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

Well put. My wife and I 'survived' our compulsory 14 days of self-isolation but every time one of us steps out to do the groceries I subconsciously reset the clock.

Work from homers: "I think a jogger might have come within 6ft of me today"

Not work from homers: "OK"
pic.twitter.com/5ZWc9NW7IV

— Nick Dastoor (@NickyD) March 30, 2020

I think that's one of the most difficult things for people to handle. There are so many risky behaviors that people regularly do that have a low possibility of harm, and we take it for granted when bad things don't happen. And when they do happen, some will shrug it off and come up with a reason related to luck or morality as to why it happened to someone else and not them.

If I contract covid-19 and the worst happens, people could shrug and say, hey, he wasn't as active as he could have been, drank too much, guess that's what happens. But the fact is that a bunch of my peers are less physically active and have the same bad habits! It's only when there's a high incidence across the entire population that we realize how arbitrary things really are.

Most of the things that happen have some level of arbitrariness to them, it's just that the reasons are at different levels of opacity or we pretend they aren't opaque.

lol calz, touché.

wasn't intended as a swipe, pom. I'm pulling up my hood and looking the opposite way if someone gets within 12 ft of me!

I'm struggling with the sheer arbitrariness of this all - we've been at home for two and a half weeks now so I think we're OK as long we keep up sensible social distancing, but there's sense that if we'd been to a different restaurant three weeks ago, or sat in a different seat on the train, or a different meeting room at work, then one of us could be in hospital on a ventilator right now. Obviously that's the case for everyone but it doesn't make it feel any less indiscriminate or unfair.

― Matt DC, Monday, March 30, 2020 9:54 AM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Seriously. I look back a little over two weeks to the day when, if my workplace hadn't granted me WFH permission, I was planning to take extended PTO until they came to their senses. The number of covid cases in the state were in the low double digits at that point (32, I believe?), but someone just down the block from my work had already tested positive and I came to learn later that someone who was working in my office up to the day in question had tested positive. We're likely to exceed 5,000 cases in the state today, and I get a little queasy thinking about what might've happened if I hadn't been as firm with my workplace and had kept commuting in to work for several more days until they formally closed the office.

so what are people doing about haircuts?

I've been cutting/clipping my own hair for many years, had no idea I was prepping for this

i have one scheduled a few weeks from now and i will not be getting it but i'm going to pay my hairdresser in advance for the next one so she can still make money. i'm a girl though.

Didn't have you pegged as a hardcore survivalist, Simon.

i was probably due for one the week things started to get bad and my hair does not grow out in an easy-to-manage way. not really sure how this is going to go.

I'm going full Catweazle till that one fine day we're allowed out of our shelters again

I am in my second week of having this (not serious but very much Not Fun) and I keep thinking about how arbitrary it is too. For the week before I had symptoms I felt absolutely fine, and so the only thing keeping me home really were the instructions to WFH.

I usually spend my days in tiny meeting rooms, and could otherwise have infected so many people it doesn't bear thinking about.

Sheesh, get well soon Stet!

Bought some DIY clippers two weeks ago and used them for the first time last night. Pretty straightforward tbh and I'm now wondering why I've bothered going to the barbers every other week for the last 20 years xps

My wife usually gets her haircut every two weeks or so, as she has a pixie cut and can't stand it getting much longer than that. The other day, she realized that it would be a while before her hair guy is open again and she was like "maybe if it starts getting annoying, you can help me trim around the back". I am not the right guy for this job and really hope that we can think of some alternative.

I own a set of clippers, but only use them to shave the dogs butt these days. There is a smaller, beard-trimmer thing, but I don't think I'd be able to do her hair with it.

Well put. My wife and I 'survived' our compulsory 14 days of self-isolation but every time one of us steps out to do the groceries I subconsciously reset the clock.

It seems this is actually fairly common. I think by now most people will have identified which necessary activity is likely to be the riskiest for them and when you haven't got many other distractions this looms large.

In terms of the arbitrariness of life’s lottery stuff aren’t we still operating on the assumption that 80% of people are going to get it anyway? So you’ll get your turn on a ventilator eventually anyway if you’re going to, whatever your movements? (Please correct me if the thinking has changed!) but there is still an element of unfairness in who gets a bad case yeah

I hate my hair, am considering buying clippers but Idk how to artfully shave the nap of my own neck, and I already paid my barber over the weekend and I guess will continue to pay him like 1x a month until they re-open and I feel okay about going?

Yeah going to the store makes me anxious, but tbh it's not on the scale compared to what others are doing.

get well soon, stet!

rest up, cap'n stet

We got an Instacart order on Saturday and then spent like 2-3 hours assiduously following the guidelines in the video that doctor made on how to safely handle groceries. We took every sensible precaution and I feel pretty okay about the reduction of our exposure but who can even say for sure. I know I didn't touch my face once during that time, and that feels pretty solid.

Get well, stet!!!

I guess it was really only a matter of time until it hit posters directly, but ugh.

Best wishes, stet! Keep us posted.

(not serious but very much Not Fun)

sorry to hear this, stet! but glad that it's not serious, all the same, and that at least you know you have it so you can take care of yourself.

Good luck.

get well soon, stet

I own a set of clippers, but only use them to shave the dogs butt these days.

I'm a little embarrassed by how hard this made me laugh

Good luck Stet (and Tracer - sorry, I only just saw your messages!)

get well soon, Tracer

In terms of the arbitrariness of life’s lottery stuff aren’t we still operating on the assumption that 80% of people are going to get it anyway?

I assume we're all going to get it, but that 20% will have more serious manifestations (from bad symptoms to hospital).

Trader Joe's this morning was ... ok. People spaced apart and lined up outside, carts being sprayed and disinfected before hand off, someone with squirt sanitizer out front for when you go in and out. Not currently charging for paper bags, but if you bring your own cloth bags you have to bag yourself. Older people get priority 8-9am, but the older folks I saw show up after 9 still got to go in first. Same for those with disabilities or those in need of assistance. Saw a lot of gloves and a surprising number of masks among those shopping (staff wore neither). They made a number of friendly announcements throughout, such as suggesting more shopping by looking at rather than touching the food.

This morning was the first time I saw a lot of (men specifically) in need of a haircut or, perhaps, just a comb or brush.

My wife wants me to do more volunteering, donating blood, etc. I'm going to do the latter on Thursday, I think, but the former ... I don't know what I'm comfortable doing, exactly, even though my usual volunteer spots are taking a lot of precautions. As she says, we're healthy, so we should be helping. And as I said, we may be healthy because we've been at home not helping, and if I get sick then we might all get sick and then there are four of us sick, not only not helping others but potentially in need of help ourselves. There's really no right answer.

i'm assuming that i'll get it at some point but i'm aiming to stave it off for as long as possible so that effective drug treatments might be found in the meantime and/or a wizard grants the uk its collective wish of tens of thousands of ventilators

think of me as the anti-ant middleton

My wife usually gets her haircut every two weeks or so, as she has a pixie cut and can't stand it getting much longer than that. The other day, she realized that it would be a while before her hair guy is open again and she was like "maybe if it starts getting annoying, you can help me trim around the back". I am not the right guy for this job and really hope that we can think of some alternative.

same, only i get my hair cut super short every 9 weeks and let it grow out, cut and repeat. my husband trims the hair on my neck w clippers after i cut his hair and i love it. we do not trim our dogs' butt hairs with it though (even though they need it!!)

bg otm

of course I could use that staving-off time to lose weight and drink less to make myself stand a better chance against this thing, but this is not feeling like the week to stop drinking or eating chocolate

I don't know why I should assume I'll get it if I spend the next couple months going nowhere but the grocery store, as planned. I'm very motivated to not get sick, because I rarely get sick and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't care for it.

<3 everyone, thanks

ugh sorry to hear stet, hope it fucks off soon

Right but after two months the lockdown is lifted, it starts to spread again, you lock down again, rinse repeat. Same number of people get it ultimately but it’s about controlling the rate at which people get it. That’s what everyone was saying a couple of weeks ago anyway. Nobody on this board will get it badly though, by royal decree

xp that means you too stet so watch your step

I could have sworn I also saw somewhere that pneumonia often counts as a "mild" case, which shows how bad bad is.

As the virus burns through more of the population, eventually it should become easier to avoid exposure to it. But that's well into the future. If they work as planned, all these efforts to "flatten the curve" just push that point of lesser exposure risk further out. What's really going to sort all this out is mass testing. Then, someday, mass vaccination.

Yeah I think I posted that, pneumonia was included in “mild to moderate” as long as you didn’t require assistance breathing

As the virus burns through more of the population

My brain translated this to "as more and more people die and the cities empty out" - whoops.

iirc anything that doesn't require inpatient care is "mild to moderate"

stet and tracer wishing you both full and swift recovery

Oh stet, not you as well? Hope you recover soon xx

In terms of the arbitrariness of life’s lottery stuff aren’t we still operating on the assumption that 80% of people are going to get it anyway? So you’ll get your turn on a ventilator eventually anyway if you’re going to, whatever your movements? (Please correct me if the thinking has changed!) but there is still an element of unfairness in who gets a bad case yeah

not necessarily. 80% was the high range and it could be far less (i've seen low ranges as much as 20-40%) but more importantly as always the trick is lowering the curve so even if you do eventually get it and god forbid need the ventilator there will hopefully be one available to you.

my best friend's girlfriend + several members of her family tested positive this morning (in Las Vegas). i'm glad that they at least they got diagnosed. she was rushed to the ER last night because she couldn't breathe. scary.

i sent this info along to my mom so that she can check off the "it happened to someone i personally know" box in her "i'm a conservative and i'm from missouri so you literally have to show me things and clamp my eyeballs open Clockwork Orange style to make be believe anything that relates to science" checklist.

(oops, sorry - forgot this is the thread where we don't mention the political factors that make up the heart of this)

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