One item looking back, and two looking ahead:
1. An example of not modeling public-health best practices: on Ash Wednesday, 16 days ago and so well within the time frame of the spread of the virus, my ash-encrusted thumb must have crossed more than a hundred foreheads with ashes. I didn't Purell between each blessing. I don't think anyone even thought twice about it - at least I didn't.
2. In the corporate world, my employer, which employs tens of thousands of workers around the world, notified us this week that all employees who are able to work remotely (meaning, from home), should do so. My wife's employer, a different multinational of similar scale, notified her and her co-workers of the same. Other corporations are doing the same. I don't make many predictions, but I'll make one here: many of these workers, once sent home, will never return to the corporate office, save on infrequent and unavoidable occasions. Employees (those who haven't already sampled working from home) will quickly grasp the advantages of skipping the morning and evening commutes, sleeping a bit longer in the mornings, sneaking in loads of laundry here and there throughout the work day, and so on. Employers will notice that productivity hasn't slipped at all and may even have improved (there is a lot of non-productive socializing in an office), and will start to wonder why they are paying so much per square foot for prime office space that is unused. And so to continue my prediction: corporations will look to downsize their real estate rentals, commercial real estate rental prices will plunge, and commercial real estate will be one of the sectors of the economy that adds to the overall economic malaise into which we're sliding. Probably the Coronavirus will bring about other permanent social and cultural shifts.
3. Parishes in my archdiocese and other diocese which have suspended weekend masses will quickly experience financial hardships, for the prosaic reason that there will be no weekend collections, upon which parishes rely to turn the lights on (which isn't necessary anymore) and to pay its employees (which is still necessary). Consequently, if this hiatus runs for a few months, we will see parish layoffs. There may be a residual impression among the general public that the church is rich and powerful. The powerful part is open to question; the rich part surely is incorrect. Similarly, Catholic schools which have suspended operation and aren't able to operate in a virtual model (most Catholic schools are hardly models of advanced technological investment and capability) will be under pressure from parents to refund tuition; this would be a severe financial blow for many schools, and maybe even a fatal one for some schools. Most Catholic schools, at least around here, are puttering along on nickels and dimes and already are running a deficit - which their shuttered parishes will be unable to make up.
Jim, re your No. 2, I suspect you are right. There will be a crisis in office rentals with prices falling and developers looking for bailouts, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut I am not sure that is a good thing. My first newspaper job was in a bureau, only 15 miles away from the Mother Ship but in a different state. And my last newspaper job involved going to Tallahassee (the state capital) for a few weeks each year, to hang out at the bureau there during the legislative sessions. In both cases, despite telephones and now computers, it's hard to get a sense on what's going on at the Mother Ship. Back home, the complaint was that the Tally bureau cared more about the state government than the readers, but when I got there I was greeted as a traveler from an exotic land that the bureau had only dreamed of once, in a lullaby.
A lot of what you called non-productive socializing is useful for establishing organizational culture, analyzing on the true interests of the leadership and maintaining institutional memory. It's pretty intangible, so people may not realize what they are losing until it's gone. But once the culture and memory are gone, it's going to be very difficult to get them back.
And my I add another miscellaneous thought that we touched on earlier. The NYT has a story today about the tsouris of the toilet paper companies. Yeah, they can't produced it fast enough at the moment. Shelves are bare. Stores are upping their reorders. Hire more people? Produce more?
ReplyDeleteBut people are not using up the toilet paper as fast as they buy it. (Despite dropping civics and history classes to teach STEM courses, we have a generation that thinks it sits on its lungs.) So, come summer, there will be a glut of toilet paper in closets, garages, basements, crawl spaces and rent-a-closets. And what will the manufacturers to then? Layoffs? Close plants?
Once I install my fancy Japanese gadget, I won't need any toilet paper. I also have a temporary fix and need very little. I don't expect the world's most exceptional population, the one that won't go metric, to make this same transition.
DeletePeople are social animals. We can go in temporary lockdown, but it isn't sustainable over the long term, either economically, or in a social way. The best we can hope for is to smooth out the curve of the c-virus so as not to overwhelm medical capability.
ReplyDeletePeople compare it to the flu, which isn't really a good analogy. It's more like polio, though without the crippling aftereffects. It is also a highly contagious virus, we had an outbreak in the 50s that scared parents to death. People were limiting social contact. I remember that my parents wouldn't take us to the swimming pool. I wasn't in school yet and usually got left home with Grandma for church anyway.
Another disease from the past was diptheria, which truly was dreaded for its high fatality rate. That was before my time. Measles wasn't. It was explosively contagious, and miserable and long lasting. Pertussis is still a threat, especially among anti-vaxxers. My parents described having it, being exhausted by coughing until you threw up.
The reason these are still not viewed as existential threats is that vaccines and antibiotics (for the bacterial ones) were developed. I had scarlet fever as a child but was back in school before the end of a week thanks to penicillin. Not like Beth in Little Women.
I trust that scientists are working feverishly to develop a coronavirus vaccine. I have read that clinical trials are in place for antiviral drugs, one of which was used effectively against Ebola and is already through safety evaluations. The best thing our government can do is prioritize support of the research and facilitate sharing of information internationally. This is not an insoluble problem.
A while back Tom suggested prayer, we should do that without ceasing.
It's all well and good to say that people who work in information technology and related fields can work from home. I couldn't have done that in my former job, not having a fully equipped chemistry lab in my kitchen. The company that I worked for is a manufacturer of electronic components of one sort and another. They also have not gone on furlough, that I know of. They were kind of bad about moving manufacturing lines offshore and south of the border. Rumors were always flying around that they would close the local branch. But it was heavily involved in R and D, and remains open. C-virus is equal opportunity, there is hardly a nation which isn't affected. So at least the virus isn't an incentive for further offshoring. But people also can't work out of their basement or garage making parts, not on the scale which is needed or is profitable. There are actually a whole bunch of jobs which can't be and won't be done from home.
ReplyDeleteI am worried about my kids, not so much about the virus, but about their employment. One son is on the staff of a private school (secular), his wife does day care in the home. If the moms and dads of her day care kids can't go to work or get laid off, it will affect her income. The other son works for an online brokerage that just got gobbled up by another online brokerage. He is hoping to stay on with the new management. That is pretty much up in the air.
After working from home for about 25 years, except for meetings in client offices, I went back to work full-time for a big company when my husband retired and I lost health insurance. I couldn't buy my own because about 10 years earlier I had a minor skin cancer removed - the biopsy itself took care of it. But according to the insurance companies,I had a "history of cancer", so no self-insurance was available to me. Obamacare hadn't kicked in yet - pre-existing conditions must be covered under Obamacare from what I know. My husband's company was too small for COBRA coverage. I still had a while to go before medicare would cover me.
ReplyDeleteSo, I worked in a semi-open office, with cubbies and half-walls, no walls or doors to shut out the neighboring conversations or to discourage the colleague passing by with a fresh cup of coffee who just wanted to chat. It took me a long time to learn to plan my mental deadlines for completing work - I would estimate that the enforced "socialization" resulted in 20-25% less accomplished in any given day. And most of it was a huge time waste - the worst being the gossip, as well as an amazing number of staff meetings that provided information that could have been transmitted by email, instead of wasting everyone's time in the conference room.
I think another benefit to having more of the workforce work from home would be the impact on traffic. DC has some of the worst traffic in the country - usually second only to LA. The local pols are constantly trying to figure out which taxes to raise to fund the billions needed for new transit and/or new road capacity. As soon as one project is done (after many years of disruption and many cost "over-runs" over those many years), they have to expand again. In the real world, most people can't ride a bicycle to work. The main tool used by the DC area workforce is the computer. Some may have to works in buildings because of the classified nature of their work - this requires extra security for the computer networks. But many others could work from home.
In the last couple of days the traffic has been flowing smoothly. Most of the workforce had already been sent home to work. The Google traffic map showed lovely green all over the major roads - usually deep, deep red all the way out to the far out suburbs in every direction.
So no more parish fish fries, but I guess the K of C is going to sell take-out next Friday. Apparently they have a freezer full of fish they need to use up.
ReplyDeleteI played the accompaniment for Stations and Benediction last night. We had about 15 attendees. That's about what we usually get, maybe down a little. No kids though. My hisband acted as server to the other deacon, who was leading things. Burned his finger on the censer because he's not used to handling it. Not seriously, aloe vera took care of it.
My pilot niece flew a full planeload of people to Vegas. The partiers have different priorities!
ReplyDeleteOne of my kids, who is on college spring break this week, was supposed to fly into Vegas for his spring break. His group of friends decided to cancel. I'm relieved.
DeleteThree of my kids are full-time college students. All are on spring break this week. None of them will be going back to campus after this week - they'll all finish their semesters virtually. My wife and I already are working from home. That means that our home, besides being two offices, will now also be three classrooms.
My other child, a school teacher who also lives with us, also is on spring break this week and also will not be going back to the school building when spring break ends. They are going to try e-learning. I don't know how long they can sustain it, nor what that will require for her - whether she'll need home space to do "teaching".
Our house is not large - the male and female children share bedrooms respectively, which was fine when they were in primary school. All of them are going to have to carve out workspaces around the house for at least the next few weeks. I love my kids, but frankly it's going to impinge on my work-from-home lifestyle quite a bit.
Ha! If what is happening to you is happening to the emergency work-from-homes, they won't be able to get back to the office fast enough when they finally can.
DeleteThis is where the beauty of using vodka in your homemade hand sanitizer comes in!
DeleteI don't find that life in retirement changes much in a pandemic. I use the Rite Aid drive-thru, and if the Kroger parking lot looks full, I try another time. Otherwise, I am reading, knitting, and talking to the cats as usual.
ReplyDeleteMy hair salon schedules me at off times anyway, so I think I can risk a haircut next week.
Bishop Boyea (Lansing diocese) gave high-risk people dispensation from church, but everything else is a go. Gov. Gretchen is curtailing events with more than 250 (or 100, stories vary), but churches are ignoring this for fish gets and Joe-Pats.
It all changes in a daily basis.
My biggest dilemma is whether to keep my annual check up in Lansing later this month. Hospitals and doc's offices are reporting a lot of nervous people just showing up and demanding tests, which, if course, are not available. Will check with them later as time draws near to see how things are going.
Still no toilet paper.
... and Father just shut down the fish frys and cancelled the Joe-Pat.
DeleteThe Men's Club is dismayed. They're gonna lose the $10k this brings in and be stuck with a load of fish that's going to go bad.
My suggestion is to bag it up and distribute to parish and community members over 65. Not sure if that's feasible, but if recipients paid a few bucks, it would help recoup costs.
However, the lack of income is going to have quite a domino effect on planned repairs and renovation on the now-empty rectory. That, in turn, means lost revenue for the planned rental to a retired priest or two.
People who are antagonistic to change or driven largely by monetary considerations and pushing to operate as normal are a menace in these times.
Our K of C is going to sell takeout fish dinners on Friday evenings until supplies are gone. Seems a lot better than jamming 400 people into the social hall. People can arrange for driveup pickup.
DeletePeople apparently got the word that tgey were dispensed from Mass. We had a sparse congregation last night. I was there because I was one of the EMHCs. I only had two people receive on the tongue, both were handicapped parishioners in scooters who don't have the use of their hands. I worried about them even being there.
ReplyDeleteWe had about 40 percent of the usual crowd at noon today. I looked at the reports for the Masses and 7:30 attendance was way DOWN but 9:00 was up about as much as 7:30 was down. Can't account for that. 10:30 was down. Yesterday's Mass were down, except for the 7:15 Spanish Mass, which was up noticeably from previous weeks. Regularly scheduled meetings and Bible study groups are all still a go with
Deletelet your conscience be your guide.
Under "take that, Gov Cuomo," my favorite steak house emailed that it has the newest and most efficient air filtering system in the county.