I worked from home today having made the decision that I have the IT capability to do so.

The other 5 Project Managers (all of whom have this home working capability) worked from the office today.

I'm expected to drive 2 hours tomorrow for a meeting that will last 45 mins and because there will be no more than 6 in this meeting at any one time that's acceptable....we have to stay professional apparently.

To me its a moral responsibility...to many others ?  Seemingly not.

Worrying times.

14 days Caz 

FWIW, the senior leadership team pulled their all-staff meeting back to this afternoon after school rather than Thursday. They've also divided into three chunks, each of 50 teachers.

I did ask, but no, they've not been told anything new by the government. They're still expecting a good chance of being told to close on Friday, as has been their thinking all along. By then we're a week and two days away from our Easter break.

Most of the staff are exasperated that meeting two friends down the pub is now effectively banned, but having 1900 teenagers and adults mingling every day at school is absolutely fine.

(How I envied my colleague who was working from home today due to household isolation, as she now avoids the commute and is no longer greeted by swarms of children. I did, at least, argue that we should effectively keep minimal traffic into our office, with most enquiries coming in by email rather than in person.)

Good to see UEFA have been passing the crack pipe round.

Have to be behind closed doors 

Yes, this is a problem.  IT systems aren't necessarily designed for  most of the workforce to work outside of the local network.  Additionally, a lot of  "cloud" based systems and mobile 'phone systems are starting to show thE strain as well :-

https://thenextweb.com/mobile/2020/03/17/uk-mobile-networks-go-down-as-people-start-working-from-home-due-to-coronavirus/

Our place is using Nomachine to access local computers.  I sometimes  use it for machine support work out-of-hours but using it for day-to-day office  jobs is hard work when the network is slow becuase everyone is doing it during  normal office hours.

It is a very similar situation up here with a similar type of meeting today. 

I heard about that earlier. The good news from my perspective is so far I've seen no sign of any performance degradation on the dedicated  Microsoft Azure cloud servers which TWO is running on. 

So pubs and schools still open?

Sounds to me like they are still pursuing the herd strategy but pretending not to by making it only voluntary

I am heading out to the pub now thanks to Stanley Johnson who said it is safe

Probably not far from the truth 

The grotesque reality is now laid bare in this BBC article. Only a few days ago those of us suggesting something like this were being ridiculed by others.

Coronavirus: UK changes course amid death toll fears

Change course or a quarter of a million people will die in a "catastrophic epidemic" of coronavirus - warnings do not come much starker than that.

The message came from researchers modelling how the disease will spread, how the NHS would be overwhelmed and how many would die.

The situation has shifted dramatically and as a result we are now facing the most profound changes to our daily lives in peacetime.

This realisation has happened only in the past few days.

However, it is long after other scientists and the World Health Organization had warned of the risks of not going all-out to stop the virus.

...

The modelling projected that if the UK did nothing, 81% of people would be infected and 510,000 would die from coronavirus by August.

The mitigation strategy is better, but would still result in about 250,000 deaths and completely overwhelm intensive care in the NHS.

The experience of Italy, and the first cases in the UK, led to this dawning realisation.

...

The analysis estimated the limits of intensive care would be "exceeded by at least eight-fold" even under the most optimistic mitigation plans.

...

The report concludes "suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time". It is hoped deaths could be limited to the thousands or tens of thousands.

The government has always said it is following the science and the science has changed profoundly.

Hence, we should be waving goodbye to pubs, clubs and theatres, work from home and isolate whole households if any one person becomes sick.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51915302

PS: If anyone says can we throw 250,000 people under the bus because it "could" be better in the long term they IMO fail to understand our society. Nazi Germany and Communist Russia could throw hundreds of thousands of people under the bus but our inability to do the same is one of the things which makes us better.

The banks are being given free money via QE to loan out at commercial rates to business &, because govt is guaranteeing those debts, the banks are taking no risk.

The biggest bank con since 2008, and this time it's happening in front of our eyes.@lbc #bbcpm #c4news #Newsnight https://t.co/uQ0RPTtbvw

— I Am Incorrigible FCA (@ImIncorrigible) March 17, 2020

So nothing for renters and self employed. Sunak is a smooth talker, but another slimeball spiv

At first glance the package looks poor compared to what Macron and Trump are preparing. Not sure about Germany but I think they are also offering a better deal. TBH I expect Sunak will have to go further. A lot further. 

Just had an em from my gym saying they are shutting up shop tonight until further notice. Answers my question from earlier today.

Do you wear your reckless disregard for the wellbeing of at risk groups as a badge of honour?

As a socialist I thought he was supposed to support the less fortunate.

He bangs on about spivs and shysters who care nothing for anybody else. Imagine my surprise when he also turned out to be a selfish pr1ck.

Edit: I had it confirmed by a GP today that I am in the 'high risk' category. So while Geoff (Beast) can stick two fingers up at everybody and lord it in the pub, I and 1.5 million others face being confined to our homes for 12 weeks from Saturday.

yep just locked up and kicked them all out I have been asked if I am available if school is shut if I’m available to reset alarms 24/7 or any break in  for a 10 week period,I also asked for more info from senior Team mums the word but I do have this feeling about this Friday.

The enormity of the situation is beginning to sink in IMO. I've just been told Imagination Technologies (about 900 people) have got virtually all of their staff working from home indefinitely from tomorrow. 

in the good old days he would be a black leg and beaten on the quiet.

This is from a piece called "What could the US learn from Hong Kong?" but "US" could be swapped for "UK".

Karin Huster, a nurse and emergency field co-ordinator for Doctors Without Borders, has spent a month in Hong Kong working on coronavirus training for vulnerable groups. She's just returned home to Washington State - one of the worst-hit in the US.

She says there are certain lessons people in the US could learn from Hong Kongers.

"What stood out for me the most was that deep individual sense of responsibility," she says. People were much more willing to physically distance themselves to help contain the virus, which was "in stark contrast to here [in Seattle]".

"I think in America, people are so individualistic, it's going to be a little harder for us to sacrifice our 'freedom'".

She noticed people in Hong Kong generally practised good personal hygiene by frequently washing hands and using disinfectant hand gels in restaurants, while public surfaces such as lift buttons were disinfected much more regularly - lessons they had learned from the 2003 Sars outbreak.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-51921683