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

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.

I'm amazed Orange County doesn't have tighter ordinances, given its blue-ness and Walt Disney World.

you'd think! but hell, our Democratic Mayor Demings was the one who solicited Desantis to re-open salons, which weren't originally going to reopen this month.

Some people? What? Who? Where?

Writers.

Oh weird, Neanderthal, I’m from Orlando, too.

Nice! Whereabouts? I'm near the University of Central Florida

I actually just moved, but yeah I’m from around that area as well. Lived there most of my life, left for school and work for several years, fucked up and had to come home and now I’m in Tampa.

Are you at UCF?

heh nah but I graduated from there years ago. I'm in the area because lost my previous lease so I found a new place to live and opted to look in that area, since I know the area. I'm less than 2 miles away from the campus though.

Ha, yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve been in college as well. Had to had to had to get out of Orlando though. Not sure I would have made it without a good enough reason.

Stepped out 2 hours and dad falls again while I'm out. Not violently but mom can't get him up.

Sigh. Gonna have to again ask for my bro to step up. Can't be freaked every time i go to the store

Richard Florida on Slate Money was pretty interesting, and one very catchy insight he offered was that the biggest problem for dense cities now isn't mass transit but the elevator. The kinds of queueing we would need to maintain social distancing and avoid multiple people in the elevator at the same time in large urban office buildings is pretty insane and almost unfathomable.

How are folks doing explaining this to their children?

My kids are understanding transmisibility surprisingly well, they are just struggling to grasp why they can't have their old life back right now

My son is old enough to understand it well, but I think he's much more paranoid about it. He's barely set foot outside of the house since the quarantine started.

I can't even. I just can't.

Desantis can argue the unemployment system was broken before him. He can't explain away how he's made it worse.

He waived work search requirements through 5/30, which was wise. he eliminated the one-week "wait" period. however, references to both still appear all over the site, confusing people.

Also - he suspended the need to log in and claim weeks every two weeks to avoid the overload on the server, a few weeks back. good move.

he just let that expire, so going forward, people have to log on every two weeks to claim benefits.

INEXPLICABLY, this is now requiring everybody who had a previously unprocessed application to request the PREVIOUS weeks they already requested. Requiring them to fill out pages and pages of information as to whether they looked for work or not, and if not, why not. I go out to the unemployment twitter and it says this is intentional, and we should just not worry about it because the work search requirement is waived.

What. the. fuck? so I answered everything smugly with a "this is not applicable, Desantis suspended work search requirements" for my mom. Finally...FINALLY on the last page, it asks IS THIS CLAIM DUE TO COVID-19? oh...nice of you to ask!

then after I submit both weeks, it says there are pending issues with both weeks claimed, and....says the first week won't be paid due to waiting period (which isn't true).

we're basically being told to trust answering "we aren't searching for jobs right now" isn't going to invalidate the application. the site, which had been functioning better in recent weeks, is crashing more often now as a result.

I am tempted to just take the stupid COVID-19 withdrawal and pay my mother she would have gotten through unemployment with it. then if we get any money from unemployment, great.

she's taken care of. I think a lot of Floridians in need are going to die if something doesn't happen. they shut the site down every weekend and...nothing happens.

I've been spamming this all over FB knowing it won't change anything but w/e:

https://www.krem.com/mobile/article/news/politics/local-experts-examine-the-question-are-stay-at-home-orders-unconstitutional/293-8575b5bf-6694-4389-8ce8-7d02736b8795

he's much more paranoid about it. He's barely set foot outside of the house since the quarantine started.

His lifetime experience of illness is limited enough that he has no real scale to measure this against and a child knows to his bones that if his parents are put out of commission, he is in deep shit, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was his primary fear.

his lifetime experience of anything, really, being a child

I don't blame him for it, plus he's a natural introvert, doesn't go out a lot either way, but I naturally worry.

Feeling under the weather today. I've been cold symptom-free since lockdown began, so it always makes you wonder when you suddenly feel sniffly, but hopefully it's just the spring tree pollen in the air.

. however, references to both still appear all over the site, confusing people.

it will not surprise me if this was the intention

o. nate if it makes you feel any better sniffles/congestion are pretty uncommon covid symptoms afaik.

his lifetime experience of anything, really, being a child

Not there’s much for him to experience atm. Our children are gonna be hardened masterminds of survival if they’re not traumatized into dysfunction.

we are all harlow's monkeys

omg

new borad description

What a great time for my wifi device to give up the ghost. Had to buy a new device, new plan, the whole shooting match - with EE, even though they're shite and have bled me dry for the last 6 years, because who can be arsed shopping around right now? As I said to the guy I spoke to on the phone, I hope EE give you a bonus for this.

i went back to the sainsburys i mentioned upthread. i waited outside. bloke obv thought i was queueing and waved me in. i was actually waiting because there were *4* staff members stood within 1m of the door all chatting about how the wonky wheel on the milk trolley was slightly dangerous.

they've closed some of the self-service tills to help with separation, but there are 4 on the one side and 3 of those were open. the bloke scanning stuff as i was packing seemed awfully close, like i could touch him with my elbow close. (this thing has changed us)

(ie nobody would've worried about that 2 months ago, wouldn't even've noticed)

I know it's small potatoes, comparatively, but the lack of any social outlet at all is reaaaallly starting to eat away at me. We had been having zoom and drinks with friends every other week, but there was apparently somehow a decision made to switch it into a "wives only" thing. Which is fine, I know being away from her friends this long has been really hard for my wife, and they seem to cheer her up immensely, so I'm grateful she has that outlet. I've tried to start an equivalent with a couple of the husbands, but that's gone nowhere so far. There was a couple of guys I played trivia with that wanted to set up a weekly trivia thing, unfortunately they've locked into the exact specific hour each week when I have therapy (which I can't move, and is pretty important to me right now especially).

So it's... just work. I've even started working on the weekends just to have something to do. And, that's about it. I'm grateful to have a job and be healthy, but goddamn without having any social contact or go to any of the places I might otherwise turn for self-care, it's just... I don't know. The longer this drags on the worse I'm feeling.

that's not small potatoes - sounds like it sucks! sorry to hear about all that.

I'll admit to feeling confident enough to visit friends' backyards and sitting 10 feet apart.

My daughter wants to go spend the night at her girlfriend's apartment---they've not seen each other for two months. We're going to let her go, but I have very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, we're in deconfinement officially now. On the other hand, I expect we'll be reconfined soon enough. Still, both of them have had no contact with anyone outside their homes (the girlfriend has been in the countryside the last two months, not in her apartment here in the city, since university's been virtual-only since then; she's coming to town for a day just to clear out her flat and go back to the countryside for the indefinite future). They won't see each other again until August at the earliest. Still, this is so hard.

My class at work had 19 people, including me and my co-facilitator.

In the ONE WEEK since it started:

*5 of the 19 will have taken time off for bereavement by week's end.
*1 was removed because she was hospitalized
*One of the aforementioned 5 also had her sister admitted to the hospital for COVID-like breathing issues.

Sad illustration of how real and wide reaching the virus is. I've never had a quarter of a class have someone die in the exact same timeframe. I don't know that they were COVID related, but considering I've never had more than one person in the same class experience a death in 10 years... I'd have to wager some of them are.

I don't care about the work aspect. But just shows you how its reach is crazy.

That is crazy, wow. Thankfully I haven't encountered that much personally just yet, hope it can stay that way.

It's also great that my insane workload, which only continues to increase, has been keeping me from spending the time I want to be spending with my son on his home learning. 4-6 hours of meetings a day make that nearly impossible. I feel like an absolute failure on so many levels.

what do you teach neanderthal?

I virtual teach introductory courses lasting anywhere from 5 to 19 days on Health and welfare, 401(k), Pension to customer care representatives.

(Congress made that fun by passing laws changing Minimum Distribution age in Dec and giving us no time to update materials)

now seems like a challenging time for that subject!
(also all my retirement funds are liquid, am i going to hell?)

That'd be more something a Schwab type could answer (I'm more a Government regulations, unit accounting, transaction and procedures guy, but not licensed for financial advice), but you'll probably be alright long-term based on my own 401k.

Lots of our clients are implementing the new COVID withdrawal. That'll be another fun thing I have to learn on the fly

just kidding, any savings i have is likely to be wiped out by COVID

Hahaha "savings", "retirement". One thing about finishing grad school in 2000 and watching 9/11, endless wars, a major recession and a likely depression in the years since is knowing that "retirement" is a useless pipe dream. I'm kinda glad I have absolutely no expectations of that being a reality. I simply think of my retirement funds as future emergency savings.

Related:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/coronavirus-inequality-america.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/style/the-rich-are-preparing-for-coronavirus-differently.html

"retirement" is a useless pipe dream

Just try to figure out a way to own the roof over your head and the patch of land it sits on, even if it's just a double-wide trailer. Then pay the mortgage off in full by age 60 or so. After that your biggest problem is reduced to paying for food, heat, water and electricity. It may not be much, but you can live that way and not be homeless.

Honestly it's kind of nuts that if you are 18.5 years old, in your lifetime, you've experienced 9/11, the Great Recession less than ten years later, and another major recession a little over a decade later, caused by the worst pandemic to arrive in the US in over 100 years. Plus a startling uptick in school spree shootings.

I had nothing at that level my first 19 years of life.