Life in Lockdown — 17th March. I guess it’s not very novel to keep a…
By: Kev Jackson
Tags: Diary, Co Vid 19, Pandemic, UK

I guess it’s not very novel to keep a journal about what it’s like to live through this Coronavirus pandemic. Still I thought it would be an interesting exercise to jot down some thoughts as I won’t recall everything that happens this year.

So there’s been a fair bit of criticism of the response to this outbreak here in the UK, with some commentators describing the official government responses as ‘satire’. As usual there are some people that cannot separate politics from the real issue at hand.

I sincerely hope the UK scientists have got their hands on policy and no decisions are made based on knee-jerk reactions or responses that have the “appearance” of being effective instead of actually being effective.

Current situation

We’ve been asked to:

work from home where people can

not leave the house unless absolutely necessary

reduce all travel to just to/from work, shopping, health reasons

stop non-essential contact with others

if you show any symptoms, then isolate your entire house from the community as much as possible

Interestingly we have been asked to but today there has been no enforcement — no police or army on the streets preventing people from moving about. Just the government asking us (fairly forcefully) to stay away from pubs, bars, restaurants, theatres etc. This is similar to, but different from other places in Europe, and still described as ‘draconian measures’ by the PM.

The one measure that is at odds with the rest of the social distancing responses: schools and universities remain open. This leads to all sorts of questions, such as “Why should I stay away from the pub when my kid could catch Covid-19 from school and bring it back?”

It’s not unreasonable to suggest that by not closing the schools the government here is allowing a fairly obvious route for the virus to continue spreading. The explanation (at least as I understand it):

children seem to be not at risk of developing serious symptoms

to be not at risk of developing serious symptoms closing schools leads to parents having to stay at home to care for younger children (invariably some of these parents will be front-line health workers needed in hospitals right now — closing schools would lead to reduced capacity at the places you need it most)

parents who cannot work from home will be forced to leave children with grandparents (the most at-risk group) which is counter-productive to the strategy for keeping the at-risk people sheltered

closing schools always has a higher impact on the children from least well-off families — some children only get a real balanced meal at school so this would have a terrible impact on their health and nutrition

Now while the explanation seems pretty well thought-out, it doesn’t stop me (as a parent) from thinking I should just keep my child at home.

At work

I am in an extremely privileged position, where I could already work from home with the agreement of my line management. A facility I would take advantage of from time to time when I wanted some peace and quiet while working on some code I needed to finish for example.

Now, along with a large number of colleagues, I’m looking at months of working from home as the new normal, rather than just the odd occasion.

Tools of the trade

As someone who’s worked remotely for long periods of time, I know how to arrange my home to facilitate working and to maintain the correct mindset — instead of just slacking off.

Obviously email and chat tools are important for collaborating with peers when not in the office. These have evolved form IRC-like text to full-video conferencing tools. So pick your poison, Slack or Teams seem to be the market leaders. If you’re already invested in the MS Office tech stack, then Teams is a no-brainer — it’s also free so you can trial it with no commitment to the rest of Microsoft products.

If you or your team are invested in Google’s Suite of office tools, then of course there is Google Hangouts which serves the same purpose.

Beyond these basic things each domain or role will require different tools and different levels of access. Traditionally companies have used VPN technologies to allow users outside of the office access to office networks and associated services. There is a growing realisation that VPNs while “working” for the basic use cases have some major downsides — typically with respect to how the integration of a VPN with a secure network creates a model of security where users within the network (either directly connected or via VPN) are implicitly trusted.

The alternative to this model is the Zero Trust security model where no individual or network service is trusted, no matter what IP address it is connected as. Google has adopted the Zero Trust model with BeyondCorp.

Physical space

Working from home obviously has different social interaction aspects, however you can create a “work-like environment” physically to allow you to be as productive as possible.

Defining a working area at home is essential for being able to segment your time and define “work” vs “home” life.

Depending on where you live, getting a new desk or office setup may be ideal — but even working on the kitchen table can be effective, so long as you get up and move around every so often as dining furniture tends to be less ergonomic.

“Codus Interruptus”

Every programmer knows that the most annoying thing (apart from crappy APIs where the documentation doesn’t line up with observed behaviour) is being interrupted while in the middle of trying to wrangle some particularly troublesome code.

At home with other family members about, the chances of being interrupted increase compared to being in an office full of like-minded nerds with their noise-cancelling headphones.

Working from home means that you really need to be able to adapt to extract as much concentration-time as possible from the chunks of peace and quiet you actually get.

My own situation — as of now — is that the house is quiet, school remains open so my child is away and my wife is at work.

Next steps

So what happens next? Today I’ve seen the start of panic buying affecting the local grocery shop, with shelves barren of tinned food, toilet rolls and soap.

I suspect the government will once again ratchet up the social distancing rhetoric this evening. There’s supposed to be some form of economic briefing where the Chancellor pledges more help for struggling businesses. I would guess that schools will be closed sometime this week, despite the scientists saying it’s not as impactful as it appears to be in halting or slowing the spread of the virus. 🦠