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

dad went to the bathroom by himself today. wasn't intentional, we still spot him. my mother went to the store without warning me while I was working in the other room, so he got up on his own, and suddenly I saw him standing outside my door. walked behind him to make sure he got in but he barely needed me. walked, sat, pulled his pants down, peed by himself, redressed himself, got up on his own power. even asked "what's on the agenda for today?" yesterday, which is positively Shakespearean for him.

glad to see he's getting better. soon I won't be needed here anymore but I'm wondering if it might be better for me to stay here a while. my mental health has been better here than in my own place.

who the fuck would go outside to look at the jetblue 2000 feet overhead? what? what???

After the saga of the CDs I ordered turning up 3 weeks later and the postman not bothering to ring a doorbell and posting a non-delivery slip claiming I wasn't at home, forcing me to get them delivered to the horrible post office in Seven Sisters Road where I got into a stand-up argument with the guy behind the counter, all of this after I'd cancelled the order and got a refund, I ordered something online again on Wednesday. Amazingly, although I'd ordered this item at quarter to five on Wednesday, it was delivered the next morning - except it wasn't because the postman didn't bother to ring a doorbell and posted a non-delivery slip claiming I wasn't at home. So, having checked online to see if my local delivery office was open the following day - and it was, from 7am to 9am - I got up extra early to walk down there, only to find it shut, because it's a Bank Holiday Weekend, hooray! So do I risk schlepping down to the delivery office on Monday, given that the Royal Mail website doesn't tell you if there's a bank holiday on or not, or do I wait till Tuesday? Minor stuff, in the grand scheme of things, but irritating. Probably best not to order anything online for the foreseeable.

your postman is an idiot - in what world are people not at home as much as possible right now?

Go on Tuesday! You can wait an extra day for 3rd-level Krautrock or whatever it is, Monday will be dismally overcrowded everywhere. Are you sure you're doorbell's working, btw?

(xp) Yes, that's what I don't get, unless they're under instruction not to ring doorbells or deal with people face to face - which I could understand.

If there are too many packages for a postie to carry on rounds, they post a card through but they just use the standard ‘we called but you were out’ instead of making one specific to the ‘we didn’t bring them along’ situation. Enraging, I know, but because I have to attend Mount Pleasant sorting office for my parcels, I got a decent explanation.

Ah right, that could be it. Having seen a programme once on the pressure they're put on to do their rounds on time I'm generally sympathetic to posties.

Do they not have trucks??

Tricycles iirc

Pish and tosh! Join the 21st century!

https://secure.i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00679/Postman_with_mail_t_679417c.jpg

I think I need to clarify to @Telegraph readers, who may have seen the truncated headline, that the full quote is .... "I've been having cocktails parties on Zoom" ... really, matron!! #carryonisolation pic.twitter.com/1bx9dPw34Z

— Elaine Paige (@elaine_paige) May 7, 2020

a constant throughout this: my parents are both exposed to sick people regularly, and as a result have a plausible brush with coronavirus at least twice a week; nothing has turned up positive but I can't tell you the number of times I've been very worried because, say, my mother had bad allergies and was coughing on the phone, or my father has a non-COVID-related procedure but shrugs off the fact that the doctor was mysteriously ill for two weeks or so. (or maybe it wasn't allergies, who knows?)

i'm the same any time my dad coughs or my mom talks about a sore throat (tho she's confirmed negative).

getting my test now!

ugh I hate nasal swabs but glad it's done. went to Publix, lots of people with no masks, not following arrows, not distancing, so I got mad and wrote a pretty angry FB post about the collective ignorance of people who deliberately don't wear masks and put people at risk.

of course, of fucking COURSE, after I pointed out I wasn't talking about individual cases, but collective behavior, one of my best friends, whom I consider family, and has taken it seriously (but I guess didn't wear a mask at Publix today) snapped and took offense and got really angry at me.

on the one hand, fighting with one of my best friends isn't what I wanted to do this morning, on the other, why the fuck weren't you wearing a mask, and why were you assuming I was talking about you personally?

so now I'm worked up again, yay. glad I just bought Duvel!

I've had to hide friends that I used to respect on facebook for sharing bug-shit conspiracy theories.

I am currently reduced to day-drinking due to teaching my 5 year-old how to write the letter P. My wife is working from home and kids camps are cancelled until July so I'm the childcare with my broken leg. While I keep reminding myself how lucky I am, I'm getting deeply burnt out. Wish I could fucking go for a walk.

friend had the gall to say I'M an angry person and defend all of the hypothetical people in my example. I mean, he's not wrong about me being angry, but this is a dude who was going to a therapist for anger management, and seems to always think making content-free, inoffensive statements is better than actual directed vitriol.

so now i'm angry and not talking to dude for managing to make my attempt at venting all about him and his feewings. fuuuuuuuuuck everybody's going nuts.

I went to the store today and the most infuriating move is two middle aged white guts standing 1.5m apart diagonally across a supermarket aisle, thus blocking passage for everyone else. TBF everyone else has given up distancing and no one his doing masks here so it's somewhat academic. Case load is low here but opening up is going to cause an explosion of cases if people don't keep up on their hygiene. I can't imagine anyone who is ignoring this distancing rules is paying much attention to washing their hands.

Par for the course in London, Ed, and has been all along.

on thursday a woman stood on one side of the aisle and her trolley blocked the whole rest of the aisle for no reason. i stood and waited patiently for 20 seconds, then kicked her trolley up the aisle. fuck everyone like this.

It was particularly noticeable today as, unlike past weeks, these goons appear to have conquered their fear and are now doing this in the aisles of my local Chinese supermarket.

oh today was crazy

The other day I heard this noise like an approaching cyclist on a narrow country lane and turned around and could see nothing, and heard a noise like something just whizzed past me. Then I heard lots of police sirens a couple of miles away. I think it might have been a police operated drone that flew over me. Either that or I'm getting to the auditory hallucinations stage of a complete mental breakdown.

Monday is deconfinement day here and it is likely to be crazy, though since bars cafés restos aren't opening maybe it'll be a bit less crazy. the second peak is gonna be "great" next month and we'll get to do this all over again.

we’re being asked to stay the course a little while longer, and rupert murdoch is cracking the absolute fucking shits

I haven't left the apartment in two months (well, as of Monday it'll be 2 months on the nose). My university is now saying that it's very probable that we won't have in-person classes in the fall. Obviously all in-person conferences have been canceled for the duration (even one in November was recently canceled). I'm just realizing that the earliest I'll do anything outside my apartment for my job will be January 2021, and that's optimistic. It's just...weird.

a friend of mine from childhood shared this piece of shit this morning (https://www.aier.org/article/woodstock-occurred-in-the-middle-of-a-pandemic/) and I got angry enough that I spent two hours researching and debunking the article. The author ignored most of my points the first time and acted defensive, saying it wasn't meant to be an "academic text". So I replied with this. I doubt he'll retract it but his central point is undermined by the data itself.

"Obviously, I know it was a serious pandemic. But I see you failed to address my other points.

The purpose of your article appears to suggest we're being irresponsible "shutting down". One friend of mine has already shared your article to suggest we shouldn't shut down, and this is a friend who has already violated social distancing measures. If that wasn't your intention - that's how it's being used.

I read your document shared (actually before you shared it with me), but it doesn't actually bolster your point. The death toll (100,000) is one you flout as evidence of its comparability to COVID-19, but you fail to realize this was a death toll arrived at over 4 years (https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/18/1/64/447194). The initial epidemic (September 1968 - March 1969) killed 33,800, approximately (https://www.co.washington.or.us/Emergenc…/…/pandemic-flu.cfm, https://www.globalsecurity.org/…/hsc-scen-3_pandemic-1968.h…). It returned another three seasons, but incidentally, the second wave (1969-1970) was much milder than the first in the US (which the article you attached indicates). So Woodstock occurred during a 'pandemic', yes, but the death toll was much lower that time (which is the opposite of how it worked in Europe). The death toll was probably in the 10,000s based on what I've read in the articles above.

Hong Kong Flu came back two more times, so combined, there were about 98,000 "excess deaths" (or deaths above forecast) due to this strain of the flu in a 4 year span. It didn't all happen in one season.

COVID-19 has killed just shy of 80,000 people in about a 3 month span. That's many more deaths than Hong Kong flu killed in the first 5 months it existed If COVID-19 returns in waves like the Hong Kong flu does, I don't think I have to tell you what that will mean from a death toll perspective. The consensus is that the 1968 Hong Kong flu, while serious, held a low death rate compared to other pandemics (https://books.google.com/books?id=WBx6McA35iYC). It is theorized that one reason for this is because it was similar to the 1957 Asian flu pandemic, so many civilians may have had antibodies to the flu (https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp…). We had no such antibodies for COVID-19, which was a novel strain.

This strain still exists, btw - which is what we're trying to avoid with COVID-19. If not careful, COVID-19 could become endemic, meaning on top of seasonal flu, we'll have seasonal coronavirus. Far less lethal by then, of course, but who wants to fight off multiple diseases?

So, you can knock off your irresponsible "merely asking questions", and realize that these two situations aren't comparable."

I probably fucked some of my interpretation up but I did my best

Preach it!

ugh I hate nasal swabs but glad it's done. went to Publix, lots of people with no masks, not following arrows, not distancing, so I got mad and wrote a pretty angry FB post about the collective ignorance of people who deliberately don't wear masks and put people at risk.

Wow. Ordinances really do vary county to county. In Miami-Dade, you must wear mask to Publix, Whole Foods, Target, Walmart, etc. The stores will not allow you in.

I wish that was the case here! Walmart is actually managing the number of people that can go in at a time, Publix is not. However, the people who go to Walmart seem to care less and pay no attention to the signage or the arrows and don't wear masks, whereas the Publix customers mostly wear them (though still too few for my liking).

then again, given how many shootings have happened when people just tried to ask someone to put on a mask, I can understand why stores are nervous. but I hope that is coming here soon.

article writer updated his article, but he cherry-picked what he wanted to update.

he's still doubling down that the 100k death toll was from two consecutive flu seasons (rather than the 4 seasons it appeared to be). but even if he were right that 100k did die over two flu seasons, thats 10-12 months worth of deaths, as opposed as 80,000 deaths in a mere 3 months for COVID. Likewise, I couldn't find much information on how the Hong Kong flu spread, and whether asymptomatic spread was as large as it is suspected to be with COVID-19. Because if it was mostly spread by symptomatic people, that's a pretty major detail.

i'm done arguing for the day.

it is suddenly hitting me, like actually hitting me, that this is likely going to go on for the rest of 2020 (the wave of summer/fall cancellations is starting); and of course I feel like shit for feeling this, but I miss having anything to look forward to

You’re very hard on yourself for feeling things that are totally normal to be feeling

Sorry your life feels rotten, katherine. It takes a lot of optimism to dig around in a pile of horseshit and still maintain the hope you'll uncover a pony somewhere in there. I hope your today is a bit better than your yesterday and you find what it is you can look forward to.

In a non-covid-19 universe, I would have been roaming the Four Corners area with my wife on an organized small group tour this past week. Instead we walked around our neighborhood, dodging neighbors who were doing the same thing, slept middling poorly at night, and we spent a lot of hours indoors looking at glowing screens.

When I remember to, I feel lucky to have it this good. I have someone I can hug ten times a day and snuggle with at night.

What Mordy said, Katherine.

I've frequently thought: I have my health, I have my income, I have my work (albeit in a home-working way that doesn't suit me) and, in the scheme of things, I'm not massively inconvenienced (there was a week that getting hold of alcohol was an issue), but it can still feel hideous.

i don't participate, but if someone wants to clap and cheer nightly for our essential workers, that's cool

i do draw the line at setting your fucking car alarm to go off at seven every evening tho

in general, making a ton of meaningless noise at some preappointed time as a way to show your very minimal contribution feels a bit too on the nose for this moment

car alarms are totally worthless for any purpose other than making a loud annoying noise. it's not like they stop car prowling or theft. so your neighbor is simply using it for its highest and best use, which is also its worst use, and its only use.

xp -- it isn't really "my life," per se, but life, in general, the existence of genuine and not mediated social connection for anyone, and the atrophying of what exists already

and it's also difficult not to "be hard on myself" when people who do want this to end get slammed by, potentially, tens of thousands of people, the very clear message sent being "it is wrong to think this, so don't do it, or you're next." if anything I am far less hard on myself than people are on people in general

when people who do want this to end get slammed

I think 'wanting it to end' is a pretty universal position. Where people differ is the desirability of different approaches in trying to arrive at less social disruption. Because there is no known way to remove the virus from our midst that does not entail stopping transmission from person to person, it is all a matter of how much transmission can be tolerated without the disruption of society becoming far worse than we are now experiencing. Governors and their expert advisors are wrestling with that problem everywhere.

Allowing the virus a free path into every home would be catastrophic to society. Without effective isolation measures the virus spreads rapidly and intensely, as has been proved in places like Iran or Ecuador already. In the face of that situation, people would spontaneously revert to voluntary isolation asap, but with the added problem of millions of infected people requiring care, and essential services decaying from the attrition of workers.

There's just no better way to go right now than what we are doing.

Another one of the Chinese takeout places I order from regularly reopened, so I walked over there today (they're two blocks from my apartment) and there was some maskless dickhead (fedora, Teddy Roosevelt mustache) in there ahead of me. I stood as far away from him as possible while waiting for my order, and the urge to stab him in the neck — and yeah, I could have — was nearly overwhelming. If he had said anything hostile or conspiratorial or otherwise chud-ish, I would have kicked him in the balls without an instant's hesitation. I am not typically a person who gets angry in public, not for the last 20 years or so, anyway, but I was awash with rage at that asshole.

i think if you took a poll of 100 ilxors and asked them "do you want this isolation to end", 'yes' would win '99-1'.

this is perhaps true but also not is what being said

I don't really believe the majority of the world or the country wants to stay locked down forever for the hell of it. Some people, sure, but most everybody I hear from is miserable, including those who support social distancing measures, and are talking about missing the pleasures of life, their friends, families, etc. most of the vitriol is what Aimless has said - thinking that going back to normal now would be deleterious to our way of life, and will cause a second wave worse than the first, meaning more of this endless isolation.

I would like for everything to go magically back to normal but I don’t actually want to spend any time around people until the new case count in my locality is approximately zero for several weeks

i don't have a good feeling about Orange County, FL, because a friend told me he drove by downtown yesterday and saw a slew of people at local restaurants where the requirements Desantis put in place (outside seating, 25% capacity, social distancing) were being completely ignored.

IMO they should all be invited to a party at Joysticks, the local video game bar, and then the bar should be sealed from the outside.

I don't really believe the majority of the world or the country wants to stay locked down forever for the hell of it. Some people, sure

Some people? What? Who? Where?

I don't actually KNOW anybody who is enjoying the lockdown and/or wants it to continue, but could see a really extreme introvert hypothetically liking the arrangement.