Unprecedented Times

[Bfun220]

We were informed that our company is a tier 2. (Hospitals are tier 1) We support both the food and medical industries. So no staying home for us.

[CaptBob]

None of the Dealerships I service have closed. (except for the ones hit by tornadoes the last week of February) We read it as transportation, repair of transportation, and repair of equipment to repair transportation (that part is me!) is an essential service. With that said, it has slowed down tremendously. I"m only going out for emergencies, and trying to finish up some new construction.

I have a pile of different procedures for entering different corporate facilities. One National account wants me to enter the lobby, check in, then go to the garage, thus protecting the employees. Another National Account wants me to enter the garage first, thus protecting the customers. Yet another wants me in the garage, straight to the wash area, scrub up and continue to rewash at a predetermined interval. They have also waived the requirement that managers have to sign for the service on an Ipad. Verbal cues are acceptable.

It's going to be a different world when it is done. I do think we will have cleaner bathrooms out there, so that's not such a bad thing!

[Tuscany]

In some ways, I would like some self quarantine. It’s safe for controlling your health risk.
It seems the message hasn’t reached some in western NY that there is a health issue afoot and standing next to one another isn’t recommended..
Being packed to the gills Friday and Saturday, and even though we had adequate separation for employees set up, I could see it in our cashiers eyes, and our employees eyes that they were terrified. My wife and son also, me included.
We all know if one goes down with Covid-19, we all go down. They know there is no co-mingling with anyone after work except for immediate family at home, again if one goes down. It’s work, and home period, or no job. Sucks, but we are kind of on the front lines.
So as of tomorrow, we have decided to close our store to the general public and separate ourselves for the sake of our employees and our customers health. Everything will be phone in..we shop..they pick up at our door.
Wish us luck!

I commend you for your action as well as keeping top notch food available to the good people in your community. My one question, and I wonder about his with all online grocery options, is how do you make your entire inventory available to people. For example, in the grocery store, i buy a ton of stuff as I browse. I would never think of half the items. For example, do you have deep list of the items available from different sections of your store? or do you just let have a small subset of items that wont sell due to them not being core items that people buy. Pulling for you and all local business.

AJ, This is new to all of us.
Obviously impulse sales will suffer, and we know that.
I think we all have to sacrifice, so if we have to lost sales on impulse food, or any food that isn’t selling, it’s ok. Our employees take it home anyway. Big picture.
We are not letting anyone in the store, including delivery people.
Our orders and being unloaded and straight into our coolers. People will call in, and our people are picking their food from our coolers without the public handling a thing. Produce especially...
Day one went well, about half of the normal business which was to be expected after a crazy weekend. This morning we were on the radio explaining our new process and we are currently getting crushed..

[Snowman73]

Good luck. Wish you the best. My company supplies medical. We continue to operate, for now. We expect sales and service volumes of electrical safety testing to drop in most areas except medical at this point. About 12 people at our offices now; All practicing social distancing.

[TTU]

My company sent all the office people home to work from there. As for the operators, we are currently working normal shifts. The trade deal with China has been temporarily lifted and we are maxing out production of our chemical that makes hand sanitizer. Hopefully this all cools down soon though. We had our son on Thursday of last week, so we are even skeptical to travel to the lake house with a one week old.

[Big Block Power]

Well congrats on the new born!!

[NautiGirl]

My company sent all the office people home to work from there. As for the operators, we are currently working normal shifts. The trade deal with China has been temporarily lifted and we are maxing out production of our chemical that makes hand sanitizer. Hopefully this all cools down soon though. We had our son on Thursday of last week, so we are even skeptical to travel to the lake house with a one week old.

The reality is there are two ways this calms down. The first is a vaccine, which is at least 12 months out. The second is what is called herd immunity. Basically enough people are immune to the virus that it can't spread.

Heard Immunity can be achieved a few ways. The fun and easy way is through a vaccine - thanks science - but as we said that's 12 months out by most guesses. The second not so fun way is that enough of the population becomes infected and builds up their own natural immunity once they recover from the infection. Best guesses are that 60% - 70% of the population would need to be infected and recover for this to work.

That's the reality of the situation. Not the most fun outlook, but this to shall pass. We just need to prepare for this lasting longer than the two week timeline that Trump is hoping for. Most experts are predicting waves of outbreaks over the next year or so. Here is a really good article on the subject. Ignore the stupid graphic on the top. http://blog.deonandan.com/wordpress/202 ... -game.html

[TTU]

Well congrats on the new born!!

Thank you very much. It is our fist boy so I am excited about that.

[sailor55330]

My company sent all the office people home to work from there. As for the operators, we are currently working normal shifts. The trade deal with China has been temporarily lifted and we are maxing out production of our chemical that makes hand sanitizer. Hopefully this all cools down soon though. We had our son on Thursday of last week, so we are even skeptical to travel to the lake house with a one week old.

The reality is there are two ways this calms down. The first is a vaccine, which is at least 12 months out. The second is what is called herd immunity. Basically enough people are immune to the virus that it can't spread.

Heard Immunity can be achieved a few ways. The fun and easy way is through a vaccine - thanks science - but as we said that's 12 months out by most guesses. The second not so fun way is that enough of the population becomes infected and builds up their own natural immunity once they recover from the infection. Best guesses are that 60% - 70% of the population would need to be infected and recover for this to work.

That's the reality of the situation. Not the most fun outlook, but this to shall pass. We just need to prepare for this lasting longer than the two week timeline that Trump is hoping for. Most experts are predicting waves of outbreaks over the next year or so. Here is a really good article on the subject. Ignore the stupid graphic on the top. http://blog.deonandan.com/wordpress/202 ... -game.html

It's a good read Nauti, and I have read several articles that point to herd immunity as well with similar numbers. But as pointed out, herd immunity drastically overloads the medical community in a way that really can't be compensated. If 60% of the world population experience the virus at the same time, then 99.99% of those are on their own to fight it, which is not a good scenario. Opening up the country in 2 weeks would likely fast track us to those numbers.

Now, for a little potential bright spot. A colleague of mine''s significant other is in the biotech field and has a lot of high-level contacts in the pharmaceutical industry, especially on the research and development side. There is some encouraging progress being made on a treatment. They are using old school Malaria type drugs as part of of a "cocktail" that works in a way similar to the AIDS cocktail. It doesn't kill the virus outright, but it weakens it enough that the human immune system can fight it and in early test results, wipe it out. Since the drugs are all existing, they are all FDA approved and there are no known side effects. Even more encouraging is that the patents have all expired, so the drugs would be available as generic and could be produced by multiple companies. I realize this is not a vaccine to prevent and is still in testing and I am not trying to spread rumors or false hope, but given it comes from a known source and not media hype, it's at least a little potential good news in the otherwise doom and gloom but no word on timeline. Here's to hoping the research continues to be positive.

[NautiGirl]

My company sent all the office people home to work from there. As for the operators, we are currently working normal shifts. The trade deal with China has been temporarily lifted and we are maxing out production of our chemical that makes hand sanitizer. Hopefully this all cools down soon though. We had our son on Thursday of last week, so we are even skeptical to travel to the lake house with a one week old.

The reality is there are two ways this calms down. The first is a vaccine, which is at least 12 months out. The second is what is called herd immunity. Basically enough people are immune to the virus that it can't spread.

Heard Immunity can be achieved a few ways. The fun and easy way is through a vaccine - thanks science - but as we said that's 12 months out by most guesses. The second not so fun way is that enough of the population becomes infected and builds up their own natural immunity once they recover from the infection. Best guesses are that 60% - 70% of the population would need to be infected and recover for this to work.

That's the reality of the situation. Not the most fun outlook, but this to shall pass. We just need to prepare for this lasting longer than the two week timeline that Trump is hoping for. Most experts are predicting waves of outbreaks over the next year or so. Here is a really good article on the subject. Ignore the stupid graphic on the top. http://blog.deonandan.com/wordpress/202 ... -game.html

Now, for a little potential bright spot. A colleague of mine''s significant other is in the biotech field and has a lot of high-level contacts in the pharmaceutical industry, especially on the research and development side. There is some encouraging progress being made on a treatment. They are using old school Malaria type drugs as part of of a "cocktail" that works in a way similar to the AIDS cocktail. It doesn't kill the virus outright, but it weakens it enough that the human immune system can fight it and in early test results, wipe it out. Since the drugs are all existing, they are all FDA approved and there are no known side effects. Even more encouraging is that the patents have all expired, so the drugs would be available as generic and could be produced by multiple companies. I realize this is not a vaccine to prevent and is still in testing and I am not trying to spread rumors or false hope, but given it comes from a known source and not media hype, it's at least a little potential good news in the otherwise doom and gloom but no word on timeline. Here's to hoping the research continues to be positive.

Yup I had seen similar. It's a mix of a ZPak and chloroquine are the drugs involved. Limited data out of France and Australia showed promise. NY was going to start giving the cocktail to patients Tuesday. I have not heard results.

[shrfdeputy]

I just read an interesting article on Yahoo (that I can't find now) that talked about herd immunity in a different way than I had heard before. It said everyone who gets Covid-19 and recovers is essentially immune to it. How long they are immune is the difficult question, but they feel confident they are immune for 2-3 years at least. The article talked about how New York is using plasma from people who they know recovered from the virus to try and pass antibodies to sick people. They also talked about how once people have had Covid-19 and recovered, they can essentially return to their normal lives, and that it may be these people who are able to restart our factories and businesses. Hopefully our recovery rate is very high and we can get more and more immune people out there.

[Tuscany]

Geeeezuz.. I haven’t worked this hard in 10 years.. We are getting over run at our store.

[Big Block Power]

Geeeezuz.. I haven’t worked this hard in 10 years.. We are getting over run at our store.

Isn't that crazy. What I can't believe is all of the retired people going to the dealerships for just a oil change. I'm like really!!

[willyswagon]

Geeeezuz.. I haven’t worked this hard in 10 years.. We are getting over run at our store.

Isn't that crazy. What I can't believe is all of the retired people going to the dealerships for just a oil change. I'm like really!!

Think........

"DARWIN"!

[cmattj]

Geeeezuz.. I haven’t worked this hard in 10 years.. We are getting over run at our store.

Isn't that crazy. What I can't believe is all of the retired people going to the dealerships for just a oil change. I'm like really!!

As the Tahoe pulls into the modified “single lane” service drive...with signs stating to stay in your vehicle.. My service Advisor greets them.

“ Hello... what brings you in today?” My Advisor asks as my porter is starting to wipe down handles etc.

“Oh we’re bored at home so we thought we’d load up the kiddos , and come by for an oil change. It’s not really due yet but we thought you’d be slow? ” They reply.

My world lately

The good news is it limits my staff reductions and will keep us surviving through this right?