Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[TrainsOfDisney]

ugh. They weren't "rushed". Coronavirus vaccine were already being developed and because of Covid - were finally given the money needed to move faster.

You’re right. They were “expedited.”

 

[dreday3]

You’re right. They were “expedited.”

Yes, they cut through a lot of needless bureaucracy, threw money at it and got it pushed to the public. Expediting something doesn't make it less safe.

 

[MisterPenguin]

1. I don't get COVID.

Statistically speaking, #5 is the most likely outcome. After more than a year, only about 10% of Americans have contracted COVID. That means 90% have not.

10% chance of COVID * x% adverse health from COVID is still a greater risk than the risk of an adverse reaction to the vaccine.

And it won't stay at 10%. If we have a large contingent who won't get vaccinated, they'll continue to go around unmasked in bars and parties and that 10% will shoot up within the crowd that doesn't get vaccinated, increasing the risk of an adverse health result.

 

[Smooth]

FWIW

 

[hopemax]

You’re right. They were “expedited.”

Much of the difference is that things that were done in series are now being done in parallel, dictated by the time it took to do the mandated safety and observation portion. Are you really more nervous because they started manufacturing at the same time they started the tests instead of waiting until after? Are you really more nervous because it got the VIP approval queue, instead of the stand-by "we'll review your documents when we get to it?"

 

[mmascari]

As someone who had a 40 mile each way commute for the past 15+ years before Covid I can tell you it’s a double edged sword. In some ways I actually miss my commuting time. Driving alone, listening to music or sports talk radio it was actually an escape for me. I don’t miss the traffic or the bad drivers (I drive into NJ every day ) but I at least knew I had a solid 45 mins twice a day to myself. Working from home I free up that time, but I find I’m very bad at carving that time out for me. I end up working more or doing other chores. People call me whenever where when working in the office I found people left me alone if they saw I was gone for the day. I find it harder to separate home and life. That’s probably more on me for not making a better effort to separate time.

You get better at it, it's a skill. Think back to when you first started working, that commute wasn't the escape in the beginning. It's a family skill too, they also get better.

I started my career with a 45-90 minute NJ commute depending on time. I learned the times to make it 45 very fast. Progressed to a 30 minute, then 3 minute commute for different jobs. Finally landing on working remote. Except for 18 months after my last job change with a 45 mile commute, I've been full time remote since 2002. During that 18 months, I was working remote 1-2 days a week for some of it. Remote work has allowed me to relocate across 4 different states for other reasons too.

Beyond that it's a learned skill, having kids makes a big difference. There were years where that remote work had a 10 mile commute. Dropping off at daycare, 5 miles each way. Since working remote is still working and not a substitute for daycare. That we're using it as daycare and work during the pandemic is part of what makes it harder.

That being said, I'm working from a home office right now in what was (many moons ago) a dining room that never got used. Where my location is now more central, and I don't have as clear of a delineation between "work space" and "personal space" it's definitely a much more delicate balance, and I find myself purposely scheduling time away from "work" (I've always been somewhat of a workaholic though, as I love what I do). If my "office" was in the basement (or if we had a garage with space above it) and it had a separate entrance, I don't think it would be as bad.

That location sounds like the biggest pain. Tell the kids they have to share a room and take over one of the bedrooms. Be nice and take the smaller one.

Home office location is probably the hardest part of the learning curve. After kids, each time we moved, home office has been part of the housing hunt criteria. You want at least a door. For all the same reasons managers want doors not cubes in typical office. That's part of the family learning the skills, when the door is closed, you're at work. They should text you, not just barge in, as if you were 20 miles away. It also gives you a room and threshold to cross. When you go through the door, you've gone to work. Run home to take care of something, cross back out through the door. A computer softphone or different dedicated line helps with this too. Answer it when you're in the room and not when you're not. Using the same personal cell phone definitely blurs lines. It's a huge help psychologically too, knowing if you're at work or at home making the changes.

I also think the fact that my home office also gets used for paying bills, helping the kids with various projects for school, etc. contributes to the difficulty.

This is probably less of an overall issue than the ones above. If you were using your office for those things at off hours, like taking advantage of an office laminator for a kids project outside of business hours, it wouldn't be that big a deal. This assumes those bills you're using a personal computer not a work one, just happen to be at the same desk.

I can definitely see that. I worked mostly from home for a couple months and found myself answering emails at 10PM because the computer was right there. In the office its a bit easier to be "done" at the end of the day.

You can outgrow this one too. Depending on your kids ages, that can impact it too. In my first remote work, it was when my wife was a medical resident. Back when they still made them take "call", which really just means working 36 hours straight every few days, nothing like the IT team call. It was before kids, in a new state, and she wouldn't come home at all some nights. I frequently found myself working until 10PM those days. There was no external triggers to say the day was over. If you combine in the dedicated office space, and a calendar entry or something, you can train yourself to leave the office and go home.

Once you do that, nothing beats the 1 minute commute with no traffic. If you need the wind down time, walk the dog with some headphones. Both you and the dog will be happier.


PS: You need good Internet access for this. But, doesn't everyone need good Internet these days.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Yes, they cut through a lot of needless bureaucracy, threw money at it and got it pushed to the public. Expediting something doesn't make it less safe.

not quite...what they did was bankroll them, guarantee the sales and give them an almost complete Carte
Blanche pass on liability.

it was a pharmacists dream.

but as you have said...it was unnecessary to follow the same red tape rules this time and the work on these began long ago...they plugged 19 into the formula. Didn’t try 1-18 though

 

[danlb_2000]

Very good post.

I’m not anti-vaccine but it’s true that the vaccines were rushed and that are still not fully approved, only approved for emergency use. There have been a few rare, serious reactions to the J&J and Pfizer vaccines that are concerning.

Those are facts.

These side effects are so rare that even if they did a longer trial we may still not have seen them.

 

[Patcheslee]

Instead of the traditional clinical trials, approval, THEN manufacture, they lessened the time needed by manufacturing a stockpile while clinical trials were going on.
Even the flu vaccine takes approximately 6 months to manufacture for the season once the license update has been made. At the beginning Pfizer took 110 days to manufacture a batch of 1-3 million doses, and has cut that down to 60 days through streamlining. If we would have followed the traditional route the first doses wouldn't have even been distributed until March 31st at minimum.

 

[danlb_2000]

Instead of the traditional clinical trials, approval, THEN manufacture, they lessened the time needed by manufacturing a stockpile while clinical trials were going on.
Even the flu vaccine takes approximately 6 months to manufacture for the season once the license update has been made. At the beginning Pfizer took 110 days to manufacture a batch of 1-3 million doses, and has cut that down to 60 days through streamlining. If we would have followed the traditional route the first doses wouldn't have even been distributed until March 31st at minimum.

Yeah, and without outside funding a pharmaceutical company would never take on the financial risk of producing a vaccine in large quantities before they were even sure if would work and be approved.

 

[Patcheslee]

Yeah, and without outside funding a pharmaceutical company would never take on the financial risk of producing a vaccine in large quantities before they were even sure if would work and be approved.

I guess if you think about it, since the federal government gave significant sums of money to them, that money comes from the taxpayers. So people need to get what they paid for

 

[GoofGoof]

You get better at it, it's a skill. Think back to when you first started working, that commute wasn't the escape in the beginning. It's a family skill too, they also get better.

I started my career with a 45-90 minute NJ commute depending on time. I learned the times to make it 45 very fast. Progressed to a 30 minute, then 3 minute commute for different jobs. Finally landing on working remote. Except for 18 months after my last job change with a 45 mile commute, I've been full time remote since 2002. During that 18 months, I was working remote 1-2 days a week for some of it. Remote work has allowed me to relocate across 4 different states for other reasons too.

Beyond that it's a learned skill, having kids makes a big difference. There were years where that remote work had a 10 mile commute. Dropping off at daycare, 5 miles each way. Since working remote is still working and not a substitute for daycare. That we're using it as daycare and work during the pandemic is part of what makes it harder.

The biggest problem these days is that with Covid everyone knows that you are home all the time. I always had to field e-mails and calls from home because of the nature of my job, but for an hour after I left the office nobody called me because they knew I was driving home. I could just not answer calls or e-mails now but that’s not how I’m wired. I do like having dinner with my family every night. Most nights I ate alone after I got home. My company is planning to go with a hybrid approach when the office re-opens. So not full time remote but work from home 1-4 days a week depending on the job and person.

 

[danlb_2000]

The biggest problem these days is that with Covid everyone knows that you are home all the time. I always had to field e-mails and calls from home because of the nature of my job, but for an hour after I left the office nobody called me because they knew I was driving home. I could just not answer calls or e-mails now but that’s not how I’m wired. I do like having dinner with my family every night. Most nights I ate alone after I got home. My company is planning to go with a hybrid approach when the office re-opens. So not full time remote but work from home 1-4 days a week depending on the job and person.

We are doing half the staff in the building, and half home each week. It's still a little odd when one of my on site employees asks me if they can work from home for a day.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

FWIW
View attachment 553475

wow...I can’t believe they had 6,147 cases...when it’s quiet and Huntington/Ashland are “right down the way”

Instead of the traditional clinical trials, approval, THEN manufacture, they lessened the time needed by manufacturing a stockpile while clinical trials were going on.
Even the flu vaccine takes approximately 6 months to manufacture for the season once the license update has been made. At the beginning Pfizer took 110 days to manufacture a batch of 1-3 million doses, and has cut that down to 60 days through streamlining. If we would have followed the traditional route the first doses wouldn't have even been distributed until March 31st at minimum.

I saw this gamed out somewhere...possibly 150,000 more covid related deaths and 6 months more of lockdown measures if they hadn’t produced until the spring.

 

[GoofGoof]

We are doing half the staff in the building, and half home each week. It's still a little odd when one of my on site employees asks me if they can work from home for a day.

We will have some full time work from home people, some full time in person and the vast majority will be hybrid. The hybrid are split between 3-4 days a week in office and 1-2 days. The 3-4 day people will still have their own desk but the 1-2 hybrid people will have “hotel” desks that are shared amongst them and the full remote people if they ever come into the office. Not sure how popular the idea of shared desks is during a pandemic but long term should be Ok. Since they are not requiring vaccination and not requiring masks while sitting at your desk I’m not planning to go back until cases drop and/or more people get vaccinated. I still think all workplaces should require full mask wearing all the time for anyone not vaccinated. If you won’t get the vaccine to protect yourself and you won’t get it to protect others you should be forced to wear a mask to protect others.

 

[mmascari]

We will have some full time work from home people, some full time in person and the vast majority will be hybrid. The hybrid are split between 3-4 days a week in office and 1-2 days. The 3-4 day people will still have their own desk but the 1-2 hybrid people will have “hotel” desks that are shared amongst them and the full remote people if they ever come into the office.

I've done similar over the years. When I started, I would go in 2 days a month, roughly once every other week with some flexibility based on what was going on so I came in on a useful day. I kept my desk for a long time that way. Eventually, that became a couple days every few months, and then few days overnight at a different office location farther away. Then someone wanted my desk, so I lost that and just reserved conference rooms for days in the office. By the end of that job, it was more like 1 day every few months and they had rolled out hoteling space.

At my current job, we moved into Agile team rooms and were not really using our office cubes for the time was in the office. So, they took mine as soon as they needed the space anyway.

The biggest problem with the hoteling is if everyone comes in on the same day, like a department meeting. Then, there's just not enough space. A conference room working as an "open concept" space can solve that for the random day.

Now, still at that job, I've moved and the commute would be 400 miles instead of 40. Before the pandemic, I would go in one week a quarter. But, even that was starting to slip to one or two weeks a year. Post pandemic, one week a year is likely.

Really, any multi location company already knows how to work with offsite people. Any company that out sources any function, like IT, knows how to work with offsite people in multiple time zones. Unless the entire team is in one location, you're quickly learning to work with people not there. At that point, one more, or all, and from home or not isn't a big deal. The pull to return to the office is mostly a management issue. There's some individual issues for people that cannot create good home office space or poor Internet. But, for most it's all management, for a typical office work using a computer all day.

Obviously not every job. They people that run our print room never worked remote, they've been in the office the entire time. The rest of us stayed away to allow them to have the building.

 

[ImperfectPixie]

That location sounds like the biggest pain. Tell the kids they have to share a room and take over one of the bedrooms. Be nice and take the smaller one.

Home office location is probably the hardest part of the learning curve. After kids, each time we moved, home office has been part of the housing hunt criteria. You want at least a door. For all the same reasons managers want doors not cubes in typical office. That's part of the family learning the skills, when the door is closed, you're at work. They should text you, not just barge in, as if you were 20 miles away. It also gives you a room and threshold to cross. When you go through the door, you've gone to work. Run home to take care of something, cross back out through the door. A computer softphone or different dedicated line helps with this too. Answer it when you're in the room and not when you're not. Using the same personal cell phone definitely blurs lines. It's a huge help psychologically too, knowing if you're at work or at home making the changes.


This is probably less of an overall issue than the ones above. If you were using your office for those things at off hours, like taking advantage of an office laminator for a kids project outside of business hours, it wouldn't be that big a deal. This assumes those bills you're using a personal computer not a work one, just happen to be at the same desk.

I work for myself, so the location hasn't been as problematic as it would have been if I had a boss I had to answer to, but I've had this setup for years and there are times it's been...interesting...to say the least. We have an open floor-plan with lots of doorways, and very few doors. When my youngest was little (our two sons are 10 and 15 now), we had chest-high swinging baby gates at each of the 2 doorways that enter my office - not to keep him out of there when I'm working, but to keep him away from my equipment and tools (lots of sharp things...it's really more of a studio) when I'm NOT in there. The central location has been both a blessing and a curse...a blessing in that I can hear everything going on in the house (younger son has moderate autism and flooding sinks was a thing for a long time), but a curse in that I can hear everything going on in the house. We still need to install a new floor (it's carpet right now, but it's a pain in the butt), and I want windowed doors for the doorways. The biggest problem has been getting the family to understand that just because I'm in the house, doesn't mean I'm available or that it's okay to leave everything around the house for me to do. It's definitely improving, but it's been a long journey. (My MIL never expected anyone to do anything to help...she just went psycho if people made a mess, and no one in my husband's family has ever worked for themselves.)

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

I've done similar over the years. When I started, I would go in 2 days a month, roughly once every other week with some flexibility based on what was going on so I came in on a useful day. I kept my desk for a long time that way. Eventually, that became a couple days every few months, and then few days overnight at a different office location farther away. Then someone wanted my desk, so I lost that and just reserved conference rooms for days in the office. By the end of that job, it was more like 1 day every few months and they had rolled out hoteling space.

At my current job, we moved into Agile team rooms and were not really using our office cubes for the time was in the office. So, they took mine as soon as they needed the space anyway.

The biggest problem with the hoteling is if everyone comes in on the same day, like a department meeting. Then, there's just not enough space. A conference room working as an "open concept" space can solve that for the random day.

Now, still at that job, I've moved and the commute would be 400 miles instead of 40. Before the pandemic, I would go in one week a quarter. But, even that was starting to slip to one or two weeks a year. Post pandemic, one week a year is likely.

Really, any multi location company already knows how to work with offsite people. Any company that out sources any function, like IT, knows how to work with offsite people in multiple time zones. Unless the entire team is in one location, you're quickly learning to work with people not there. At that point, one more, or all, and from home or not isn't a big deal. The pull to return to the office is mostly a management issue. There's some individual issues for people that cannot create good home office space or poor Internet. But, for most it's all management, for a typical office work using a computer all day.

Obviously not every job. They people that run our print room never worked remote, they've been in the office the entire time. The rest of us stayed away to allow them to have the building.

I’ve worked from home full time for about 4 years...

its both a tremendous benefit and a challenge. I think that’s pretty true of most people.

 

[ImperfectPixie]

Re-read what I wrote, because it isn't that.

Philly elementary school reverts to remote learning after ‘multiple’ COVID-19 cases

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Philly elementary school reverts to remote learning after ‘multiple’ COVID-19 cases

in an ironic local development...New Jersey - citing “vastly improving metrics” - is expected to ease restrictions in some big categories starting next week.

Summer camps being the one they gushed about...there’s also been soon to be confirmed rumors that all schools will be “encouraged” to be full open the last couple weeks of the year...the “saw no evil”
Approach.

politics never go away. This is a governor who made a billion at Goldman Sachs but was elected by unionized labor.

the one side “won” before...now the other side must claim victory.