The severity of the impact on the livelihood of these people and the residual impact to the economy cannot be overstated.
> Are childcare options being provided during closures?
> Closing schools has a major impact on our ability to staff hospitals, health care facilities, and other fire and medical departments. Superintendents have been asked to provide childcare, at no cost, to families who are in the medical field or who are first responders.
> What if I don’t work in those fields?
> If families don’t work in the healthcare or first responder fields but are expected to continue to attend work during the closure, they should reach out to their school district. Districts can make additional decisions that are needed for their communities.
Let's be honest, that duty will likely fall on an extended family member. The worst part? That extended family member will likely be a member of a covid-19 vulnerable population. More precisely, grandma.
(edit: I see I'm being downvoted.... ok. I'm genuinely curious, and also hoping that people aren't keeping their own out-of-school kids away from their own grandparents out of fear)
Their parents, who are about to be either working from home if they are white collar, or laid off if they are blue collar, because local economies and services take a nosedive during a pandemic. We're in the middle of this in Seattle - service workers aren't being called in, or are getting laid off.
And if you aren't in either of those categories, you should have a friend or relative who is, who you can ask to childsit.
Some parents are now going to be working at home, side by side with their kids attending school at home. While this may not be ideal all the time, it's not a terrible thing to make all of this work. We're all going to be set up for telecommuting and online education going forward. If nothing else, it's less fossil fuels being burned.
Just like WW2 got us out of a depression and started us on a huge economic upswing -- and yes, at an immense cost -- this might have a similar effect, albeit on a smaller scale. I would not be surprised if 6 months from now, with the virus gone and a whole lot of disruption behind us, we'll find it stimulated the economy more than it hurt it.
I'm also wondering if the internet infrastructure will handle this well, with so many people working and going school remotely, with a really fast ramp up.
And the internet is going to be fine, although individual sites with a sudden increase in traffic (Zoom, Skype, Office 365, etc) might have issues.
I'm not saying I'm happy this is all happening, but I can be interested in seeing how all this works and see the positives, can't I?
Should I tell my kindergartner to be all grim and sad, or tell her that this is an adventure?
The VPN endpoint bw saturated, I guess 90% employee wfh wasn't a use case for network capacity planning of VPN link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_I...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_t...
And if you don’t have kids but want to help out, hit me up
Fact is, everything is slowing down because everyone is in the same boat. It seems like an unsurmountable problem at first, but after a few days of everyone recognizing it's for the long haul, you quit worrying about it.
That said I believe this is just the tip of the iceberg and we'll look back and wonder how we worried about such petty things.
This is going to hit small businesses hard because they can't just stop hibernate for a while and survive. IDK what they'll do. I have a feeling this recognition will hit and we'll realize how deep the economic dire straits we really are in the next few days. And that's before we even start talking about the medical part.
Feedback welcome
I live in southern California, and today the 4 school districts near us announced 2-5 day closures for next week, with status updates coming afterwards.
