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Comment by gteqlt | Hacker News Reader

Would a regional (or national) "work remotely" two week period every year help to reduce (eliminate?) the flu virus or something like coronavirus?

Probably there would have to be some skeleton crew of people keeping basic stuff running, but maybe those people could be heavily screened first.

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Many jobs can't be done "remotely." What about food service, cooks and waiters? Delivery people? Doctors, surgeons?

Randel Munroe of XKCD fame walks through this scenario in his "What If" book.

Link to sample on books.google.com

https://books.google.com/books?id=tgZIBAAAQBAJ&printsec=fron...

2 weeks is probably not enough, right? Assuming that it would be feasible for everyone to stay home for 100% of the time, that would still leave everyone in contact with N (avg number of people per household) minus 1 people, so for the isolation period to be able to eradicate a disease, in the worst case of each of those N people getting infected one after another instead of in parallel or all at the same time, that period would need to last for (N - 1) * (incubation time + period of possible infection), or something along those lines.

EDIT: grammar

I doubt this would be really possible - utility services are definitely much more automated these days, the same thing with industry, but it's really far from everyone involved being able to control the whole operation remotely.

Also many industrilk processes are continuous, with any interruptions being costly & dangerous if abrupt (eq. if the skeleton crew messes something up and there is no one to help them).

Interesting idea, it would only help if those people actually stayed home rather than working from a nearby coffeeshop or otherwise going into a public area.

I wonder what percentage of the population would have to work from home in order for this to impact the spread rate.

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