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

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.

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

― BSC Joan Baez (darraghmac), Tuesday, 17 March 2020 18:11 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I got advised against that by my physio and by an ENT consultant as it could damage my ears and sometimes only succeeds in moving congestion further along tubes it shouldn't be in.

(I still do it, of course)

friends who are usually content to text or email suddenly wanting to talk on the phone.

thanks for reaching out, i'm currently at capacity, etc.

alien brain slug!!!!

wtf

ed. please explain

Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Directed by George Romero pic.twitter.com/91cvhlLLga

— SAFDIE (@JOSH_BENNY) March 17, 2020

This is a useful thread about having covid:

Folks, this #CoronavirusOutbreak is no joke. I’ll give you occasional updates, tweeting from “Above the Hospital Bed,” about how serious #COVID19 aka #coronavirus can be. Think of this as #LatsCovid19Journal, my thoughts on #LivingWithCovid. [Thread] pic.twitter.com/pFXkAGWu3O

— David Lat (@DavidLat) March 17, 2020

Key takeaway for me is that he and I have more in common than not - about the same age, size, health afaict - and it sounds like it suuuuucks. But he also said he gave it to his husband and it wasn't nearly as bad for him, so I guess truly ymmv.

my brother works in NYC and his coworker is out sick with a fever so they're both quarantined in their apartments. I saw him four days ago. we are both in our 20s but our parents, who we also saw over the weekend, are in their 60s. Freaked

Wow I am so out of it that I was scrolling this thread and saw my last post and my display name and was like whoa who's THIS guy?

friends who are usually content to text or email suddenly wanting to talk on the phone.
it me!! i am enjoying the phone talking renaissance and steeling myself for the inevitability of teaching online via webcam. i have avoided video chatting pretty much completely (by choice) but now I have to get used to it. So I have been trying to desensitize myself by video chatting with my closest friends who i normally just text with since they rarely have or make time to talk w me on the phone. it's work from home video chatting time, friends!!!

If John Hopkins numbers are right, we went from a reported 4,700 cases in U.S. yesterday to 5,800 today. Yeeesh.

Yeah a friend said "I hate skype who wants a phonecall?" and now I'm a little giddy* that there's a phone call coming that isn't with family.

*may be incipient Coronavirus

not only was there a case at my workplace, but the person who tested positive is about two degrees of separation away from a friend I met up with on Friday, and the coworker who sits closest to me works out at the gym with someone in the infected person's group

i figure most of these people who are usually "gotta spend time w my family!" are maybe happy to see a familiar name pop up on their phone and step outside to talk for a while at this point. it's only going to get more ripe for phone calling! i love talking on the phone and i don't think i will ever stop loving it unless i lose my hearing. (god forbid)

an taoiseach addressed the nation there

- no lockdown beyond whats been done here already (schools closed, work from home where possible, bars shut, the same social distancing and avoidance as everywhere else)

- above measures were in place through 29th march, now indefinitely but through summer expected

- cases expected to go to 15000 here by end of month

- vulnerable will at some stage be asked to isolate at home, measures being put in place

- major recruitment and coordination drives in the healthcare, supply chain, food, transport, administration, communication sectors

- measures will be put in place for all citizens who may experience hardship

- told youngsters not to be giving cheek and to check with mammy if theres anything they can do to help once a day

- paraphrased churchill three time. classic trolling.

That’s a partial covid thread violation

*blows whistle*

Let’s keep it in the Ebola thread, lads

Welllllllllp. Confirmed case in my actual office. My open-plan, no fucken walls anywhere, people packed in practically shoulder-to-shoulder workspace. And now the fun begins!

Old Lunch... join the club

Sorry to hear that old lunch. That must be immensely frustrating.

Someone in my extended family: "X (colleague) got sent home from work today because his wife tested positive for CV last night"

dopey twat

Thankfully as noted upthread, I've been on self-lockdown since Friday (except for a brief, no touching anything walk outside like half an hour before I got the news) and haven't touched anything outside our apartment door without a Clorox wipe in hand, and I feel fine thus far, but yeah...I'm not even gonna set foot outside my home for a long while.

xp guilty laugh as I think of leaning over my coworker's cubicle wall and saying, "hey, my wife tested positive for that corona thing! pretty wild, huh? *sips coffee*

good way to get your coworkers to burn you at the stake

When we moved not all that long ago into our renovated semi-open office space (much lowered cubicle walls), someone asked about the easier transmission of illness. We were told we had plenty of sick time and should take it!

Good luck, OL and mh.

The alien brain slug was not long after I came to Australia. I get dust allergies but not hay fever and figure I was just sensitive to some Australian native polllens. Treated accordingly for a several months with Nasonex but it kept getting worse, lots of sinus headaches, which Sudafed would relive for a bit. Eventually I went to the doctor, and after a few rounds of different treatments for allergies and inflammations he sent me for an MRI.

You could quite clearly see that the whole right side sinus network was full of something. Diagnosed as a sinus polyp, which is a bag of fluid that develops in the sinus. Sometimes can be cancerous but rarely. Sent for surgery, knocked out and th ENT went up their with an endoscope and cleaned it all out. Biopsy clear and fine after a few days on codiene and a month of rinsing my nose with saline solution.

Only bummer was finding out it wasn’t covered by the Medicare/NHS reciprocal health agreement and i had the wrong insurance so had to pay for it.

Sorry that is not really corona related but VG asked. We don’t really have a threat for discussing the ailments brought on by creeping decrepitude. (Let me tell you about my feet and how they should be hacked off and replaced with robot ones)

Thanks Ed, was gonna ask as I have sinussy stuff at the moment right now. Have had a headache behind one eye for two days. I get dust allergies too.

I am too old for this...the 40 plus thread.

well i am relieved it wasnt an actual slug slug
but this that is horrible, sorry for yr troubles Ed - glad yr all better!!

that video posted of Dawn of the Dead... I scrolled too fast and thought it was going to be a video of Ed's nose slug.

Sort of spiraling into a panic mode tonight because I just keep hearing of and seeing people blatantly ignoring the social distancing and just blithely going on with the whole, "fuck you, I'm American and I'll do what I want" attitude. It's infuriating. The latest was my 73 year-old MIL who called us tonight from a night out with her friends playing cards.

I just feel like it doesn't matter that the rest of us are sacrificing since so many people just don't give a fuck. Like will it even matter that we're hunkered down at home? One of those nights.

I still don't know what kind of gatherings with friends are considered acceptable. as a rule I've just been staying in other than to buy groceries.

I have more issues with the "hey come on, I need some decompression time", like....I get everybody's need to step aside, but this isn't like someone taking 4 hours off of work to go get a massage, or someone taking a break from packing boxes for a move to go out to a club.

the virus does not care about your feelings. my FB feed was full of people who went to Disney in the days before it closed. intelligent, compassionate people who suddenly thought being around thousands of people was a good idea.

For me, as a person with underlying health conditions, the uk directive is to “significantly limit your face-to-face interaction with friends and family if possible” and further down it says having friends or family over to the house is “strongly advised against”. That’s meant to go for 12 weeks.

I still don't know what kind of gatherings with friends are considered acceptable. as a rule I've just been staying in other than to buy groceries.

We're going to try this

https://www.netflixparty.com/

and if anyone has any idea of any online boardgames I'd like to know.

Ordinarily I don't love having a car or driving it, but I did go for a drive with the kid today as a time-killing measure. It was nice. We can't do playgrounds or see his friends or go swimming or go to gymnastics, but the car is enclosed and there's stuff to look at.

roll20 is an online RPG portal, I think it may require a paid membership?

FUUUUUUCCCCCKKK, Austin bars and clubs closed until May 1st.

https://www.kut.org/post/austin-closes-bars-prohibits-dining-restaurants-and-limits-gatherings-response-covid-19

These are creepy times.

the 'obscure singles you heard in cvs' thread is in danger

the whole, "fuck you, I'm American and I'll do what I want" attitude.

it's everywhere and it can't be eradicated by a small thing like a pandemic. that's why authorities are doing all they can to limit the variety of selfish bad choices people can make, by closing down most of their options for rubbing elbows in public gathering places. let them go to the mall cinema as much as they like, but if the doors are locked it's kind of a hollow gesture of defiance.

I hung out in the Sam's Club tire shop tonight. They were playing Human League, which isn't so obscure.