Photo by AC Almelor on Unsplash
- Meticulous and Orderly, Germany Can Handle a Pandemic
By reacting to the outbreak early, Germany also bought itself time to build on other “preexisting” strengths. Even before Covid-19 struck, it had far more beds in intensive care units than most other countries. It has been adding many more. So Germany still has spare capacity: About 10,000 of the more than 22,000 beds are free. This lets its hospitals save the lives of more of the patients coming in, and even take some from France and Italy.
Yet another preexisting advantage, on the socioeconomic side, is a century-old labor law that prevents abrupt layoffs and lets employees get paid even when their work temporarily dries up. Called Kurzarbeit (literally “short work”), the program gets companies to keep paying staff up to 67% of their salaries even when there’s nothing to do, and the government reimburses them. More than 650,000 firms have signed up already, representing millions of employees, from bakers and cleaners to engineers. They and their families can stay financially resilient during the lockdown, and employees will be able to quickly return to work when the virus fades.
- The Restaurant Impact From COVID-19
- Before you forward that ‘uplifting’ email to homebound colleagues, think again
But here’s why chain email, no matter how well-intentioned, is not the way to do it:
It’s intrusive. When working from home, it’s hard enough avoiding distractions that siphon away our focus and energy without having to filter out time-wasters disguised as work matters.
It may offend. One person’s inspiration is another’s irritation. Some people draw comfort from psalms and hymns; others’ love language is dirty limericks and Lizzo lyrics. Either group bombarding the other with their own particular form of “inspiration” is just asking for an HR intervention.
It’s a security risk. Although this chain mail is benign, if annoying, some forwarded messages can carry malicious payloads. Social engineering spam and memes can lure people into revealing personal information. Scams like these have always been around, but they tend to proliferate during a crisis when people are most vulnerable. The coronavirus pandemic has been no exception.