2020-03-19 COVID-19 PM Update

For the last few days we’ve been preparing internal reports twice a day for staff. We’ve decided to release these publicly to help you plan.

Cases this PM are up to 11,800 from roughly 9,000 this AM and 6,500 at this time yesterday.

Cases in Tenessee are up to 154 from 98. Of those, 105 of them are in Davidson and Williamson counties around Nashville, and 26 are residents out of state but recorded in TN. This is out of 497 tests, which is not a lot for the entire state. We remain surprised that there are not more cases showing up in East Tennessee and continue to believe that it stems from low testing.

“Right now, the majority of cases are people between 21-50. ” [WBIR] This will most likely continue to affect public guidance. You can expect that Tenessee will progressively take measures to ensure that social distancing is followed across the age range.

You can find testing sites here, call your doctor before going to a testing site.

We still believe that new cases will continue to rise as testing ramps up. That said, there are some states where testing is getting worse and not better (see MN). So, take numbers for specific states with a grain of salt unless you know that testing it up to speed.

For JM Addington we believe that our biggest operational risk is that our team staff comes down with something other than COVID-19 and we are essentially forced to self-isolate for 14 days because of similar symptoms. We are in a work-from-home posture with employees rotating on-site work on a weekly basis to ensure that there is no reason for us to self-isolate, other than staying well. We highly recommend that you consider the increased risk that a simple cold presents to your business today in the context of COVID-19.

The SBA disaster loan for COVID-19 continues to be unavailable for Knox county and we assume the whole state.

We continue to be planning on a six to ten-week horizon for major impact. A lot of headlines are shouting some scary things today about global recessions, economic crisis and 18-month shutdowns. It is critical to be driven by data right now and not headlines. Will there be a global recession? Absolutely. Are we headed in the dark ages? There is no reason to believe that this is the next Great Depression.

JM Addington continues to be open for business and serving our customers. We are still going on-site and are available to help employees get setup with work from home as well.

Tim Burchett is holding a virtual town hall on Friday at 3:35 PM. You can join by calling (855) 710-6228 or visiting https://burchett.house.gov/live. If you are a small business owner that lives or does business in his district, you should hop on the call.

For small business leaders, Verne Harnish has some great practical advice on how to lead through a crisis.

Finally, we are offering a free Work From Home package for new customers that includes antivirus, backup, Microsoft Teams and computer monitoring. Free for 60 days. Support prices and setup also have reduced prices. We’ll onboard as many people as possible before we get swamped. wfh@jmaddington.com or 865-240-2716.

A note to our competition: we’d be glad to share how we are able to do this if you want to replicate it. Most of you have JM’s cell, otherwise, call our main line and he’ll get back to you.

That’s all the news that’s fit to type. Go forth and do good work.