Ask HN: How long is mandatory WFH going to be in effect? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How long is mandatory WFH going to be in effect?

8 pointseof9 comments

It seems with the social distancing strategy we are looking at several months of this new normal.

The company I work for is mandatory work from home like most other tech companies in the bay area; officially until end of March, but it seems likely this will be extended quite a bit.

With broad testing will we be able to get into the office much sooner than post-infection peak?

It seems to me we will all be working from home deep into the summer, what does HN think?

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Right now we're WFH until mid-April but planning for it to last as late as July or even longer.

China started quarantines much earlier than we did, so our infection curve will get much higher. When public transport was shutdown in Wuhan ~Jan 23, there were only ~500 cases there (and just a small handful outside of Wuhan). The entire city was shut down soon afterwards.

There are currently 700+ cases in both New York and Washington, 3800+ throughout the US, and people are still out and about and many aren't taking it seriously. A week or two from now we will look much like Italy, Iran, Spain, and France do right now. They will likely look worse than China did when the virus peaked there.

It seems driven what the local government is doing which (at least in US) is going to be dictated by how much federally funded relief money they can get.

In some states it will take a legislative act to cancel school and/or significant funding and training to go all-digital. Public schools are there legally for all and they need to have solutions for all - inclusive of poorer people that don't have internet/computers.

Once there are reliable tests and ability to test for residue (computer geek here, forgive my ignorance on biology) that someone had the virus then I would imagine more things return to normal-ish. From what I'm reading, this does look like a multi-month adventure.

> ability to test for residue (computer geek here, forgive my ignorance on biology)

I came across the correct terminology recently. The tests that test if you were infected within a certain time period, even if you did not have symptoms, are called serological tests.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serology

Looking at the infection curve for China, I'm expecting to WFH for the next 3 months, with things getting better around June.

I think if the rate of new cases doesn’t slow down by mid April, no state will go back to business as usual. Given the state of things, it’s best to just do the national shut down instead of dragging this out past mid April.

Our economy can’t survive this kind of pause for 3 months, who are we kidding here?

Our initial period is until April 1, but I have a feeling this will be expanded as the situation progresses.

Nobody knows, I'd guess many months.

If WFH is effective for the company, then it can last longer, or forever for some people.

If the health care system collapses, then it lasts longer. If the health care system figures out a way to deal with this, then it lasts shorter.

The health care system can deal with it by flattening the curve by social distancing / quarantine, building herd immunity, having a vaccine, massive testing, checking temperatures all the time everywhere, or something else.

Vaccine is probably out for 18 months, but testing seems to be ramping up, so I'd guess that after several months there is going to be massive testing plus temp checks everywhere, and that stays around until herd immunity happens (which is some larger % of the population gets infected), which could be like year?

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