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

i always put Chaucer in the washing machine to be safe

I think bake in the oven at 60C for 90 minutes.

No, Chaucer is the name of my dog, I said as I was bundled into the back of a police car.

banterbury

Folks who are pretty sure they have or had it it, or know people that are pretty sure they have or had it, just wondering, why would anyone be pretty sure? The symptoms ultimately seem pretty generic. Fever, cough, fatigue, etc. Even the duration is not out of the norm for the flu. Not saying it's not covid, but barring the worst I'm not sure why I would suspect I had it unless I maybe interacted with someone I knew tested positive.

I know I keep mentioning how there are suspicions (or maybe actually proof, at this point?) that this started circulating as early as December, maybe November. Interestingly, I seem to recall people saying this was a particularly bad flu season, so ... maybe some of those were covid, too? Just like that Italian doctor who had heard colleagues say, in retrospect, they had seen a bunch of strange pneumonias back in December, I can only imagine people have been dealing with this for a lot longer than maybe known, just approaching it as a flu, or pneumonia, because the symptoms are so similar.

my friend was sure because the low grade fever was persistent and lingered longer than it normally does with her, and the shortness of breath is uncommon for her.

but she wasn't entirely sure but Virginia won't test her unfortunately.

xp This was predicted to be a particularly bad flu season as far back as early fall though, iirc. Not a surprise.

With so little testing being done we're all just milling around in the dark. This should be the first project funded during Infrastructure Week.

At this point testing doesnt matter anymore

What I had = yeah it coulda just been a cold or something. I just erred on the side of caution.

Interesting thing about testing right now: it benefits public health and safety of healthcare providers, but has little effect on how a viral pneumonia is treated. Given providers are charging the insured up to $600 and the uninsured more than $1000 (for a test whose material costs are a small fraction of that and free in many OECD countries) for a test that doesn't personally benefit them, I'm not sure I'd care about it. I get bilateral interstitial pneumonia, please treat that, but tests that only benefit others should be paid for by the public.

any version of Slob On My Knob >>>>> any version of Imagine

That so?

Wow this is beautiful pic.twitter.com/uzjkkLHFVd

— James Urbaniak (@JamesUrbaniak) March 19, 2020

Wife refuses to buy Garden of Earthly Delights puzzle

I don't know if Facebook links work here--never tried it. When I was out walking today, I took a camera and photographed closure signs around town. (Small town; covered about half of it today.) I see my name's in the URL, but honestly, I don't much care. It's always been on my ILX user profile anyway.

http://www.facebook.com/phil.dellio/media_set?set=a.10156553303521534&type=3

link works, photos appear to be private

Thanks--I'll try to fix that. I'm not a photographer...it's basically a whole bunch of closed signs. But it feels important to photograph them. Businesses are going to be devastated by this everywhere; in a small town, especially, I don't know how most of these places get back on their feet. I suspect most of the people who live here (unlike me, who moved here in November) have done so for all or most of their lives.

At this point testing doesnt matter anymore

hard disagree. it may not save millions of us from infection now, but the experts say that massive testing will be critical to any chance at regaining a functioning society and economy in less than 18 months when a vaccine might be ready. but it has to be done in the tens of millions, repeatedly, so we can sort out the currently-infected, from the never-infected, from the already-recovered and therefore immune.

xp -- they interacted with someone who had it, and the timeline of the symptoms also matched

Wife refuses to buy Garden of Earthly Delights puzzle

My housemates and I went in together on a Garden of Earthly Delights puzzle. It is the one bright spot in all this dystopian misery. We haven't started it yet, but it's comforting just to know it's there.

I had shortness of breath in October. No fever. I am fairly sure it was related to a cold and wasn't cv. I'm glad I pushed ahead with getting a chest xray at the time or I'd be worried now.

testing is vital, theoretically. literally the only reason we're staying home and closing businesses en masse is because we can't tell who has it or who has had it.

australia has just ordered all restaurants, bars, casinos, cinemas to be closed for probably six months

however it appears that alcohol will continue to be available because australia

Nothing more essential than the bottl-o.

Fuck me i’m glad the states rolled Scotty form marketing tonight.

Needing to go for a walk round the park but I suspect it will be busy. How about the amount of outdoor rec time you're allowed is inversely proportional to how much space there is in your house?

I mean I would literally stay in for the next two weeks but I live in a not large one room apartment so need to stretch my legs at least.

i think australians are allowed to go outside, just not to congregate in small rooms (unless you’re a school student)

Going outside should be fine but too many people have been showing no more regard for personal space than usual. And that was before the sun started shining. Just can't trust these fuckers.

Panting, sweating joggers are my current bete noire

xp yeah, i know a few serious extroverts who are already looking for loopholes in the new rules

Going outside should be fine but too many people have been showing no more regard for personal space than usual. And that was before the sun started shining. Just can't trust these fuckers.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETtcNefXgAAcotv?format=jpg&name=large

this is the local social club where they were still doing zumba classes mid-week!

I've always been paranoid about the webcam on my laptop so I've spent the past 2 years disabling it (repeatedly, because Windows kept re-enabling it every update) and covering it with stickers. I wanted to offer to Skype my mum on mother's day and it turns out the webcam doesn't even work

eventually I found & set up an external one and my mum did not want to Skype anyway

but I spent an hour on the phone, mainly just chatting but also asking intermittently if I should ask the Amazon delivery guy to leave her present on the porch rather than knocking (as she's high risk) and eventually she agreed that that was better and seconds later before I'd had a chance to change the delivery options he knocked on the door, so now I shall vibrate with worry about that for a while

(they did say on Friday they were theoretically fine with Amazon deliveries or I wouldn't have sent one at all - as it is the contents are rather crap since I left it too late what with worrying about it and Amazon had already made books etc non-urgent delivery-wise, which totally makes sense, except as far as I can see Amazon no longer has any stuff that might be "urgent" like food or hand gel/wipes etc in stock anyway)

fuck joggers in general (sorry JCLC, not you)

"testing doesn't matter anymore" is embarrassing nonsense

https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-interview-larry-brilliant-smallpox-epidemiologist/

Now that we've missed the opportunity for early testing, is it too late for testing to make a difference?

Absolutely not. Tests would make a measurable difference. We should be doing a stochastic process random probability sample of the country to find out where the hell the virus really is. Because we don't know. Maybe Mississippi is reporting no cases because it's not looking. How would they know? Zimbabwe reports zero cases because they don't have testing capability, not because they don't have the virus. We need something that looks like a home pregnancy test, that you can do at home.

We normally gather for lunch at my wife's mum's on a Sunday. We made do with a 4 screen 16 person video chat. It was as chaotic as you'd expect but it was good for us all to see each other and especially for my mum-in-law to see all of her grandchildren.

I know nothing whatsoever about how testing kits are made and what's in them, but would it not make sense for idle industries to be turned over (if possible) to mass-producing these things? Plus masks and ventilators. Maybe there are elements that go into them that can't be easily sourced or whatever, but if "we" are on a war footing then let's make the fucking weapons eh. Feel free to tell me how this can't be done though.

one of my friends has it. she can’t get tested, but she knows, bc if you get it and the symptoms are particularly strong, you’ll know you had it. you will have trouble breathing for days and will run out of breath doing the simplest activities. it will feel pretty gd horrible, according to her

xxpost Here at least I think the WH has invoked powers to compel factories and whatnot to do that, but afaict has not actually asked them to do that. Because they are stupid and incompetent.

My friend took his kids to the zoo last week. He said maybe 40 cars in the giant lot, and all the buildings were off-limits, so it was just a handful of people gliding around like ghosts in the big empty zoo.

xpost That's tough, because the regular flu feels pretty horrible! Out of breath doing the simplest activities sounds more specifically like stories I've heard from people with this, though. At least some people.

xxxxp iirc the uk govt is going to give a bung to Brexity Tory donors JCB to turn their production over to testing kits or masks even though there are already uk suppliers making those things that the govt hasn't got in touch with, so business as usual for Tory govts I suppose

I'd like more tests wherever they come from tbh but it would seem to make sense to talk to the people who already know what they're doing and don't need a setup time

oops, this is the apolitical thread. sorry, scratch that post! I will post about zoos instead

it’s a different horrible from the flu josh, that is what i was trying to say

I like my local zoo and I hope it can keep going with no visitors as it can't be cheap to run. I know people have mixed feelings about zoos and I can totally understand that but I'm sure wherever one is at on the "liking zoos" spectrum we can agree that them all shutting at once because they've run out of money and maybe staff would be bad. not sure what can be done, really - of course this is pretty low priority but I hope there'll be some sort of provision for them

(also I gave the bf a voucher for an experience day at the local one, and there's a time limit to use it by, so it would be nice if it doesn't become void, but tbh I like what they do and they must be having hard times so if it does expire, well, I'm happy to have made a donation...)

jeezus Brad, that's awful.

I'm feeling v weird about the possibility of getting sick because *here's where I curse myself* I didn't have a cold all winter. That never happens.

xxpost Yeah, it really does sound like a crapshoot (so to speak). The worst manifestation of it, anecdotally, seems to be reduction of respiratory function. Other folks I've heard of have vomiting, some just have high fever and chills, and so on. I don't know anyone (via friends) that has had to go to the hospital, thank goodness.

I've never had the flu, so I don't have anything to judge symptoms against tbh.

I saw a guy on twitter - v healthy 44 yr old - who is now intubated and in critical condition. His husband also had the virus but it was mild and passed quickly. This is why testing is important - we need as much data as possible if we’re to come up with a vaccine.

I've never had the flu

consider yourself lucky. as an adult it clobbers you!

So I've heard!