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Two weeks into the reopening of the university, and thus my workplace, the library!
We reopened on August 19, I have no idea what the rational is on starting on a Wednesday rather than a Monday, but that's the way it is. With few face-to-face exceptions, all classes are online or remote learning. Kinda hard to teach chemistry labs remotely. We have an absolute mask requirement for students, faculty, and staff when on-campus, and it seems to be going well, especially with fewer students wandering around.
For the previous two weeks, we were averaging a gate count of 40-45, which isn't bad. We have air conditioning and WiFi, and Alamogordo is still seeing temperatures of 90+, though it looks like it's cooling down a little this week. I only had to chide one young woman without a mask last week, she had one with her and apparently removed it when she sat down. She immediately and without complaint put it back on. I told her about me missing half my immune system, maybe this will give her a reason to remember.
My library has four private study rooms, and they're doing booming business! I put up signs with a warning that social distancing is not possible in these rooms, so we've done what we can. Elsewhere in the library, we've removed chairs and deactivated computers to enforce social distancing. It's a little sparse compared to the first 2.5 months of the year before the shutdown.
We're allowed to remove our mask when we're in our office, and while my office is a cubie without walls to the ceiling or an actual door, I sometimes take mine down. We have pretty strong air conditioning, so that circulation should sweep out any nasties in the air.
We also have a bonus of a very low case count in Alamogordo: Otero County has had a TOTAL of 218 cases and TWELVE deaths (excluding prison facilities: you do not want to know about them!). We apparently peaked in June/July, but that's no reason for complacency! There is still a state-wide mask requirement and my family unit is still strident about mask use and more, depending on the situation.
I don't know how long we'll stay open until main campus has major outbreaks among students or staff. My (proverbial) money was on not making it until October, so we'll see. I'm doing very brisk business with interlibrary loan, I currently have more books out on loan than I was averaging pre-pandemic, which is very good! And as a final bit of good news, with three of us being permanent employees, the library director decided that we'd work from home one week in three, so this is my first week of staying up later than is reasonable and not waking up to an alarm! Tomorrow I'm going to Las Cruces to take care of some shopping, but most importantly to get my firk ding blast glasses adjusted: the prism is off. We were watching the Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and I was seeing two lines of subtitles. *sigh*. It'll make reading computer screens a lot easier.
And now the bad news.
It looks quite likely, though not yet confirmed, that Russet's observatory has a case in the day staff.
The symptoms look very likely that someone is infected. This person is one of the engineers who works in one of the outlying buildings and doesn't normally go into the main building where Russet and most of the astronomers work. With luck, testing results will come in today, and we'll know. But there's always the risk of a false negative, which is so vexing! There's no way of knowing what kind of test they did, so we'll have to wait and see. If positive, site shutdown for two weeks to see if anyone else is sick and contact tracing to see who else that works there needs testing.
And that's where trickiness ensues. The second big telescope, the 2.5 meter Sloan Digital Sky Survey, is in shutdown for its major maintenance window. And that's what the guy was working on. And he was in contact with some of the 2.5 astronomers. So in that indirect pathing, some of the people in the main building could have been exposed.
Everyone in the main building is supposed to scan a QR code with their smart phone when they enter a room. So naturally one member of Russet's team on the 3.5 meter did not have a smart phone, or a smart enough smart phone, that could scan QR codes. So he was supposed to maintain a paper log, which you can guess probably wasn't adequately maintained. And on his last work shift, which would overlap with the period when this guy was likely infected but not yet symptomatic, he forgot to scan codes. Which means that if they have to map everybody in the main building, there are going to be serious breaks. Which is a surprise to nobody, contact tracing is a difficult process.
So we're a bit on tenterhooks, waiting to find out the likely diagnosis of this guy.
For the previous two weeks, we were averaging a gate count of 40-45, which isn't bad. We have air conditioning and WiFi, and Alamogordo is still seeing temperatures of 90+, though it looks like it's cooling down a little this week. I only had to chide one young woman without a mask last week, she had one with her and apparently removed it when she sat down. She immediately and without complaint put it back on. I told her about me missing half my immune system, maybe this will give her a reason to remember.
My library has four private study rooms, and they're doing booming business! I put up signs with a warning that social distancing is not possible in these rooms, so we've done what we can. Elsewhere in the library, we've removed chairs and deactivated computers to enforce social distancing. It's a little sparse compared to the first 2.5 months of the year before the shutdown.
We're allowed to remove our mask when we're in our office, and while my office is a cubie without walls to the ceiling or an actual door, I sometimes take mine down. We have pretty strong air conditioning, so that circulation should sweep out any nasties in the air.
We also have a bonus of a very low case count in Alamogordo: Otero County has had a TOTAL of 218 cases and TWELVE deaths (excluding prison facilities: you do not want to know about them!). We apparently peaked in June/July, but that's no reason for complacency! There is still a state-wide mask requirement and my family unit is still strident about mask use and more, depending on the situation.
I don't know how long we'll stay open until main campus has major outbreaks among students or staff. My (proverbial) money was on not making it until October, so we'll see. I'm doing very brisk business with interlibrary loan, I currently have more books out on loan than I was averaging pre-pandemic, which is very good! And as a final bit of good news, with three of us being permanent employees, the library director decided that we'd work from home one week in three, so this is my first week of staying up later than is reasonable and not waking up to an alarm! Tomorrow I'm going to Las Cruces to take care of some shopping, but most importantly to get my firk ding blast glasses adjusted: the prism is off. We were watching the Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and I was seeing two lines of subtitles. *sigh*. It'll make reading computer screens a lot easier.
And now the bad news.
It looks quite likely, though not yet confirmed, that Russet's observatory has a case in the day staff.
The symptoms look very likely that someone is infected. This person is one of the engineers who works in one of the outlying buildings and doesn't normally go into the main building where Russet and most of the astronomers work. With luck, testing results will come in today, and we'll know. But there's always the risk of a false negative, which is so vexing! There's no way of knowing what kind of test they did, so we'll have to wait and see. If positive, site shutdown for two weeks to see if anyone else is sick and contact tracing to see who else that works there needs testing.
And that's where trickiness ensues. The second big telescope, the 2.5 meter Sloan Digital Sky Survey, is in shutdown for its major maintenance window. And that's what the guy was working on. And he was in contact with some of the 2.5 astronomers. So in that indirect pathing, some of the people in the main building could have been exposed.
Everyone in the main building is supposed to scan a QR code with their smart phone when they enter a room. So naturally one member of Russet's team on the 3.5 meter did not have a smart phone, or a smart enough smart phone, that could scan QR codes. So he was supposed to maintain a paper log, which you can guess probably wasn't adequately maintained. And on his last work shift, which would overlap with the period when this guy was likely infected but not yet symptomatic, he forgot to scan codes. Which means that if they have to map everybody in the main building, there are going to be serious breaks. Which is a surprise to nobody, contact tracing is a difficult process.
So we're a bit on tenterhooks, waiting to find out the likely diagnosis of this guy.