It has been a week since my last post and much has happened. In Germany as well as worldwide. The pandemic continues and countries are beginning to undertake strict and painful countermeasures in order to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. Germany started to take the outbreak more seriously and since yesterday, Bavaria is urging everyone to follow the strict rules of isolation going out only on most urgent needs. Today Berlin prohibited gathering of more than 2 people, families and households excluded, but the real numbers are only starting to flow in. In Slovenia prototype respirators have been made in cooperation of engineers, biologists, medical doctors and many companies in order to jump start local production due to 2-4 month delivery times on the global markets. Myself, I have used my contacts and resources to start purchasing face masks from the Chinese Factories and deliver to Austria and Slovenia since the shortage is extreme and everyone needs reliable supply routes. Buyers are – states, retirement homes, pharma companies, distributors, pharmacies, industrial and other companies that want to better protect their employees. European Union is ramping up production capacity as well, but it is difficult to do in such a short time.

My workdays have been 12-16 hours workdays mostly from the office (we have the whole office building floor to ourself) with my colleague, the rest of our employees are in home office or on sick leave. We try to keep up with work and productivity, although it is proving difficult, as home office and also taking care of children, family members is proving to be difficult. We are also monitoring the measures Germany is going to be providing for companies. At the moment it does not seem that we will need them as our Software and services are in demand, but it never hurts to be informed and ready. All my employment plans are put on hold, even though we have some good candidates we would like to employ. I guess we are not the only company right now that has put a stop to it.

A very good article on the Corona outbreak, mostly confirming my thoughts was brought to my attention. I do recommend you to take the time and read it, there is more and more confirmation that the world will never be the same after this as well as nobody really knowing how long the pandemic will last and how it will impact our lives. And the unknown is where fear lives. Recently I have a tab open constantly on the coronavirus reported cases globally with statistics, even though not because of the sheer numbers but because I want to have a feeling if panic might start.

The Legal services division (currently for employers and employees) is performing well, we have good visibility in Slovenia. The cases we get are horrible. Employees are being let off overnight, forced or bullied to sign resignations (which means they are not eligible to get unemployment benefits) – mostly because the employers have no idea what to do, they only know the companies stopped so they have to cut costs. Hopefully we will be able to help as many companies and people in need as of course countries are setting up countermeasures to prevent the economic collapse. Many keep working, there is no provision of personal protective equipment because of the shortages on the market. The worst thing is we often get questions what to do if they have someone who might be at risk at home (i.e. with asthma, cancer or breathing disorders) and worry they will get infected at work and bring it home. If they explain their concerns, they are often threatened by employers they will lose their jobs. Mostly people with minimum wage income, even though we are now getting cases in from other service industries as well. We are launching same products and services in Germany now, where the same is occurring, but people have more money and it is more conventional to seek legal advice before taking action. Also Germany is moving much faster in accepting legislation and countermeasures to protect its economy, even though everyone knows the fallout from this will be enormous. 150 Billion EUR have been planned to help mitigate the economic damages. Right now, not much is new, but I do see light at the end of the tunnel, the measures will work and next week I am fairly certain Slovenia will have it under control, in about 3 Weeks Germany should as well.

Recently I thought a lot about things we don’t hear about anymore – what is happening with millions of refugees at the European borders, how are poorer countries coping and do they even know how widely spread the outbreaks there are?

What will change after the crisis? I think we are all getting a lesson that global supply lines are not the best and it will make sense to look towards self-sustainable supply at least for EU and shorten the supply routes. We have become too dependent on other continents which is showing to be a huge weakness right now. How will the economies change after this has been done, will we impact the developing countries in a bad way by doing that? Most probably yes.

What is happening with the elderly, how are people coping with isolation? Will the internet infrastructure here be able to manage all the data flows (mostly from streaming in homes) – I think not, since Germany has infrastructure from beginning of 2000s, fibre optic is not really spread out here and about 5G we can only dream. How will that impact people being at home? From my friends and family in Slovenia I get a lot of information on how tough it is to be isolated and it has only been 1 week… several more to go. How will Germany’s over 80 million handle that? Will we start running out of supplies due to supply lines disruptions, will we start seeing shortages of certain products? Who is taking care of the homeless now? Very few people are walking the streets, even less of them will give a coin to a beggar. And so on… so many things that are changing and so many wrongs as well. But I think this pandemic will show us where we can improve as a global society, also how we can work together. The effort to manage the COVID-19 pandemic is a global one and researchers and countries are working together on fighting it, so a lot of good will happen as well.

This weekend Germany had a hackathon organised by the government to build solutions to help in these times. Over 43.000 people attended and build several tools that are critical in these times, that is amazing. Many people who usually wouldn’t lift a finger for less than 2.000€ per day participated for free, that is extremely positive. Estonia had an international hackathon to combat Corona as well about a week ago it was also a big success, people from over 20 countries participated. The times we live in are amazing in how we can collaborate and work together, also achieve higher goals and I can only hope that our future is not one of wearing a mask and gloves when we go about our daily business – be it because of infections or pollution. I am also very much looking to seeing the results of the world stopping for a bit on the environment. If anything the COVID-19 pandemic is showing us that the whole planet CAN and WILL take action if the motivation is powerful enough. The only issue is that global warming is slow, COVID-19 is extremely fast, that’s why its on our radar. Hopefully we learn and remember, I am looking positively towards the future and hoping that we all learn as a global society and improve. Thank you for your attention and all your feedbacks and discussions are much appreciated.