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

Or you could save the N95 for the more dire times to come, and wear a bandanna in the meantime?

yeah Hadrian otm

here's a crazy experiment: 1) exhale into your palm, then 2) do it again with ANY FUCKING OBJECT between your palm and your mouth

or yeah you could obsess about whether the seal is correctly fitted to your facial shape, then say fuck it and say the whole effort is futile

i mean, you do you, silby

sheesh

I don't think it's futile, I just am cranky about it and inevitably doing all the things people will scold you for doing, like constantly touching the mask.

it's not a burden I think it's not something that needs to be added to the list of things the cops are empowered to hassle people about by ordering it.

we are wearing a surgical mask on the rare occasions when we're going to situations where we know we're gonna be in an enclosed area with other people.... basically grocery stores.

Otherwise, we're doing a bandana anytime we're on the streets.

i'm wearing it around my neck while jogging and trying to stay WAY the fuck away from people as best i can. the jogging is new and it's saving me from going completely crazy. i better go now actually.

like I'm doing the mask thing despite not being at all convinced that it has a marginal impact on anything, don't worry about me

I'm worried that the precipitate reopening thing in the USA is going to be like Hoover doubling down on private enterprise except the result will be even worse and more difficult to come back from

I went out in the car and to a store for the first time since March 14th and it was weird. A major factor in this was that we are getting low on beer and wine and can't seem to get those delivered to us via anyone.

I was going to go to the local independent beer and wine shop but called them to see what they had going on and they were alarmingly lax - like "just come in, wear a mask, or don't, whatever, it's cool". I ended up going to whole foods because I'd heard that they were at least trying. Only two people there weren't wearing masks, people seemed to stay far away from each other, they had sanitizer and wipes at the entry way and barriers in front of workers and such but it still felt harrowing and stressful and I spent as much time cleaning and wiping shit at home as I did shopping.

we spent way less money these last six weeks because we haven't been going out and buying beer and cheese and salads and such and of course I ended up spending six weeks worth of beer and cheese and salad money in one shot this morning.

Yeah I've been... overcompensating a little with the purchasing lately.

One thing is that the kids need new summer clothes. We never really needed them so urgently before because they always wore their uniforms.

I went out in the car earlier too, for the fourth time in about a month. It was a sunny clear afternoon; the countryside here is absolutely stunning. Driving alone through it, it felt like it was there just for me. Then I felt bad because I never come out and see it any more.

Surreal going over the M5 on a sunny day and seeing it nearly empty. God I was tempted to make a detour via the seafront.

We have a local booze shop with a terrible name, but it delivers and also will bring groceries, apparently. I have a bit of gin left and only loads of tiny cans of this cucumber tonic water which I ordered by mistake. It's ok. And a fridge full of cider, obviously. Plus a couple of Budweiser bottles the local Indian restaurant gives away free with every order, for some reason, if things get really bad.

So if they are unable to say that wearing a mask will absolutely save you or someone else from COVID-19, then they are not effective.

the untruth of this is all we need to know. about _everything_.

Sure, but it might be more helpful to stop framing these things as binary options and instead talk about risk gradients. Going shopping with no mask and no distancing is maybe a moderate risk. Shopping with mask and distancing is low risk. Etc.

the problem with that is "low risk" for who?

If you are going out w/o a mask you are jeaopardizing the curve-flattening effort. People need to stop w/ this risk calculus that hinges on *how* risky a certain behavior is...your comfort with one set of odds is not going to be the same as another person's that you run the risk of infecting—either directly or as part of a system that perpetuates this fucking this for another year.

This is maddening.

this fucking *thing*

people trying to hedge/fine-tune/freestyle the advvised practices according to how personally at-risk they think they are—it's the same logic these jackass protesters are using

Ok, but that gets us into a situation where we are told masks are not effective

today felt like three days. i'm emotionally exhausted. it's not dad. mom is having meltdowns over the stress. trying to keep her sane.

on the plus side I did manage to watch both seasons of Atlanta

the weirdest part was early on when everyone was like "surgical masks have no effect" and I was thinking "then why do they wear them during surgery?"

god I really hope there isn't a Heaven/Hell, because I sure as shit don't want to spend the afterlife with 99% of the people out there right now.

i want to spend it with worms

Well, you know what Sartre would say...

I don't 😣

Sad!

regardless of uncertainty about how effective masks are, wearing some kind of face covering in public is important, as respect for other people and for their legitimate concerns.

I agree!

It’s a thing I’ll do even if I don’t think it does anything other than inside of my head, like praying, except that I like praying more.

lol

some of the face coverings out there have made me so happy to see

It's not an answer I actually want, but I keep wondering how vulnerable eyes are. Should I be wearing glasses to keep droplets out of my eyes?

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Wednesday, April 22, 2020 7:06 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Multiple xposts here. I seem to recall reading that the nasal passages are by far the most vulnerable entry point on the face. The mouth contains a lot more bacteria so would require a more substantial viral load to penetrate. The eyes, I guess, are less vulnerable than the nose and more so than the mouth, if that helps. It's probably very difficult to become infected that way though if you're keeping your distance and no carriers of the disease actually sneeze or cough at you. Ears I couldn't tell you about, or any other orifices (I can't imagine anyone much having caught COVID-19 anally but you never know).

Don't take my word for any of this, btw.

I can't imagine anyone much having caught COVID-19 anally but you never know

butt chugging coronavirus, off

I guess eyes seem extra vulnerable to me bc they’re wet, they’re big, they’re exposed to the air, and they go straight into your head!

I’ll try not to think about it too much.

i have to take my glasses off if i'm wearing a mask, otherwise they get all fogged up

Nostrils are more vulnerable than eyes, but only because breathing in actively pulls in whatever is floating nearby. Eyes are passive receptors.

our nicely made but homemade masks don't have metal nose crimps, which greatly reduce fogging and leakage there. i have a genius idea to affix a ~1.5" length of flexible adhesive weatherstripping that is somewhere in our belongings that i think will create a good seal/substitute there and would be removable/replaceable for the daily wash cycles, but i have not found the stripping yet.

I sewed a jumbo paper clip into my homemade mask, bent straight into a piece of wire and then shaped around the bridge of my nose. The mask sits high under my eyes and I let the bottom edge of my glasses sit to the outside of the mask, over where the wire/fabric hugs close to my face. It moves the glasses forward from where they normally are, but I can see through them well enough. There's some fogging, but not a lot.

i have to take my glasses off if i'm wearing a mask, otherwise they get all fogged up

― crüt

This has been driving me crazy

It doesn't seem like decorative masks are a thing in countries where it became common to wear one over the last 15 years but team masks are going to overtake baseball hat sales in like a week.

Looking forward to being able to get an Ebbets Field throwback flannel Brooklyn Dodgers mask.

https://www.nytimes.com/article/glasses-fog-wearing-mask-coronavirus.html

Haven't worked out how many washes a mask can take.
Probably ought to make one anyway.

this lockdown has brought me to the opinion that fresh milk is overrated and I'm quite down with supermarket brand UHT skimmed milk for tea, coffee, sauces, soups etc .. might just start using it all the time now. Yeah .. do one Gapesy!

So...has anyone attempted to cut their own hair? Been watching a couple of videos YouTube, playing with taking a scissor to it for at least a trim this weekend.

Me me me mememememe! I bought a set of clippers/trimmer online and watched a lot of youtube videos and did my bf's and mine last week. Came out pretty well!

Could you give us a link of the videos that were most useful.

I just put a number 2 attachment on and keep the shaver going over and again, and no matter how many times you do it and the all the different plains of your head you think is done you will always miss a bit. If you are locked down alone use two mirrors to check the top and back of your head.

I'm sorry if that sounds garbled I'm out on the phone.

All I have is a pair of scissors and a comb. Don't know what to do about the back of my head..xp tx call that was clear.

*thx calz

i employ the Calzino Hair Method to that exact specification

Yep, pretty much - a big mirror in the bathroom and a phone for the back of my head. It always takes longer than I remember.

Just buy some clippers.