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

Anyway, sorry to mostly apolitically discuss/vent about my rational/irrational fears and experiences in the Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020 thread.

Oh and I missed the news that as of a few days ago I officially live in the county with the highest number of cases in the US, so perhaps you will forgive my heightened state of alert wrt people who are still moving through the world like it's 2019.

if you have extra masks, one could always have them in ziplock baggies when leaving their home to give to people who do not have one.

I think it's condescending to delivery people to suggest they are incapable of common sense. Was this guy prohibited by his boss form wearing a mask and gloves? Or from setting the food down once OL came down to get it and keeping his distance?

zoom theatre including a reunion of the Orphan Black cast that I came across last night by looking at Facebook at the right time & getting apop up reminder.
Quite fun, not sure how interesting it would be to watch it as the recording that is up on their FB page. Couple of episodes and some between cast banter.
THought there might be some talk about it but doesn't seem to be.

xp i dunno are delivery people more capable of common sense than all the dumb motherfuckers out in lake geneva wisconsin this weekend

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/05/16/coronavirus-hundreds-flock-lake-geneva-downtown-most-without-masks/5207663002/

it seems like yesterday when a noticeable enough number of ilxors didn't feel like wearing a facecovering in public.

even actively arguing against the efficacy

I kinda wonder how people in states like WI and AZ are going to feel in a couple months when they find themselves once again stricken by the plague and back in strict lockdown while other states are taking sensible measures to slowly transition into something resembling normalcy. I kinda wonder.

I don't wonder. They're going to blame Obama and Nancy Pelosi and, somehow, Hillary Clinton for not protecting them.

Looks like my employers are building up to getting people to go back to work, got an email from my manager this morning reminding me to keep checking my work email account. Because I don't live too far away (15-30 mins on the bus, 45-60 mins walk) I'm anticipating being one of the ones they ask to come in. Damn it.

feeling generally like shit about my cratered productivity, and the "no one has productivity!" argument doesn't really resonate with me because if anything the career landscape feels more darwinian now, not less

I kinda wonder how people in states like WI and AZ are going to feel in a couple months when they find themselves once again stricken by the plague and back in strict lockdown while other states are taking sensible measures to slowly transition into something resembling normalcy. I kinda wonder.

if it's ever this clear - i'm not sure any of us are going to be able to slowly transition into something resembling normalcy until either vaccination or it just burns through the population.

lol i’m imagining OL remonstrating this delivery guy for not wearing a mask and the guy raising a finger and going “well, actually,”

that actually happened at the post office the other day

I kinda wonder how people in states like WI and AZ are going to feel in a couple months when they find themselves once again stricken by the plague and back in strict lockdown

i fear there's no escape. people will acclimate to the level of slaughter required in order to go to bars and to lakeside bullshit*, our social non-response** will be the 'best you can do with this shit' or even 'awesome,' and the economy will continue to crater and the usa will end. the end.

*i went by the local reservoir yesterday (very outdoors and distancy and masked), and the shit was like fucking coney island. cars lined up to drop boats for i'm guessing 30 mins. beaches filled in quite large groups, tho possibly just families, hard to say. bikes and strollers everywhere. no idea the level of actual-elevated-risk, but def not 0.

**my original catastrophic/phobic commentary was too ~political~, so i blamed ~society~

He’s allowed to vent here about the delivery person acting like a fool. I hope OL didn’t actually chew the guy out in person, of course. But also: to work in delivery in 2020 and not be aware of “contactless delivery” (whether trained but employer or not? I see this concept being mentioned *everywhere*) is rather silly. And a reasonable person, if expressly forbidden from drop off, would text or call or speak that while attempting to shove food into their client’s hands.

We have had a few successful drop offs, thankfully we have a front porch and no lobby nonsense to deal with.. but man the old Greek people who live in my neighborhood DNGAF in the grocery store. I pointed out the direction arrows on the floor to an old maskless lady the other day and she said “oh I just look first.” Also she was in front of me in line on the way in and didn’t stand in front of me, but instead stood diagonally to the rest of us, blocking the entire sidewalk for people walking by the grocery store. Stellar.
Of course part of the street is also pylon’d off to allow people to distance from the line to cross by the store.. but no one uses it.

(Wrong thread, I know, but haven't seen Finefinemusic on here in ages...Hope all is well in Toronto--I cleared out in November.)

General observation: at the grocery store, I'm finding men in their 30s to be the least mindful of present conditions. There's this sort of air of invincibility with a lot of them I encounter.

FTR, I didn't chew the delivery guy out at all. My interaction with him was basically 'uh...you can just, like, set that down?...on the ground...y'know, just right in front of you?...oh, okay, you're just going to mutely stare at me until I come directly up to you and take the food out of your unprotected hands, cool, cool, would you also like to give me a warm post-delivery hug while you're at it because why not at this point'.

as a person who gets to stay at home, i'm just really not into being heavily judgmental regarding the actions of people who are still required to go to work. idk what their access to PPE is, idk what information they're hearing, idk if they're thinking that since everything in nyc is gradually reopening that maybe shit's fine now. i've ordered delivery at least once a week and the attention paid to the delivery instructions has been wildly variable, but i'd also say the likelihood of you contracting the virus from someone *handing you a bag* is so low as to make your angst misguided

xp Hello pal! Mostly lurking, occasionally venting! :) Happy you got out. Very good timing in that we bought both a car and then a house last year so we are in a pretty good place for all of this, except for that place is in sometimes-sketchy and very densely packed Broadview North. Fair amount of grocery and drugstore workers getting sick which makes me that much angrier at the seniors shopping without a care in the world.

You shouldn’t order food, probably.

i felt the crushing weight of isolation when i went to trader joe's today
it made me realize how much i enjoy talking with people even when, yes, it's idle jib jab at trader joe's. i missed it. i didn't have to wait in a line around the parking lot to get in, and the whole process was perfectly fine. i just felt so sad for bygone times. i think my mom is having a hard time dealing with this too, as the sole person in the household who finds herself doing the same old errands in a dark new era. i mean it's that + everything else + dnw the rona

How dare you discuss/vent your rational/irrational fears in here of all places.. you monster

You shouldn’t order food, probably.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Monday, May 18, 2020 10:00 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think this conversation has already in this very thread but i find this position completely untenable

If there's anything we've learned, it's that you stand the best shot of contracting the virus if you're in an enclosed interior space with lots of people breathing the same air. I would be a little nervous receiving food from an unmasked or ungloved delivery person, but it would not compare to sitting inside a restaurant, a bus, or in a nursing home. This delivery person would've had to sneeze at exactly the moment when I approach him and walk through his droplets.

yeah I don't get what's wrong with food delivery. It's a beautiful break in routine on weekends. In my county everyone's required to wear masks.

OL's delivery person done fucked up IMO but I wouldn't go shoot him for it. I do think the possibility of infection via something like that is pretty low. At least I need to think that because we get delivery probably twice a week and I frankly have to limit the number of things that freak me out or I'll go nuts.

That was an xp specifically about OL. Ordering food is fine but you have to accept that it minutely increases your risk and live with it.

Freaking out about taking something from someone’s hands indicates that for OL, the risk to reward ratio is not okay for him.

even a large open interior space like a sparsely populated Target >>>>> elbow to elbow at a bar.

nothing about food is beautiful. it's fucking fuel. shit reminds me of music.

yes, I know, sweetie.

hey alfred no sneezing needed and be careful about the "th" sound...
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/15/simply-speaking-could-transmit-coronavirus-new-study-suggests/

yeah I saw that a couple weeks ago

My thinking is basically that if someone exercises basically zero caution in their interaction with me that they're probably exercising basically zero caution in their interactions with who even knows how many people, which probably means there's a slight uptick of risk when getting < 6 feet of said person.

Again FTR, I acknowledge the varying degrees of seriousness with which people are taking this and rather than being a complete nazi about it I just exercise an excess of caution and always wear a mask and gloves whenever I might be encountering people outside of my apartment. And I've been effusive in my gratitude towards the people who are risking their health to make this stuff happen and tip like half of what I make in a day and haven't had an issue like this before my experience last night, which seemed egregious. At any rate, I've been avoiding posting itt and I feel like that was maybe a good position for me to take wrt this thread.

I haven't ordered delivery and only ordered takeout once (stopped at the bodega right when all this started) but it isn't an ethical thing, more that the last few times I ordered delivery it was inedible (to me)

sorry ol i wasn’t trying to drive you out of the thread

At any rate, I've been avoiding posting itt and I feel like that was maybe a good position for me to take wrt this thread.

hey, I apologize if I'm one of those people occasioning the second thoughts.

the post office thing, I don't know what to think, because in virtually every respect besides the mask element thing it was a permit patty-type situation

I've ordered more than plenty of food via Just Eat over the past two months. Each time I've said to leave the food on the doorstep and there will be a tip, in an envelope, under the doormat. When they call the buzzer to our block of flats, I stand behind my door as they walk up the stairs, and when they get to my flat I shout through the door a thank you and make sure they get the tip. I don't come out to the communal area until I can hear they are away, and that's as much for their peace of mind as mine. All of the people doing our drop-offs have been wearing masks and gloves - and given how few folk are doing it in shops in Glasgow I've been surprised by that - and at any rate, once the food is out the wrapper and on to a plate I can bin the bag and wash my hands.

When I got take-out at Tim Hortons the other day, the server got impatient with me because, when she held the door for me to come in and pay, I said "It's okay, I've got it." She had a mask on, I had my scarf on. My feeling was that it was better for me to come in on my own rather than pass by her closely. Her feeling was that we both had something over our mouths and noses, and that me touching the door was the bigger hazard.

I deferred--it's her call--and walked in right by her. I think I'm right from everything I've read, but I kind of sighed and let it pass. I didn't want to give her a hard time. (Not a comment on OL's situation, which is different.)

i'm not sure any of us are going to be able to slowly transition into something resembling normalcy until either vaccination or it just burns through the population.

It will happen eventually one way or another. Even without a vaccine some equilibrium will be found concerning how high an infection/death rate is tolerable and which new behaviors allow us to live within that band of toleration. Humans are very adaptable and there will be an inevitable process of normalization. We'll find a set of workarounds and clumsy heuristics, adjust our expectations. and continue on. It will feel normal, no matter how different it looks from what we thought used to be normal.

Applicable to the trump administration as well unfortunately

ha aimless i thought that was sanpaku as i read it. and ulysses, it's why trump's horrifyingly-slow-walk-through-every-atrocity seems to work politically, i think.

So I never thought I'd be praising Best Buy (of all businesses) but they have closed their stores to shopping. It's either curbside pickup or by appointment only (for e.g. repairs).

I needed a thingy, went bloop bloop with my phone, drove to the store, opened the trunk; they put the thingy in the trunk; I waved and drove away. Smooth.

Almost none of the advertised as contactless deliveries I've ordered have actually been that, I leave instructions for how to do it but they are never taken up. I'm fine with it.

Here in London most food delivery ppl are undocumented migrants, wouldn't really imagine they have the best access to info on what the rules are.

The cashier in the supermarket today had a minor sneezing fit just as she was about to scan my shopping. Did her best to get her elbow to it and then used sanitizer. This was after a supervisor had encouraged me to move to that lane. Never change lanes!

Before that I was in the post office and irrationally or not didn't want to stand in this enclosed scanning booth thing they have at one of the two open service points, so I stood to the side of it and the cashier refused to serve me. Seemed like the distance was the same but whatevs. On the way out I had to ask the security staff who were gabbing among themselves to stand somewhere that allowed to me leave the shop.

I mean, stay alert is actually good advice really.

We've been going on epic pokemon walks on the giant university campus with the kid lately to get him out of the house and change the scenery. But college students absolutely DNGAF about masks or social distancing or any sort of precautions based on the ones who are still around.

Most of them are gone so it isn't too hard to avoid them but last week it was super beautiful out and we got stuck on one side of a river because the bridge was packed full of students in gowns lined up to take graduation photos in a particularly scenic spot with the stadium behind them. It was unreal to me and I felt like I was in some sort of zombie movie trying to keep the kid away from the throng to get to the next bridge. There's no way I want to teach face-to-face this fall.

i was teaching an ethics class online when i got sick, and since all their other classes were suspended and revamped to go online, i did some minor tweaking of mine before we resumed. naturally i added some junk about the pandemic, mostly focused on the morality of social distancing and closures.

generally my students sounded like good eggs but there was a frustrating level of nonchalance or resentment in the atmosphere of some of their considered work on those topics. they want to get back to their lives and see their friends, they're not at risk, etc.

I love all the "we reopened and there's no spike" talk.

Add the incubation period to the amount of time it takes to get tests back and you might not see excess cases for two weeks past reopen. And that's just the people who went back out on Day 1