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

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.

I'm putting clorox wipes, frooty pepples into the trunk, mind thinking about a thousand things, about 300 of 'em things I saw inside that Sam's Club.

"Hey!" says older woman suddenly next to me. "They handing out wipes at the door?"

"Huh? What? I don't know." Realized I was still holding on to one from ten minutes ago. "I got this one at the exit."

"Hey!"

Didn't realize she was still there. What time is it? "Yes m'aam?"

She points to my tire. "Your car's got a flat!"

And then she was gone.

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

― mookieproof, Tuesday, March 17, 2020 10:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Limbaugh on rotation in a couple months

hospital report, Oregon, 3/17/20:

no more elective surgeries
no surgeries using blood
no surgeries resulting in transfer to Assisted Living

an old friend of mine in Indiana just had a scary heart attack and was scheduled for open heart surgery. then they told him "well if you come in and get the virus you'll die, but if you stay home you probably won't die right away" and they postponed his surgery so now he is at home with them keeping a close remote eye on him

idk if it has been mentioned here but the blood banks are getting hammered as well

I don't think everybody in America realizes that hospitals being stretched aren't a thing in the distant future, these conversations and procedural changes are happening in multiple states *right now*.

I'm sorry to hear about your friend - hoping he pulls through when they're able to get to his surgery. that has to be terrifying for him.

btw don't take my first sentence to be defending that ignorance, since every expert's been hammering on about this for weeks.

no yr totally right, my wife just had an argument with her 86-year-old dad who thinks it's all a "hoax"

I feel like the theme parks leaving themselves open the rest of last week just encouraged a bunch of people to make a "last call" visit to the park. not that attendance necessarily spiked or anything, but a whole bunch of people I know went twice in the last few days it was open and when people said "hmm maybe not a good idea" the response was "well I needed this, it was going to be closed for a while!".

I still know people who literally think the heat will 'burn up' the virus. or taking enough Vitamin C will keep you from getting it. or that you can't spread it if you're not symptomatic (I have no idea why THAT is the one thing people can't get through their head...for all I know I have it!)

kinda wish they'd just abruptly shut.

my brother wasn't forced to come in, fortunately. Universal blinked.

My uncle is in dire need of a hip replacement, which is supposed to happen in 3 weeks, and he's worried it will be delayed. Another uncle had a bad cold, and I haven't been able to get a clear explanation from my aunt about what's happening with him. My dad seems to have lucked out, he's scheduled to get a stent tomorrow after 2 recent minor strokes, and it looks like it will actually happen.

Piled on to bully a CHUD game store owner who was crowing about it being a hoax and he was going to keep running events bringing in all the people (literally every) other stores were 'abandoning,' he caved when people screenshotted his shit and explained they'd be contacting the local media with it.

anecdotally lots of 70+ retirees here (uk) socialising as usual. shopping, coffee, seeing friends, garden centre, public transport. ffs

my 10 year old nephew came down with a high temperature and a cough last night. he's one of four kids, one of whom has downs syndrome. they live a five minute walk away from my mum and dad. they've all been seeing each other until my parents went into lockdown yesterday. troubling news.

he would be the only kid in the world to my knowledge with the virus who also displays symptoms. i think it's very very unlikely.

Is that true? Great news if so! Hoping he's just got the regular lurgy, not the special one.

Coronavirus and kids:

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/coronavirus-kids-children-symptoms-research_l_5e701c39c5b63c3b64835739

Roughly 4% of the children had no symptoms at all and 51% had mild illness — meaning symptoms like fever, sore throat, coughing, sneezing or digestive issues.

Another 39% had what researchers considered moderate illness, including pneumonia, more frequent fever and cough, or wheezing.

whaa - that totally contradicts what I've heard

guess we'll find out for sure sooner or later :(

Not all cases were confirmed through lab testing, and severe outcomes were more common in kids who were not specifically tested for COVID-19, which could be because their symptoms were caused by other pathogens.

hmmmm??

The study may also underestimate the number of children who are asymptomatic carriers, as it focused primarily on those who presented with symptoms, O’Leary said.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

yeah kids w/o symptoms aren't being tested unless presumably they've been in overwhelming contact with a confirmed case

but confirmed cases won't have been tested and confirmed until they've been in contact with a confirmed case
etc

yeah seems like the answer to a lot of this is 'more testing please' not less

It's the thing I'm finding most frustrating tbh
Lack of accurate data for anyone to make decisions
I completely understand the NHS isn't adequately funded or able to provide testing. But when I've expressed frustration about it I hear people say 'well they need to focus on healthcare not filling in forms/testing when most people are likely to not have it'. Again I get it but routine testing would clarify a lot.

I fully expect that lots of people are seeing there's only e.g. 3 confirmed cases in their whole county, and acting as if there's no risk.

good luck NickB - and yes, please govt(s) please ramp up the testing

someone from my team who works with me on a couple of projects is off sick now, no news as to what with except "feeling really run down" - reminding myself that there are a lot of other reasons to feel "run down", not least the uncertainty. it's probably not The Bug of course

this might be a bit nuts but I don't even know if I should be sending my mother a mother's day card, let alone anything to go with :/

(PS non-Britishers, don't panic, your Mother's Day is probably not until May)

yeah, I thought my parents were in a relatively safe place because until the weekend the cases by county map had their county at 0, but they're right by the border and a neighbour's kid goes to school in a town which had several early confirmed cases and they think that whole family probably has it

but that family can't get tested and nor can anyone else, so the case map by county still says just 1 or 2

Posting stuff will be fine I think, he said hopefully. Least we don't have to lick the stamps anymore

I bought a card with a cool little cellophane window in but card/paper will harbour fewer bugs than cellophane so maybe I'll buy a new one (or better still, find one in my existing card stash, even if it probably won't say anything about Mother's Day) or maybe I'll just try to be less nuts

(I say "will", I mean "I read an article which I was way too dumb to understand and came to this probably half-baked confusion" obv)

a local person died here who had tested positive for cv, but I feel bad for wanting to know if this person is a statistic in our county or the neighbouring one where he died in hospital.

My uncle is in dire need of a hip replacement, which is supposed to happen in 3 weeks, and he's worried it will be delayed.

my mom is in this same situation with a knee replacement, although i’m not clear on exactly how dire. tbh it doesn’t seem like a great time for a septuagenarian to go to a hospital unless absolutely necessary

yeah my sister and I had to badger my mom into canceling her knee replacement scheduled for today.

She refused for a week+ and now gets it, is glad she's not going in despite being in terrible pain and having tremendous difficulty walking

My brother's had flu-like fever for a couple of days, I'm pretty sure it's COVID. He's got a youngun - I know "kids" aren't at risk but are babies? I keep worrying.

there have been virtually no deaths of people under 10 iirc, as the father of a 21-month-old the extremely limited effect on children so far is one of the main things keeping me sane

It doesn't seem to be affecting babies much? I dunno, my sister had a baby last week after just eight months. Terrified by the fragility of it all but she seems to be doing well and they're self-isolating in any case. And it's probably a good thing it happened early, can't imagine what it would be like to be in the last month of pregnancy and watching the various updates knowing you need to go into hospital just as this thing approaches its peak.

No one knows until they start testing everyone, like that small Italian town apparently did, but I suspect many, many people - kids, adults, everyone - have this or had this and are asymptomatic or barely symptomatic and transmitting it. Certainly if this did start circulating in the middle of cold and flu season (which it did) there had to have been plenty of people who thought they had common colds and flus but may have had this and just didn't know it yet, or didn't even know they *could* have had it. For example, a few weeks back my older daughter amp back from a trip and got a random fever that lasted a couple of days. Not really any other symptoms. She missed a day of school, but quickly got better. Could that have been it? A few days after she recovered my other daughter got what appeared to be a cold - stuffy nose, cough. That also lasted a couple of days, and then she got better. A few days after *that* I caught a cold which I assumed was her cold, and started getting mild symptoms in sequence - stuffy nose, fatigue, sore throat. Could *that* have been it? Without testing, I'd never know.

In fact, I bet it's been spreading for a lot longer than people first thought, and those "patient one", "patient two" people, the first to test positive (in this country, at least) were not the first to have it in this country, just the first to get sick and tested. The potential bright side of this, if it were true, is that infection rates would gradually slow as more and more people get it and gain some form of immunity. Isolation or quarantine would only speed this process up. But of course the only way to know for sure is if everyone got tested.

I had a sore throat, cough and fatigue for a few days about three weeks ago but I'm still of the opinion that was another bug going round rather than this. Until we have reliable and widely accessible antibody tests it's going to be impossible for people to really do anything unless they've unequivocally had it.

best wishes to emil.y's brother and youngun

It absolutely has been more widespread than even blanket testing in China/Korea suggests, the micro study in Vo’ was very clear on this. Makes it far more difficult if people have never had symptoms.

I think it's good to assume anything from several weeks ago was a different illness unless you're given a test to see if you have antibodies specific to covid-19. I've already heard some "well, I think I may have already had it, so I'm not too worried" statements and that's a very dangerous stance

That's for sure. But good luck getting a test (here) just to check and see if you had it a few weeks ago, which would be useful to know the longer we are stuck inside.