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

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

the present is a Hell, but it's a hell we know and can react to in real time. if you worry about the future all of the time, you're worrying about millions of combinations of hells and your anxiety will process them all equally as likely threats and you'll feel under siege even though none of it is happening. that's what put me in a hospital in 2009 for an anxiety attack that I thought was a heart attack.

obviously it's hard not to think about the future now, but I have to stop myself when I get too deep into it.

The present has pleasures. Wallow in them, even if they're only puddle-deep. I'm reading books (and writing one). I'm going through the hard drive where I keep the bulk of my music, and pulling out things I haven't heard in years, or don't remember ever hearing in full at all. Yesterday I took a walk and noticed several restaurants that are open, so this week I'll be trying things I've never eaten before. On Friday I recorded an interview with a musician I've been a fan of for 30 years.

none of these are options. walking means coming within 6 feet of someone every 30 seconds or more and getting catcalled the whole way, still; I can't listen to music since I constantly have transcription; there really aren't that many restaurants near me that are open and the ones that are I either can't eat at or have grown sick of (and I'm trying not to order takeout anyway because I could lose my job at any second); I've barely been able to get necessary reading/writing done, let alone anything ancillary to that

if anything there seem to be more catcallers during all of this, not fewer

I've yet to talk to anyone who loves social distancing.

I've not heard anyone else say that either, however I'm not hating it, because I'm getting to work on music from morning till night, which is all I've ever wanted to do with my life. Of course, I've still got a job waiting for me when this is all over (hopefully) which I'm still getting paid for (so far). Not seeing anyone else is not too much of a problem for me because I've totally gone in to obsessional hermit mode. In terms of the future, all I'm really thinking about is when I will have to venture out to buy food again.

I live in a quartier with constant catcalling and from what I’ve watched out the window, it’s gotten worse, because the assholes who do it feel no compunction about violating the lockdown.

i was doing a lot better before my dad's incident. had to console mom crying today due to stress.

also wigging out wondering if I can realistically work from here, knowing that the distractions may make it hard. I could do FMLA, but it'd be unpaid, so I couldn't do it long-term. feel like my brother and I will tag team whenever the home health isn't here.

plus he'll be walking better when he's had more time to recover from surgery. he was walking better than this a few weeks ago (albeit, not MUCH).

on the plus side, he's speaking more, he corrected me on a plot point I misunderstood on TV, and he jokingly told me to shut up yesterday, which means he's doing a little bit better.

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.
Aimless is otm — if anxiety is about the future and depression is about the past, the only solution is to focus on the present, and I mean like the very day you’re living in. It’s bad but it’s also right in front of us and bite sized and manageable. The future is unseeable and the past is obviously unchangeable. Dwelling and ruminating on either is a surefire way to make today even worse than it is. Resisting that urge and focusing on the present is the only thing keeping me chugging through each day and it’s hard but the alternative is debilitating.

good post La Lechera

I can’t afford to lose my shit rn and I’d prefer to not lose it anyway. I’ve been really frank w my mom when she starts to hypothesize or my dad when he starts to freak out about November and how terrible Trump is. You gotta draw boundaries w your own brain sometimes too.

I’m single and introverted, live alone and am used to social isolation, and my lifelong job has also prepared me for this, but it feels very hard, I haven’t had a real conversation with anyone in person in over a month, the closest I’ve come was a zoom book club meeting

I’m v interested in these weird new symptoms being reported - that broadway guy got his leg amputated due to covid complications and I saw another story from a friend of a friend whose BIL suffered a series of mini strokes after his recovery that drs think is related to covid

it was likely covered in thread before but there was an interesting (though somewhat anecdotal) article in Wapo that brought a theory that covid 19 is a much broader, multi-organ attack, particularly kidney, liver, heart, and gi. it proposed that the body's massive immune response in the lungs, which causes such catastrophe, has masked the wider effects.

Would explain why my wife is still coughing after 30 days while I had literally one night of shivers and aching legs but then a horrible (and, we thought, unrelated) IBS flare up in the weeks after.

my housemate got ill for just a few days and since then has not been able to walk properly. he's always had back and sciatica problems but he says he's lost a load of feeling down one side of his leg. we couldn't work out if it's corona related or not though...

I do not understand how one is supposed to not worry about the future when I have a vested interest in what the future is going to be like because I have to fucking live it

one problem i find with worrying about the future (speaking as someone who has worried about it my entire life) is that it is so utterly unpredictable. sure i could've worried about pandemics for the last two decades but despite knowing about the risk there was so much else to worry about that i was completely caught off-guard by coronavirus. in general this is the problem with worrying about the future - there's plenty to worry about and then out of nowhere it turns out the thing you should've spent worrying about was totally off yr radar.

also even if you worry about the *right* thing your worrying isn't go to change it

— Chronic Worrier

I'm sorry katherine. Many <3s.

Also booming post from Lechera. I wrote something longer about the daily labors being what actually keeps things going until the future is the present, but it's been said before and better.

This weekend was one of the harder ones for me, just in terms of mentally dealing with the loss of everything that will not be happening. While every single one of them was anticipated, Friday I was overwhelmed with a whole sting of cancellation confirmations - kid's school out for the rest of the year, my son's baseball (for which I was to be coaching) canceled for the year, a trip with friends to Colorado in late summer canceled, baseball camp for my son canceled. Again, we were anticipating all of those, but it was a bit overwhelming to see them all in black and white on the same day.

Obviously not as serious as those of you struggling with being ill or ill family members, but it was the first weekend during which the scope of this thing threatened to pull me under.

"string"

I want to bring all my friends who are struggling home to stay with me, and all the suffering ilxors too.

NYC just canceled all public events requiring permits through the end of June. No Pride parade, no Puerto Rican Day parade, etc.

God it seems like a different age when the Tartan Day parade organizers were trying to hedge their bets even after St Pat's was cancelled, and I was yelling at them on twitter to do the right thing and cancel or sacrifice their primarily portly, older, red-faced followers. Like it was even a possibility that they would have a parade and then pack thousands of ppl into a venue in mid-April.

It feels more and more like -- whether you choose to focus on the present or not -- that you are going to be processed by whatever is going on. Whether you get covid, or whether you will have work or make rent over the next month...just howls of laughter when I got my pension statement through the post the other day. No way that's happening. It feels certain to me although part of me just doesn't want to see what the world will look like.

in orbit otm, it's crazy to think that I was at one point arguing with a friend of mine who was insistent on taking their kids to the St. Patrick's Day parade! Fortunately the city wisely came to their senses and canceled it first.

Our retirement account statement came the other day and I filed that one away unopened....

I will check on my net worth again sometime next year.

I do well not dwelling on stuff during the day, but as soon as I try and fall asleep it's like a pack of wolves descending on my mind... the wisdom is sound, but the habit is hard to break.

I've noticed some things on my once sometimes twice weekly jaunts outside. For a start I feel like shit when I'm outside, I feel like coughing as soon as the air hits me - which I assume is probably hay fever. Secondly I'm amazed at how many people there are out and about - social distancing? You're 'avin' a laugh! Also traffic is still annoyingly ever present - that's fucking London for you. Buses are still running and they're much emptier but we're not talking like one or two passengers per bus, put it this way, I wouldn't get on one.

those people on the bus are probably going to the job that they're forced to go to, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Xh7VB-u-U

in other words, they probably wouldn't get on one either, if they had a choice

xp

What, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon?

It's London, the place is full of dipsticks.

the thing about the future vs. the present is that the present is being alone, hemorrhaging money and what's left of any career prospects I might have, gaining weight and getting older, having social ties atrophy. and then all of this is also happening on a global scale, and any options I might have previously had to improve my situation are no longer possible. and even when lockdown is over there will be pressure to self-lockdown anyway until there's a vaccine, which is 1-2 years.

I also lol at communications about my pension, it already existed in the realm of mythology for me and I pay into it as an act of radical optimism - yes, there will be such a thing as retirement for me in 2053 and I will get this much money to live on and it will be enough, sure - but now the idea is even more of a joke and paying in more than the minimum contribution feels mildly quixotic. Maybe UBI will be sufficient after the post-covid reconstruction tho eh

retirement is darkly funny to me because earlier this year I was finally in a position where I could start saving for retirement, but kept putting off opening the account (in part because when does one have the time to spend potentially hours in a bank?), and of course since the stock market crashed earlier this year would have been an awful time to start one

lol katherine, similar thing happened to me. i started up an account 2 months ago. at least since i invested little, I lost little, but sigh

i chose not to contribute to a 401k at my new job, because i doubt i will ever retire, HR followed up to try to convince me to use it, the day we went WFH i'd had a meeting with the company rep that afternoon which is now obviously cancelled indefinitely. felt a little bit redeemed

Also booming post from Lechera.

Seconded. Reminds me of this Rebecca Solnit quote:

Despair is a form of certainty, certainty that the future will be a lot like the present or decline from it. Optimism is similarly confident about what will happen. Both are grounds for not acting. Hope can be the knowledge that reality doesn't necessarily match our plans.

And also regarding quarantine life more generally, from Clarice Lispector:

Living is like being tired and not being able to sleep.