Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
A lot of people…office workers, students…are going to be getting their first experience of remote working, and a lot of organizations are going to be getting either their first experience or a greatly expanded experience in managing this kind of work. What will be the long-term effects of this?…will people eagerly return to their brick-and-mortar working environment as soon as it is safely possible?
Certainly, there are a lot of workers who would welcome the opportunity to avoid their daily commutes. And there are a lot of employers who would be happy to save a lot of money on office space.
And there are surely some parents who would welcome the opportunity to keep their kids at home…there are also more than a few who have arranged their lives and their work schedules around the assumption that their kids will be in school for several hours every weekday.
Many of the remote working experiences are surely going to be suboptimal, however, given that there has been little if any leadtime to prepare systems, content, and procedures.
So what do you think?..a return to things the way they were, or permanent change?
Issues covered will be on COVID-19 spread, World Headlines, the 3-4-2020 Seattle Public Health Press conference, World Headlind Summary, Corruption at the WHO, Bad and good news COVID-19 medical developments. the Political/Demographic Implications of COVID-19 for the Gov’t Elites, and the social media and videos COVID-19 tracking source section.
Top line, There are currently 97,138 confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide, including 3,351 fatalities as of the March 5, 2020, at he 4:48pm ET time hack on the BNO News corona virus tracking site (https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/) There are 80(+) and growing umber of nations including China plus three “Chinese special administrative regions” (Macao, Hong Kong and Taiwan) that have reported COVID-19 infections. China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Italy, Iran, Germany, R.O.K. and the USA all appear to have local, or endemic, spread of the disease. Russia, Egypt, and Columbia appear to have joined the endemic spread list as well due to airports in the UAE and elsewhere picking up air travelers originating from those nations as sick with COVID-19.
WORLD HEADLINE SUMMARY (3/5/2020)
o New Jersey confirms first presumptive case
o NY state cases double to 22
o Seattle closes 26 schools
o Pentagon tracking 12 possible COVID-19 cases
o Illinois reports 5 more cases
o NYC reports 2 more cases, raising total to 4
o Italy postpones referendum vote; death toll hits 148
o WHO’s Tedros: “Now’s the time to pull out the stops”
o Tennessee confirms case
o Nevada confirms first case
o New Delhi closes primary schools
o EU officials weigh pushing retired health-care workers back into service to combat virus
o Italy to ask EU for permission to raise budget deficit as lawmakers approve €7.5 billion euros
o Beijing tells residents not to share food
o 30-year-old Chinese man dies in Wuhan 5 days after hospital discharge
o Cali authorities tell ‘Grand Princess’ cruise ship not to return to port until everyone is tested
o Global case total passes 95k
o Lebanon sees cases double to 31
o France deaths climb to 7, cases up 138 to 423
o EY sends 1,500 Madrid employees home after staffer catches virus
o Trump says he has a “hunch” true virus mortality rate is closer to 1%
o Switzerland reports 1st death
o South Africa confirms 1st case
o UK chief medical officer confirms ‘human-to-human’ infections are happening in UK
o UK case total hits 115
o Google, Apple, Netflix cancel events
o HSBC sends research department and part of London trading floor home
o Facebook contract infected in Seattle
o Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Netflix cancel events and/or ask employees to work from home
o Netherlands cases double to 82
o Spain cases climb 40, 1 new death
o Belgium reports 27 new cases bringing total to 50
o Germany adds 87 cases bringing total to 349
As I mentioned on these pages a few days ago, I am attending a national conference in DC for my company and around 300 of our vendors. As a reminder, I am involved in industrial distribution (actually HVAC distribution, which is a subset of industrial distribution).
I asked the same question of dozens of my top vendors, and it was basically “what issues are you seeing with regards to the production slowdowns in China?”. I left the question open intentionally as I didn’t want to funnel responses.
Almost all of them, as if they rehearsed their responses together, said the following:
We have enough safety stock to get us through the Spring orders and a few months afterward.
We are in constant contact with our Chinese vendors (as if this means anything) and are looking at alternate sources (prices will increase).
There may be shortages on certain items in the future.
I distilled these responses down a bit and thought about it and I think that there will be some supply chain issues, and there may be some opportunities. One vendor remarked that once Chinese production is fully back on line that there is a container logjam anticipated that might put some orders back several months. The vendors could be giving us the “remain calm” routine to try to keep runs on product to a minimum, but the demand in HVAC just isn’t there right now, as we are firmly in “shoulder” season. Shoulder season is Spring and Fall, where there aren’t too many emergencies, unless you live in the commercial world, where everything is an emergency.
Not much more outside of these comments was related to me and I think they are for the most part telling the truth. I guess we will know in a few months. If we start out Spring with some hot weather like in 2018, we could start to see some relationships tested.
This will be a short update. Issues covered will be on COVID-19 spread, World Headlines, COVID-19 medical developments regards PPE & the role of building contamination in spreading disease in Japan, and the social media and videos COVID-19 tracking source section.
Top line, There are currently 92,138 confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide, including 3,134 fatalities as of the 3 March 2020 at 5:51 a.m. ET time hack on the BNO News corona virus traking site (https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/) There are 70(+) and growing nations including China plus three “Chinese special administrative regions” (Macao, Hong Kong and Taiwan) that have reported COVID-19 infections. China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Italy, Iran, Germany, R.O.K. and the USA all appear to have local, or endemic, spread of the disease.
The reality of personal protective equipment shortages in the USA because we outsourced most such production to China and many regional medical systems sent a lot of our existing medical PPE to China in January 2020 per the request of the CDC.
World Headline Summary (As of late evening 3/2/2020):
o US death toll climbs to 6; all in WA, which has 18 cases
o 2 new cases confirmed in Tampa Bay
o 1st case reported in New Hampshire
o Hubei reports 114 new cases, 31 new deaths
o Santa Clara County confirms 2 more cases, bringing county total to 9
o Gottlieb warns US cases likely in ‘low thousands’
o Illinois announces 4th case
o Boris Johnson: “A very significant expansion” of the virus is “clearly in the cards”
o Italian death toll climbs 18 to 52 while total cases surpasses 2,000
o BMW tells 150 to quarantine after Munich employee infected
o Algeria total hits 5
o Senegal becomes 2nd sub-Saharan country to confirm virus
o WHO’s Tedros: Virus is “common enemy” of humanity so don’t focus on blame
o Jordan reports first two cases
o French death toll revised to 3, total cases climb to 191
o Tunisia reports first case
o UK total climbs to 40
o OECD warns global growth could fall by half
o Indonesia reports first cases
o “Progress is being made” toward a vaccine
o Cuomo says NY expects more cases
o India confirms 2 more cases
o ‘Official’ Iran death toll hits 66
o EU confirms 38 deaths across 18 members
o First cases confirmed in Fla.
o 2 Amazon employees test positive in Milan
o Virus now in 8 US states: Washington, California, Illinois, Rhode Island, New York, Florida, Oregon and New Hampshire
o San Antonio virus patient re-hospitalized after testing positive
o China warns it could face ‘locust invasion’
COVID-19 MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
This article is very much worth reading in full, printing out a copy, highlighting and carrying around. I’ll excerpt a couple of sections from it below the title and link:
Unmasked: Experts explain necessary respiratory protection for COVID-19
The themes of this update will be on issues of COVID-19 spread, World Headlines, Major COVID-19 medical developments, the Washington State COVID-19 outbreak and its implications, and the social media and videos COVID-19 tracking source section.
Top line, There are currently 89,788 confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide, including 3,061 fatalities as of the 2 March 2020 at 7:03 a.m. ET time hack on the BNO News corona virus traking site (https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/) There are 65(+) and growing nations including China plus three “Chinese special administrative regions” (Macao, Hong Kong and Taiwan) that have reported COVID-19 infections. China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Italy, Iran, Germany, R.O.K.and the USA all appear to have local, or endemic, spread of the disease.
World Headline Summary (As of late evening 3/1/2020):
o Global virus deaths hit 3,000 as China reports another 42
o NY State confirms 1st case of Covid-19
o Rhode island announces “presumptive” case; patient recently visited Italy
o Washington State confirms 2 more cases
o 2 new cases confirmed in California
o Israel case total hits 10 day before vote
o South Korea death toll hits 22
o Germany case total doubles in 24 hours to 129
o Mexico case total climbs to 5
o White House to hold meeting tomorrow with 8 pharma CEOs
o Italy reports 42% jump in cases overnight to nearly 1,700
o France reports 30 new cases, bringing total to 130
o Czech Republic, Dominican Republic report first cases
o Chinese health officials report first ‘double lung’ transplant connected to virus case
o Iraq, Bahrain confirm 6 new cases; Lebanon confirms 3
o 6 being tested in NYC for coronavirus
o South Korea confirms 18th death, officials seek murder charges for founder of church at epicenter of outbreak
o American Physical Society cancels major scientific conference
o Juventus quarantines U23 squad [Professional Soccer/football in Europe]
o Iran death toll hits 54 as Trump offers aid
o Thailand, Australia report first deaths
o Spain case count hits 73; France hits 100
o Independent scientist says it could have been spreading in WA for six weeks, with hundreds infected [Much more below]
o Italian cases number more than 1,100; South Korea reports more than 3,700
o Italian death toll hits 29 [with a 9% serious case rate]
o Luxembourg reports first cases, says it’s linked to Italy
o UK cases rise to 35 as 12 new cases confirmed; 2 cases infected inside UK
o UK health secretary says China-style lockdowns “an option”
