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

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

xp - close confinement exacerbating frictions, I expect

So spending time apart is overall better than not for married couples? Sounds vaguely ideological.

Bit of a stretch there Pom :)

Why, pray tell?

ime when you live with someone you need a balance of time together and apart for optimal results

Sorry, I'll take it to the uncool conservative beliefs thread.

i would think internet dating now has a lot less pressure/more fun. Like how those pandas just smashed after 10 years of not smashing.

exactly like that

ime when you live with someone you need a balance of time together and apart for optimal results

It depends on the state of your relationship overall. If there are large external factors keeping the marriage together (mortgage, kid/kids, etc.) then sure, you might need a break. But if you're two people with no larger obligations in/to the world, who are just married because you enjoy each other's company, then this situation can represent either no change or a change for the better.

relatedly

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/world/coronavirus-domestic-violence.html

My wife sent me this. pic.twitter.com/yFv0ctGnU9

— John_Hempton (@John_Hempton) March 25, 2020

Went for a modest run, and boy, am I already starting to see masks and gloves littered all over the place.

kudos to the old dude in the supermarket this morning who LICKED HIS FINGERS to pick up a pack of toilet paper

Well, you don't want the packs to stick together now, do you

Went for a modest run, and boy, am I already starting to see masks and gloves littered all over the place.

Went on my sixth delivery run today and my lord the # of gloves and masks littering public transit is abhorrent.

people are fucking pigs

It depends on the state of your relationship overall

unperson otm

Watdching a live stream of my dad's send off and seeing taht people in Kenya either don't get social distancing or haven't had it introduced asa restriction. They had a curfew a couple of weeks ago in Nairobi at least.
Depressing to think that in a group so9 large at least one p[erson has presumably got it and may have spread it further.

Not sure what I was expecting, Dad's wife and their children? I guess he came from a reasonably large family so what counts as immediate family covers a lot of people.
I was expoecting an interment and a later memorial service once the virus was gone.
Now feeling powerless to see a potential disaster. Hope against hope it doesn't spread any further among these people.

Thought it odd taht commercial internal flights were still happening for the family to get half way across the country.
Dad was 81, i think his wife must be something similar. & so must Dad's siblings. and other peers.

I went shopping on Saturday and found the car park had a load of gloves floating around it. Also the pavement on the walk up there had a number of gloves lying there.
Great way to contain the spread.

Also noticing there's a load of people walking around in teh same pair of gloves for ages.So are probably thinking that's an end in itself not just that any virus contact will be spread elsewhere by the gloves. Don't like wasting so much plastic on changing pairs between every shop but think it is probably a lot safer.

sorry you've lost you dad stevolende

MY dad's ceremony has a lot of people walking around in surgical masks and now has a priest talking about Corona but it would just appear a bit wasted if people aren't keeping distance and arehugging and shaking hands freely. Or queuing up to pay tribute to the open casket or whatever.
Don't want to be thinking about that at a time like this. But would have thought the safety measures would need to be pretty universal

Dad died of an existing condition at a time taht the virus is heavily around. I was thinking it was probably better that it was immediate than him lingering in restricted conditions.
& that the funeral wasn't going to b etaht since I thought there was a larger event penciled in for later this year for precisely that reason.
So really do not want to think of people having attended this taking the virus with them to allparts of Kenya and elsewhere.
THought they were too intelligent to be doing something like taht.

Stevo I'm so sorry.

I've now been told that in Kenya the Coronavirus has been concentrated in Nairobi , the capital city and Mombasa one of the big ports.
So anybody in the area near the banks of Lake Victoria should be safe to congregate. Is that mindlessly naive, a problem that happened in the West already or is it likely to be remotely true?
& if people from both of the infected areas have flown in to attend a funeral is it still true then?

so sorry for your loss Stevo

sorry to hear that stevo

well hoping i don't lose any more of my family after this.

Thanks

oh man stevolende so sorry to hear this, sending you best wishes

very sorry for your loss, stevolende

Condolences.