◼ COVID-19 / US Bloomberg Businessweek March 16, 202045PU XIAOXU/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS
meltdown of March 2011 drew new attention to the
needs of single dads in the country and prompted
broader social emphasis on active fathering. It
“changed men’s sense of value in housework partic-
ipation,” says Tetsuya Ando, head of advocacy orga-
nization Fathering Japan. “The coronavirus will have
a similar social impact.”
If so, whether the changes persist is another
question. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis,
necessity pushed more women into the workforce,
conferring more child-care responsibilities on newlyunemployed men, but as the economy improved,
most households reverted to the pre-crisis division
of labor, says the ILO’s Addati. The coronavirus cri-
sis is an opportunity to challenge entrenched social
dynamics in a way that benefits both women and
men. “We have to think of ourselves as all being care
providers and all being care recipients,” she says.
“It should be our responsibility to make sure every-
one can take care of himself, his loved ones, and
make sure the workplace is safe for everybody.”
�Janet Paskin, with Bei Hu and Grace Huang○ You want to do what you can to protect yourself
and others from the spread of the new coronavirus.
You’re already washing your hands raw, bumping
elbows instead of shaking hands, pressing elevator
buttons with your knuckles, and valiantly fighting
the urge to touch your face. What else can you do
to fight Covid-19? Well, you could just work from
home today instead of going to the office.
I know, I know: Most people can’t do that. Only
29% of U.S. workers in a 2017-18 U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics survey said they had the option to
do their jobs from home. Those who can tend to
have much higher incomes and education levels
than those who can’t. Doing your job via an inter-
net connection is simply not a possibility for most
people working in retail, food service, manufactur-
ing, health care, and lots of other sectors.
But this isBloomberg Businessweek, and, accord-
ing to the BLS, 60% of people in management, busi-
ness, and financial occupations can work from
home. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance
you can WFH at least some of the time. There’s
also a good chance your employer will be order-
ing or strongly encouraging you to stay away from
the office in the near future, as several prominent
tech companies already have. But you don’t have
to wait.
Think of it as your own little contribution to
lowering R0, the reproduction number, generally
pronounced “r-naught.” R0is the average num-
ber of people an infected person is likely to infect,
thus determining whether an epidemic spreads(R0> 1) or peters out (R0< 1). It varies by disease,
with measles at a spectacularly contagious 15 or
so, and the average for the seasonal flu usually
around 1.3. Current estimates of Covid-19’s R0are
in the 2s.
Changing behavior can change the effective R0,
though. One way to think of R0is that it’s the prob-
ability of infection given contact with an infectious
person, multiplied by the contact rate, multi-
plied by the infectious duration. Hand-washing,
elbow-bumping, and the like bring R0down by low-
ering the probability of infection given contact with
an infectious person. Working from home does it
by reducing the number of contacts.● Is it more effective than
closing schools?By not going to the office, and by staying off public
transportation if that’s how you usually get there,
you’re not just protecting yourself from the virus,
you’re also protecting everyone who still has to go
into work or take the train or bus. Such behavior
is often labeled social distancing. It may feel a bit
anti-social, but during an epidemic it’s actually
quite pro-social.
In China, making everybody stay home seems
to have brought the coronavirus’s R0 below the
disease-spreading threshold, at least temporarily.
More limited shutdowns such as school closings
have also been shown to play a role in curbing or
at least slowing past influenza epidemics.Why should more of
us work from home?