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

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)

http://i.imgur.com/CryREBU.png

get well soon, stet + tracer + everybody <3

lol ulysses

get well stet.

I live alone and don't own clippers, so I will just hack at my hair with scissors when the time comes. (I already did tiny snips.)

I already wash my hands more than I need to, bcz it's OK to touch your face w/ freshly washed hands (I read it). And c'mon, I need to fucking scratch my nose sometimes.

No stores for me. Still anxious about future chemo clinic trips, like in a month when all the negative-tested staff might still be no guarantee of 'safety'.

just had an epic argument with my mom about mark levin and coronavirus. btw americans, sorry to hear about the travel docs and IDs that some favored republicans are getting in the mail. mark levin got them, he said so on his show. the order from trump is coming tomorrow, is what my mom heard. good luck usa.

the only reason it's not on the news is because they're part of it too

huge if true

(not true)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/philadelphia-threw-wwi-parade-gave-thousands-onlookers-flu-180970372/

i wonder if that's part of why PA has been treating it so aggressively compared to other states

it's a good theory, but it involves learning from the past and applying lessons to the future, so...gotta imagine it's not connected.

yeah not even Frank Rizzo was at that parade

https://i.ibb.co/fxNTFWY/FB-IMG-1585603643442.jpg

wow

They deleted it but they're getting killed by people who saw it before it was taken down. And given all the competition in downtown Ybor, even if they reopen, there are a lotta people who might just eat wings at Boneyard instead

the owner looks pretty close to how I thought he was going to look.

he wrote a book "Notes From A Social Media Mad Man: The Bar & Restaurant Owner's guide to Social Media Dominance."

Florida Man Hall of Fame

lol at going full reason dot com on a notice to customers

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91eUZ5iaGDL._US230_.jpg

on the next Black Mirror, wot if James Murphy and Guy Fieri had a baby?!

hey man! he's just being honest there. if he's going to choose between killing a few geezers or suffering major inconvenience to himself, guess what, it's geezers into the propeller blades every time.

DeSantis will appoint him to his cabinet next week.

in other news, there are so many people spreading ignorance that aren't even the denialists or the "flu kills more people" assholes. even well-meaning people who are trying to follow along.

sitting watching a discussion where someone was flummoxed how we could have 20% of the cases in the world and everybody's conclusion is "the US must be testing more than other countries".

we're mostly indoors now. no excuse for not knowing what's going on.

the other thing I'm trying to do is boost awareness of the $600 unemployment because it seems to have been dwarfed by the news of the stimulus checks. lots don't know they're eligible for it so I want them to hear how it works.

fortunately it seems like states are just going to pay the extra out, but the federal government is funding it. so if you're already eligible for unemployment and getting it, they'll just start bumping your payments up $600 no application needed. it's those people who aren't usually eligible, like gig workers and contractors, self-employed people, people who had to quit their job because of coronavirus, or had their job not begin due to it that I worry about, as it appears they are going to have to apply for it.

States are still awaiting on guidance so I'm worried it will take weeks to implement. I hope not.

so right now I just keep sharing the article daily and telling everyone I know about it, and friends are sharing it. just feel like that's the best we can do. make sure nobody gets left behind.

in other news, most Floridians have spent over a week trying to file for unemployment and can't, due to understaffing and a flawed website, and they're "hiring" 100 more people as if that's going to help in the near future.

Good luck stet. Feel better soon!

Karl, sorry to hear about your argument with your mom. I think we grew up in similar situations and geography (SE MO v. S IL). I'm a bit older and lucky my parents eventually ditched the religion thing, so my mom went from a Reagan/Bush conservative to supporting Klobuchar, which is definitely progress. May you get to experience this as well.

best of luck stet

thanks, PBKR. it's a dynamic you're probably familiar with, but because she is so distrustful of "authorities" (not including the ten commandments and the god she lives in fear of 24/7, of course), she leaps straight into the arms of people like levin and alex jones.

Had a bunch of idiots come into the stairwell where I live to have a session.
Had to shoo them out. I am up 4 floors which was about as close as I wanted to get to someone I don't know who was making aessential of the place.
Mindless aholes wonder if they were just going in anywhere that was remotely open.
So may have to cross am area that wouldn't have been otherwise infected to reach the street.
Annoying.

Big mood:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD2ZC11pPPQ

An ILMer who has been lurking on this thread these past two months here.

Thanks to all the regular contributors on here--am both enjoying it and finding it helpful.

Started to get a light/diffuse headache 3-4 days ago; it then ramped up slightly to body aches and fatigue over past two days; now I'm starting to sweat (although my temp is not yet feverish) and food/toothpaste/mouthwash is starting to taste bland.

No sore throat at all, and very slight to no chest issues--still, am starting to worry a fair bit (esp about my elderly landlady, who lives two floors down and uses a separate door to come and go, but still).

As an aside, I had a two-week illness that I caught on an airplane back in mid-Oct (symptoms in that case showed up 4-5 days after departure flight) which was the worst I've ever felt (aside from food poisoning)--it felt like pneumonia at the time, but my best feverish Googling suggested it was instead bad bronchitis. Am hoping in vain that that recently caught other (?) bug might help me through this.

Am 42 yrs old, same age as Mayor Suarez in Miami whose symptoms were similarly on the mild side, FWIW (fingers crossed).

(xpost two weeks lurking, ha)

now im worried that we are still letting ppl in from ilm tbh

Haha! Glad to get rolled in.

the problem with all of the half measures we're taking in this country = doing things 50 different ways from state to state and not having uniform standards or guidelines or any real enforcement = we're relying on companies to do right by their employees when they're notorious for not doing that.

so my friend, the one who recovered immediately stayed home from work when she is sick. In Virginia, where she lives, you cannot get tested without Virginia Department of Health approval. Their website and their hotline state that you need to contact your local health department to see if you can be tested, but to just self-isolate like you have it.

My friend attempted to get tested, called the local district health department/CDC - she could not be tested. You have to either be a healthcare professional with symptoms, live in an area of a suspected cluster of infections, work in a congregate setting (she does not), or be hospitalized due to fever or lower respiratory infection and have tested negative for flu. Obviously, she wasn't going to go to the hospital for mild symptoms, esp because non-COVID tests wouldn't be free and she couldn't afford them. and also who wants to take a bed away from the people that need it?

So the CDC/local health ordered her quarantined, and gave her a letter. 99% of the civilized world would accept this. However, her company is giving her a hard time that it's not a "doctor's note". They made a statement saying that others who "recently got sick" went to a virtual doctor and get notes. So my friend pointed out "what do you mean others - you mean others had COVID-like symptoms and you DIDN'T TELL US???!!". HR brushed that off like it was ok. So there's possibly a mass breakout at their office. Her BOSS is home sick too!

But she also said "wait, why should the department of health letter not qualify? once I told them I had COVID symptoms, the urgent care or primary care physician would have referred me to call the CDC/local health department to see if I can get tested, and I *DID* the latter. they wouldn't have me come in due to risk of getting their practice infected.

And a virtual teledoctor can't take my temperature or examine me thoroughly online, and it's not free! and I'm out of work right now! they literally would do the same thing the department of health did - listen to my symptoms, advise me to stay home".

so nobody will tell her if she can return to work. she is now thinking she might just leave the job and report them to OSHA/federal authorities for unsafe practices, since the company isn't following social distancing requirements, nor reporting known cases at the company to other employees.

so angry on her behalf.

well to your own credit at least you observed the two weeks distancing xp

to put what I said yesterday another way.
1) If I am trying to stay at home I need to know that the parameters of that home are safe and that I don't have another agency introducing external factors into it for no reason. So having some idiot decide that the entranceway to my space is open for them to hang out in is revolting.
& up to now I have kept the door unlocked to allow mail to be delivered and people to access me. Now have to keep the street door locked which totally screws that up since landlord hasn't fit an intercom to my door several flights up.

2) at a time that has probably increased suicidal thoughts among the population one measure that had been pretty recently introduced appears to have removed. There have been a large number of people jumping into the river here so they introduced a system where that river had patrols watching that they didn't. & I'm not seeing them around anymore when I've been in town.
Does need people to be that patrol and they would be vulnerable to the virus in the process. But surely they do need to have some measures against suicide.
Which has me wondering if similar things are happening elsewhere.

This new 'oh lol maybe you do need a mask after all, our bad, or maybe you don't actually, who can say (masturbates furiously while alternating between hysterical laughter and copious weeping)' shit is inducing the first mild twinges of despair in me. Like I didn't really have all that much faith in the people 'in charge' to begin with, but this kinda makes me feel like we're truly on our own to an unnerving extent.

the other thing I'm trying to do is boost awareness of the $600 unemployment because it seems to have been dwarfed by the news of the stimulus checks. lots don't know they're eligible for it so I want them to hear how it works.

fortunately it seems like states are just going to pay the extra out, but the federal government is funding it. so if you're already eligible for unemployment and getting it, they'll just start bumping your payments up $600 no application needed. it's those people who aren't usually eligible, like gig workers and contractors, self-employed people, people who had to quit their job because of coronavirus, or had their job not begin due to it that I worry about, as it appears they are going to have to apply for it.

States are still awaiting on guidance so I'm worried it will take weeks to implement. I hope not.

so right now I just keep sharing the article daily and telling everyone I know about it, and friends are sharing it. just feel like that's the best we can do. make sure nobody gets left behind.

in other news, most Floridians have spent over a week trying to file for unemployment and can't, due to understaffing and a flawed website, and they're "hiring" 100 more people as if that's going to help in the near future.

― narcissistic sleighride (Neanderthal), Monday, March 30, 2020 7:23 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Been checking the website of my local unemployment office every day, and their recent update is basically "we're waiting for guidance, could take weeks." I fear that when they finally have this all sorted there is going to be a major traffic jam. I've tried calling, but no one answers the phone, because of course they don't.

I haven't been outside my front door for a week but I was running out of food, so I decided to make the trip to my local supermarket today, luckily it is literally at the end of my street. So, donning my makeshift face mask of a red silk handkerchief held together at the back by a Ramones badge I headed out. I was glad to see that the good people of the area were dutifully queueing along the pavement outside Morrisons, six feet apart, not so delighted to see some not so good people walking along the pavement - which was definitely not six feet wide - the whole length of the queue when there was an empty pavement just across the road. Anyway, the supermarket was pretty well stocked - I even bagged some toilet roll and eggs - for more or less everything but pasta and rice, I also appreciated the choice of background music they were piping in, The Carpenters, "Close to You". Got all I need for now, so didn't need to check out my local corner shops, I'm assuming they're still open if I am in desperate need of pasta or rice.

another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day
another day

my makeshift face mask of a red silk handkerchief held together at the back by a Ramones badge

LOL that is very Boab-like!