social distancing – Archimedes van Wou

Office workers are expected to work from home if possible. Well that works fine… of course I don’t have the best equipment here at home, but since I got an old television from the attic, I have a better screen than at work … until my laptop breaks, of course … I noticed that the Microsoft teams and skype apps just fit at my hard disk but had to clean up a lot to have enough disk space for all my other hobbies… ..

Communication with colleagues is going well because the people you work with know where to find you. However, that will not apply to everyone. With certain people and processes where contact was also difficult in the old pre corona situation, this has become more difficult. … .And of course… bump into someone by chance is not possible. … so expanding work contacts with new people is more difficult .. Fortunately, Corona is almost defeated, right? If not, more social moments must be built into working life, otherwise the social organization will fall apart.

Working at home takes some time to getting used to, a few weeks ago you only saw your wife full-time during the holidays and right now you see each other almost every day … we get used to it… In the beginning we sat at 1 table but that does not work, we each have another type of job. Anyway, after a while you will organize your environment in such a way that you can sit there for 8 hours a day. How boring it sometimes can be, even for a computer man like me…

However, you feel less involved in society, no hobbies possible, rules regarding the distance when you walk outside … no longer going live tot your parents … although I will try this next week anyway.

Working from home offers the solution to the environmental problems. If we want to maintain this in society after Corona, it must be ensured that productivity remains the same in any case. And the question is also what should happen to those empty office buildings? All our pension money is in those buildings … Should they be filled with economic refugees as soon as the Corona virus strikes in the developing world? Or is this still a typical disease of (semi) western consumer countries? I don’t see a major pandemic in Africa yet.

However, dependence on large American companies is increasing. Do we want that? As technology becomes more and more important for the private sphere, these companies that fall under the American Patriot act become more powerful because a lot of economic information also leaks out, which provides a competitive advantage for the organisation or country who has all the data.

But maybe it is just the way it is.

Social isolation does not work. The remedy is worse than the disease. At the moment we have had social isolation for a month in the Netherlands. Major events have been canceled. Bars and restaurants are closed, everyone works at home behind the computer if possible. People should keep 1.5 meters away from strangers. Groups of more than 3 people together are prohibited. The number of deaths and the number of new patients in intensive care units is currently decreasing. Bottleneck is the small number of ic beds per capita in the Netherlands. It will take a few more weeks before we are back to “normal” capacity utilization. It is expected that as soon as measures to prevent spread are lifted, the number of new cases will increase. Looking purely at prevention, this situation should last until there is a pill against this disease. And that can take another six months. And then hope that the disease does not mutate to a new variant, just like with the seasonal flu.

However, the economy has also become a patient due to these measures. The economic downturn is unprecedented. … Only not to measure according to the usual methods. New official figures for economic growth will not be available until May. Yet there is already an urgent need to know what is to come economically. The current situation is so unique that there are no economic models for it. According to the NOS (Dutch public broadcaster), economists are trying to get a grip by experimenting with so called ‘nowcasting’ instead of forecasting, such as counting the number of times a barrier at the port of Rotterdam opens in real time.
Perhaps the coming downturn of the economy can be compared to that of the Second World War. Demolishing something is easy but rebuilding it again is much more difficult when it takes too long. Simply put, do we choose the end of civilization in these regions or will we take a different approach?

The truth is that it is still the case that the average age of the people who die is 70 years old. So it is still an old people’s disease or deadly to the physically weak in this society. …..A bit of bad luck if it is your own grandpa or grandma. Or father and mother…. Last week, the blood bank reported that 3 percent of donors had Corona. A much higher percentage is required for group immunity. An intermediate variant between the current measures mentioned above and opening everything up is to ensure that the current measures only apply to people over 50 and those who are weak. So that the rest just get sick and group immunity arises. Additional measures such as supporting loneliness, having groceries delivered, etc. must then be taken. And maybe just knowingly and exclusively voluntarily infecting non-risk groups. I don’t see the latter as politically possible of course … But it would be nice if we had everything behind us within 1 month.

A learning moment is that air pollution has never been so low here. The daily traffic jam problem has also been solved. It would be nice for humanity if there would also be a balance between the ecological footprint of consumption in western and semi-western economies and what the earth can handle.

This is also a chance!