
Ask HN: How long is mandatory WFH going to be in effect? - eof
It seems with the social distancing strategy we are looking at several months of this new normal.<p>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.<p>With broad testing will we be able to get into the office much sooner than post-infection peak?<p>It seems to me we will all be working from home deep into the summer, what does HN think?
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rococode
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.

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matt_s
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.

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wallflower
> 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](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serology)

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

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runawaybottle
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?

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

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idoh
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?

