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

yeah they haven't shut down the luxury construction sites in nyc yet have the?

my friends who are renting my place were talking about how the apartment on our floor is still being gut renovated despite all the lockdown orders.

The government have said that workers have to turn up to their workplaces today if their bosses ask them. @DailyMailUK - Why shame the passengers, not the people who forced them to get on the train? https://t.co/emSKgksqfm

— Michael Walker (@michaeljswalker) March 24, 2020

sorry my bad thread discipline, not apolitical

My workshop is located in a group of 12 buildings, we’re the only occupied space and the others are all under construction - the crew is still coming in every day.

I imagine it's hard to just put a half-finished building (or half-finished renovation) simply on "pause." There are a lot of interdependent things that happen in sequence.

Also I suspect that if your apt. or house is in the middle of having a bathroom or kitchen rebuilt, it may be difficult for you to just, y'know, not have a bathroom or kitchen for a year. Also, there is weather. If your building project stops in the middle of putting up walls, the structure can't necessarily just sit and wait for you to get ready to work on it again.

Of course my heart is with the workers and their safety, but a heck of a lot of them are hourly and won't get paid to not work, so, I dunno.

90% of construction work in Paris and in the Ile de France generally has been stopped during the outbreak.

Do we have any posters living in Germany or Italy? Or elsewhere, besides North America, Ireland and the UK, and France? I would like to hear from them about how things are locally.

oh, we have Australians, and that's been interesting to read

I suppose being a mostly English language message board, the diversity will be rather limited. oh, aren't there Dutch and Belgians too, and someone in Switzerland? well, that's for another thread, don't mind me.

iirc Australians are regularly bitten by venomous spiders from a young age, and so have hardier immune systems

Where is Tuomas, need a Finland update

I’ve been speaking to my colleagues in Spain a lot recently and they’re cautiously optimistic, or as optimistic as you can be when your local ice rink has been turned into a morgue.

Panic buying has mostly stopped and supermarkets are fairly well stocked. The Italian model suggests strict isolation will be worth it. People are starting to think about lockdown being eased at some point over the next two months.

Do we have any posters living in Germany or Italy? Or elsewhere, besides North America, Ireland and the UK, and France? I would like to hear from them about how things are locally.

Lisbon here. Things seemed blase till around 12th March when masks started appearing, but not many. The following week supermarkets had lines outside which I thought were long until I saw what was happening elsewhere. The lines seem to be gone now and there are no shortages (other than black beans). Supermarkets have a guard outside who keep the number of people inside regulated but that was only really necessary for maybe 3 days. Buses still going but never seem to have more than one or two people on.

It just feels a lot like the hinterland between Christmas and New Year

interesting! are there cops patrolling the streets in Lisbon to check people's reasons for being out?

Not that I've seen. There's a police station on the route to one of the supermarkets and I've seen a couple of police walking around but nothing different to normal.

there are here and they're counterproductive because the last time I was out (had to visit the bank) it just results in people rubbernecking around the doorways

(and by "had to" in this sense I mean "had already been putting an errand off and the time was running out to do it"

iirc Australians are regularly bitten by venomous spiders from a young age, and so have hardier immune systems

― love will keep us apart (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, March 25, 2020 3:55 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Also we have vegemite which has been proven as a cure for corona by Tom hanks. I wonder if dick smith said racist but all Australian ersatz vegemite is better or worse than the kraft produced stuff.

Also have you seen the sun here, unless that virus is slip slap slipping the factor 50 its toast.

Sorry but marmite is the one true yeast spread

climate change is good now

the flour thing is real in the UK. cannot buy it for love or money. i've searched 20+ flour mills that ship direct and every one has closed their web shop. it's crazy! what is happening?? i mean this is a real serious commitment to... baking bread?? i didn't think enough people cared or knew how? why???? i've been baking my own loaves on the weekend for a little over a year, and i only need like 2kg a week at most. where is all that flour going??

unease

idk. There was some strong bread flour (Canadian??) in my supermarket this weekend but no regular stuff.

yeah, i have seen things about the sudden rise in people needing to bake bread right now.

It’s mostly going to feed moths and weevils right now.

I don't know if anyone on ILX is Mormon or ex-Mormon, but I just learned yesterday that apparently having (at least) a 3-month emergency supply of food is an informal tenet of the religion. As I was reading about it I came across a forum for ex-Mormons complaining about the practice and all the stuff their families or loved ones had accumulated. For example, parents downsizing were itemizing their store room and realized they had barrels of wheat. Not flour, wheat. Responses jokingly asked what they planned to do with it, run it over repeatedly with a car? Someone else stockpiled so much wheat (wheat!) they eventually had to donate it to feed cattle. Another thread calculated that they had enough pancake mix to make literally 3000 pancakes; their mom called the packaging hotline to beg for alternate uses. Another poster said their dad would joke that he didn't need to store food, because if the end of the world came he would just grab a gun, walk down the street, shoot his neighbor and know there'd be a year's supply of food. There was even an older article asking if then candidate Mitt would have months of food stored in the White House.

When they've been charitable, it's been a great boon. I believe they opened up their church stores post-Hurricane Katrina, which was the right thing to do.

On the other hand, the central organization has been hoarding money like crazy for a while and some of the members are getting irritated that, like any person or organization that has a ton of capital and desires to do something to make it grow, they've invested in real estate

I just got furloughed!

Aww, man. Best of luck to you shakester.

My wife's company was offering a three-month sabbatical at half pay, which frankly sounded great to us. Turned out they don't want to lose her for that long, so they worked out a part-time deal instead.

this came at a time when I happen to be fairly well-positioned to survive it financially, so I'm thankful for that.

At this point I'm more worried that my company is going to go under, and I won't have a job to go back to. But who knows what tomorrow will bring.

really sorry to hera

I’m listening to my husband in the next room negotiating a pay cut. It sounds like his boss is talking a 50%-75% cut. Husband is trying to ascertain if he’ll still be expected to work full time and boss is being passive-aggressive about it.

Shit, that's terrible.

xp -- *hear, apologies, tabbing between this and freelance thing

yikes justin3. that's scandalous.

Οὖτις does this mean paid vacation or are they keeping that 100% salary guarantee?

(or maybe i'm not quite understanding how this works...)

I don't quite understand it all either. I do know it means I'm still technically an employee (which means I get to keep my benefits, which is good) but I won't be paid a salary, and I can't work. I *can* claim paid-time-off that I was already eligible for (ie vacation and sick time), while I am on furlough. Otherwise I am expected to sit around, not get paid, and wait for my position to be re-activated.

I do think I am eligible for unemployment while furloughed (which I think means I will also be eligible for the 4-months pay thing in the Senate bill)

I'm really disturbed to hear what's happening to everyone

I’m listening to my husband in the next room negotiating a pay cut. It sounds like his boss is talking a 50%-75% cut. Husband is trying to ascertain if he’ll still be expected to work full time and boss is being passive-aggressive about it.

― just1n3, Tuesday, March 24, 2020 7:28 PM bookmarkflaglink

what.....the.....fuck!

can we, like, crowdpunch that boss until he relents, like Bill Murray's brother

Personal good news: I just got another message from the DC courts, saying that I will NOT need to report on Monday, and this round of service is completed.

Οὖτις: I was furloughed for four weeks during the 2018-2019 Federal Government Trumper tantrum sequestration. (My employer is a Federal contractor, so they had no money coming in on my contract. But they did keep our benefits active.) I didn't apply for unemployment, because I had savings and didn't think it would last that long, but would have been eligible. I remember the worst part was the uncertainty. But at least then I could go out, go to a movie, etc. So far I've coped with working from home, but only because I've been busy for the last week.

Please note, his company still hasn’t drawn on their line of credit. Jordan is trying to convince him that that conservation of cash by cutting 75% is not worth the loss of employee effort, which would end up costing a lot more.

that’s yet another fucked thing, our system doesn’t have a cut-out for salaried employees to take assistance if their position is diminished

my friend who used to work on a factory line had a couple weeks per year of nearly guaranteed lay-off years ago, and it was straightforward. they’d only shut down the line for several weeks, he’d know it was coming and get his paperwork in order to file for temporary unemployment, go hiking along the great lakes for a week or two, and come back right after. obviously not a lifestyle for everyone, but he knew the rules and the standard deviation

Just1n3, shakey, I’m so sorry.

Thank fuck for that I can rest easy now I've had my office government text message.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lv7b1o6917cnu44/png%20image%202.png?raw=1

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETuAqILXYAEkkM0.jpg

so sorry to hear people’s bad news. all this is happening so quickly.

i lost my job about two weeks before all this really kicked in (i reported bullying at work, and they removed me a few days later), and now the job market for people like me has just ground to a halt. ‘er indoors is still working, and i’ve got a reserve tank of money to get through the next few months, but the timing sucks.

i reported bullying at work, and they removed me a few days later

well now this is bullshit on top of bullshit. sorry AA

So, when is a good time to kick out one’s alcoholic and belligerent husband after years of putting up with his lying about the problem at hand? Apparently last night, if you’re my little sister.

He really is an asshole and she found 18 empty beer cans had accumulated over the course of one day.