Google Experiences Hundreds of Covid Cases After Return-to-Office Mandate (cnbc.com) 227
"Google employees are receiving regular notifications from management of Covid-19 infections," CNBC report Friday — "causing some to question the company's return-to-office mandates."
The employees, who spoke with CNBC on the condition of anonymity, said since they have been asked to return to offices, infections notifications pop up in their email inboxes regularly....
The company began requiring most employees to return to physical offices at least three days a week in April. Since then, staffers have pushed back on the mandate after they worked efficiently for so long at home while the company enjoyed some of its fastest revenue growth in 15 years. Google has offered full-time employees the option to request permanent remote work, but it's unclear how many workers have been approved.
Google's Covid-19 outbreak in Los Angeles is currently the largest of any employer in LA., according to the city's public health dashboard. Deadline.com first reported that the tech giant's trendy Silicon Beach campus in Venice, Calif., recorded 145 infections while 135 cases were recorded at the company's large Playa Vista campus.
Staffers have been filling Memegen, an internal company image-sharing site, with memes about the increased number of exposure notifications they're receiving. One meme, which was upvoted 2,840 times, showed a photo of an inbox with the email subject from a San Francisco-based facilities manager stating "We're so excited to see you back in the office!" and a subsequent email subject line stating "Notification of Confirmed COVID-19 Case...."
Some employees said they received a spike in notifications from the Mountain View, Calif. headquarters and in San Francisco offices after the company held a return-to-office celebration, where Grammy award-winning artist Lizzo performed for thousands of employees at the Shoreline Amphitheater, near Google's main campus.
Defending the safety of working on-site, a Google spokesperson told CNBC they hadn't been experiencing a sudden recent spike in their Covid cases, arguing that instead the hundreds of Covid cases had been occurring over "the last few months."
The company began requiring most employees to return to physical offices at least three days a week in April. Since then, staffers have pushed back on the mandate after they worked efficiently for so long at home while the company enjoyed some of its fastest revenue growth in 15 years. Google has offered full-time employees the option to request permanent remote work, but it's unclear how many workers have been approved.
Google's Covid-19 outbreak in Los Angeles is currently the largest of any employer in LA., according to the city's public health dashboard. Deadline.com first reported that the tech giant's trendy Silicon Beach campus in Venice, Calif., recorded 145 infections while 135 cases were recorded at the company's large Playa Vista campus.
Staffers have been filling Memegen, an internal company image-sharing site, with memes about the increased number of exposure notifications they're receiving. One meme, which was upvoted 2,840 times, showed a photo of an inbox with the email subject from a San Francisco-based facilities manager stating "We're so excited to see you back in the office!" and a subsequent email subject line stating "Notification of Confirmed COVID-19 Case...."
Some employees said they received a spike in notifications from the Mountain View, Calif. headquarters and in San Francisco offices after the company held a return-to-office celebration, where Grammy award-winning artist Lizzo performed for thousands of employees at the Shoreline Amphitheater, near Google's main campus.
Defending the safety of working on-site, a Google spokesperson told CNBC they hadn't been experiencing a sudden recent spike in their Covid cases, arguing that instead the hundreds of Covid cases had been occurring over "the last few months."
Google denies responsibility? (Score:3, Insightful)
'Defending the safety of working on-site, a Google spokesperson told CNBC they hadn't been experiencing a sudden recent spike in their Covid cases, arguing that instead the hundreds of Covid cases had been occurring over "the last few months."'
To which the reply should be: 'See you in court...'
Re: (Score:2)
Courts need to clarify what is right (Score:2)
We're in largely uncharted territory here, and it would be helpful for everyone to know what the law does and does not expect. This would provide appropriate protection for both employers and employees going forward.
Re: (Score:3)
Calling SARS Cov-2 something akin to "some random virus" is like calling the WW2 some random quarrel between nations.
You do understand that it was the worst pandemic in the past century to hit the western world and international trade, right? We're not talking about the seasonal flu here.
Re: Google denies responsibility? (Score:2)
since they have been asked to return to offices, infections notifications pop up in their email inboxes regularly
That doesn't mean it wasn't happening before, just that cases were being reported. Coronaviruses tend to be quite contagious.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
>"Most covid infections come with permanent damage that they don't fully understand yet." https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
That sounds a bit hyperbolic. How many such studies have been conducted on other novel infections? How can they separate out possible effects of vaccination? "For cases, no distinction is possible at present to determine whether a positive test is due to infection or vaccination[...]. Information on the vaccination status,ï and how both vaccination dates might interact with
Re:Google denies responsibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google denies responsibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Slow down there cowboy. There's only so much misinformation I can handle in one post!
Re:Google denies responsibility? (Score:4, Interesting)
>"Slow down there cowboy. There's only so much misinformation I can handle in one post!"
I welcome your analysis. What I listed were all facts (from the best info I can find): that the later variants are more contagious, that there is non-symptomatic infection of those variants, that cloth masks do little to contain it, that later variants are much more mild, that it is endemic now, that the old vaccines no longer stop transmission, and that UV/HEPA is effective at reducing indoor spread.
Perhaps they don't fit with some narrative or something???
Misinformation would be things like:
COVID-19 was a conspiracy, the vaccines never worked, that an unproven XXX supplement is effective, COVID-19 is just like the flu, that there are no long-term effects from COVIS-19, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
>"Slow down there cowboy. There's only so much misinformation I can handle in one post!"
I welcome your analysis. What I listed were all facts (from the best info I can find):
Most of my criticism would fall under the category of "picking nits".
...that later variants are much more mild,
Maybe, maybe not. It could also be the case that so many people have recovered or gotten vaccinated that it *appears* to be more mild.
... that it is endemic now
I would argue that by the strict medical definition of endemic, it isn't, but colloquially, maybe.
... that the old vaccines no longer stop transmission
They stop transmission, just not for very long. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
>"Maybe, maybe not. It could also be the case that so many people have recovered or gotten vaccinated that it *appears* to be more mild."
Possible, but I think unlikely. I will concede that perhaps that one isn't "fact", but based on best available data. Far from being "misinformation".
>"I would argue that by the strict medical definition of endemic, it isn't, but colloquially, maybe."
McGraw-Hill Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine: "The presence of a disease or infectious agent in a given geograp
Re: (Score:2)
>"I would argue that by the strict medical definition of endemic, it isn't, but colloquially, maybe."
McGraw-Hill Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine: "The presence of a disease or infectious agent in a given geographic area or population group; also refers to the usual prevalence of a given disease in an area" I would argue that almost 3 years makes it endemic now.
Concise, but unfortunately not complete. Endemic, AFAIK, normally means having reached endemic equilibrium, which means that the virus has a steady rate of transmission. COVID-19 isn't endemic yet.
One could argue otherwise, but it is not "misinformation" to say such a thing.
I never said it was.
>"They stop transmission, just not for very long. :-)"
Well, originally Faucchi and others refused to admit that there was even natural immunity in those who recovered. Which was patently outrageous.
No, that's not outrageous at all. The omicron variant confers almost zero long-term immunity against reinfection. Until you have numbers, you can't assume that a virus will produce long-term immunity.
And then that it "was a pandemic of the unvaccinated", which we now know was not true (many people I know who were double vaccinated and boosted, sometimes TWICE, still got it, even not long after).
At the time, that was true. That was in July of 2021. Omicron didn't appear until Novembe
Re: (Score:2)
>"Endemic, AFAIK, normally means having reached endemic equilibrium, which means that the virus has a steady rate of transmission. COVID-19 isn't endemic yet."
Maybe not. But it certainly looks close.
>"No, that's not outrageous at all. The omicron variant confers almost zero long-term immunity against reinfection. Until you have numbers, you can't assume that a virus will produce long-term immunity."
Well, note I said "originally", which was far before omicron. I believe the data later revealed that n
Re: (Score:2)
>"No, that's not outrageous at all. The omicron variant confers almost zero long-term immunity against reinfection. Until you have numbers, you can't assume that a virus will produce long-term immunity."
Well, note I said "originally", which was far before omicron. I believe the data later revealed that natural immunity turned out to be at least as long as vaccination.
It did, but until you have the data, you can't just assume that it will. Yeah, you can probably assume that severe disease will result in robust immunity, but you can't assume that the 98% of cases that were mild would produce any lasting immunity. And omicron later proved their caution to be correct.
Seems to still hold (although both are less with recent variants). I can only spectulate reason they refused to talk about acquired immunity for so long was because it didn't fit with their political agenda.
Who refused to talk about acquired immunity? It wasn't some big secret. They initially said they had no idea how robust acquired immunity would be. That caution was justified based on a number of other cor
Re: (Score:2)
>"Is the original strain gone, though? Omicron appeared at the end of last year, after the delta wave, and likely branched off prior to alpha. That suggests that although the original strain is *almost* gone, it is still lingering enough to potentially cause serious problems in the future."
I can't answer that. But it comes down to that whole "is anything ever really completely gone?" and "how gone is good enough?" type of questions. The numbers I see are something like 99.99[9]% of all current infectio
Re: (Score:2)
I would be pretty surprised if more than 50% of infections result in some kind of noticeable permanent damage. Even 50% of COVID cases resulting in permanent damage would be fairly surprising
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Google denies responsibility? (Score:5, Informative)
OK, so it is not "most cases" that end up with permanent damage, estimates range from 10% to 30% of infected people depending on the study and the group size, etc. Who would want to play that kind of Russian-roulette (am I allowed to say the word Russian without someone calling me Ivan here?) with their brain? Covid attacks the vascular system, and in some people it directly enters the brain where it almost certainly causes some level of permanent damage. Increased levels of hyperphosphorylated Tau protein are detected in people who died of Covid, and that is a solid marker of permanent brain damage.
And for the people here who don't read the scientific literature, no, the permanent brain damage is not from vaccination, there isn't one single study on PubMed that even suggests that. However, there are dozens of papers on brain damage associated with Covid infection, here is a tiny sample:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
The evidence is solid and only willfully blind people would not see that this is not a virus to be ignored.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Google denies responsibility? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Google denies responsibility? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Let's see. You told him he wasn't quoting a study, immediately followed by the study he was quoting. So you're either too lazy or stupid to use google.
Then you claim that brain damage doesn't matter because drugs, ignoring the fact that many of us avoid drugs for just this reason - even if the damage was in any way as predictable, so.... wrong again.
Would you like to play again?
Re:Google denies responsibility? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Google denies responsibility? (Score:5, Informative)
That "permanent damage" you refer to is properly termed "vaccine side effects."
That explains why unvaccinated people have more long-COVID and vaccinated people who haven't had COVID don't. I was wondering. Thanks.
Re:Google denies responsibility? (Score:5, Informative)
That explains why unvaccinated people have more long-COVID and vaccinated people who haven't had COVID don't. I was wondering. Thanks.
Everything about long covid is counterintuitive. There is very little evidence in literature to suggest vaccination causes any meaningfully less long covid. Even disease severity is only weakly associated with long covid outcomes.
"previous vaccination does not appear to be protective against several
previously documented outcomes of COVID-19 such as long-COVID features, arrhythmia, joint pain, type 2 diabetes, liver disease, sleep disorders, and mood and anxiety disorders. The narrow confidence intervals (related to the high incidence of these outcomes post-COVID) rules out the possibility that these negative findings are merely a result of lack of statistical power. "
https://www.medrxiv.org/conten... [medrxiv.org]
Vaccination prior to infection is an excellent way to reduce your risk of hospitalization and death... unfortunately vaccination is not an effective means of reducing ones risk of long covid.
Re:Google denies responsibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why people are afraid of vaccine side effects but not covid side effects. One of those is worse than the other.
Re: (Score:2)
No link. No source cited.
No difference from the parent post. No effort required.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Google denies responsibility? (Score:4, Insightful)
800 people is plenty, provided that they are randomly chosen. Especially with an incidence rate of 90%.
Unless you can give us a rather good reason why you consider that sample size too small, I guess we can safely assume you know fuck all about how statistics work.
New Excuse (Score:2)
"I got the covid, man. I can't come in today."
Re: (Score:2)
Sadly, this is definitely happening.
Re: (Score:2)
Guess it beats calling in for monkeypox.
Re: (Score:2)
Guess it beats calling in for monkeypox.
Yes, calling in sick with Covid is more socially acceptable in some environments.
Whatever productivity gains they pretend are there (Score:5, Insightful)
They want us back in the office to maintain the property values of the commercial real estate they own. Our lives don't matter nearly as much as they're investments and their profits.
But I find frustrating is that we have such an obvious slap in the face reminder like this and still you have people hero worshiping the global elites because of prosperity Gospel. People who can't imagine that someone might have more money than they earned because they personally work very hard and they want to believe that there's a one-to-one ratio between hard work and reward.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a reason why I left academia and the professional classes, to become a skilled tradesman. Mainly, the near-total disconnect from reality that the other classes live in, as you point out in your last para. And of course, the working classes get screwed into the ground anyway, as they have throughout history. As soon as there's no more blood left to extract from that stone, the upper classes will start getting their blood from the professional classes. And then you will all of a sudden start hearing
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Ya, who the hell needs doctors, scientists, engineers, etc. They clearly have near-total disconnect from reality that the other classes live it. Why, doctors don't even treat real people. Scientists develop stuff only for themselves. Engineers never develop stuff for the proles. What an amazing insight, do you have newsletter?
Re: (Score:2)
As soon as doctors, lawyers and scientists (like myself) have to work in Amazon warehouse conditions, you really haven't made a valid point. Most of the people I know are not struggling to survive, but that doesn't mean I don't understand the plight of workers as I have lived in my car too. Some people don't even have a busted old car, and liver under a bridge. Nothing in this country is going to get better unless the doctors, lawyers, scientists and engineers start standing up for working people, because p
Um... they do (Score:3)
Re: Um... they do (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Are immediately wiped out tenfold by people constantly being out sick...
Not to mention the productivity hit caused by a) worries about contracting Covid and b) resentment at being forced back into danger for no good reason.
They want us back in the office to maintain the property values of the commercial real estate they own. Our lives don't matter nearly as much as they're investments and their profits.
Yep.
...(people) want to believe that there's a one-to-one ratio between hard work and reward.
When you hear the old saw "nothing succeeds like success", look no farther than what you just pointed out for the reason it's true. The belief that those better off in life are morally, physically, intellectually, and/or spiritually superior seems baked into human nature. This is one of the most immiserating beliefs in human history.
Control & Real Estate (Score:5, Insightful)
Mandates to return to the office are still being driven by two things: control and real estate. Management can protest all they want, and claim that it's "unplanned meetings in the hallway", but it takes a certain type of extraordinary disconnect with reality for anyone to believe that.
Employers requiring employees to return to the office, when the job is done just as well, if not better, from home are the most blatant type of, "we don't value our employees at all." They are like General Zod in Superman 2: "...your very lives will gladly be given in tribute to me...."
Re: (Score:2)
No, it indicates management doesn't value the company at all if productivity is lost. Since that doesn't make sense it makes me believe we're not seeing the whole story.
Re: Control & Real Estate (Score:2)
It does make sense a corporation's value is based on assets and productivity. These mega corps are watching thier real estate investments tank, so the largest value comes from getting people back in those chairs, even if productivity is lost.
I think it's unfair to say it's purely not caring about people's health though. These campuses have micro-economies which is what creates thier real estate value. This means coffee shops, bakeries, food trucks, and so on. When no one is coming to the office, all that mi
Pandemic (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Wow, put many people in a small room during a pandemic of a highly contagious virus and many people get sick? It's almost like we should have listened to science or something.
I know, it's such a mystery.
This is just another reason as to why I've set foot in my last office. It's a pointless and needless exposure to a buffet of communicable diseases, and I ain't gonna fuckin' do it.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
>needless exposure to a buffet of communicable diseases, and I ain't gonna fuckin' do it.
Your immune system may resent the lack of exercise later in life. Good luck with that attitude
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Pandemic (Score:4, Funny)
Your immune system may resent the lack of exercise later in life. Good luck with that attitude
I'm in my 60's and my immune system is fine; what it doesn't need are pointless stress tests provided by dumb-fuck plague rats who are too scared or too stupid to get the vaccine. I also don't need to catch your kid's cold du jour, which you generously brought to the office to share.
In summary, fuck off.
*Shakes head* (Score:2, Informative)
Stupid is as stupid does.
Large number of sick days (Score:5, Insightful)
COVID is probably (mostly?) endemic at this point for most people in industrial countries, but still, there are issues. One being that COVID is so contagious.
If current variants match or even beat measles in how infectious they are, economics call in their dues: Even if COVID has become like the flu, if it spreads that quickly and, for good measure, you are not protected from reinfection even for a single season, as it looks now, chances are you are home sick for a week each time with what for most people will be "just like a flu" thanks to current vaccines. Do that twice a winter, and then scale up to your work place where multiple waves will sweep through: fun ensues. Work on a time critical project with a large team: "all-hands" becomes a thing of distant memory. And that before adding vacation, training, travel ... Which is precisely what I see. Surprising? I think not.
Does not take anything away from the "Welcome back to work - by the way, your team has been wiped out by COVID" messages at Google. Good addition to a Sunday morning coffee. If we remain lucky, that will be our new normal for a while ...
Re: (Score:3)
Meanwhile, China seems to be able to do what they need to do to systematically reduce the impact of this to almost zero and will be pretty much at full strength.
Re: Large number of sick days (Score:2)
I don't know if I should feed a troll or not.
China is not doing perfectly fine. Lockdown still take place. Generally thier management is getting better but too many cases and heads will roll for government officials.
The lockdown are devastating sectors but China is also fairly decent at controlling the narrative.
With exports it's a different system. Many of these workers can function in a close system. They work stupid hours and thier leisure time is some drinking or simple games. Imagine asking all google
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
This is a lie. You are a liar.
Unvaxxed natural infection offers less protection than vaccination alone. While it's true that vaccination + natural infection offers the best protection, I should point out that you vaccinated to avoid getting the disease!
"Everyone throw covid parties so that we can all get the disease ... so that we can get some protection from the disease!" How stupid do you need to be to think that makes sense?
Re: (Score:2)
COVID did "weaken with time", but not all virus strains weaken with time. Beside, if that is true, how did COVID, which is a version of the very common coronavirus, even happen in the first place? The notion that all viruses weakens over time is simply false. Has HIV weakened? It hasn't .. people changed their behavior a little and more importantly anti-retroviral drugs that totally suppress the virus became effective and cheaper.
Re: HIV is weakening also (Score:2)
That is one study and even itâ(TM)s authors do not claim it is proof of or guarantee of HIV weakening over time. Besides, I can find counter points like https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org] If viruses only weaken over time, outbreaks wouldnâ(TM)t exist. Viruses can get weaker but they also can get stronger and drug resistant. HIV, which is still deadly without treatment, may have be slowed down because the strains had to mutate to adapt to the anti-retrovirals. Btw, monkeypox is spread through skin c
Re: (Score:2)
You seem to think HIV is no longer a problem. It is. Also, this covid virus ..I admit that omicron is weaker than alpha .. but then alpha already killed off the most susceptible .. so obviously statistically by number of deaths omicron will appear weaker even if it was equally potent. With HIV, widespread anti-retrovirals have been keeping its transmission rate low .. but not zero. Furthermore, the virus had to adapt to widespread therapeutic usage so while it may appear to have weakened .. if we took away
Re: (Score:2)
There's enough examples of viruses that have not weakened with time to show that is false. Consider Smallpox, regular pandemics, even after vaccines were a thing.
So? (Score:2, Insightful)
What is it that people want? (Score:2)
There is no risk to hospitals, no reasonable chance of covid ever going away and no reasonable chance of hiding from a virus nearly everyone has been exposed to by now anyway.
So Covid causes sickness and death like all of the other diseases and threats out there. Will hiding stop covid? Will it prevent you from being exposed? It's not clear what people who don't want to go to the office "because covid" want or expect.
Context, please (Score:2)
Hundreds of people calling in sick isn't great, but without some context, we don't know if it's anything to worry about. So, how many people call in sick on a normal day? How serious are the COVID infections compared to other infections? How does this compare (in terms of infections per employee) versus other employers and the rest of the county?
We've been seem alarming-seeming reports like this for 30 months. Can we please learn to only present numbers with some perspective?
Re: (Score:2)
"without some context, we don't know if it's anything to worry about"
Precisely. We must ask 'What is the death toll?' to know whether there are consequences to these infections. Are there any serious, disabling cases?
Presumably these people tested positive, somewhere, somehow. Maybe at-home testing? Maybe at the office? Who gathers this info and how? And if it's positive tests and not actual sickness, what does it all mean?
Without more relevant information this Summary is useless.
Re: (Score:2)
Here in BC, we've been having lots of problems with things like the ferry service and hospitals due to how many are off sick. Even had a school had to close for a week last year locally due to so many staff off sick.
Some services need X amount of people to function, the ferries as ocean going vessels as an example need X able bodied seamen to legally operate and even schools need something like one staff member for every 30 odd students. Then things like factories where you need a minimum number of people t
Wait, aren't they all like quadruple vaxxed by now (Score:2)
Oh the US has only mRNA vaccines. Carry on.
more context required (Score:2)
"will infection rates rise if we come back to work?"
yes.
"but what if..."
yes.
"but how about if they..."
YES. The answer to that base question will ALWAYS be YES.
For the question to have any real meaning, we need some metric to use to decide if the increased rate of infection is a bad tradeoff. I don't care about the answer to the base question because I already know what it's going ti be. I'm interested in knowing if it was a good decision. And don't tty to convince me that ANY increase in infection rates
Re: (Score:2)
YES. The answer to that base question will ALWAYS be YES.
Followed by
...if the increased rate of infection is a bad tradeoff.
YES.
Putting a bunch of unwilling people into a melting pot of harmful, infection diseases is always a bad tradeoff. It's even a worse tradeoff when there is exactly no necessity to drive that bad tradeoff. It's evil that it took so many needless deaths for the indifferent assholes in the ruling class to take it seriously. And now they want to convince us that something's changed that no longer makes that melting pot of harmful, infectious diseases harmful. It's "1984" applied to pathogens.
Fuckin
Re: (Score:2)
There's never going to be a good level of acceptable tradeoff for requiring people to come in to work when you know the result is going to be spreading a disease that is not only still killing more people than most other causes of death in the country, but which has serious secondary effects whose full extent is not yet even known. For a knowledge worker company like Google, the very idea that they would summon people in to work and risk diminishing their effectiveness permanently with long covid symptoms l
Google as the Titanic... (Score:2)
Google as the Titanic....
The Titanic public relations officer...they hadn't been experiencing a sudden iceberg impact, arguing that instead the hundreds of icebergs had been occurring over "the last few months in the North Atlantic.
A travesty that human life is so devalued at a company that states "Don't be evil." That maxim should be now "Don't be very evil."
JoshK.
Re: (Score:2)
...a company that states "Don't be evil."
Remember, Google retired that motto several years ago, when they could no longer pretend it still applied.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, point taken. Retired indeed like a cheap Firestone tire from a Ford Bronco in the early 2000's.
For some reason after the "sentient AI" pandemonium and hullabaloo, I often wonder if the AI is like the "BOSS" computer from Dr. Who, "The Green Death" episode.
JoshK.
Special much? (Score:3)
Lead by example (Score:2)
I have a revolutionary idea. Google should lead by example and mandate a flexible work from home policy whereby employees that have COVID, flu or even just a cold should be allowed to work from home.
I know execs & managers will feel awkward that very few people will be around to pretend to be happy to see them but maybe it's better that way.
I apologise in advance if I have offended anyone with yet another one of my radical/stupid ideas.
Re: (Score:2)
I apologise in advance if I have offended anyone with yet another one of my radical/stupid ideas.
Offended? No. But it is a worthless idea for solving this problem, because people can transmit covid (and other illnesses) before they are aware that they have them. They need to not come in to work before they know that they need to not come in to work. The obvious solution for a tech company like Google, which can function no matter where its employees are, is to keep them at home unless they are maintaining physical infrastructure. Google is literally a leader and even a pioneer in remote collaboration,
No one knows (Score:2)
The covid infection rate is currently quite high, but no one knows what it is, because home tests have no reporting feature.
CDC says only 37% have got a booster shot at all. (Score:2, Informative)
Current death rate is ~400/day. Wait until we get in to fall and all events aren't outdoors.
For comparison, the summer [cdc.gov] has had the least deaths per day over the whole of the pandemic. Notice that it was nearly 3000/day in February THIS YEAR.
This doesn't even include 'long covid" and a lot of states are barely reporting anything at this point. Thanks to the politicization of public health the CDC has backed off even trying to give meaningful guidelines because Americans don't give a fuck if you or someone
Re:CDC says only 37% have got a booster shot at al (Score:5, Informative)
Whilst I agree that COVID is still serious, your "number of deaths" statistic is misleading. The USA has the third largest population in the world, so it's no surprise that USA deaths are high.
Per capita (deaths per million in the last 7 days):
Spain 15.1
Norway 14.5
Chile 12.92
Estonia 12.77
Israel 12.69
Australia 12.15
Portugal 11.94
Finland 11.93
Greece 11.85
Italy 11.62
Tunisia 11.17
Trinidad and Tobago 10.72
USA 10.37
Re: (Score:3)
They should have Googled the risks (Score:2)
Or binged it.
Were people going to work sick or something? (Score:2)
Time for some union support... (Score:2)
I think any Google employees who didn't join or support the formation of their union should reconsider. Having the vast majority of employees collectively saying "Hell no - we won't go (back)" might change the company's tune.
I don't love most unions and have never worked in a union shop, although I've done contract work in union plants and it can be a real pain in the ass. But given the choice between being a union member and being forced to work in a Petri dish, I'd suck it up and join the union.
Only a problem for the upper middle class (Score:2)
Wrongful death suit? (Score:2)
I wonder how the company's bottom line would be affected if one (or more) of those who were called back to the office and then caught COVID (in a way traceable to workplace exposure) died - and the family/families brought a wrongful death suit?
Sigh (Score:2)
Smart People (Score:2)
Self-described Smart People - where is the evidence of this?
Re:Covid has mutated, nearly harmless now (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Covid has mutated, nearly harmless now (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure vaccines help reduce severity, but at this point there are significantly more harmful diseases than covid circling un-noticed because.. you just take a few sick days off and return to work.
By definition, if something is significantly more harmful you don't take a few sick days off and return to work.
If you haven't earned a Herman Cain Award yet, you aren't likely too. Getting vaccinated virtually eliminates the chance that you will downplay covid and then die of covid like Herman Cain did.
On average, 460 people are still dying from covid every day. And the numbers are rising (albeit slightly).
It's time to get back to life people. Take the masks off and smell the freedom. We made it past the mass death phase of the pandemic.
Um, yeah. Life has been back to normal for a year now. And what freedom was taken away that you need to smell it? Body odor?
As for your title, like most everything else you said, it's wrong [go.com].
Re: (Score:2)
You realize that your link agrees with the GP that SARS-CoV-2 has evolved to become much less virulent, right? And that GP did not make the claim that your link argues against?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Think of all the lives that would be saved if we set the speed limit at 25mph. Why don't we do that?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Covid has mutated, nearly harmless now (Score:3)
spped limits
Yet somehow among the safest roads in world are the Autobahns. The French speed limit is 81. To make it work, we need good training and properly built roads.
Re: (Score:2)
We made it past the mass death phase of the pandemic.
Speaking only for my province, but more people have died of COVID here in 2022 than in 2021 or 2020. We make no attempt to control it anymore, but it is definitely still killing people.
"Manitobans continued to die at a faster rate compared to the same time period last year. A total of 566 people have died in 2022 as of the week ending Aug. 6, Manitoba Health reports, which works out to a rate of 2.6 deaths per day.
During the same 217-day period last year, there were 483 deaths, a rate of 2.2 deaths p
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine it has to do with your handle. You are going to have to come up with some better material to escape the curse of it.
Anyway, some of us, myself included, got sick as a dog from it. It put me down for 3 weeks although I had pneumonia at the same time so it is hard to say which kicked my ass the hardest. I also hear some folks died from it, so just because it didn't affect you as bad as others doesn't mean it was something to be taken lightly.