Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Coronavirus / Corona Virus

I have to say the positive attitude of some companies surrounding this period has been quite pleasantly surprising.

Barclays extending mortgages for up to three months in case of hardship.
Some airlines offering to rebook to alternative destinations (and spread it there, maybe not so good but still a gesture)
In the IT industry we have seen most of the companies that provide on-line video conferencing offer free usage pending the resolution/adjustment in order to enable engagement without the travel and risk of contamination.

We are doing a few things in anticipation of any lock down. If you have any good suggestions please do share as I suspect most of us not happily retired will be working on the same list of issues. I will put mine here to try and assist.

1. We are having a test lockdown day with everyone working from home. This will allow us to test our practices and find glitches.
2. We have enabled peoples private phones where they are not equipped with laptops and distributed iPads that were "privilege" devices to other operational staff members.
3. We have nominated people as the "lone office worker" to man the office if we have a suspicion so that it is not a rotation/spread program and others can work from home with office cover.
4. We have setup a common webex meeting which all home staff can use to share comments, threads, customer messages, general chitchat etc
5. All phones are practiced with divert to mobile
6. Access to all apps from home has been considered, god bless the "cloud" and SaaS.
7. All staff have been informed of what to do each morning prior to coming to work in case the office needs to be closed and not a general quarantine
8. Cleaners have been contacted and preparations made for "deep clean". We joke that no one knows what this means but it is probably the truth.
9. Our key suppliers have been asked if they have a business continuity plan similar to ours (and would they share it so we can nick their ideas and vice-versa)
10. Our key customers have been collated so that should anything happen we can communicate quickly.
11. All meetings (face2face) have been moved to webex/on-line unless critical
12. Goods in-out have been issued with gloves and handling instructions for packages. Everything left at door, stripped of packing and wiped prior to introduction to the office
13. Home deliveries (AmazonPrime etc) have been blocked to reduce the visits to the office.
14. Key members of staff allocated for isolation if something kicks off so they can then become the primary office person.
15. The toilet roll store room has been locked and only fours sheets handed out at a time by the toilet roll monitor, the office sadist asked for this job. We figure it is a perk he will enjoy.

The impact on retail, transportation and hospitality is going to be like a 4 month closure if it continues in this manner. I can see several retailers that managed to make it through the January hollow being tipped over if this continues.

We do however still have toilet roll crazies among us.

I watched a distinctly unpleasant set to this morning in the supermarket. A customer had six packs of Lemsip Max which apparently includes paracetamol and was trying to check out at the auto-machine. It was refusing to allow more than 2 packs. He then proceeded to become rude and aggressive to the employee trying to help him. He was accusing them of blocking his rights to buy products etc etc. A nurse was at another till and pointed out very loudly so everyone could hear that it was illegal for the supermarket to sell more than two packs of paracetamol based medicine in a single transaction by law due to the impact it can have if taken en-mass. The till was merely doing what it was programmed to do.

People really are getting out of their boxes.

Ah so Lem-sip is the answer......

And a shed full of bog roll.

Following a briefing, my sister (Paediatric Oncologist with the Teenage Cancer Trust) has given this advice to my parents:

2gm Vit C a day in divided doses
25mcg of Vit D a day

If symptoms appear:

1gm Vit C
3mg Zinc
50mg elderberry extract hourly

She has also told them to isolate themselves from human contact as much as possible.

All Bloomberg London employees abroad in Europe have been called back home from wherever they happen to be. Which means that we'll have the pleasure of #2 daughter's company tonight instead of this weekend as she's back off to the Smoke tomorrow morning (she's been working in Paris this week, though almost all of her meetings had been cancelled).

Latest Sit Rep from WHO it is now officially a pandemic Sit Rep 50

Speaking two days ago..

WHO Director- General in his regular media briefing on 9 March stated that the threat of a pandemic has become very real; however, this would be the first pandemic in history that could be controlled.

Now I'm not being flippant here but hey lets this whole thing in perspective, I'll bet more people have died of the clap in the same period of time..

SITUATION IN NUMBERS total and new cases in last 24 hours

Globally 113 702 confirmed (4125 new) 4012 deaths (203 new)

China 80 924 confirmed (20 new) 3140 deaths (17 new)

Outside of China 32 778 confirmed (4105 new) 872 deaths (186 new) 109 countries/territories/ areas (5 new)

WHO RISK ASSESSMENT

China Very High Regional Level Very High Global Level Very High

Time to dig a big bunker or trust in Trump!

It's not panicking, the situation is very serious. Currently we have approximately 460 cases in the UK and 8 deaths. I know this doesn't sound a lot just now but the number of infected individuals is doubling every three days and the strategies to stop it are limited. So in 21 days we could have around 30,000 cases if the mode of transmission doesn't change. The mortality rate in the UK is around 1.5% so we are looking at around 450 deaths by the beginning of April. Today there were 200 deaths in Italy alone. These numbers would overwhelm the NHS, especially the demand for ventilators and oxygen let alone manpower. Who knows what will happen to the transmission dynamics in a month or so -hopefully the virus will be slowed by modified behavior, increased ambient temperatures and UV light. In any case this is no time for complacency.

Well, it's getting very interesting now.....

Apologies, it seems my post about Doctor's advice about coronavirus on page15 of this thread is largely inaccurate!!

https://fullfact.org/online/coronavirus-claims-symptoms-viral/

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