Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

I'm waiting on a phone consultation to confirm I'm in the old granny and vulnerable adult bracket and am effectively coccooned for 12 weeks.

I have bronchiectasis - which is a chronic lung condition. Any type of virus/infection can further damage my lungs so I should generally avoid sick people anyway so I'm expecting to be in the vulnerable category despite having a relatively mild version of the disease so far.

I've inadvertently passed my tension and stress onto my children and they're all worried they're going to kill me:(

someone who was in my building and the neighboring one at work last thursday has tested positive

great?

I haven't had a real sinus infection in a few years, and one side of my face is notoriously bad at clearing congestion so I'm currently blasting it with saline, etc. because I don't want to have to end up needing antibiotics. So I've had a minor sore throat for a couple weeks. Rationally, I know it's the sinus issue. but...

We're being shut to the public but we still don't know if we're expected to come into work anyway. The email announcing the closure from the Chief Executive was a masterpiece in obfuscation, colleagues have been wondering around asking what it means and could someone explain it to them!

does steaming your face help with that? xpost

oh, there are a dozen things that help and I'm doing most

I'm also probably anxiously clenching my jaw, which seems to be one of the main things that makes it worse, along with allergy season :/

mh, if you can, get to a CVS or other drugstore and get a night guard! Jaw-clenching is not a big problem ordinarily, but chronic grinding will wear away teeth, and you will probably want to have teeth later in life.

I am a pretty severe grinder (or so I'm told) and it's exacerbated by stress and anxiety. (Hey, anybody having any extra stress or anxiety lately?)

oh, I don't do it at night and don't really grind. just tensing the muscles

oh, also, if you rely on any kind of over-the-counter sleep aids to fall asleep, you might want to buy those now; the duane reade near me wasn't out, but alarmingly short

^^ otm

we're in lockdown here since noon, and the streets are weeeeeeirdly quiet now.

xxposts to onimo: my dad has the same condition.
hope you get through this whole thing ok <3

Thanks VG. I was only diagnosed in 2018 so I'm still learning how to manage it. I (deliberately) lost a whole bunch of weight which seems to be helping with symptoms,

mh take 800mg of ibuprofen 2x daily for 3 days and that should clear your head out. Passing this advice on from an old pro with small sinuses

Most of the prominent local record stores around here went to curb service and online sales today, except one that's giving out gloves to in store browsers and throwing out anyone who 'exibits cold-like symptoms', which seems a bit much given the could just close the inside of the store like everybody else.

Well that would be good advice but there seems to be a v heated debate about whether ibuprofen exacerbates the vid xp

In fact some of the language has gotten very... inflammatory 😎

xp srsly

record stores closed now in Eugene OR

awful time for u to get fpd wins but

No better time imo

given I have a job that pays well already and can work from home, shouldn't moan too much, but email just went round the company saying there will be no annual payrise for anyone this year because the company is losing money from the shutdown and also no more hiring, any empty positions will remain vacant. considering that we are already understaffed, that is a bit of a bastard

so now they're telling us not to use ibuprofen

yup, for the time being, although some other counter-opinion came out from Ireland yesterday iirc

thanks, El Tomboto! I'll give it a try, although will possibly stop early if I start showing covid symptoms, lol

My state social work job has now informed us that all in-person assessments should be done by phone if possible. I tend to get sent to buildings full of immunocompromised people so that’s a relief, though many of my clients don’t have functioning phones.

given I have a job that pays well already and can work from home, shouldn't moan too much, but email just went round the company saying there will be no annual payrise for anyone this year because the company is losing money from the shutdown and also no more hiring, any empty positions will remain vacant. considering that we are already understaffed, that is a bit of a bastard

similar situation here. i stayed at my current job (which i hate) for the last couple months because i was supposed to get a bonus after my 1-year anniversary. now everything is tanking, and i know i'm not going to get the bonus. i know, boo hoo, but unfortunately my job seems to pay me exactly as much as my expenses, so this bonus was going to be a chance to save a bit so that i can deal with my car's imminent kicking of the dust. oh well

xp JoeStork you're in Seattle area yeah?

xpost Does pressing and holding that pressure point between your eyes to clear sinuses work? I read about it awhile ago.

I still want to know the basis of the ibuprofen hypothesis. It seems to go back to that one tweet from a French doctor who based her theory on ... not much. I mean, it may all be accurate, but is there any more to it than the French doctor's one tweet?

Sinus thing my physio taught me which sometimes works:

- breathe out through your nose steadily until your lungs are completely empty
- hold your nose and nod your head up and down without breathing in for as long as possible
- when you really need to breathe in take a long deep breath through your nose
- repeat

Also may cure hiccups idk

xxxp yeah!

extremely ominous title change there

What is wrong with people

Y’all participating in the new Corona Challenge? This is on a plane btw... pic.twitter.com/w1XwVRZd87

— Cash ✌🏾HYPE (@CashNastyGaming) March 15, 2020

a new kind of bug chaser

thanks for all the advice re:sinus infection, but.. I've been at this a while

I've successfully gone without needing antibiotics for a sinus infection for... nearly five years? It just takes some extra sinus flushing

would say Darwinism in action, except if it's young people doing it it's more likely other, older people that they kill xps

jaysus djp

but...also finds vmic

heh, mh i'm right there with you: doing a neti pot in the morning (and sometime at night), gargling saltwater and Therabreath at morning and night and taking doses of fexofenadine, loratadine and singulaire daily
https://www.therabreath.com/mouthwash/
honestly more worried about my kidney/liver than my two month old bad-again/not-so-bad-again sore throat at the moment

I know this is very first world problems but: I've had my groceries delivered through freshdirect for about ten years now... no car and no nearby grocery store during that time means that the slight upcharge (maybe 5 or 10 bucks an order) makes it very efficient. I just tried to follow through on an order I reserved last week and discovered my order had been cancelled. I called customer service and they called back two hours later. After I thanked the guy for his clearly difficult task, he informed me that they had been intentionally cancelling placed order because they aren't holding reservations. But that I should check back tomorrow morning to hold a reservation for next week. To which I replied "wait, you cancelled my reservation because you aren't taking reservations but I should make another reservation tomorrow?" Then we did that about three times and then he started shouting at me "NO RESERVATIONS SIR NO RESERVATIONS DO YOU UNDERSTAND NO RESERVATIONS" and I said thank you and hung up and that's honesty about as scary as this has gotten so far. There will be no manager to speak with during the apocalypse.

i get sinus relief from pinching my nostrils and slowly pressurising by trying to blow air out my nose, like youd use when depressurising in a plane

the Valsalva maneuver

^ worst Robert Ludlum novel evah

haaa

oh, I can do all kinds of tricks with clear sinuses. blow air through eustachian tubes, do that yawning thing where it sounds like a bass rumble in your inner ear, etc

they just get bad at draining on occasion

Here's a great local (for here) resource to help club workers, restaurant workers and other similar folk affected:

https://chicagoservicerelief.com

I'm sure other cities must be gathering together something similar.

Solidarity wrt the low-priority, first-world bonus/raise problems upthread. Our workplace had trumpeted for most of a year that they were streamlining our review process this year such that our review, our bonus, and our raise would all occur simultaneously. Pretty sure I visibly rolled my eyes in my review two weeks back when my manager said, well, actually, the bonuses and raises had been pushed back for unexplained reasons. I said something to the effect of, 'yeah, I haven't forgotten where we work, so I don't really pin my expectations on anything they say.' Feels like I can continue refraining from expecting anything.

Sinus-clearing trick I saw the other day but haven't had a situation where I needed to try it out yet:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/fekafk/lpt_how_to_quickly_unstuff_your_nose/

Going back to my wife at her healthcare job. They reportedly have another patient back in the clinic who had traveled through multiple east asian countries displaying flu-like symptoms who bluffed their way past the warnings at the front desk. When questioned why they didn't go to the hospital instead, they said that they had been to the hospital, who said they couldn't do anything about it because they don't have testing kits, and told the patient to go to the clinic instead "to get treated for their symptoms".

My mate who works in social care and has been going to the pub as normal keeps messaging me about meeting up to watch a film. I told him today that the cinema announced it’s closing indefinitely and besides I’ll be bunkered as I’ve a slight cough, and his response was “So, your place?”

xp jfc

does steaming your face help with that? xpost

― Yerac

Steam Your Face my favorite Dead live album

given I have a job that pays well already and can work from home, shouldn't moan too much, but email just went round the company saying there will be no annual payrise for anyone this year because the company is losing money from the shutdown and also no more hiring, any empty positions will remain vacant. considering that we are already understaffed, that is a bit of a bastard

― Colonel Poo

shame dressing like death and taking upper level executives round to silently point at open graves with their name on the tombstone would be taken as "threatening", god knows how dickens managed to get away with it

My current not-really-a-problem problem: friends who are usually content to text or email suddenly wanting to talk on the phone. I loath talking on the phone but I guess some of them are lonely and may need some interaction right now so I will oblige, esp since I may need them to return the favor in six months when I am babbling to myself and making shadow puppets

my friend called me via video chat, but I got to see one of their cats as compensation

I feel for you guys with sinus issues. A couple of year back my sinuses shut down because an alien brain slug to residence up there. It was 6 miserable months before the doc removed the polyp, which, by then , had filed up all the sinuses on the left side of my head.

Human bodies are deeply weird.