Ask HN: What to do when company takes Covid-19 as a joke?

[shetill]

Basically my company is only starting to consider the possibility of eventually having the thoughts of working from home... Based in London and things could easily escalate here to the same situation as Italy. Should I simply not come from next week and WFH regardless of what they say or be a patient lamb?

[13415]

You're obviously concerned so you might not like my (very subjective) advice.

If the official recommendation is that each company decides on their own, then there is not much you can do and you'll have to follow the company guideline. If the company insists on not doing anything, then their leadership is dangerously irrational. In that case, I'd seriously consider looking for another job now rather than waiting until the economic crisis hits. (It will likely hit hard, world-wide.)

If you're asking about the personal risk of going to the company versus staying at home, that cannot be answered in general. Are you going with public transport/the tube? That's a very high infection risk. Otherwise, going there and working there might not be a high risk, depending on the office layout and facilities for sanitizing. Does the building have air conditioning? That's probably a very high risk. How old are you? The younger, the less of a personal risk you have.

Without more information, it's impossible to judge or even attempt to quantify the personal risk.

[lucozade]

Unless it's a very small company, or you're very senior, you possibly just aren't aware what the company is considering.

I'm reasonably senior in a large global company (I'm based in the UK) and what we are doing, versus what we are officially allowed to say that we are doing, differ pretty widely.

We are also, largely, asking most folk to keep working as usual unless there are specific reasons not too. And we are tracking all those decisions centrally.

And, although I disagree with some of what we are doing, most of it is for very good reason. We have a duty of care, both legally and morally, and, as with the government, public safety sometimes clashes with individual wishes.

Having said that, I'd be pretty surprised if we get through next week without a much larger contingent working from home, but there's an awful lot of wood to chop before that will occur.

[maps7]

How does your comment help the OP?

Your company sounds like it's mishandling this. It sounds like you're dealing with secrecy and putting lives at risk.

[eanthy]

Basically money > people. Everyone acts like it's not gonna happen to them

[catacombs]

Can you start working remotely on your own? Do you need permission? If not, starting that. The virus is probably already in London.

[notahacker]

Well established some Londoners do have the virus, and the risk of transmission in typical London transport or offices is non-zero. But if he does need permission, the challenge might be that the UK government's stance is to pointedly not instruct offices or schools to close yet.

[demygale]

The UK has 500+ confirmed cases. It’s safe to assume the virus is widespread in the population. You’ll have the same numbers as Italy in a few weeks. There is no way to avoid that outcome.

[gtirloni]

I think the general idea is not to avoid it forever but delay infections as much as possible so the healthcare system has time to process them. Essentially avoid DDoS'ing hospitals.

Yes, almost everybody will get this thing but let's not do it all at the same time (and before there's a vaccine or specific medication).

[eanthy]

People say it like it's a cold and we might as well get it instead of everything close for 2 weeks and get it over with. I don't know why UK think it's so much better and special than any other country in Europe. Only time will show.

[DanBC]

The UK (and I'm not saying I agree with this) says that people are going to get covid-19 no matter what we do, so we want to get as many young healthy people to get now as possible. That means they stop being vectors for transmission, and it means we can manage hospital admissions and "cocoon" vulnerable people.

personally, I think this is a risky strategy that's going to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths and totally over-whelm our hospitals who are already struggling under winter pressures.

https://twitter.com/iandonald_psych/status/12385183716516495...

https://thesmallplaces.wordpress.com/2020/03/13/cocoons/