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

sounds positive! glad he got the surgery so quickly.

Aw, that's good news.

ha matthew i got one of those emails today too. it’s like... chill out. i’m probably giving you a good grade.

anyway i’ve been very frustrated by the lack of testing / conditions one has to meet in order to get tested here in the states, which just seems to me like a way to impose regimentation and rationality on something that does not have the human capacity for logic. in part this is because i’ve been having major digestive problems and chills and coughing off and on since the beginning of march, but i don’t have a fever and haven’t been around anyone coming from a hotspot to my knowledge so i guess i can go get fucked, even though universities are petri dishes even when things are normal? cool system we have here

or as richard marx put it

Hey, remember how for years we had “smoking” and “non-smoking” sections of planes and restaurants? Then, eventually, enough people realized that cigarette smoke doesn’t know which section is which and it was stupid as fuck? Remember? Good, cuz a bunch of dumb motherfuckers forgot

— Richard Marx (@richardmarx) April 18, 2020

Richard Marx otm

Just checking his twitter, he's a cool guy!

Yeah but he also swears he "left her by the river" so

Social distancing in action.

even in normal times I don't really care when students turn in work---as long as it's before the deadline the university gives me for filing grades at the end of the term, I can work with them.

same here euler

nice

I don't have a lot of students this term, just one small course, but the students have been writing to me to say that they've had trouble thinking and getting their acts together and could I accept their work a little late, and I'm like, it's the same for me! it's hard for me to think right now and I have to keep begging for deadline extensions too! we are all in this together.

the administration of my school is being pretty annoying about micromanaging our compliance w the new reality -- there was a list going around of instructors who supposedly were not compliant but the list was pulled from bad data so we have to waste ALL THIS TIME clarifying and explaining and defending ourselves. it's ridiculous.

maintaining the connection i have built w my classes and staying organized and not losing students are my tpp priorities atm -- there are no due dates in the assignments i created in the LMS, people who are sticklers about that are either dealing with students who need a lot of structure or, at worst, are uptight jerkholes

the administration of my school is being pretty annoying about micromanaging our compliance w the new reality

I'm supposed to enter a list of what I did every day onto a spreadsheet, and I keep forgetting to do it at the end of the day, so I try to do it at the end of the week but by Friday afternoon my brain is a puddle of stew and I can barely remember that I'm alive, let alone what I did all week.

I made my meek adjustments to online (hate the term "remote") learning without a hitch, and I've had some mild attrition, but otherwise students haven't changed their habits. I've been slacker on deadlines -- that's the only difference.

sounds like you are doing awesome work la lechera, must be great for your students to have a caring teacher throughout all this.

my school trying to keep administrative procedures (and even our drop-in classes!) going was ridiculous...I'm laid off now and honestly I'm happy about it, 4 hours of online ESL teaching a day was doing my head in.

yeah that would do me in as well -- it feels like talking with the same people but talking through a wall or from inside a box. really hard to keep things moving!!
and thank you <3 i am doing my best and trying to be creative about how to approach end-of-semester projects and stuff like that. it has been fun to talk with them about what they're cooking, how they are approaching home ec topics.

i totally flaked on a class this week because i haven’t been feeling well. once my stomach gets right i’m planning on rectifying that though

The "Get My Payment" app on the IRS website is giving me the dreaded "status not available" message, and apparently there is nothing I can do. I qualify and filed a tax return last year so I should darn well be in the system. It's apparently a pretty common occurrence to see this info but given reports of money going to the wrong accounts it's still worrying/infuriating.

Also, comedy broadcast from the comedian's home is the saddest comedy.

Yeah, Colbert's opening monologues have the "pause for laughter" thing and its disconcerting with no audience. Though I have to say the Dylan bit at the start of Friday's was the funniest thing I've seen in a long while.

Ya, the pauses make it super weird. OTOH I caught Jimmy Kimmel's show a couple nights ago and thought he'd adjusted pretty well. Still it was very dark viewing somehow. But maybe it's growing on me, because I kinda wanna watch SNL tonight just to steep in the dystopian semiotics of the new format.

Tonight's a rerun, not sure when the next "live" one will be.

Yeah doesn't snl rely on ensemble qualities.

Completely unrelated.
Found out that Guerssen Records has a note up saying they have no way of sending things out. I think it says you can make purchases but there is no post in Spain at the moment. Hope that isn't fatal cos they're a nice label.
Have been meaning to pick up some stuff from them since I bought stuff before Xmas.
Wonder if this is happening elsewhere and if people can actually weather it.
Assume there must be rent and storage and things to cover while things are at a standstill.

Ensemble qualities being difficult to duplicate while members are in isolation from each other.

Did hear that Michael Che has picked up the rent tab for several apartments in the block his dead mother lived in in honour of her passing. & he's not that well off. Heard it on a podcast yesterday plus discussion of what a comedian's salary is likely to be.

That is baller as heck

K if SNL is a rerun then imma watch The Irishman instead

as predicted, The Discourse has moved from "actually, social distancing is really popular and only the protesters dislike about it." just because people recognize that they're worse than the alternative doesn't mean they're fucking popular! is there some parallel world where people don't feel complete despair over all this? do those people just possess a capacity to be morally shamed out of despair that I don't?

("they're" = "these measures")

depends what you mean by "popular". sad to say we live in a world where the options only seem to be "yes, we hate it but we want to save lives" or "it's a liberal Chinese conspiracy to shut down the economy and take away our guns and OUR FREEDOM". in that sense, yes, social distancing is more "popular"

is there some parallel world where people don't feel complete despair over all this? do those people just possess a capacity to be morally shamed out of despair that I don't?

Not sure if I'm managing to parse this but it sounds rather like you think people should be ashamed of not feeling despair (at social distancing?). If I don't feel despair it's not because I've been morally shamed into it. Quite the opposite.

Now this all may be all bad for many people, but I feel on the contrary that you're likely to encounter moral censure or accusations of contrarianism for saying what you like about (side effects of) these measures without including a whole stack of disclaimers. Even then.

And feeling despair (or anything) is never a moral duty.

Yeah. And nobody can police your thoughts because nobody knows what they are

Not sure if I'm managing to parse this but it sounds rather like you think people should be ashamed of not feeling despair (at social distancing?).

My reading of Katherine's post was more "it's okay to feel despair," not "you should be ashamed of not feeling despair."

Positivity over the measures in the survey clearly meant "we think they are helping and need to continue them", not "we are overjoyed at not being able to leave the house and everything being closed and living on meager savings

What survey? Maybe that's some context for that post.

Because of course I can understand "is there a parallel universe?"

But "do those people just possess a capacity to be morally shamed out of despair that I don't?" reads like "people who feel differently to me (must/might - it's a bizarre notion either way) do so, not because they just feel otherwise, but because they have a capacity (?) to have been morally shamed out of it.

I dunno, maybe that's supposed to be a positive quality "those people" have but it read ironically like a strange ('shaminf') attack on people for feeling a certain way (i.e. differently to 'me', i.e. not correctly.)

I remain open to the possibility I have failed to parse this post and also that it was just an off the cuff remark. Not trying to start a flame war.

I have been exchanging long emails over the past 3 weeks(?) with someone I met on OkCupid who I now believe is catfishing me. Anybody been in this situation before and have advice? The right thing to do is just block and move on, isn't it? Don't try to confront them, they'll just have an explanation ready for everything and try to make me feel bad for trusting my own suspicions.

I think you nailed it. Trust your instinct, chalk it up to experience and drop them. There's nothing healthy happening there.

“social distancing is really popular” lol maybe if you can afford it, sure

just assembled a bedside commode. +20 XP

it isn't an attack on them, it's just that, because of all of the protests, the morally acceptable position carved all of this seems to have become "social distancing is really popular and you must love it, or else you are satan incarnate," an expansion of the previous, still-in-effect only morally acceptable position of "only satan incarnate is worried about the oncoming great depression." the desire for all of this to end -- independent of whether that is a good thing or something one would advocate for, just the desire for the world to return to how it was when the future was not indefinitely this, when 22 million people in the country so far were not employed and when most methods of deriving joy from or improving one's life prospects have been ended indefinitely for everybody -- has been reframed as something only karen who wants to get her hair cut feels.

which, if you do in fact hate all this, and are terrified about the oncoming great depression, and remain so despite all Discourse telling you not to be leaves you in a very agonizing position. because not only do I feel despair about all of this, it is compounded by the knowledge that this despair now makes me satan incarnate.

feeling sad and yearning for covid-19 to end is one thing that is totally normal and not satanic at all. protesting that governors reopen states to normal business while the virus is still killing people and at risk to continue to grow because of lack of testing is more of the satanic karen being critiqued.

I haven't talked to anyone for whom the isolation/distancing has been a cause of despair - all the other stuff, yes. Impending Great Depression 2, small businesses going under, how am I going to put food on the table, etc. but IME people separate that as a failure of the state from the necessary steps of isolation/distancing.

I mean, there's a reason why the traditional advice for people who are severely depressed is to leave the house

not to mention the countless studies demonstrating the importance of in-person social interaction, physical touch, etc., all of which are now not options

xpost with Mordy and milo

because of all of the protests, the morally acceptable position carved all of this seems to have become "social distancing is really popular and you must love it, or else you are satan incarnate," an expansion of the previous, still-in-effect only morally acceptable position of "only satan incarnate is worried about the oncoming great depression."

Disclaimer: you and I never agree on anything and you always seem to take my disagreements with you as personal attacks on you, rather than simple opposing opinions. So I will declare up front that This Is Not That.

Nobody I'm reading (on social media, in "think pieces," or anywhere else) likes social distancing. Plenty of people are seriously unhappy about being stuck in their dwellings (and that's without even considering the plight of homeless people, prisoners, etc.) But they like the idea of choking to death in a hospital bed even less. So they tend to view people who are really, really mad that they can't go to the beach or to a chain restaurant (and participating in astroturf "protest" pseudo-events about it) as...the assholes that they fucking are.

the morally acceptable position carved all of this seems to have become "social distancing is really popular and you must love it, or else you are satan incarnate,"

I've yet to talk to anyone who loves social distancing. It sucks bigly. It just happens at present to be the only effective tool for slowing the spread of a very contagious and dangerous disease, that is capable of creating much worse havoc than social distancing is creating.

terrified about the oncoming great depression, and remain so despite all Discourse telling you not to be

The best available social and governmental response to this crisis would recognize that a 'socialist' approach is the only sound and fair one. It should be seen as a social necessity to allow everyone the best possible chance to survive this pandemic and under the present circumstances the money to ensure that end should be pumped into society to whatever amount is needed to reach that goal.

The economy has not been brought to a standstill. None of the vital infrastructure of the economy has disappeared. The essential needs of life are being met. We can piece the rest back together when the greatest danger has receded. This, too, shall pass. We need to remind each other that when this is over nobody should have their lives wrecked because a huge necessity fell on all of us equally. Plenty of lives will be wrecked as it is without compounding the problem with greed and vindictiveness.

I mean, all things being equal (which they're not) and if you could somehow remove the risk of infecting someone else (which you can't), if my choices for the rest of my life are dying in a hospital bed or living through another several years of near-total isolation followed by/in conjunction with a great depression -- and something tells me the current political climate is not going to allow an FDR-style solution out of it, so it may last even longer -- where, unlike the actual great depression, you can't even interact with other human beings, then I'm not sure I wouldn't choose the hospital bed

another several years of near-total isolation

this is v unlikely fwiw i see these articles w/ headlines like "think this will be over soon? prepare for 2 more years experts say" and i think they're irresponsible. not only is that a worst case scenario but even then we're talking about punctuated distancing with some things being relaxed and then maybe reversed again.

I wish you could somehow shut your mind to fears about the future. This is probably a futile wish on my part, but it's a losing game to try to outguess what will happen in the next couple of years. No one knows what 2022 will look like and your brain is inventing a wretched future that makes you all the unhappier in the present.

the alternatives are to live in the present, which is hell, or the past, which is irrecoverable