Paul Steidler is right in his piece at Inside Sources. COVID-19-induced power failure is a “double disaster” we really need to avoid:
The electric grid is essential for all aspects of modern life — including hospital care, food preservation, computer operations (i.e., many people’s ability to work), and at-home medical devices for the sick, elderly and disabled.
When countries attack one another, there is an excellent reason the grid is typically a top target. By knocking out electric power, an adversary is thrown into disarray.
To make sure our grid stays up, we need to make sure the people managing the grid stay healthy. Indeed, this must be a priority.
The highly-skilled, hard-to-replace and experienced professionals in the energy profession seldom can work from home. In fact, there is no record of a power line ever having been replaced remotely.
There are also significant limits to “social distancing†in power production. Line workers often must be near one another.
The engineers and other professionals in the control rooms of power plants and transmission facilities must be able to communicate immediately, directly and close to one another.
Think things are tough now? Imagine being trapped in your house with your kids for a week without electricity.
We have prioritized testing for workers in the power industry. Another case where having the 15 minute test would help a lot.
Steve
An attack on the power grid would be an existential threat to the country, which IMO Kung Flu is definitely not. I think any attention to social distancing or other pandemic control measures would go by the wayside in the response to the attack.
Under a weather-related or non-hostile downing of the power grid, again there will be less attention paid to the pandemic mediation restrictions, depending on the kind of catastrophe involved. If extreme weather, crowding might become necessary and any risk of additional COVID-19 deaths might be treated as collateral damage for the good of all. We should be very thankful that we’re in early spring instead of deep winter or the middle of summer.
Steve: Surfing the web and found this interesting article on a device that uses forced-draft vaporized hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate masks and other biohaz clothing. If does what it’s touted to do hope you’ll see one soon:
https://radio.wosu.org/post/coronavirus-ohio-battelle-pioneers-technology-clean-and-reuse-ppe#stream/0
Thanks. Will pass it on. We have already purchased a UV unit and are starting with that this week. Nice paper out of Univ of Nebraska where they had excellent results. While the results are looking good for sterilization what is not so clear is how much degradation it causes. Based upon their data we think we can UV them 5 times.
Steve
re: ” Imagine being trapped in your house with your kids for a week without electricity.”
Better than being trapped in my house with the breeders’ kids whose babysitting/mis-education I’ve been so highly taxed to support.
I don’t have to imagine being trapped in a house with a child for a week with no power. The last hurricane to come through here (Irma, I believe) did just that.