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

not sure if mine is summer-weight, but it definitely stopped me from touching my face and wasn't 'hot' or anything.

but on the downside, my friends tell me i look crepey with it on

tho they also said the same thing when i took it off so

I wore a N95 mask and disposable gloves to Booker and Sainsbury's the other day, nobody batted an eyelid in Booker, people were still scared of me in Sainsbury's.

That's been my uniform too, no one seems to mind. Definitely noticed an uptick in mask wearers at Target yesterday.

yeah in about a week it shot up from about maybe like 15% of people having them to like more than half the customers I saw

hey guys, I moved to Toronto end of February and

moving across the country and starting a new job in which you have to actually go into the office each day in a pandemic? do not recommend at all

it does feel weird to be employed in a period when almost everyone is laid off or not working etc esp when I've spent a lot of my life under/unemployed

anyway, I'm mostly settled in now except minor things here and there and I'm mostly convinced I have the virus but asymptomatic considering how often I go out

My cousin sent us some homemade cloth masks with no filter layer, which I truly can’t imagine make an appreciable difference to anything other than making me uncomfortable and thus touching my face while outside more than I would. They’re cute though.

Two layers of cotton fabric can do a significant amount to prevent you from potentially spreading to others, and at least guaranteeing a basic blocker in case you sneeze or cough in public. While not foolproof the idea is that it is enough to make a significant difference in the reduction of airborn virus particles.

masks also tell other people in the supermarket to stand the fuck away from you

honestly, there’s a measurable difference in people’s behaviour when i’m not wearing a mask, they stand near me and brush past me and even bump into me

I literally feel like I'm being chased.

Oh you're behind me and encroaching on me? Ok, gonna jog a little forwar....oh shit, someone's coming the other way.

maybe I can parkour over the frozen....shit, someone's looking at green beans.

backflip onto the top of the tv dinner freezer it is

This is exactly it, like the walls are closing all on sides

parkour otm, i’ve been pulling off some borderline acrobatic feats just to get away from thick people xp

from outbreak thred:

I've been keeping track of my own timeline through this--last day in a school, last movie in a theatre, last coffee in a public place--and I'm pretty sure all of that ended with me no later than March 16. I've been extremely careful since then: walks, grocery store, post office, scarf/gloves/never-close-to anybody. If the incubation period remains at two weeks maximum in almost all cases, than I feel like I can say, with a 90-95% confidence level, that if I were to contract it now, that'd be alarming with regards to the limits of what you can do to stay safe--basically, that never leaving the house is the only option.

― clemenza, Sunday, April 5, 2020 6:00 PM bookmarkflaglink

Wrong thread, probably.

― clemenza, Sunday, April 5, 2020 6:00 PM bookmarkflaglink

3/10 was really a major turning point for me.

a week earlier is when it finally hit me what a real threat this was. i was on my way to a concert (Overkill) on 3/10 when I started reading articles while eating at the Waffle House across from my hotel - all of the condiments were gone as the manager wanted them pulled. starts were starting to talk about closing. I said to myself "this is probably my last concert for a while", thinking gatherings would be banned soon.

the next 24 hours was such an escalation. I had a rehearsal for my Fringe play and while we were there, the NBA season was suspended, and within 10 hours or so, all leagues had suspended play. Trump had just suspended Europe travel. I now realized it wasn't just big gatherings that were over, but mostly everything.

pretty much everything stopped for me that day.

I need weed to proceed

feel like i'm constantly doing dishes

so who's wearing masks? I wore my balaclava to the grocery store and looked like a bank robber.

― no feeble christ (Neanderthal)

here in portland we call that the "antifa look", i bet there are some antifa folks feeling really smug about themselves right now

For us it really was Friday the 13th. I had a pesky workmergency, my wife texted me about a minor scrape she got on the car in a parking lot, we were aware of the threat but dealing with normal stuff in more or less normal ways.

Then boom. Schools are closed for a month, go the fuck home and stay there, grocery stores emptied by panic buying, every music gig and practice suddenly off. Not that much later it was: boom, there goes prom and graduation and birthday parties and Girl Scouts and swim class and dance class and the school play.

No bat mitvahs, no Spring Break atts camp. No speech therapy, occupational therapy, no physical therapy. No dentist appointments or new glasses or haircuts. No first dates, no games, no playoffs.

We've stopped talking about all the things that were expected but now won't happen.

I know all of this probably seems trivial, but. There are millions of ghost childhoods off in some alternate universe where this isn't happening, and a million timy stupid heartbreaks in the spaces they would have occupied.

Thanks for relocating my comment, this is where I meant to post it.

A friend and I were talking, and the day that will be Day 1 for many people will be March 12: Tom Hanks and his wife were diagnosed and the NBA shut down within hours of each other.

I stopped going to work on the 10th because I didn’t think the subway was safe any longer (played sick for three days until my workplace got on the same page on the 13th).

We had already been building up our pantry for at least a week and had enough non perishables. Focused on perishables on the 11th and 12th (bought a rolly cart for the occasion!)

Last day inside a store was the 14th, got stuff at the hardware store and a fuckload of tea from the Indian grocery.

Since then, only dog walks (4x/day, he’s not old enough to do a three walk day yet).

Started practicing mask use about a week ago after watching the video Forks linked.

I flew internationally on March16th. A few days later I had a bad sore throat, and developed a dry cough, chest tightness and chest heaviness that was extreme enough to really alarm me, fatigue, loss of smell/taste/appetite. I never had much of a fever. It lasted two weeks. I called my doctor when the chest tightness reached a peak and I was panicking. She told me to stay home unless I became short of breath. I never.got tested. I think California is way behind on testing

I’m better now

not sure if mine is summer-weight, but it definitely stopped me from touching my face and wasn't 'hot' or anything.

but on the downside, my friends tell me i look crepey with it on

― no feeble christ (Neanderthal), Sunday, April 5, 2020 3:33 PM

perhaps you should remind your friends that this is a batter of life and death

i think they get the whole mask thing but expected a scarf or something

i don't care, it's dope and does its job!

yeah i mean as long as they’re also committed to flattening this thing out, should be a piece of cake

most of my social circle is very much on the "stay the fuck home" wavelength, even before it was mandated. had one metalhead friend who was like "this is so overblown" and ten other metalheads swooped in to say "you're wrong", which...surprised me, lol

btw Dr Drew admitted he was wrong on his original "the media overblew this" hot take.

cool bruh. yr still an asshole.

no kidding. shut yr flap, jack !

kinda dead to me for going on Fox News at all

I do like a batter of life and death

I guess you swing that way

feel like i'm constantly doing dishes

good grief yes. I'm constantly flashing back to those parts in the stories of the early explorers where there are three months of constant cooking and cleaning.

I misread that and thought you guys were discussing symptoms for a second.

There’s a couple of pieces around suggesting the BCG vaccine (for TB) is correlated with better outcomes. They’re doing trials on it now.

From the Irish Times:

A study of 178 countries by an Irish medical consultant working with epidemiologists at the University of Texas in Houston shows countries with vaccination programmes – including Ireland – have far fewer coronavirus cases by a factor 10, compared to where BCG programmes are no longer deployed.

This translates into a death rate up to 20-times less, according to urologist Paul Hegarty of the Mater Hospital, Dublin.

Their “correlation” study, expected to be published shortly by PLOS journal, is largely a statistical one and comes with caveats because of possibility of confounding factors. But it is more comprehensive than an initial one conducted in New York, which prompted a scaling up of clinical trials on people with Covid-19.

To reduce the possibility of error, the researchers re-evaluated cases during the course of the pandemic and made country-by-country comparisons including between Ireland and the UK, Mr Hegarty said. “We did not expect to see such a marked difference.”

“Over the 15 days, incidence of Covid-19 was 38 per million in countries with BCG vaccination whereas the incidence of Covid-19 was 358 per million in the absence of such a programme. The death rate was 4.28 per million in countries with BCG programmes and 40 per million in countries without such a programme,” he added.

Like other vaccines, B.C.G. has a specific target: TB. But evidence accumulating over the past decade suggests the vaccine also has so-called off-target effects, reducing viral illnesses, respiratory infections and sepsis, and appears to bolster the body’s immune system.

The idea is an offshoot of the “hygiene hypothesis,” which suggests that the modern emphasis on cleanliness has deprived children of exposure to germs. The lack of “training” has resulted in weakened immune systems, less able to resist disease.

One of the earliest studies hinting at the broad benefits of B.C.G. vaccination was a randomized trial of 2,320 babies in Guinea-Bissau in West Africa, published in 2011, that reported that death rates among low-birth-weight babies were dramatically reduced after vaccination. A follow-up trial reported that infectious-disease mortality rates in low-birth-weight babies who were vaccinated were cut by more than 40 percent.

Other epidemiological studies — including a 25-year study of over 150,000 children in 33 countries — have reported a 40 percent lower risk of acute lower respiratory tract infections in children who received a B.C.G. vaccine.

A study in the elderly found that consecutive B.C.G. vaccinations reduced the incidence of acute upper respiratory tract infections.

lol suck it antivaxxers

I went to the store this morning. Wasn't too bad, only thing they didn't have was flour and yeast (as far as I could tell). I wore my new bespoke mask for the first time, and if I'm being honest, it makes me feel *less* safe. Just the way your breath catches in there, and you feel the moisture condensing, and you feel every breath in and out, plus it brings attention to itself and yet you're afraid to touch it or adjust it, plus it's kinda itchy and makes me want to sneeze or rub my nose. I guess I'll get used to it or, even more effective, maybe I'll find it so annoying and distracting that I'll go out even less. On the plus side, this was the first time I went out where the majority of people were covering their face, so there's that. Also some people conspicuously disinterested in doing anything. And I passed one woman who gave out a loud, aggressive single (wet) cough without covering her face. It's fitting we got this virus from animals, because animals is what we are.

HENLEY: Well, yeah.

Got a little annoyed at the Uber Eats driver who insisted on making me open the door to grab the food from him this morning rather than leaving it at the door as requested.

But it isn't any worse than the people you can't get away from at the grocery store, so w/e

Broke down and got groceries after 2 weeks. Customers 50% masked. The geiger counter soundtrack from Chernobyl's rooftop scene would have been appropriate for the distanced jousting of the produce section.

You love it

(xpost) I was somewhat annoyed by the postal clerk today who made me get out my wallet and show ID to pick up a package. Under normal circumstances, they sometimes ask and sometimes don't--you've already got the delivery notice out of your PO Box, so unless you physically terrorized someone else into handing over their notice for a package the contents of which are unknown to you, the notice is yours. For a $20 CD, you need ID in the middle of a pandemic?

I know anyone still out there working is going through a lot, so I didn't say anything.

I ordered beer with a restaurant delivery last week, dude dropped everything at the door and took off before I could even come down with ID. Works for me.

scored some tp

in a weird turn of events i have started (remotely) dating someone in the last two weeks and it's going ludicrously well, which is wonderful, a reason to look forward to the future and all that, but also EXCRUCIATING

amazing to have any sort of dating success via the awkward-by-default medium of video chat

Uh, wha?

idk i guess this isn't an irrational fear but it's an irrational experience

I have been predicting for a while that this would be overall bad for marriages and overall good for online/remote dating so glad to see at least the good part of that is maybe anecdotally panning out

Congrats Brad!

this would be overall bad for marriages

Why, pray tell?

I believe it can, in some cases, be bad for marriages (too much forced time together?) but I refuse to believe in any kind of golden era for video dating