Yeah, you just cannot administer your own test. To fly to Australia I needed a pcr test done from an approved facility within 72 hours of my flight. To return to the US I needed a pcr test from a histopath clinic within 24 hours of my flight. Fortunately there is one at the airport. If you test positive (according to United) you cannot fly back to the US for 11 days even if you eventually test negative unless you get a note from a Dr. that you're cleared to fly. That is why I took my own test and when I tested positive extended my trip 7 days, which by that time I tested negative with another home test in time to go to get tested at the histopath clinic for my flight back the US. Anyone from the US planning a trip overseas should budget your trip for an extra 7 to 11 days just in case you happen to get sick on your trip.

Your airline will require proof when you check in, so it’ll have to be from a testing provider that sends results by email or printed copy. It’s a money making scheme.

Fine for Americans, but on a small island like Britain it’s a real pain in the ass. We get on a plane every time we go somewhere for a weekend.

Has this changed? When I went to London in December I absolutely administered my own test, which I got from the concierge at our hotel. My husband and I went to a lobby bathroom and did the test. We talked at the time that it was such a scam as we could easily cheat. We are going back Memorial Day weekend. Not as worried about getting stuck as I was at Christmas.

This has been a primary concern for me about leaving the country during the pandemic. I'm planning to go overseas this summer so hopefully they lift this stupid rule by then. If they don't and I get stuck paying for an extended trip you'll all hear about me suing the Federal government. :)

High Alert incoming!

Indoor masks urged is the word on the street.


https://aws1.discourse-cdn.com/busin...92d4d247f.jpeg
Credit: ABC7NY

^ :rolleyes:

The mixed messages are just laughable. The mayor is pushing for return to office, and the same week his health department is “urging” masks indoors. News flash guys, these are fundamentally incompatible recommendations.

Cue Pedestrian to say the 20-somethings should be forced back o their offices where they will sit masked for 10+ hours per day, but normal people understand this is ridiculous.

^ The problem is that they keep counting Covid cases.

It is meaningless, just cut it out.

When you bring people together, viruses circulate. Intelligent & informed people get this.

How is it incompatible?

It stokes unnecessary fear.

If you are telling people that the level of danger from Covid is increasing and that they should wear masks, you can not simultaneously tell them to engage in the most unnecessary and undesirable indoor activity they can do. Nor can companies insist on employees coming back to the office when said employees can respond that the city is saying the Covid risk is high enough to require masks.

There’s a reason that offices are the last thing that should open when Covid is over. If you have a desk job, you can work from home better than you can replicate any other human activity from home, and all of those other things are ones that people actually want to do.

Back in 2020 there were some ideas otherwise, but I was pretty blunt telling the partners at my firm (80% or whom were in their 60s or 70s) that absolutely no one is coming back to the office when the government still says they can’t go to a restaurant, bar or gym. And I was right of course.

That's quite a leap from the public health agency sending out a recommendation to being incompatible with returning to the office. That's like saying a recommendation to wear a condom is incompatible with sex.

Plus, if we're to get back to normal, elevated cases are inevitable. We can't flip out and yearn for masks every time stats trend a certain way. This Eric Adams is just asking to be a one-termer.

C'mon lol. This is ridiculous. First, Eric Adams shouldn't dictate what recommendations the public health agencies advise. That's how we got into this mess in the first place. Second, it's an advisory, it's not a mandate. I'm sitting in an office right now with no mask and I'm surrounded by people not wearing masks.

Public health doesn't set policy or mandates, the city does and if he's expecting blow back, he should get in front of it and say masks are optional. Many people in 'blue' cities are wondering if/ when their leaders will drag this shit on. .

He doesn't need to say anything lol. The NYC public health agency issues advisories all the time about everything. Nobody is confusing this with a mandate.

Public health departments should set mandates and policy concerning public health issues, which COVID-19 is.

As for working from home, when you realize that people often waste as much time in the office as they would in their own home, there isn't a strong argument to get people into the office to "increase productivity". Now, if you work in hospitality, retail, healthcare, etc, in which being around people is a fundamental part of the job, yeah, you kinda can't do that at home.

^ don't forget isolated alone in your house all day isn't exactly healthy either. I and most of my coworkers are looking forward to RTO. My cats will miss me though.

Because it's political and has been five minutes after this all started. If masks went off as soon as mandates were lifted, that means people absolutely have had enough. Every time a health department makes an advisement, the public then looks to the government about what restrictions might be handed down. It's why everyone was in a rush to drop them well ahead of the midterms. Because politics.

^ This.

People don't understand this basic concept. Particularly one major political party

^ I hear that when airports in Chicago ended the indoor mask mandate, people on airplanes and in the airports applauded.

You bet people hate it. This kind of "mandating" is very unpopular.

^Unpopular for a specific amount of forumers that can be easily listed.
People from other states are furious at NYC, so I guess they won't be voting for Adams in a few years. Oh wait, they wouldn't be anyway :haha:.
Maskaphobes gonna phobe and I thought no politics in here?

… if sex was something that most people wanted no part of, but were being forced into by their employer, and then public health authorities said that it wasn’t safe without a condom.

Employees don’t want to go back to the office. They can point to this and refuse to do so, and their employers can’t do shit. That will 100% be the advice of their legal counsel to HR as well.

If employers want their employees in the office then they'll just tell them to be there. Plenty of employers have done so throughout the pandemic. A mask advisory has nothing to do with it.

Except that no, this isn’t the case. At least certainly not for white collar professionals in Manhattan. This is why all the banks pushed back their “back to office” dates 14 times.

Yeah, seriously lol. Also, the only mask mandates that NYC has been under for most of the pandemic have come from the state anyway. The only current mask mandates, mostly for public transit, are state mandates.

Hi, white collar worker in Manhattan speaking here. The only reason people are continuing to work from home is because their employers allow them to. No other reason. If the employer said everybody needs to return then they'd go back in tomorrow.

That's true, I should have clarified that. If I were to work at home, I would still be out and about. I have a friend who works in tech and he can work at home, in his car, in a coffee shop, at WeWork, etc. Better than just being in one place, which would sorta be required if he had to go in to work to be supervised.:haha:

But they won’t and can’t do that, and this new recommendation further weakens their hand in doing so.

Nor can they really compel anyone. They can threaten to fire them but then they would be sued, and quite possibly lose.

Yes, they can. No, they would not lose.

Employers no longer have all the cards. We are starting to lose people because our company is requiring employees to return to the office and there are so many options with WFH tech jobs needing talent. Apple and Google are also having a problem retaining employees because they are insisting their employees return to work. Many will but many will have their foot out the door looking for something else until the policy changes. Covid was a huge game changer about expectations. I am only giving the Bay Area a year before I return home as WFH with this company or somewhere else.

Yeah, that's why they aren't doing it. Apple just delayed their return plans because of "rising number of cases" lol. But it's really due to resistance from employees (and probably a lot of execs too).

Also, this is not to say that employers should mandate everyone go back to the office. I'm just saying that they could.

Don't forget to get your free Covid test kits via the Government:


https://www.covid.gov/tests

" Every home in the U.S. is eligible to order a 3rd round of free at-home tests. Order yours today. "


"" Thank you for placing your order on USPS.com®.

Reminder: This order includes 2 packages of 4 individual at-home tests (8 tests total). Packages will ship free, separately.

This email confirms one of the packages in your order. You’ll receive separate confirmation and tracking emails for each package. ""

There's rumors from today we might delay RTO as well. That's a recent development for both us and Apple. Yes they could and are mandating returning to work but employees have a lot more bargaining power as tech companies are vying to keep talent from being poached. All one has to is offer permanent WFH and the resumes will fly in.

Would that mean WFH is preferable to working at a place x miles away? I'll let urbanist arguments slide btw...
As a manual labor person I'm envious of WFH, but I don't hate.

For god’s sake. You’re missing my point.

Employees are refusing to go back to the office, and employers aren’t going to force them to. They’re only going to push so hard. Anything from the city or its health department that seems like a step back on Covid (and this guidance does) is going to be another argument that employees can use.

“Well you know, cases are rising. They’re saying we should wear masks inside again. I just don’t feel comfortable coming in, especially since I need to take the subway.”

No company is going to tell this person they have to come in anyway, at least not one with an HR person or even legal counsel.

The perverse mental illness continues well into 2022.

Now over 1 and 1/2 years after having a vaccine widely available that turns Covid into a bad cold….

:haha:

In Ontario they just stock grocery stores with them at the customer service counter for free. I grab a 5-pack of tests like every other week. We had a close contact a few weeks ago with someone who was positive and burned through 8-10 tests by testing daily for a few days to make sure we were clear.

It's good to have.

I got your point. I just don't agree with it. First, this shouldn't dictate what public health agencies advise. They should be advising based on science. Did they establish a metric to recommend mask wearing? Do we meet the metric? Then that's it. All of this talk about the mayor dictating public health recommendations is silly. That's not how this should work.

Secondly, if your employer wants you in the office they will just tell you to go. Plenty of workers are back in the office. The state of New York ordered its workers back to the office in June 2020. If you work in the city of New York, your employer can do it and they will do it if/when they want to. The only reason they haven't done so yet is because they don't want to.

Well yes technically they can, but realistically they aren't going to do that especially if they are in the private sector. For one, many managers like working from home and it's hella awkward to try making staff come in while you Zoom from home. Everyone is saving on expenses. Gas prices going up plus inflation has made coming into the office even less attractive. And if staff is happier with the way things are and productivity is up, why try to go back to the 20th century way of commuting into the office for the 9-5. I went through Koreatown the other day and the amount of for lease signs for office space was incredible. This same neighborhood used to be packed with office workers but now a ghost town during office hours.

The future of office space is conversion to residential, simple as.

I don't think its an either/or thing?

My employer (both my department and the larger agency as a whole) is mostly on a hybrid system: Come to the office if/when you need to, but telecommute otherwise. Hell, my department downsized and moved to a smaller building last year to account for the increase in WFH.

My employer had us come back to the office 3 days a week last August 2021. We then were able to work from home again from X-mas through the end of January 2022, but have been back to the 3 day in office hybrid since then.

When I was in Sydney and Melbourne their CBD's seemed pretty lively and a lot of people seemed dressed for work. I am not sure if most employers had their workers come back full time or it is just the CBD's are more mixed with a lot more residential. Regardless, their CBD's seem to be back in full swing.

Yeah, this is what the new normal will be. The 5 day/week presence in an office is dead for most white collar workers. Some employers will request your presence for a certain number of days, some won't.

But honestly, I haven't had to be in an office on a Friday on a regular basis in a decade. The pandemic is just accelerating a trend that was already in motion.

Depends on the company/org. Mine had offices in seven cities across the west and now only officially has our HQ office in the Bay, which is really only used by some from finance, a couple boomer managers that were based there and still like the office, and the receptionist who still handles orders/shipping. Once our Bay Area lease expires in a year or so, an office designed for 40-50 people but currently has 10 max that go in on any regular basis, we'll for sure downgrade to a much smaller office.

There's been a handful of people in the other cities who wanted office space, which we've found some coworking spaces for, but everyone else (90% of the org) is still working from home full time with no plans of going back/wanting to go back after a survey went out. Renting the coworking spaces is much cheaper and flexible.

On the flip side, what we're doing is having more mandatory in-person staff retreats (what I suggested). We use to have one a year, now we're having two, plus another one for the different departments (so 3-4 total per staff member).

Public health agencies shouldn’t be recommending mask usage regardless of case numbers because cases don’t matter. If people aren’t vaccinated and die of Covid, it’s their own damn fault. No health care system in the US is actually under real stress from it either.

Why would you want to test yourself for Covid?

Okay lol.

Visiting an elderly or immuno-comrpomised relative? I have an uncle who hasn't been able to get vaccinated and is on immune-suppressing medication. I've only seen him a couple times but tested myself like 5 times in the 48 hours before.

Plus we now have Paxlovid, which is an added layer of protection for higher risk people, and very easy to get.

I've already prescribed it for 4 people.

Our society is full of idiots, plain and simple. Many of them are not worthy of the standard of living that they enjoy, so scared are they of basically nothing at this point. Shameful

That, there, is a legit reason.

Sadly, for every 1 person like you, there are dozens of morons testing themselves who can't come up with any good reason other than "I just want to know"