Covid-19

[drudy23]

It's already ugly. Record numbers of unemployment and we're only a month in.

[xu82]

This is true. My company is in the financial services business and we are open but weekly revenues company wide are down about $1 million a week right not, that’s an absolute ton of lost revenue for us. We have had to let a lot of our cooperate employees go already and I am sure the longer this goes, field operations will probably start to feel the cuts next.

Not layoff related, but my wife works in financial services at one of the BIG banks. Remarkably, they have 91% of their employees working from home. That’s incredible to me. It took some scrambling, but they were ahead of the curve in making early preparations.

That means a LOT of very expensive empty office space. I wonder how much this experience will impact the way we work going forward......

[drudy23]

Not layoff related, but my wife works in financial services at one of the BIG banks. Remarkably, they have 91% of their employees working from home. That’s incredible to me. It took some scrambling, but they were ahead of the curve in making early preparations.

That means a LOT of very expensive empty office space. I wonder how much this experience will impact the way we work going forward......

Hopefully alot...

If anything, employees should start to push more to make this the new norm. Corporations will hold on as long as they can with ways to keep the control in their favor. There's simply zero reason for most professional level jobs to be chained to a corporate desk all day. It's all about control and power. Power to the people!!

[xuwillie]

This is why i believe they will open up the economy before we are ready. And i'm not saying its actually the wrong thing to do.

[xubrew]

I tried working from home. By the end of the second day I decided I couldn't stand it. I'm just as isolated in my office as I am at home right now. No one else is here. So, I'll keep coming in as long as they'll let me.

I now have a brand new respect for everyone who works from home.

[boozehound]

Hopefully alot...

If anything, employees should start to push more to make this the new norm. Corporations will hold on as long as they can with ways to keep the control in their favor. There's simply zero reason for most professional level jobs to be chained to a corporate desk all day. It's all about control and power. Power to the people!!

Ugh. I hope not. I have a pretty good work from home setup (upstairs dedicated office with windows / natural light etc) but I still don't prefer to work from home, although it's getting easier the more I get used to it. I find that i miss the social interaction with my colleagues. I have a job that's not particularly 'task oriented' so I spend most of my days in meetings and I find the in-person meetings easier and more effective than conference calls. On the positive side I love not having a commute and being able to step out for a quick run in the middle of the day.

I do agree though, particularly if the COVID threat persists, that we will see many more people working from home as companies cut costs on offices and real estate. Not sure that will be good for the economy. It definitely won't be good for corporate real estate.

[xavierj]

Yes working from home could save companies money. Sucks for the real estate industry though. What do you do with all of the empty office space and buildings?

[boozehound]

Yes working from home could save companies money. Sucks for the real estate industry though. What do you do with all of the empty office space and buildings?

You would have to turn them into residential space (if the demand is there) or tear them down eventually. I think downtown Cincinnati has been dealing with an oversupply of office space for a while as companies move operations away from expensive city real estate to the suburbs (or overseas)

In big cities like NYC where people live in small apartments I would think the communal work spaces would rise in popularity as well if more people were told to work from home.

It was probably going to happen anyways, but this will likely speed it up. I think it will be interesting to see if this has any impact on the urbanization of society as well. When we moved to Philly we briefly entertained moving into a more urban setting before ultimately settling in the suburbs. I'm really glad we did since we have a much larger home than we would have had in the City in a neighborhood with a big yard. My colleagues who live downtown are having a much different (and much worse) quarantine experience than my family and I are experiencing. Longer term, if close proximity starts to become a health risk living in the 'burbs (or even rural areas) would suddenly look a lot more attractive.

[Masterofreality]

Today's "Let's do a Reality Check" Report for Ohio:

Today's Model Projection of new Cases per Day: 1,600 (Projected peak day Sunday at 1,607 per model)
Today's Actual new reported Cases: 305 Including 77 “assumed/probable
Highest Daily Total Increase in cases since report began on 3/9: 427 on 4/4/20. (Only 2 other days over 400- 4/6 with 407 and 4/3 with 410)
Actual TOTAL Hospitalizations: 2,156 (up 123 from yesterday) since reporting began a month ago
Actual TOTAL ICU admits: 654 since reporting began a month ago (up 41 from yesterday)
Total Ohio Hospital Beds: 34,000
Total Ohio ICU Beds : 2,500

Where my overrun at, and my “1,600 cases/day” and my ICU overload, and, and, and....???

[Juice]

Today's "Let's do a Reality Check" Report for Ohio:

Today's Model Projection of new Cases per Day: 1,600 (Projected peak day Sunday at 1,607 per model)
Today's Actual new reported Cases: 305 Including 77 “assumed/probable
Highest Daily Total Increase in cases since report began on 3/9: 427 on 4/4/20. (Only 2 other days over 400- 4/6 with 407 and 4/3 with 410)
Actual TOTAL Hospitalizations: 2,156 (up 123 from yesterday) since reporting began a month ago
Actual TOTAL ICU admits: 654 since reporting began a month ago (up 41 from yesterday)
Total Ohio Hospital Beds: 34,000
Total Ohio ICU Beds : 2,500

Where my overrun at, and my “1,600 cases/day” and my ICU overload, and, and, and....???

We are going to have to wait until early May to open things back up and I don't know why. Maybe give it another week and let's start easing back into things.