Tag: COVID Times
Pandemic Crisis Response Plan
I consult for a UK based bank which just two weeks ago closed it's London office. The London office is in a shared building, and one case of a person who has been in close contact with a COVID-19 infected person has effectively shut down the building for cleaning. The Hong Kong, New York, and New Jersey offices are the only buildings left available for operations.
Since the client is a systemically important financial market utility, by design, none of their critical systems are remotely accessible. These critical systems are protected behind layers of firewalls and are only available via specific terminals at specific locations in New Jersey and New York City.
Let me be clear. These systems are systemically important to the global financial markets, and employees supporting those systems must be physically present.
As of last night, the company initiated it's pandemic and business continuity response plan.
The company will be enforcing CDC recommended social distancing restrictions of 6 feet between workspaces. The New York and New Jersey offices will have extremely diminished seating capacity.
Starting next Monday, 16 March, all staff working from the New Jersey and New York City offices will alternate being in the office. Group A will work in the office one week, then work from home for a week while Group B works onsite. Staff will sit in designated seats that are 6 feet apart.
Once the UK office has been sanitized, employees who work in a critical capacity will be the only ones allowed back into the building.
This operational mode is expected to be a temporary situation and is an attempt to balance the risk to staff against the company's responsibility to the global financial markets and US federal contingency requirements.
The new normal is just the old normal exposed
I read the news, and I watch as the world falls apart. My wife calls me from her weekly stop at the grocery store. Behind her words, I can hear the treble of frustration and possibly despair. How can a neighbourhood of educated and otherwise rational human being get so afraid that they hoard toilet paper? Toilet paper! The shelves were empty of every paper product. Milk is so scarce one would think our neighbourhood is experiencing a famine. I try to be helpful, "Get some almond instead".
While I am concerned about how school cancellations will affect my children's college education I am scared about, the prospect of not having anything to eat because our neighbours have hoarded all the food. But we are privileged. We have high speed internet. My kids have computers. We have multiple grocery store options. Many others are not so fortunate.
Social distancing? How many of you cross the street when you see a homeless person. Do you know anything about your neighbours? Social distancing is not new. It's been going on for a long time. America's warts are showing.
My elderly mother-in-law doesn't speak English very well. She's blissfully unaware of what's going on the world. But she's very friendly with her neighbours. I think she won't understand when we tell her not to let her friends in for tea.
I read article after article about social distancing, which claim this is a new normal. But I think this had always been the norm in the USA. An "every person for themselves normal". A "To heck with you, I got mine" mentality that was always under the surface is now on full display.
