Should I travel to Berlin this weekend?
October 9, 2020 2:51 PM Subscribe
I am due to fly from Milano to Berlin on Sunday afternoon for work. I am struggling to understand if this is a good idea or not based on the numbers but I really don't know if it is a good idea or not.
I would be there Sunday 11 October -- Friday 16 October afternoon, working from an office with 4 people, and staying in a hotel ten minutes walk from the office in Neukolln. The area the highest seven-day incidence value, currently at 114.3 per 100,000 residents. The whole thing feels risky but I am not sure if I'm over thinking it. I've been WFH since March and this is the first time I would have seen my colleagues/payments for the hotel have been made, so I feel somewhat guilty if I don't do this trip. Your advice is appreciated.
I would be there Sunday 11 October -- Friday 16 October afternoon, working from an office with 4 people, and staying in a hotel ten minutes walk from the office in Neukolln. The area the highest seven-day incidence value, currently at 114.3 per 100,000 residents. The whole thing feels risky but I am not sure if I'm over thinking it. I've been WFH since March and this is the first time I would have seen my colleagues/payments for the hotel have been made, so I feel somewhat guilty if I don't do this trip. Your advice is appreciated.
Another perspective is that if it's not essential (dying parent, etc), then why run the risk, either of being sick or becoming a inadvertent superspreader? Masks and social distancing do not by themselves afford 100% protection. You also need strict border control and contact tracing.
It's within the realm of possibility that you pick up the virus on the flight, experience few or no symptoms, and then spread it to your co-workers and the other passengers on the flight home.
One person taking a business trip does not a pandemic make, but if everybody thinks that way... hello, second wave.
posted by dum spiro spero at 4:29 PM on October 9, 2020 [3 favorites]
It's within the realm of possibility that you pick up the virus on the flight, experience few or no symptoms, and then spread it to your co-workers and the other passengers on the flight home.
One person taking a business trip does not a pandemic make, but if everybody thinks that way... hello, second wave.
posted by dum spiro spero at 4:29 PM on October 9, 2020 [3 favorites]
Don't do it. It's not worth it.
Ottawa, Canada currently has around 80 per 100,000 active cases and 12 per 100,000 new cases per day [since I'm not sure what incidence value means] and Public Health has just told people to avoid gathering with anyone other than their immediate household for Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend (this is a big deal). And the Ontario government has shut down restaurants, bars, cinemas, gyms, etc effective midnight tonight.
posted by heatherlogan at 6:05 PM on October 9, 2020 [5 favorites]
Ottawa, Canada currently has around 80 per 100,000 active cases and 12 per 100,000 new cases per day [since I'm not sure what incidence value means] and Public Health has just told people to avoid gathering with anyone other than their immediate household for Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend (this is a big deal). And the Ontario government has shut down restaurants, bars, cinemas, gyms, etc effective midnight tonight.
posted by heatherlogan at 6:05 PM on October 9, 2020 [5 favorites]
Indoors is not okay, even with masks.
posted by aniola at 6:43 PM on October 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by aniola at 6:43 PM on October 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
Well, look: people should stay home and not move around right now. That's a piece of information that is obvious but economic factors are preventing proper support for that behavior. It's a damn shame your employer can't manage to rise above the average in even (awful, barrel-bottom) American standards and restrict all travel until further notice, so it may be possible that you don't have a ton of say in this without repercussions. But if you think you can push back, please do, just for everyone else who might be on the bubble.
posted by Lyn Never at 7:16 PM on October 9, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by Lyn Never at 7:16 PM on October 9, 2020 [6 favorites]
European perspective, because these things are not global: we are currently in the second wave. Unnecessary travel is to be avoided. I would not go.
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:04 AM on October 10, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:04 AM on October 10, 2020 [3 favorites]
I don't know what your relationship is to these colleagues, but I wouldn't go, if only because I wouldn't want my colleagues to outwardly be nice/welcoming/conversational with me after such a long absence but, inside, actually feel quite upset that I'd risk exposing them. I also don't think they'd tell you the truth about their true feelings, necessarily.
The issue isn't Berlin - they live there - or even the medical risk, but their (perhaps unfair!) perception that you are exposing them to *something* unknowable, something outside the control of the precautions they ordinarily take. Is that a risk your career in this workplace can absorb?
Is there a feasible way to work remotely on whatever you're doing up there, even if it's a hassle? It's hard to know what physical presence you require, but between the postal system, the internet, faxes, phones and messaging, can you truly not find a way to deliver this work you'll do up there from Milan?
posted by mdonley at 6:14 AM on October 10, 2020
The issue isn't Berlin - they live there - or even the medical risk, but their (perhaps unfair!) perception that you are exposing them to *something* unknowable, something outside the control of the precautions they ordinarily take. Is that a risk your career in this workplace can absorb?
Is there a feasible way to work remotely on whatever you're doing up there, even if it's a hassle? It's hard to know what physical presence you require, but between the postal system, the internet, faxes, phones and messaging, can you truly not find a way to deliver this work you'll do up there from Milan?
posted by mdonley at 6:14 AM on October 10, 2020
Berlin is a 'hot-spot' - and Neukoelln especially, for the virus. For that reason alone I would avoid coming here. There's a weird denial thing I've experienced and noticed in others in that I feel fine, everyone I know feels fine, so how bad could it be? Yet we just gave up a planned stay outside the city because we would be coming from Berlin and if we couldn't provide tests proving we were healthy (at 150 euro a pop and no appointments before next Friday, we could not). We thought about going anyway but then heard about cars with Berlin license plates being vandalized for this exact reason - depraved, virus spreading city-dwellers infecting the country-side. And our Air BnB host would get fined when their angry neighbor turned them in.
And for you, worse case scenario (after getting sick), is that due to quarantine measures you get stuck here. In a hotel.
That is all to say - so much of the experience of this virus is abstract, until it most emphatically is not. The goal is to try and avoid that moment, getting infected, and if the smart money is to avoid going where the virus is spreading most aggressively, then common sense suggests you do that.
posted by From Bklyn at 9:05 AM on October 12, 2020
And for you, worse case scenario (after getting sick), is that due to quarantine measures you get stuck here. In a hotel.
That is all to say - so much of the experience of this virus is abstract, until it most emphatically is not. The goal is to try and avoid that moment, getting infected, and if the smart money is to avoid going where the virus is spreading most aggressively, then common sense suggests you do that.
posted by From Bklyn at 9:05 AM on October 12, 2020
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