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

I also liked how this article addressed a bunch of questions that are probably pretty common, but don't seem to be answered elsewhere

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/well/live/coronavirus-contagion-spead-clothes-shoes-hair-newspaper-packages-mail-infectious.html

Re. USPS. Don't give up hope. I sent a few packages from LA to Montreal last year. Following the tracking info I saw that all of them (!) were sent to Moscow (!!). And yet... Eventually all were delivered to their Montreal destinees.

I suspect that the postal clerk who gave me shit for coming in at the end of the day with 5 whole packages that did not cause her to work late was somehow responsible for this but I never got around to making enquires and once they were received it was moot.

Yeah, I mean clearly larger problems in the world and I'm happy to wait, I just wish there was some update or indication that they were trying to help. I was hoping for a, "hey we forwarded this to the last known station that received the package to see if they can help" but instead it's just constantly re-confirming the same thing the tracking tells me, i.e. nothing.

xp -- I cut my own hair the other day, and while it obviously isn't any kind of a professional job it is acceptable to me for the time being (used regular scissors because I didn't have shears, but I doubt that could produce any more split ends than were already present)

the worst part of it honestly was the 1-2 hours of motion sickness afterward from craning my head in every direction

that's a lot of motion sickness!

it might be the golden age for self-hair-care, the time of great experimentation and understanding

1. That puck shaped Remington seems v cool. Not sure I would want puck shaped given how i do, but the price is good and charges and guards, that's where i mighta gone if i'd known of it.
2. dropping a cat at the vet for shots yesterday i was waiting next to clipper rack. i actually looked up at the clerk and commented "wow, dog clippers are actually more expensive than human clippers!" and she responded "yup, dog hair can be coarse and filthy, the shears need to stand up."

most real clippers started at like $85 and went to $200.

my trans-species clipper arbitrage genius plan, dashed

I am hitting the fucking wall of self-pity and depression today. This just all feels so... futile. I am so very thankful to have a job, but I feel like right now that's the sole reason I exist... to make sure those wheels of capitalism keep on turning. Everything single thing I enjoyed doing in my free time has disappeared, I have absolutely no social life, every fucking single event I had planned for the entire year has evaporated. I'm not alone or unique, but the heaviness of just having fucking... nothing to look forward to is overwhelming me today.

feelin ya jon

things might get better!

Thanks, sorry to derail and wallow. Here I was thinking I was doing pretty well, it just all hit me this morning.

*checks thread title*

you are extremely on topic

things will get better. and you and we will adapt. you are appreciated here jon.

It's like not just the disappointment of waiting things out, it's the constant barrage of updates about how unlikely it is for all the things I love to even be around AT ALL when this is over.

already, mask-less is like the "before time."

don't comparative theology types explain that some of our conventions in dress and behavior were guided by concepts of physical wellness and safety, in addition to "spiritual" wellness? if so, which sect will decide first to state that masks are actually a requirement suggested by god, and that proper worshipful living means wearing one?

i think it'd likely be a new sect really, it would be weird to try to like, glue this one on maybe. unless like a pope or lama or roshi or whatever first required all parishioners to practice masking, and it held for a long time and then suddenly new scripture or revelation.

i'm going to go dig up a stump in my yard, it's gotta be better than me typing this, sorry. then i need to find a new crabapple tree somehow, which me luck.

which me, wish me, etc

good luck

now's a good time for everyone to try shaving your head imo
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/beauty/a32188285/women-shaving-head-covid-quarantine/
https://www.thecut.com/2020/04/quarantined-people-talk-about-shaving-their-heads.html
https://www.allure.com/story/covid-19-quarantine-hair-makeover

I literally see NO ONE except friends who deliver my food and my doormen, so any hair hacking will be done for comfort only

Interesting lecture here, starts at 1.08:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzdcMqipMIY

xp -- I get motion sickness very easily, certain video games do it as well, as well as cars ofc

that presentation way outperformed my expectations and i was legit stoked to hear etymology of donning and doffing. it’s logically clear enough that im surprised how surprised i was.

Yeah, i saw it at exactly the moment you were musing on those points, so kismet

Melancholy Horny

I'm able to get through the day as long as I have work. But in the evenings I start wanting to "break loose." Then I remember that I'm too nice a girl to let myself violate social distancing recommendations, and I start to hate myself. Then I remember that I'm so incompetent with men that I couldn't get laid back in the old days, and I hate myself even more. The only thing that keeps me from binge drinking is that I don't seem to feel it anymore.

LOL, the CDs I ordered that I've been upstairs, downstairs, in my lady's chamber, trying to trace and get delivered and which I eventually got a refund for, have turned up - almost a month to the day after I ordered them.

#ClapForCDs

I got another notification from the USPS this morning basically again confirming mine is "in transit". It wouldn't be a big deal if it as something I could just order later if it never shows up, it's a limited edition of 500 thing, so I'm worried if I wait too long it'll be gone and then my only recourse will be eBay or discogs or something for much more.

LOL, the CDs I ordered that I've been upstairs, downstairs, in my lady's chamber, trying to trace and get delivered and which I eventually got a refund for, have turned up - almost a month to the day after I ordered them.

Play once and shelve?

No way.

Some of us still enjoy and frequently play CDs, it's true!

They need a new name to make them ~fancy~ like rekkids > ‘vinyls’. i call them ‘metals,’ or sometimes ‘foils.’

compact discs!

Some of us still enjoy and frequently play CDs, it's true!

And playing them even more than usual, if not necessarily enjoying them more.

Exactly! Since I can't go to record stores and browse, I've been digging more deeply into the corners of my collection.

so is it ok yet to mail order stuff? still got the guilt

I thought we decided stuff shipped by USPS is good? Since they will be making their rounds anyway, it's not requiring any special trip or extra effort. Plus it's probably helping to support those small businesses for whom shipping is their only option right now. I could be wrong.

it's okay

I went to the post office today because I had the same experience as jon /via/ chi, my tracking was saying that the package had reached my facility a week ago, then 3 days later it was ‘in transit to another facility’. The postal worker told me that they were holding the package in quarantine at the regional facility for an unspecified amount of time ‘because it came from NY’

Meanwhile I ordered something via USPS and the seller clearly never mailed it (they just paid for the postage and it's been in "Waiting to Receive" status for 12 days), seller trying to say it was mailed and that it just takes a few days to update.

Yea, 1-2, not 12. Scammers still gonna scam even during a pandemic.

Just had a third Ebay buyer telling me the package hasn't turned up, from the last batch I sold a month ago. Post is fucked right now all over (admittedly this guy was in Chile, where the postal service is remedial at the best of times).

If you have means, support retailers, restaurants, and theaters you want to be around after this.

Kino Lorber and a number of other film distributors, and Alamo Drafthouse and other indie cinemas, are doing programs where one buys tickets for "virtual cinema", where the local theaters promote and get a ~50% cut of revenue for streaming (hosted by the distributors) of what would otherwise be current releases.

I'm presently trying to find whether I've the cables to send Extra Ordinary from my PC to my projector tonight.

for me it's not so much that I don't have means, more that the restaurants I really want to support aren't doing gift cards and aren't in delivery range unfortunately -- in normal times it'd be a short subway trip or a longish but doable walk for pickup, obviously these aren't normal times -- and it would feel incredibly weird and presumptuous to just fill out a contact form like "hey, can I just give you money?"

(despite my best efforts otherwise I'm pretty sure I'm gaining weight, it turns out that baking constantly and no longer walking several miles each day has an effect)

If they give 2k a month like Dems want, I'll probably give half of it to random businesses (the other half to debt)

I was in one of those little Tescos earlier, i.e. the ones with no room and no chance of social distancing, when in wander a couple deep in conversation. They promptly park themselves halfway down one of the aisles, basically preventing anyone else using it, and continue their nose-to-nose conversation but when I overhear the woman saying, "So where do you live? And do you know xxxx?", I realize they don't even know each other! It's London, the part of the UK with by far the highest incidence of COVID-19, so of course no-one is wearing a mask, including the staff in the shop.

If you’re a business with a loyal clientele and you offer something different, a GoFundMe stands a good chance of being successful. There are a couple of restaurants in Stratford that have “pre-sold” dinners at inflated prices for whenever they reopen and reached their goals in a matter of days. So much so that they’ve got enough left over to donate to charity.

What is the effect of a corona sufferer being stuck in a job where they're packing meat. Does it just spread to the other members of the workforce or does it spread to the product?
JUst hearing about it spreading rapidly through the workforce. Does the meat packed get destroyed automatically or does it just get distributed?

O if only there were a government department setting standards for food safety and making and enforcing regulations. Maybe they could even have instead sectors who were empowered to halt production. What a crazy idea, sounds like socialism

(Sorry, not quite apolitical there)

Instead sectors? = inspectors

Mostly other workers and their families. Yes there's some SARS-CoV-2 on the meat, just as there's normally high counts of fecal bacteria from evisceration, but normal cooking would kill these.