Covid-19 miscellany

[Worldtraveller]

I found working at home and working at the office to be about the same, with a slight advantage for collaboration when in person.

I live close to work, so I don't have this 1.5 hrs of daily driving to weigh in on the math.

Same. I liked being able to occasionally break during the day to do something around the house during my lunch break, but I think overall, I was slightly more productive working from home.

 

[crazyfingers]

I forgot to mention in my post above that though the first part of the pandemic, they were saying that back to office would start when case rates reached "Low" or green as the CDC rated counties at the time. But then as rates reached RED they didn't change course. Moving goal posts also made me angry.

 

[crazyfingers]

I found working at home and working at the office to be about the same, with a slight advantage for collaboration when in person.

I live close to work, so I don't have this 1.5 hrs of daily driving to weigh in on the math.

Same. I liked being able to occasionally break during the day to do something around the house during my lunch break, but I think overall, I was slightly more productive working from home.

I had originally gone remote around 2009 because my kids were so out of control that I needed to be home just in case. I grew to like it so much because of the flexibility and because I got an hour and a half of my life back.

Besides, pre-pandemic, 90% of the people in my division of the company were either remote or at another company location, being in the office was pretty pointless. Pretty much the only people I had any reason to collaborate with were the sales guys and even then, because everyone else was remote most interactions were via Skype/Link/Teams at the time anyway.

 

[Playball40]

I found working at home and working at the office to be about the same, with a slight advantage for collaboration when in person.

I live close to work, so I don't have this 1.5 hrs of daily driving to weigh in on the math.

Same. But in my case training my team is easier in person. Once mastered, they are just as productive home as in office.

 

[Rhea]

I like the office and running into people in the office to say hi, and being able to pop in on people for a 5-minute collab, and the friday games in the meeting room.

Home can be handy, but I do like seeing the people. I’d be good with half days, tho.

Online can work, I do that with a lot of night meeting and early morning meetings for different time zones, but it’s not as good as in person, for me.

Granted, it does not require a long commute. I’m 13 minutes from door to desk, (including a quarter-mile walk from parking to office) and I’d have to go the same distance anyway for food, wine, fuel, book club or the gym.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

https://wapo.st/49Gxfj9

Measles in Florida schools and the anti-vax movement grows, as the government coddles the madness.

The measles vaccine works because measles itself is very amenable to vaccination producing very long term and nearly full immunity. Unfortunately, covid is not amenable to the same kind of vaccination success, no disrespect to the scientists trying.

By trying to oversell the efficacy of the covid vaccines with no discernment between vaccines for different infections, this is leading the reactive masses to think other vaccines are similarly oversold. For the most part the other vaccines are not oversold.

This is like reefer madness backlash but for vaccines. And yes, high strength cannabis is not all roses, but it is not fentanyl.

Covid mutates so fast that vaccines aren't anything like 100%. Still, 50% is an awful lot better than 0%. We continue to do flu shots for the same reason--it's still better than not doing it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

RTO doesn’t improve company value, but does make employees miserable: Study

Data is consistent with bosses using RTO to reassert control and scapegoat workers.

arstechnica.com

So it looks like Return to Office is just about so much dickery; wanting people to push around and something to blame for overall poor performance. But how far up the ladder does this RTO attitude extend? Is anyone considering the benefit of happy employees and the cost of office space?

A big driver is the cost of office space - or rather, a desire to keep the price of office space up.

Lots of top managers and corporate shareholders (and of course, there's a big overlap between the two) have large investments in commercial real estate. If workers don't use that space, they stand to lose a LOT of money - money that was invested in what (in 2019) looked like a really safe asset class.

RTO is essential to support the retirement funds of the folks sitting in the boardroom; They need it to happen on a personal level, so they don't give two shits whether or not it makes good business sense. And they never much cared for happiness amongst their employees - employees get paychecks; If they want to be happy, they can do it on their own time.

A brief glance at the office towers in any major city gives you an appreciation of the problem here. These are very expensive structures, which are typically useless for any purpose other than office space - they cannot easily be repurposed as domestic or industrial spaces. Workers must RTO, if these buildings are to continue to return dividends for their investors (who just so happen to also be the owners and/or managers of the big white-collar firms that are calling for RTO).

There is also the problem that when there's a major shift in business the ones on the wrong horse lose badly even if there was no way they could have known they were on the wrong horse. To get to the top you need to be both good and lucky--therefore you must make bad things look like good things.

 

[barbos]

Btw, how are you feeling? Have you recovered completely yet?

Almost 3 weeks now.
Except for sense of smell and some coughing I am perfectly fine.
Both are improving too. I noticed that I smell complex chemicals much better than simple ones like alcohol and vinegar.
Basically 3 days of high temperature, then 3 days of almost normal (36.8)
and after that it got better. I would call it a mild case.

Got infected again. But this time it seems much milder variant I suppose. 4-5 days and I am almost normal, I think.
Still, it's worse than normal cold.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Btw, how are you feeling? Have you recovered completely yet?

Almost 3 weeks now.
Except for sense of smell and some coughing I am perfectly fine.
Both are improving too. I noticed that I smell complex chemicals much better than simple ones like alcohol and vinegar.
Basically 3 days of high temperature, then 3 days of almost normal (36.8)
and after that it got better. I would call it a mild case.

Got infected again. But this time it seems much milder variant I suppose. 4-5 days and I am almost normal, I think.
Still, it's worse than normal cold.

Did you lose taste?

 

[barbos]

Did you lose taste?

No, only smell, like the last time. And not completely, at least at present.

 

[barbos]

I wonder if I still contagious. Still runny nose and occasional dry coughing like the last time.
It does not bother me much. But still, it looks like my hope that it will get to 100% way faster is hopeless.
It's gonna take the same time I am afraid.