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

(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

well, you live in Florida, surrounded by Floridians. this may be germane.

if we're out walking my 2yo already stops and moves to the side if he sees someone else coming (unless he's in a temper tantrum with me). It's kind of sad.

Neanderthal completely. it blows my mind that people think the infections stats - and death stats! - are somehow responding to policy and behaviour in real time.

I was thinking that having a bank holiday weekend 2 weeks before the easing up of the lockdown here might mean a spike coinciding with yesterday. Couldn't really tell from the streets
There's still few people around I think. A few places with doors open or at least hatches. Mainly chemists and food outlets.
Did have a bit of a queue appear while I waited for a Chinese takeaway yesterday which was a bit awkward. I was a bit surprised the place is back to handmaking noodles now behind a plastic screen. They had stopped that for a while. This place has stayed open throughout and been vilified by some idiots for being Asian.
Went down to Spanish arch area to eat at least part of it. There were a few others who had the same idea.
I was also looking around for elastic to see about making a mask. Can't find that anywhere these days. I wound up buying some cheap shoelaces to see if any of them might work as ties.
Had forgotten to grab a mask when I went out and the ones I have are probably not great anyway. So wound up buying another and being told that they get porous when wet so washing them not a great idea.
Thought some places might be back to normal times from yesterday . But found source of my greens; spinach, kale, chard etc had started closing at 4 since I was last in town.& supermarket in town was closed by 6 when it used to be 7. Just needed to get a couple items.
Had a covid test over the week which came out negative . but I think you can't really be prepared for the feeling of the nasal swab until you've felt it.guess at least it's fast. Still feeling a bit cold or fluey though.
& did get to see the reunion read through of a few episodes of Orphan Black.
Otherwise been working on a couple of jeans jackets and listening to hours of podcasts. Just getting into some medieval history stuff. A thing about coconuts yesterday which were somewhat around but called buts of India or whatever the latin would be.
Now wondering what time post coming since I was told it was back to prepandemic time last week but I just went down to unlock the street door and found items arrived before 8am. Same thing around 8.30 yesterday. Had to lock street door cos youth had been using bottom of stairs to congregate in. Plus neighbours now leaving a bike there and has left the box from it to get wet from the elements.

the local sainsburys i've complained about before have issued the staff with BIG badges telling you to keep 2m apart. the one i saw was on a bloke stood, doing nothing, in the middle of the T junction at the end of an aisle, making it impossible to not pass within 1m of him from any of 3 directions. 'do you want to go past?' he asked, waving me through without moving.

Just been down to my local (small) Tesco's and LOL 2 metres. Lockdown pretty much history round Seven Sisters Road, I saw all of three, three, people wearing face masks/coverings on my way there and back. Weather is gorgeous out there btw.

for some dumb reason I had to visit the house of someone who's been pretty cavalier about the whole thing. tried to avoid the dude but he still talked to me a bit from fairly close up and I'm just thinking, oh cool I could've inhaled some particles and now spread this to my whole family. even if the odds are super small living with this sort of anxiety after every small interaction sucks. can't imagine being someone who actually works at a hospital and what not.

we are hosting a kid during this time and went to meet his mother in a park, she did not wear a mask and maintained no distance at all, especially with her son, she was furious that the lockdown was not over, basically because she wanted to send her son back to boarding school and not have to pay us for hosting him. I didn't argue with her, what's the point?

I’ve been eating lunch in my truck or sitting on the tailgate when I have to drive through for a sandwich but now that we’re breaking 90 degrees I don’t see that lasting much longer. Gonna be a long time before I’m willing to sit inside somewhere to eat, though.

Restaurants open in MDC tomorrow at 50% capacity. All employees must wear masks and gloves. Outdoor seating prioritized. I've got a couple friends who want to risk eating at a table outside this Memorial Day weekend (what's a weekend?). I'll admit, I'm feeling frisky if tables are indeed six feet apart and everyone working there's wearing a mask.

OTOH no way in hell am I sitting at a bar or inside the restaurant.

Yea outdoor is a much lower risk. I'm tempted too cos i always mask.

Then again, i assumed the best when my friend invited me for a beer, told me he believed the bar was social distancing, and showed up to find no masks, no seating people apart, no outside seating ...zero controls.

Fortunately it was dead inside but assuming businesses are going to follow social distancing is futile. I won't visit anywhere that i haven't driven by first to make sure they're following.

Some friends are having a social distance gathering with masks outdoors on Sunday. We're all the type taking it seriously so I'm not worried there. Just happy to see friends again.

Went for a run with a teal (ymmv) face mask today and it was surprisingly fine, breathing-wise. I run on the grass or on the street as needed but it's nice to have the extra protection and get less dirty looks from passersby (a meagre minority, as most of them look and act like 'it's just a flu bro' types).

I've attended several small gatherings (three others at most) since late April. In every case we've sat in the yard at least six feet apart and have felt no anxiety.

fwiw here are MDC's guidelines: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article242766186.html

so much about this virus is just impossibly frustrating, it's almost like it was designed in a lab (sorry) to wreak havoc on us. it's incredibly contagious and spreads from people who appear to be perfectly healthy. if you get it you may not know for weeks. the symptoms are all over the map. it's deadly, but not deadly enough for people to take it seriously.

the Ziggy Sobotka virus

like I wonder if something that got people deathly ill right away might have wound up killing less people