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Kansas City is relaxing its shelter-in-place restrictions. However, the furor over the death of George Floyd has spurred mass protests, which may force the city government to revert to strict quarantine measures. This is because two separate yet compounding factors, namely maskless protesters and the use of tear gas, may contribute to a spike in COVID-19 infections and make the complete return to the workplace unwise.

Strict COVID-19 quarantine measures in Kansas City stifled the flow of money. Consumer spending went down, and so did the production of many goods and services. However, as of this writing, the state government is slowly easing restrictions. The businesses that survived are the ones that are beginning to revitalize the economy.

As Kansas City gradually reopens, more and more people are being allowed to go back to work. Soon, offices will be full again. Small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that were able to realize the benefits of remote work are likely to continue supporting work from home practices.

As of this writing, it appears that Kansas City is not suffering COVID-19’s wrath as much as coastal cities like New York City. This is due to two factors: KC has a much lower population density than NYC, and its residents by and large are complying with stay-at-home orders.

Remote work setups are nothing new. In fact, there are some companies that are completely composed of distributed teams. And given how internet connectivity is only improving over time, a new trend is emerging. Instead of having employees go to work, more and more work is going to where the professionals are instead.

In Disney’s Aladdin, Princess Jasmine was cooped up in her palace, occasionally slipping out of the castle walls or flying through an endless diamond sky with the eponymous hero. Now that lockdowns are the norm in Missouri and across the nation because of COVID-19, we get to empathize more with the princess.

With so much time on our hands thanks to shelter-in-place directives, we’re now more able to relate with Rapunzel and her hair-growing feat. Unlike us, however, Rapunzel didn’t have a TV, radio, gaming console, laptop, or smartphone. The most she did was sing, braid her locks, and help pull her foster mother up her tower.

What do you get more of the more you stress out about it? That’s right, it’s stress — and our COVID-19 pandemic woes aren’t making things any easier. Citing examples of our troubles will only send us into a tailspin, so we figure that it would be better if we focused on what we can do to help instead.

Imagine running the ICU of a hospital. Everything is running smoothly, until all of a sudden, all patient data is gone. All digital information regarding patients’ conditions, histories, treatments, medications, allergies...all gone in a blink of an eye.

Hackers don’t sell a product or a service, they sell information. And information is more valuable than ever. Additionally, they’ve always worked from home! The coronavirus is a dream come true for hackers. In fact, they’ve created ingenious new campaigns to prey on people who are investing less time in cybersecurity to make room for public health best practices and revenue-generating activities.