Tanzania the Healthy

I'm not sure how to think about this, so I'm putting it out there for you to figure out:

There is no COVID-19 in Tanzania.  Not a single case.

At least according to Tanzania's President John Magufuli, who led three days of national prayer in June which, according to him, eliminated the virus from his country for good.

National data backs this up.  Of course, the data is based on the testing regimen, which tests only visitors.  Apparently, no Tanzanian has been tested, at least since June, so there are no cases (why does this sound eerily familiar?).

The Tanzanian government has not ordered any vaccines, nor has it applied for COVAX assistance.  With no cases, why do they need a vaccine?

"Countries that opt not to vaccinate their citizens could also incubate the virus, offering it a base from which to mutate, even as it is diminished or eliminated in the rest of the world."

Global herd immunity just got a little harder, and the new world is a little further off.

Global Herd Immunity

Here at "The New World," we feel pretty confident that no one has herd immunity until everyone has herd immunity.  As noted, the virus has not yet learned to respect arbitrary, human-drawn borders of any kind.

So all this talk about the US returning to normal in the summer or fall or Christmas is, on important levels, meaningless.  You know that, I know that; I've written about it before but I can't find where at the moment.  But as recently as yesterday, the New York Times published some detailed research that set up the parameters for herd immunity in the US, as if that would return us to normal.  The only important measure of herd immunity is global herd immunity.

So how's it going?  I've come here today, actually, just to share this one chart.  Here's how it's going*:

I'm a big fan of reducing social inequality, but the problem here is that we're vaccinating a small part of the world and expecting to live in that world after our handful of rich countries are vaccinated.  This makes about as much sense as sending vaccines only to states in the US whose name start with vowels.

Global herd immunity.  We need to see this phrase a lot more often, especially in rich-country policy documents.

* - COVAX, at #3, is an initiative funded by richer nations (including, post-Jan 20, by the US!) to provide vaccines to poorer nations - although it won't be enough, and richer nations (see Canada) are appropriating some for themselves).

Zoom Relationships

Lots of speculation regarding the future of the office in the new world.  Partly  because, well, there's not a lot to write about as we settle in to our long voyage to the outer planets.  Who knows?  But there are those who are pushing back against the assumption that WFH will be a major factor.

Why?  Because "organizational life is founded on relationships," according to Beth Humberd and Scott Latham, of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.  And relationships, they insist, require trust and cooperation, which seems self-evident, and they also require physical proximity, which does not seem so self-evident.

The study they rely on to connect office relationships and physical proximity was published in October of 2018, long before COVID, WFH and the Zoom culture.  From the Abstract:

We contextualize workplace relationships in their physical environment and propose that spatial dimensions common to modern workspaces actively influence workplace relationships, focusing specifically on the spatial dimensions of proximity, workspace assignment, privacy, and crowding.  Our spatial model of work relationships proposes that these elements work through relationship-building mechanisms, such as communication content, face-to-face frequency, communication duration, and identity marking, as well as through relationship-straining mechanisms, such as territoriality and ego depletion, to differentially influence both positive and negative relational ties at work.

It looks to me that Humberd and Latham's "physical proximity" argument is based primarily on the study's inclusion of "face-to-face frequency" as a positive influence on relationships.  Fair enough.  But a Zoom call is essentially "face-to-face," and although there's a lot to be said about the differences between a Zoom call and a physically-in-the-same-place meeting, there's no evidence that the positive impact on relationships that a physically-proximate meeting has is significantly greater than that of a Zoom meeting.

There's also the interesting thought that some of the difficulties of the physical workplace indicated in the Abstract - "...proximity, workspace assignment, privacy and crowding," are largely addressed when you're working from home.  And even if it is shown conclusively that physical proximity improves workplace relationships, will corporations abandon WFH purely on that account, when WFH provides everyone with so many other benefits?

The more I think about this, the more interesting it becomes.  The Abstract notes "relationship-straining mechanisms, such as territoriality and ego depletion."  What impact would working from home have on these issues?  How about sexual harassment?  Bullying?  Certainly water-cooler conversations, touted as "critical to new ideal generation," can be done by text?  Or on Twitter, to engage a much wider audience?

Lots to think about in the dark void before herd immunity.

One Year

This blog is over nine months old, but the pandemic - the part that was made real, and is still real, to Americans - is one year old today.  On February 6, 2020, Patricia Dowd became the first American to die of COVID-19.  

Her heart burst.  Imagine that.

That's when it started, for most of us.  When we started dying.  When the alarm bells went off.

When we set sail.

Happy birthday.

Disruptive and Turbulent

I'm here today to talk about post-COVID thinking.  Or, at least, what big thinkers are thinking about "the day after COVID."

That kind of grandiose and hazy stuff can be found all over.  Everyone wants to get in on the ground floor and maximize the new paradigms and innovative opportunities of the post-COVID space.  And so forth.  It wouldn't be so tiring if it weren't pretty much the only writing being done about the new world.

And it's mostly of the "wouldn't it be great?" variety that we've seen over and over.  But I did see one interesting idea recently, which was connected to an extensive series of videos of "big thinkers" talking about the new world.  The upshot is:  Many changes that were coming, slowly, or insisted on, or stalled, will break free and start happening, like an ice jam breaking up in the spring.  

Business, education and politics will be more disruptive and turbulent; changes brought about, or exacerbated, by the pandemic, will continue and expand.   Telemedicine "is here to stay," and every company will become much more digital than they've ever been, and "...will have to take a great deal of its commerce, interactions and workforce online."  And there will be more robots than ever!

I only read the article summarizing the themes of the videos, because there are ninety-nine of them and each is at least five minutes long, meaning that there are eight hours of video.  It might be fun to look in on a few to see what's what.  I'll do this myself, and let you know if the big thinkers have anything interesting or important to say about the new world. 

Late

If this blog were a pregnancy, the baby would be overdue.

WFH Gets Even Better

Don't you love tripping over a new idea you know nothing about while you're slogging through material that isn't going to pan out to anything interesting?  I do. Happened just today. 

Here's where it begins:

"...nearly two-thirds of tech workers in the San Francisco Bay Area would consider relocating if given the option, and many of the region’s biggest employers—including Facebook, Google, Twitter, Square, and Coinbase—have announced plans to allow at least some staff to work from anywhere on an ongoing basis."

Here at "The New World" we looked at the whole "work from home" thing quite a long time ago, but there wasn't much to say about it since no one knew with any certainty whether a substantial number of companies and/or employees would continue the practice in the new world.  Today, it's pretty much the same:  predictions without any real evidence. 

But there are, apparently, some emerging incentives which may have an impact on the popularity of working from home (in addition to all the other advantages).  Municipalities are offering "remote worker incentives" to individuals who move there to work from home.  "Cities and towns have long offered companies financial rewards for bringing jobs and tax revenues to their region, but now many are turning their attention, and incentives, toward these individual mobile workers."

As it turns out, you might be able to score $2,000 cash if you move to Savannah, GA, to work from home, or maybe you'd rather move to Tulsa, OK, for $10,000.*  The Shoals region of Alabama, in the northwest corner of the sate, is offering the same amount for tech workers who relocate.  Topeka, KS, which is really in the middle of nowhere, ups the ante to $15,000.  And if you want to move to Vermont - well, you're too late, as their Remote Worker Relocation Program has run out of money and has not - at this point - been renewed.  But we can always hope.

The headquarters-siting sweepstakes is really a pain in the neck for all concerned.  A remote worker incentive program, however, is much easier, and benefits everyone - workers get to work where they want, with a little help for moving expenses.  Corporations get to live in much cheaper real estate markets, vastly increasing their options; and municipalities don't have to give up tax revenues to attract big installations, but instead get full-time workers who will live and shop in their town, in return for a reasonable investment.  “The multiplier effect on that investment becomes huge,” says Bob Ross, the senior vice president of marketing and communications for the Greater Topeka Partnership. “And then it just adds density to your community in terms of intellectual capital.”

As you might expect, most of these programs require extensive applications, and are limited:  only a certain number of grants are available.  But they certainly change the landscape of workforce distribution.  And they're not pandemic-dependent:  the benefits to all concerned will be just the same in the new world.  We'll just be much, much more used to working from home.

* - Tulsa is the ugliest city in the country, and I can't, at the moment, think of an amount that would get me thinking about moving there.