A Company Handling Crisis Communication Correctly

aside from freezers, i would imagine that there’s a bit of stress eating, a bit of full households, and a bit of not having had the time to cook properly before.

so, a lot of people on hand and “mom” with time on her hands. possibly some cooking food and taking it to shut-ins and elderly, too. one hopes!

how are you keeping, Ian?

My company now has implemented work from home programs where applicable, and where someone has to be there physically on site, has started having some of that go in to the physical space while keeping others working from home–then switching those groups periodically–all the while keeping everyone paid. We’ve also locked us down by buildings and divisions, minimizing travel even within the site. We’re also discouraged from off-hours socializing in-person with other people outside our work teams/divisions/buildings, etc. Anyone who feels any cold- or flu-like symptoms at all is to call our medical department and is stay at home (and if not serious, can work from home).

So far this seems like a relatively humane and good strategy. Of course, you worry how long can it be kept up.

I don’t have a large freezer, otherwise, I probably would have stocked up more on meat and seafood as well. My guess is that people value meat greatly in favoring their meals, and in the worst case scenario, people believe that meat production may dry up or be hard to find. It makes more sense to me to stock up on meat and other types of food that can be frozen than toilet paper.

I have not seen a corporate response like this from any of the corporations that have me on their email list. The worst corporation in Canada is probably more efficient than many well-respected corporations in the USA.

“See You on the Other Side”

“See you on the other side.” He said, with a trace of tired. A hand reached out from a white button shirt to shake mine. No young man would wear a shirt like that, far too proper and prim. Far too many holes to had been darned.
Of course, in a movie, there would be subtle hints of a world through the looking glass – from the old and roughened noir main to the aged movie sign that clung to the wall. Nowhere would do it that way now – from the bent lines that clung akimbo to the rough bricks on the wall, to the lines on white that we placed the letters on. Everything was ancient but in the same sepia way. An image of a picture on the small Main St. USA, lost in some world not named New York City or Chicago. A poor Main Street.
I turned to look at his brown face, a visage more ancient than mine. It had chased away any loving crafted sign of beauty except on the edges. Only his wife could see their hints. But she had seen them almost every day. Even longer than I had.
“I suppose we will at that.”
“It is a big world, it crowds little towns out of the way.” While he said this, he was also climbing down the ladder, looking up at the sign which said “Closing Down.” “Will we see it again, do you think?”
“Not unless the historical society slaps an historic vista on it.”
He shuffles down his ladder, then looked out over the main avenue with its empty stores gleaming. Even the Chinese restaurant across the way could see it. It is now the only because was another retail establishment. It could no longer huddle for warmth in the late winter with anyone else.
“Maybe they should – there is a lot of memories within and without seen from up there.”
“Only little ones.”
Slowly, up the sidewalk slowly, slowly. slowly came a pasty woman. She was once the primary school reading teacher. The woman who got the hard cases and made them sing with their eyes.
“I heard you back there – and across the river at the plant men who lived here work there. The made wondrous engines.”
The old man turned around, from the back, I could see that he became wider. It being happiness to every corner of the ticket stands and beyond. “Mrs. Van Corlaer, it is so nice to see you to-day.”
Then he bowed and took off his cap. Cap – not hat and certainly not chapeaux.
She shifted her red purse from left hand to right hand, though no curtsey because she was portly. “There were enough times here as if under a snapshot.”
The old man laughed. “Enough memories and movies.”
The elder woman touched her wide brim glasses. “I remember when this cinema had ‘Gone With the Wind’ on one of the revival tours. The were in the ‘70s.”
At this, I piped up: “You could not have seen the original.”
“Good heavens no, it came out before I was born. My mother saw the original. And in New York, at the midtown movie theater show in the film. In fact, she traveled by the El.”
“El?” A quizzical look on my face.
“Overground part of the subway.” Looking straight-up at me with her wide hips.
“Which theater was it?” It was more than a question, it was elocution from the old man.
“Don’t rightly know. My mother did, but it is so long ago.”
I cocked my foot over the ladder, looking down the boulevard, just seeing the bridge, with warping denuded trees wrapped around it. It was the thoroughfare into the main burgh. The one where all of the men used to go. “The new century is consuming the old.”
“You two boys must excuse me, I have to get going.”
“Why don’t you let me walk you down to your place?”
“That would be kind of you.”
“Could you hold the fort while I walk Mrs. Van Corlaer home?”
“Your wish is my command.”
I watch the two of them walk away, chattering of older times. It was the last I saw of him. The next day his wife showed up. Her story was he had fallen down after he had dropped Mrs. Van Corlaer at her brick building. An ambulance came and got him. While at the emergency room, they gave him a test for the coronavirus. He tested positive.
Two weeks later the was a death in the city paper. Two short lines. I did not know he was a Lieutenant in the Marines.
See you on the other side.

This virus need not have one name. In fact, the name of it depends on how it manifests in each nation. In America, it’s appropriate to call it COVFEFE-19. In China, it’s appropriate to call it the Wet Market Virus. In Italy, it should be called Gabagool-19. In Iran, GreatSatan-19. In South Korea, GangnamStyle-19.

Regardless of what we call it, it’s the angel of death.

Three years earlier, JFK said this. Suck on this you Batista Cuban f*cks. I would support any one running for POTUS who agreed to send you demented criminal slobs packing. You are not Americans. You are filth. You are scum. Get out.

Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in seven years… and he turned Democratic Cuba into a complete police state – destroying every individual liberty. Yet our aid to his regime, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support of his reign of terror. Administration spokesmen publicly praised Batista – hailed him as a staunch ally and a good friend – at a time when Batista was murdering thousands, destroying the last vestiges of freedom, and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the Cuban people, and we failed to press for free elections.

The toilet paper craze reminds me of the tulpenmanie. Maybe single rolls will be as good as C notes soon.

I’m waiting for the op-ed telling us that robots are better because they don’t get sick. I think progress with AI would be even faster if a way could be figured out to make robots mindless consumers.

If there’s one thing that won’t happen, I’d think it’d be the running out of perishable consumer goods. There’s too much money to be made these days, as the toilet paper craze indicates. But yeah, if price gouging of food happened I’d sure think that’d increase revolution fever, which is the most major thing outside of the PTB’s management plan.

As edwin points out above, people are grocery shopping outside their comfort zone. Over half of Americans eat out for dinner two or three times a week. I couldn’t easily find anything about lunch, but I suspect the majority eat lunch out at least 5 times a week. This means they don’t know how much or what kind of food to buy if they’re facing maybe 21 meals at home for the week.

A great example of Stockholm Syndrome.

https://imgur.com/a/5UxRdjA

Smallpox blankets, anyone? How low can they go? Apparently there is no floor to how low they can go.

https://imgur.com/a/P1t7DjU

IMO this is because the Navy has been throwing its money at very expensive, and nearly useless, Big Weapons Systems.

Almost forty years ago, Andrew Cockburn’s The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military portrayed the way all militaries–theirs, ours, and everyones–prizes big impressive expensive things over smaller, often cheaper, alternatives. (Like sophisticated systems to block or interrupt the homing devices on anti-ship missiles as opposed to simply towing cheap dummy ‘targets’ that would put out a huge signal which would thus draw any enemy incoming anti-ship missiles to the dummy target). So it’s not surprising.

(I’m somewhat familiar with the history of Russian tank design, and back in WWII they came up with an axiom of ‘no tank should ever be heavier than 50 tons’–which save for some prototypes and a short production run of the IS-4 (250 tanks) they never violated even up to this day. The Russians came up with this rule due to the fact that most bridges built for civilian use can’t support tanks > 50 tons without being reinforced, and they didn’t want to hold up any wartime movements by finding themselves in situations where they might be be forced to wait for engineering services to do that.

But NATO tanks have ballooned to 70 tons and more. I would assume Western bridges, plus bridges elsewhere in the world, have similar weight restrictions. So do Western tank outfits need armies of engineers to accompany them to reinforce virtually every bridge they cross? That doesn’t seem very practical or sensible in a real shooting war against a modern, competent, enemy force).