Coronavirus (Covid-19) infection survey: Characteristics of people testing positive for Covid-19 in England, 22 February 2021

‘The UK government published a report on the infection risk associated with various occupations, based on data on COVID-19 cases in England from September 2020-January 2021. The analysis compared the likelihood of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 during the study period for 25 standardized occupation categories. The occupation-specific risk ranged from 2.1% to 4.8%, with an overall risk of 3.9%. None of the individual occupation groups had a statistically significant difference from the overall average; however, some of the occupations with the highest risk showed a significant increase over those with the lowest risk. 

‘Occupation groups at the upper end include professions such as teachers, law enforcement and prison staff, childcare and home care, and secretarial professions. Occupation categories with lower infection risk include professions such as farmers and gardeners; scientists, engineers, and researchers; legal, social work, and news media; and textiles and printing services.’ (Summary by John Hopkins Centre for Health Security)

Read here (Government of UK, Feb 21, 2021)

We can't afford to wait for Covid-19 vaccines to be rolled out. Here’s what we can do to curb the virus now (The US situation)

• First, we need to get every American a high-filtration mask
• Second, schools and workplaces need to be made safer
• Third, we must protect our essential workers
• Fourth, we need to urgently build a functioning nationwide “test, trace, isolate, support” (TTIS) system
• Fifth, the US needs a “circuit breaker” to break the chains of transmission

Read here (Time magazine, Jan 13, 2021)

Coronavirus: How the world of work may change forever

‘More than seven months have passed since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic. Hundreds of millions of people have lived through lockdowns. Many have made the abrupt shift to working from home; millions have lost jobs. The future looks uncertain. We don't know when, or if, our societies might return to normal – or what kind of scars the pandemic will leave.

‘Amid the upheaval, BBC Worklife spoke to dozens of experts, leaders and professionals across the globe to ask: what are the greatest unknowns we face? How will we work, live and thrive in the post-pandemic future? How is Covid-19 reshaping our world – potentially, forever?

‘We’ll roll out these important views from some of the top minds in business, public health and many other fields in several articles over the next few weeks. We'll hear from people including Melinda Gates on gender equality, Zoom founder Eric Yuan on the future of video calls, Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler on what’s next in travel and Unesco chief Audrey Azoulay on the ethics of artificial intelligence.’

Read here (BBC, as at Oct 26, 2020)

The long shadow of the pandemic: 2024 and beyond

‘Even when the world returns to ‘normal,’ the legacy of Covid-19 will transform everything from wages and health care to political attitudes and global supply chains...

‘One impact of the Covid-19 pandemic may be that society will begin to take scientists and scientific information more seriously. In medieval times, the manifest inability of rulers, priests, doctors and others in positions of power to control the plague led to a wholesale loss of faith in corresponding political, religious and medical institutions, and a strong desire for new sources of authority.

‘It is possible that the inability of our political institutions to fight the virus will have similar implications. The public’s expectation of effective state action will likely rise in the immediate and intermediate periods, if deaths continue or accelerate. And if the response continues to be incompetent, confidence in existing political institutions will fall. The many failures of American government at every level in confronting the pandemic, especially when compared with other countries, may result in a shift in political preferences aimed at undoing the existing order.’

Read here (Wall Street Journal, Oct 16, 2020)

Training for the pandemic economy

‘But we can learn from the failure of earlier programs. Their record reveals that training works best when it is closely connected to a real job or occupation. Program design should be informed by detailed government forecasts of the types of jobs that are coming and which skills they will require. Similarly, training works best when firms and industries collaborate on program design, because employers are a source of information about the skills that will be needed. At the implementation stage, on-the-job training – apprenticeships, in other words – is essential, and not only for blue-collar jobs. Although we think of apprentices as machinists and plumbers, increasingly they are nursing assistants and insurance underwriters.

‘Here, Europe has a leg up, owing to strong trade unions that can cooperate with employers’ associations in organizing apprenticeships, and because worker-firm attachments are relatively strong. In the US, progress will be harder...’

Read here (Project Syndicate, July 13, 2020)

An analysis of three Covid-19 outbreaks: How they happened and how they can be avoided

‘A crowded restaurant to celebrate the Chinese New Year; 100 workers infected inside a 19-story building; a group of devout Buddhists travelling by bus for a religious ceremony. These were the scenarios for three outbreaks of Covid-19 that have been carefully documented by the authorities. What happened in each one? What were the risk factors? What lessons can be learned, now that we are trying to get back to normal and return to restaurants, offices and other shared spaces?’

Read here (El Pais, June 18, 2020)

‘Are you immune?’ The new class system that could shape the Covid-19 world

‘...experts predict that if survivors are found to be immune, they could perform a range of jobs and services – such as volunteering in hospitals and nursing homes, caring for coronavirus patients and working in shops and food processing plants – risk-free. And, depending on how authorities, business and society at large respond, they could also be entitled to greater freedoms.’

Read here (The Guardian, June 10, 2020)

Why you might be missing your commute

“You can’t disentangle home and work anymore, and that’s not always easy,” says Jon Jachimowicz, an assistant professor in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. A new study, co-authored by Jachimowicz, examines the function of the commute as a psychological threshold between home and work.

According to the study, the daily commute offers an opportunity for people to engage in “role-clarifying prospection”, meaning it gives them time and space to think about the upcoming work role. “Through role-clarifying prospection, employees mentally shift their attention from what they are experiencing in the present - thoughts pertaining to their commute, or thoughts unrelated to their past or future role - to what they will be experiencing when they arrive at work, namely, thoughts pertaining to their workday,” the authors write.

Read here (BBC, May 21, 2020)

When it’s time to go back to the office, will it still be there?

‘In a late-April survey among corporate real estate users by the trade group CoreNet Global, 94% of respondents said employees will spend more time working remotely even after the pandemic is over. And 69% said firms will use less real estate in the future as a result of remote work, up from 51% in March... “The supply and demand for office space may change significantly,” Warren Buffett said earlier this month at Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s annual meeting. “When change happens in the world, you adjust to it.”

Read here (Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2020)

The post-pandemic future of work

‘Some work must be done to keep society functioning—the work, as social reproduction theorists have it, of life-making and sustaining—but what are the conditions under which people do it? If everyone had the right to live, to a home and health care regardless of whether or how much they worked, what would the incentives be for people to take up that socially necessary work? Would we distribute it equally, perhaps, rather than deciding that certain people are “essential” workers and the rest of us something else entirely? This moment, this crisis, is showing the brutality inherent in so many kinds of labor, and showing how unnecessary other work is. Perhaps it can also be an opportunity to question our most basic assumption: that work itself should be at the center of our lives.’

Read here (The New Republic, May 1, 2020)