Coronavirus & 2020

[NOVA Green]

Coronavirus is a US Non-Partisan virus which will likely lead to a Global Recession.

Europe was already in a Recession Environment, Asia-Pacific was rolling through a slow-down, and the US Stock Market was excessively inflated, despite the lack of wealth gains, while the global rich bastards roll their dice to find whatever profits they can at the hands of Workers from throughout the world as part of their "Global Race to the Bottom"...

Work in a Tech sector with World-Class "Cleanrooms/fabs", and average wages have collapsed from over (20) Years of offshore MFG operations to "tax havens", with Asia-Pacific towards the top.

It used to be many of our Asia-Pacific MFG plants were "in-house" in places like Singapore and Malaysia, where low wage sub-contract labor was the norm...

Increasingly as part of the Fortune 100 Global Supply Chain, there was greater subcontracting to Subcontractors within China...

All business travel is not just banned to China over the past 4 Weeks, but also many other key Supplier markets within Asian-Pacific.

The Company that I work for, which has a large employee population within China (as a Global Company) has forced people to work from home within China, banned all business travel, etc...

Although it's not Trump's fault that this happened, the reality is that it happened to coincided with a time where the US Market was on the verge of collapse as part of a cycle recession, plus all of his "trade war with China BS"....

Strongly suspect that Trump will not win against Bernie in '20 if there is a major US Recession....

Trump started the War against China.... Trump said he was gonna make $$$  bcs of the stock markets, but....

[NOVA Green]

Too early to tell....

The large Tech Mfg plant I work at just got rocked by the news that Coronovirus not only hit next door, but additionally that we have multiple workers doing self-quarantine, after having potentially been exposed to friends & relatives that could possibly have tested positive.

If the Factory shuts down workers are furloughed, and unless you are someone in a position to work remotely, even if you have a positive PTO balance, it's extremely unlikely to cover 2 Weeks off work (let alone longer)...

If it stretches longer than two weeks, it's going to be hitting people's paychecks hard...

Unemployment benefits at 65% when you are living paycheck-to-paycheck especially if you don't have a waiting week in line, will put people into homelessness where I live...

Idle the Factory for Four weeks, will even cut into the comfortably "Middle-Class" budgets, not to mention even causing some heartburn for the "Upper Middle-Class" Engineers & Technicians, where working remotely only goes so far....

Don't know and can't predict how this will play out politically, but if we don't get relief on the West Coast, even in heavily Republican Trump Country (Including the County in which I live), the incumbent will likely be blamed regardless of even if the loyalists give him the benefit of the doubt on his initial response....

[NOVA Green]

Getting worse in Oregon...

The tech company direct employees are now required to work remotely, with the exception of "Business Critical" positions....

Meanwhile the remaining 50% of the workers on the site (overwhelmingly contract workers) that work and support the factories still need to show up so we can run the Factories and the Labs...

Absenteeism is running through through the roof of our employees, since not only has it been a bad Flu season in Oregon, especially for folks with kids, but now the s**t seems realer than it has ever been before.

Now there are Mandatory 3' Contact rules, anybody that has left the "Metro Area" is now in a self-quarantine zone for 14 Days.

We are all waiting for the the giant Tech Campus to the shut down for a min of 2 weeks, and potentially much longer.

The only hope we have to avoid being screwed over, is that we have World Class Clean-rooms, and Testing for New Product Launches which have competitive advantage in the Asia-Pacific Market which supports our idled factories in Malaysia & Singapore...

We relocated the Mfg lines from Ireland to Oregon, which ended up much cheaper for the client, although honestly feel like a bit of backstabber shifting some jobs from one my ancestral Nati0ons back to America.... 

Still, partied with about (30) Irish Engineers while they shifted our MFG OPS overseas, plus one of them dated my Sister back in the days with some hippy rainbow coat from Dublin and ended up causing some difficulties in the relationship....

Site is now effectively shut down.... we are now waiting to see if critical item such as MFG and Testing Will be shut down...

Regardless the clients get to work remotely, while meanwhile we need to mingle in our worksites despite the OR "State of Emergency"...

All of us contract workers are waiting for a "Mass Furlough", which will likely hit before too long, especially since we have multiple individuals potentially exposed in a small "Tight-Knit" Community in Downstate Oregon...

Everyone is one edge, for the most part keeping calm.

On Wednesday talked to one of the Ladies that works in the Factory who told me that her Male friend got either verbally or physically threatened with a knife in Sweet Home Oregon about the last roll of TP on the shelf....   (Thought she was doing a Sweet Home Joke where there is a little a slip between the pipe and the lip)---- but for real... Former Mill Town with no Mills... cheap living... beatutiful scenery, and tons of folks that lost all hope where sometimes getting a bit of comfort in that tiny glass bowl keeps you running on and on to the next job and the next city down the line helps you survive and carry on another day

Today in the Mid-Valley of Oregon, many items are cleared off of Grocery Shore shelves, for various reasons, but my wife observed a ton of Seniors when she was trying to grab a few items today stuffing the carts with provisions...

Y'all don't get it but West Coast is Ground Zero...

Sure maybe figure out a better way to do it but the s**t is real in WA & OR.... CA likely not behind the line....

Reality is that on the West Coast we are the first hit, so learn the lessons and successes and failures or responses from State and Local Gvts just trying to carry on....

It is heading East and South....

Be prepared....

[NOVA Green]

Can whomever posted the uber-sized graphic please self-correct because it is blowing my eyeballs out.

Got a few West Coast updates, but will need to step out to have a smoke before the National Guard Convoys start patrolling my neighborhood....

[NOVA Green]

Latest Update from Oregon:

Not only has DEM GOV Kate Brown declared a State of Emergency, to combat the Coronavirus, but it has increasingly expanded and is now hitting places close to home in downstate Oregon.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/oregon/articles/2020-03-08/oregon-declares-state-of-emergency-to-fight-new-coronavirus

Just today...

https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-coronavirus-live-updates-march-16-bar-restaurants-closures-cases/

I was a little tipsy chatting with my wife last Night, and positing that maybe we should buy a gun for self-protection, when increasingly stories are floating around about desperate hoarders are threatening people at Grocery Stores for the last supplies of TP and certain canned goods.

Not a gun fan, but also not a hater for ownership for a Shotgun to chase off Bears or Cougars, nor having a 22 "Deer Hunter" style Rifle for target shooting, let alone an 9 MM for target shooting or possibly household defense.

She talked me down today, but when I heard last week from a co-worker from Lebanon OR...the story from Sweet Home, Oregon (Old Mill Town and now Tweaker Central (We call them crackheads in OR when they hit the pipe on the White Dope, even though we know many of them by name and families over the years), when somebody got jacked at knife-point for the last large bundle of TP, we have a major problem going on here....

Fine....we go shopping this past weekend and aisles are cleaned out for all sorts of products in all stores, from canned goods, to fresh meat, to produce, to cleaning supplies wiped out of the aisles....

Meanwhile, the schools are shut down in OR until at least 3/31, we had (10) cases hit right down the road in a Veterans Home with a huge number of residents and workers that have extensive local contact networks.

Although the giant Tech Factory is not closed down, those of us who are contract workers still need to report to work to support the Factories and the Testing Facilities, although the Fortune 100 workers are allowed to "work remotely", and now we need to practice "social distancing".

There are multiple instances in this tight-knit downstate OR giant MFG plant, where folks are potentially exposed and we are still awaiting testing results, and wondering which of our fellow co-workers might test posititive, while meanwhile we got to keep a positive face to keep the factories and labs running.....

This is not a joke.... we don't yet have a "confirmed" result at a 3.5k+ MFG Facility, but we all know it's there, but the bosses won't shut down the Factory until they know they get their bailout, while meanwhile the Tech Stocks have been collapsing for awhile, while our Global Supply Chain has been heavily impacted by shutting down jobs from our Tech Plant and shifting them overseas as part of a "Global Race to the Bottom"....

[NOVA Green]

They shut down the entire Plant Today, sending virtually everybody home at least through the end of March (and possibly quite longer).

The few exceptions are in the World-Class Clean-rooms, which are arguably some of the safest work environments in the world (within the Fabs).

As a Sup had to walk the line and deliver the message to the rank and file, which was something we were hoping was not going to happen, but I was prepping my fellow workers to be prepared for....

Contrary to popular stereotypes, the Tech Sector in Oregon does not consist of a bunch of College Educated Geeks sitting their in some sort of HBO "Silicon Valley" Sit-Com, but rather a ton of skilled manufacturing workers, many of whom learned their traded when the Timber Mills shut down.

The MNCs increasingly use sub-contract labor to fulfill their needs as many of our MFG lines are being shipped overseas, and many of the line workers and technicians are barely living above Oregon MIN WAGE, within an area where the Cost of Living (Rent) has gone up dramatically while our wages are stagnent.

Now we are shut down for an indefinite period of time, forced to file for unemployment benefits where there may or may not be a waiver on a waiting week, forced furloughed onto the dole making roughly 65% or less of our wages, while still struggling to pay rent.

Needless to say, we are not all identical when it comes to partisan political affiliation, world views, etc....

WE NEED AN IMMEDIATE BAILOUT NOW!!!

We are tired of the bailouts going to Big Business every time the economy crashes, we all get that this is Medical Emergency... meanwhile from the perspective of many of us it looks like although the State Gvt is trying to handle the situation, the Federal Gvt isn't doing crap to cover our expenses when we are simply performing our patriotic duty and got our plant closed (through no fault of our own) because of a State and Federal Emergency Situation....