NASA Memo: Planning a Return to On-Site Work
Message From The NASA Associate Administrator: Planning a Return to On-Site Work, NASA
“First, let me say that no decisions have been made at the agency level to move away from the current operational state at headquarters and the centers. But, the questions of how and when we return to on-site work are on everyone’s minds these days as we see the curve of coronavirus infection beginning to flatten in portions of the United States and the national conversation shifting to how we get back to “normal.”
Given the 14 day gates of the President’s plan is any center in an area to move to phase one anytime soon? After all those Easter gatherings I would expect some new hot areas to bloom. Plus with the three phase plan telework is highly encouraged until phase three so other than processing Mars rover, finishing up commercial crew flight readiness, building Orion and green run for SLS is there any rush to reopen the centers when most of those locations aren’t on a downward trend yet for the most part?
My wife works at Kennedy as a CS. We’ve heard here in Orlando that the NASA government service and their service management is trying to soft open the center. They’ve been asking employees to quietly come into work over the next few weeks starting next week. This despite the fact Florida is a virus hotspot & civil unrest is becoming an issue too. Our COVID death toll in Orange County is rising and we are due for a second wave. They need to wait until June to do this since they are putting our entire community, children and our families at risk to open May 1rst. I am really worried about her being asked to risk her life.
Might check your numbers. The Florida I live in is not that hot in virus terms.
Usually the people who do not think that COVID-19 is a big deal live in another world to begin with.
There is a huge difference between handling a problem and doing a Chicken Little. COVID-19 is a problem, a problem that can be handled. It is not the end of the world and we have a “cure” that is worse than the disease in most aspects right now.
Risks must be evaluated with as much real world information as possible. The numbers in Florida indicate that the state is not a hot spot, and reasonable measures can keep it that way. Reasonable does not include lock down..
Check back in a few weeks. Your governor decided to relax the measures that were put into place to protect citizens thus allowing the virus to spread more easily- again. Better yet- go up to New York and see how bad it can get. But you are some kind of anonymous epidemiologist named “redneck” – so you know better than the rest of us, don’t you?
16 May is 4 weeks. Let’s see.
Ah “Chicken Little”. When you start to use fancy technical terms like that you lose me.
What ‘numbers’ are you using here? As far as I know, nobody knows the extent of infection. Nobody. All we can count are the number of sick folks.
It’s insane.
Numbers for Florida and also numbers compared to the models that were used to make the decisions. The economic damage is certainly insane.
Actually, given pre-existing conditions and complications resulting from COVID-19, we don’t even have an unambiguous body count. With testing, I think it’s possible to work out how effective various precautions are (cloth face coverings versus medical-quality masks, is 6 feet or 2 meters the right distance for social distancing, is two weeks the correct duration for isolation, etc.) Knowing that would make it safer to reopen businesses or have people return to working in person. But I’m not sure if we’re even there yet, and the fact that acquired immunity may not last long makes things even more uncertain.
While I understand there is a fear about COVID-19, I took the time to look at the Florida Department of Health COVID-19 dashboard (https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/96dd742462124fa0b38ddedb9b25e429). If you have seen the John Hopkins University COVID-19 dashboard, this one will look familiar. In fact, the Florida dashboard has some rather interesting data and it breaks some of it down to the zip code level.
In the lower left corner it shows the number of daily new cases, and this starts on 3/19 and runs through 4/17. You can definitely see the rise in cases at the start of the reporting period, but that rise does not seem to be continuing. At the least it appears to have flattened, and may be ready to slope downward. A few more days will show if that is indeed the trend. The main takeaway here is that it is no longer rising as it did during late March/early April.
Another positive takeaway is to click on the tab marked “Deaths by Day” under the graph. This will display the number of deaths per day and this too is showing a downward trend since April 6.
On the right side of the screen is a list of counties. If you click on Orange County, you will see information specific to that county. At the bottom of the screen is a daily new case count for the county. This shows a downward trend from April 1st.
Another good site is the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) site. This is the group that has been working on the projections used by CDC and the states. The projections for Florida can be found at https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/florida. At the top of the page it indicates that the peak for deaths was projected to be 16 days ago (April 2), which is close to the actual peak date based on current data (April 6).
If you scroll down a bit it shows projected peak hospital resource usage. There are several positive takeaways here. First, projected peak was 4 days ago (more data will be needed to see how close this is to being correct). However, more importantly look at what the projected resource needs were for April 14. There are 1,695 ICU beds allocated just for COVID-19 patients. Of those, only 405 were projected to be needed. The news is even better for all beds. There are 20,184 beds available (including ICU beds) and it was projected that only 1,535 beds would be needed. This is good news for hospitals. It indicates they have the beds and resources needed to properly treat the COVID-19 patients without resorting to Crisis Standards of Care protocols.
As you can see there is a lot of good news here. There is even more information available on all of these sites, as well as the JHU COVID-19 dashboard (https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6)
Can this change? It sure can. If folks do stuff like gather together in large crowds, stop washing their hands, etc, it can get worse, much worse (and it did exactly that during the 1918 Spanish Flu in Baltimore and several other large cities). But by taking appropriate precautions we can begin to return to some of the activities we used to do. Ultimately a vaccine is needed to bring us completely back to normal. At best that is still probably a year away. There are very few of us who can wait around inside our houses another year until a vaccine becomes available.
I would encourage you to take a look at what your local officials are saying. Look at the data for your area, and make an educated decision about what you are willing to do, and what you decide can wait till later.
Also, for a point of reference I am a retired Paramedic and I used to work in the emergency management section of a major public health department. Since retiring I continue to teach emergency management and healthcare response to public health agencies.
Sorry for being so long, but I hope this is of some help.
Thanks for doing the deep dive research. The issue at hand here is that people are not being given the full story by their employer. Once the situation and risks are set forth then people should be allowed to make a decision. But even if the peak has passed that does not mean that the risk has disappeared. indeed, lifting restrictions too soon simply primes the pump for a resurgence of human to human transmissibility. I am a biologist and used to run epidemiology reviews for several government agencies so this is ringing some bells for me.
This is how skilled the Governor of Florida is with regard to the whole pandemic thing. That’s where KSC is. Florida. Just sayin’.
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