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

oh did you not already hear about the

https://www.thecut.com/2020/05/dancers-drive-through-strip-club-coronavirus.html

our daycare just announced their plan. they usually have a capacity of 66 kids. they're reopening in june with 24 kids. 3 kids per teacher. drop off is in the car park. parents may not leave the car. teachers will come to car with apron and mask and take kid's temperature, then bring them in. children over 3 must wear a mask. kids will not be allowed to play together. we said "that sounds like the scary adult bits in E.T., see you in ...august?"

ours is doing this too though I don't think we're going to send them until July or August if we can. I feel like if one of the parents got it we'd all wind up getting it within a week.

do we know yet why this virus is so relatively harmless for children? I still feel it's smart to hold off on exposing them for as long as we can but idk if my "at least the kids will definitely be fine" confidence is misplaced

July is our deadline. Camps for our kids in Houston open and I’ll be close to running out of time off. I had surgery on my leg mid- february, I can’t WAIT TO GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS HOUSE. I’m scared that it’s going to shut down again right then. Fuck you Greg Abbott.

I work at a museum that is opening next week and it boggles my mind that we are doing this. Glad I have an excuse to stay home.

I knocked a pint glass that I'd rescued from the street flying yesterday as I picked other things around it up, so had both hands full. It shattered on hitting the floor.
& I realised that it wouldn't be easy to replace it for a while. Not sure how safe either. Used to just pick them up so they didn't leave broken glass all over the street and cos they were useful.

Texas is never shutting down again, Patrick and his people would rather people die en masse than shut down again and they've pummeled Abbott into it.

not that people aren't already dying en masse but a million Texans could die and they'd just shrug their shoulders

I walked past a cafe that was open yesterday, the first time in I guess two months?

It was a small cafe, a couple sitting in the window seats and then a few other people in. No masks as how can you be in a cafe with masks, table definitely not 2 meters away!

People have been compliant with masks for sure, and yes numbers are lower than US or UK - but Portugal isn't Vietnam or Slovenia, nowhere near it.

Had to put down my dog yesterday, which had the added weirdness of social distancing. In order to let us be with him as he died the vet administered the injection through a long tube from an adjoining room.

That sucks dowd :(

oh dear that sounds bad, sorry for your loss dowd.

frogbs, the risk is low and i don’t want to add anxiety but there’s a kawasaki-disease-like syndrome associated with covid that’s already killed three kids in new york.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/health/coronavirus-children-kawasaki-pmis.html

Slightly disappointed to see taht the grass which has been allowed to grow for the last couple of months has been getting cut today.
NOticed the main park in the centre of town was still being allowed to grow a coupl eo fdays ago. THought it was to allow bees etc to propagate
I liked the sight of allowing nature to take its own course. Noticed taht a number of plants by the roadside as I walk up to th esupermarket that I don't like seeing cut back have been allowed to do their own thing. Now the main park local to me has had all its grass stretches mowed wonder if tehy've go tmuch longer.

but today was two days after the ease of teh lockdoiwn officially started.

also noticing more traffic around on the main road up to the supermarket now. So hoping that the break that nature has had for the last coupl eof months isn't coming to an end.

"AstraZeneca books orders for 400m doses of Oxford vaccine"

looks promising (the report i read said 1bn). oh, here:

"AstraZeneca said it was capable of producing one billion doses of the AZD1222 vaccine this year and next."

oh, wait...

"A high-profile potential vaccine for COVID-19 being tested by researchers at Oxord University failed to protect vaccinated monkeys from being infected by the virus."

"The vaccine candidate, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, being tested is a weakened form a common cold virus"

we've seen this before, people reporting possible numbers and the real numbers being nothing like that or the the final x tonnes, y hundred thousand things being less than useful

still, good to see autechre got the tricky vaccine naming job.

(are AZD1222 and ChAdOx1 different things?)

I can't even with Florida.

There was a data breach at FL DEO (the Unemployment group). An hour before the news broke, my mom got a vague email from them saying they needed more info from her, to log on ASAP to get the info, and there was of course no message waiting.

In the same email, her permanent password was provided in big bold letters, and they told her it was her temporary password, and to change it.

This was apparently DEO's way of notifying people of the breach. By sending them an email sharing their current password and not saying anything about a breach.

News reporters began asking for copies of the email so I sent it to 3 of them.

Also my mother got a call saying her negative COVID test was unreliable and to make another appt.

I'm not like upset or anything, but I have sharp stinging pains in my chest which are typical anxiety symptoms for me.

LOL FL.

wow. that is... not good

the humorous thing is mom doesn't need credit monitoring cos she already has it from another data breach, lol.

local bar/concert venue which has hosted probably the greatest number of underground metal shows in the Orlando/Winter Park area since 2012 is in trouble and doing a GoFundMe. I kicked in, would hate to lose them.

but of COURSE, amidst all of the goodwill and community coming together, there are assholes screaming about how the bar should sue the government for lockdowns and how they were unnecessary. Can't escape this toxic shit anywhere right now and it pisses me the fuck off.

If anything they should be suing the federal government for not giving them a sufficient lifeline (I guess they didn't get the PPC or small business loans or weren't eligible).

my swanky new mask comes with an unfortunate side-effect: my glasses slip suddenly off my face without warning, necessitating a lurching “save” each time

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ef/a0/d4/efa0d4c1643258d0b4fd6572613ab8b1.jpg

I slept on my now quite knackered glasses last night and they keep slipping off me. Got the specsavers letter in january reminding me my of my NHS coupons for a test + new ones are activated. What is the rush I thought

maybe they weren’t yet aware of the extent of the data breach and were asking people to update their passwords as a precaution while they investigated?

It's pouring rain here, which I'm happy about as maybe it'll keep people from flocking to the beach.

Apparently it WASN'T related to the data breach, and the data breach happened in March-April, and impacted less than 100 people, and it only came out as news because they hid it from the public initially.

So DEO has confirmed that the email my mother got IS legit, and it tells her they received her application and she needs to take action and log into her site, and provided her current password as her Temp password.

She logged in, no action needed. Tons of existing applicants apparently got this email and had the same experience, to the point where they thought it might be a phishing email.

We have decided to ignore it for now.

Plus they received her application a month ago and she's been paid twice so to get a notification like that is a headscratcher! *Shrug*

If the checks keep coming, whatever i spose. Here's hoping.

welp 2 of the three Neanderthal clan members who took their COVID-19 test now got letters saying the negative test was unreliable and to get re-tested.

yeah sure, i'll take time off work again to take a test that may not even be valid. get right on that.

Apart from anything else, them keeping her password in plain text is hair-raising.

yeah, I made her change it immediately afterwards.

cos if you lock your password out, to reset it, most times you have to CALL (the online reset doesn't always work), and ...lol at that queue

Many xp but we've been going to the beach every weekend while staying at least 10 feet from the nearest other human. really, behaviors need to change, not destinations.

That’s not readily compatible with banning cars though so RIP Earth

RIP

TOYOTATHON IS CANCELLED

https://www.autoblog.nl/files/2020/03/Toyota-Corona-970x498.jpg

the beach is just a 3 minute drive for us from our tiny living space.

my friends and I are doing a social distancing get together tomorrow but every one going is very serious about it and it's going to be outdoors.

I need to be around friends or I will go nuts, even if I have to use a megaphone to talk to them.

I say you are doing the good work. Mental health is also a vital concern.

my blood pressure went up today when I saw an old man initially trying to bully Publix employees to let him go out the entrance when they were clearly trying to manage traffic to where it all goes the same direction to manage the chokepoints. he just kept arguing and I could see the employees getting uncomfortable.

but fortunately, he saw the light and turned around.

i think it's fine and probably even good to see friends outdoors

One of my favorite local venues is going to live webcast a couple of area Psych bands playing on their roof tonight, and I haven't been this stoked for anything in ages.

yeah i hope we'll do this more often tbh.

course, the first time I left the house to do anything besides grocery shop last week, my mom accidentally dumped my dad out of his recliner and on to the floor while trying to adjust the chair recline for him, so I got summoned back an hour later to get him up -_-

(it was more amusing than anything, I come home and he's just sitting watching the tv while laying on a pillow up against the chair and mom looking embarrassed)

a thing I have noticed: a lot of criticism of people not wearing masks -- to be clear, you should wear masks -- seems to be people projecting their pre-existing thoughts about groups of people they don't like onto the situation, and claiming they are the main people who aren't doing it. if there's been any kind of actual research on this I'd defer to that, but in my experience there really isn't any pattern as to who does and doesn't wear masks; photos kind of bear it out, but are as self-selected as people commenting on it.

hope someone asks him "who even are you?"

Neanderthal, how was your party outdoors?

xpost my comments upthread aren't meant to denigrate youth, because unlike other demographics, age is one of the easiest ones to surmise with an eye test. nor do I think it necessarily *helps* to cast blame by demographic, because it ignores other factors such as the political leanings of the area you're in, as well as widespread availability of commercially made masks in the area (cos we know DIY is something many people won't do)...etc.

but I definitely can't ignore the percentage of young people I've seen unmasked. since I'm in a college town, I see more 20-30 somethings in grocery stores than I did when I lived further away from the college, but on my last visit, I saw exactly 1 young person with a mask, and about 10-15 without.

but the young will get the brunt of the blame because age is one of the easiest things to surmise with a mere eye test, it doesn't mean "lol the youth are killing us all". I also see plenty of people my own age and older not wearing masks, too, albeit it's a little more balanced. But it's more than just a few people in my own demographic that aren't wearing them. and I see entire families coming in maskless.

but we're a conservative state, and although my city is more liberal, when you have a state that has elected morons like Trump, Desantis and Rick Scott, their ignorance reaches people in all counties/cities and probably leads to some of the masklessness.

xpost it was nice! it was a little weird. I realized when I go a long time without socializing in public, it takes me a while to get used to it again, so I was quieter than usual. felt sad to not be able to hug anybody, but was glad nobody was doing it all the same. we were all 6 feet apart on lawn chairs and wearing masks, and having fun bullshit convo like we haven't missed a step. we were only there about two hours. I

found myself getting sad quickly as we were on the lawn where the Orlando Fringe festival usually is full of food tents, beer tents, and thousands of people, and it was just the ten of us. my first May without that in my life. but we all felt it, and it was good to be around friends again.

seeing my friends' little ones (4 1/2 year old boy, and a 2 year old girl) lit my heart up, I had missed them so much. daddy asked the boy if he remembered who I was and he said "of course I know who that guy is, that's Wob!". it was adorable.

we plan to do this semi-regularly now.

Good for you. Did you remove masks to drink?

I've taken more dares. I visited my parents at my sister's yesterday, inside the house for the first time since March. We still sat six feet apart, not that it mattered at this point.

yeah, here and there, but nobody was really drinking for the most part, since we were out on a public lawn, and nobody wanted to get fined by the cops.

this is making me extra paranoid around the house with dad. I was already wearing a mask and washing my hands like a madman, now I seem to sanitize just about fucking everything, including the air when I fart

xp -- I wasn't referring to you, this is just something that's been bugging me for a few weeks now

Staten Islanders with masks drive out non-mask wearing person in grocery store. #Coronavirus pic.twitter.com/iPQwk7lD9y

— McAuley (@McauleyHolmes) May 25, 2020

Venting fears here, not sure if they're irrational ones.

With the virus still very much in circulation and restrictions loosening, I imagine there'll be a rapid outburst of pent-up energies toward shopping & recreation, coupled with poor cautionary measures due to the psychic relief of acting 'normal' again, causing an unmistakable surge in new cases starting in about 3 or 4 weeks.

My irrational fear is that, if I don't jump onto that bandwagon at once, before the world is bursting with dangerous asymptomatic viral vectors, and before it all shuts down again, I'll have missed that tiny window of greatest safety in the first several days of manic activity. I'm sure I will resist it, but the urge is like a brain itch.