 

[Ultra Lord]

Really weird/awesome vibe at my favourite small bar lastnight.

hand sanitiser’s for everyone, max capacity limited to 30 people instead of their usual 100. Bar staff constantly washing hands.
Maybe 15 people max? Everybody in there being taking careful to not get too close to each other.
S’not all doom and gloom. People are starting to take things very seriously now.

 

[pink poodle]

Local supermarkets closed early last night. I'd wager heavily it's chaos in there today.

 

[moorey]

Mine very quiet. Still out of the usual stuff....
Including the 4kg of sugar I need for my 45lt batch of apocalypse sauce
Also, COVID19 keeps putting my pics sideways

 

[hifiandmtb]