Yesterday I managed to piss off an employee good and proper. Perhaps I should have been more tactful than saying “I have no control over what you do outside of work, and I can’t stop you from doing something stupid and selfish. If you do go to Florida for spring break you will need to self quarantine at home for two weeks before coming back to work.”
According to him this is nothing to worry about and it’s way blown out of proportion. I’m a complete dumbass and totally overreacting. In related news, I’m a total asshole for ruining his spring break plans. Good thing I’m used to being an asshole.
For those interested in trying to visualize how fast this is spreading, the WHO has a neat dashboard that you can use to see the number of cases reported worldwide and by country. What really helps to visualize this is looking at the cumulative cases graph, especially by country.
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/685d0ace521648f8a5beeeee1b9125cd
Fortunately for China it looks like they are turning the corner. As long as they can keep transmission slowed down they should be through the worst of it. Unfortunately for Italy and the U.S. and a lot of other countries it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
For the record I don’t think it’s time to panic. It is time to be smart about things. Minimize your contact with others, especially those over 60. Even if your state hasn’t closed their restaurants and other public gathering places, avoid them. Get carry out, get delivery, but don’t eat in the restaurant. You don’t need to buy two carts full of toilet paper. Have enough supplies on hand so that you don’t need to go to the store every day. Keep your shopping minimized as much as possible, and do it at times when the store isn’t crowded. Don’t do unnecessary shopping. Now isn’t the time to go to the mega mall even if they do have killer deals on those cute shoes you’ve been looking at.