Kickstart: Brought to you from the home office

I'm going to take a guess and say that many of you find yourselves working from home today. And for the next several days. And a week ago, you didn't imagine that would happen. At least not so fast.

We here at Plastics News are with you, taking extra precautions, practicing the new skills of "social distancing" and figuring out what "flattening the curve" is all about.

What does that mean for readers? If everything goes as planned, you won't even notice. About half the staff already had worked remotely and the rest of us have worked off-site occasionally.

Today's Material Insights won't be shot in the Detroit studio, but other than that, we'll continue our coverage just as we always have. Tuesday's Polymer Points Live will still take place with materials reporter Frank Esposito.

You can reach us all via email and while we may not be at our office phone lines, we'll still get your voicemails.

So hang tight, everyone. The news related to COVID-19 is moving fast. We'll continue to keep you in the loop. That includes tracking changes to events. We have an interactive list of changes and cancellations here.

And please reach out if you know of something we're missing or you have information to share. You can reach me at [email protected] and Editor Don Loepp at [email protected].

Things are a little more complicated at factories.

Even in the regions that have locked down and limited residents from leaving their homes have made exceptions for work. But as our sister publication Automotive News has been covering, some companies are getting pushback.

Union leaders at Ford Motor Co.'s Louisville, Ky., plant are pushing the company to halt production for two weeks as a precaution. (Ford's plant in Valencia, Spain, had three workers test positive.)

A Fiat Chrysler Automobile transmission plant in Kokomo, Ind., had a worker test positive, but has continued production.

Volkswagen AG has called off work for a day to allow its workers time to arrange childcare during a two-week school shutdown.

Are you working in a plant? Feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] to share stratgies on how to maintain business when everything is in flux.

PN's economics editor Bill Wood is putting his forecasting skills into overdrive and taking his best shot at predicting how the U.S. economy will do with this COVID-19 hit.

Overall? Speaking solely on the nonmedical impact, Wood sees reason to remain calm.

"I believe the most likely outcome is that the economy will return to full vigor in the second half of this year," he writes. "As of this moment, my forecast does not have a recession in 2020. My base case outlook calls for slow growth in the second quarter of this year — perhaps even negative growth — followed by increasingly positive growth in quarters three and four.

"Readers of this magazine should also take heart in the role that plastics will play in the ultimate defeat of this disease."