Friday, March 13, 2020

Thoughts on the Mexican Beer Flu

Well, the whole COVID-19 coronavirus thing has really come to a head, with POTUS declaring a national emergency.

On the one hand, it's been clear that the MSM has been trying to gin up a panic in yet another effort to hurt President Trump. On the other hand, the reaction of all levels of government, who presumably are privy to info us great unwashed cannot see does raise concern. Also, some analysis I've seen on a private forum has me leaning in the direction of, "This is not a drill!"

Local to me, all schools are closed here in Pennsylvania for the next two weeks. It's my understanding that after the three snow days are used up, my kids will be getting homework assignments until Spring break in early April.

My wife teaches in Philadelphia, so she'll be home.

Large public gatherings are prohibited.

Many large corporations are having people who can work remotely do so.

I took off today, but this afternoon after I got back from the range I checked my work email. I saw that I'd missed a couple last minute, mandatory all-hands meetings, so I pinged my director. Starting on Monday, those of us who do not need to be onsite will be working from home until mid-April. I fall into that category. Also for this time, meetings will be held using Cisco Webex or Microsoft Teams and enabling the webcams on our laptops will be mandatory.

This will be an interesting test of my employer's VPN. I hope it can handle the load. There's a fair amount of work I can do without being connected to the VPN because we use public cloud services, but there will be times I need to connect via the VPN to login to various hosts.

As a prepper, I had already ensured that we had provisions laid in. A couple of weeks ago, seeing the possibility of quarantines, I'd added to them with a couple of runs to BJ's (yes, including TP). So, we're in good shape.

I might go out tomorrow and pick up a handle of Wild Turkey, though. ;)

I am a bit concerned about my parent and my MIL, all of whom are in their 70s. My brother and I "grounded" our parents. They are generally homebodies anyway but my MIL is a social butterfly, so hopefully she can find it in herself to stay home.

Stay safe out there.

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