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

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.

I guess it depends what you want to do. If you are talking about setting foot outdoors for the first time in a couple months, go for it. If you mean going to a crowded bar with hundreds of strangers, maybe not. There will be opportunities to do normal activities around other people again, it is just going to take time.

The way I see it right now, the bulk of people are remaining cautious and attempting to live their lives as normally as possible while taking necessary safety measures. Then there's the thrill seekers who dngaf, and will go mingle with Tina of other lunatics with little regard to anyone's safety. My hope is these two groups can stay distinct enough to keep things on the right track.

Mingle with Tina = mingle with tons of

Lol ”go mingle with Tina” would make an excellent euphemism for something, euphemizer’s choice

True enough, sounds like a good time, tbh

Got a test of myself yesterday as to where my own head is at as restrictions loosen. I went out for a bike ride with the intention of stopping at the dollar store. I realized halfway there I didn't have my scarf with me; I never even considered going through with the store visit, just continued riding around and went back later when I had it.

Having said that, I just looked at the clip of the people chasing/shaming that non mask-wearing woman out of the grocery store (outbreak! thread), and I don't want that. I find any kind of mob activity, even if well intentioned, scary.

I don't think "well-intentioned" is quite the right descriptor there. NYC metro area has suffered enough death and misery from this pandemic that it makes sense that red hot anger would boil up against someone who pays no attention to how their actions might affect others.

I think that makes-sense (yes) and being someone who would join in are not necessarily the same thing.

But that's a description of everyone in that video - turning masks into a shibboleth when you're none of you standing that far from each other and (and some of you have a bandana for a mask) is unhealthy in more than one way.

That's true too, and I hadn't even considered that--a mask is one part of an array of things one should do, and those people weren't doing another key thing. I wear a scarf in the grocery store, pulled around my mouth and nose. Should I be subject to something similar, or am I on the safe side of whatever line those people have drawn? I understand their anger, I really do, and according to the lines I've drawn myself, I've felt the same anger. I felt it today when a guy decided to exit Tim Hortons by walking by me instead of out the door he was supposed to. But feeling angry and shouting someone down in a mob isn't, again, the same thing.

Just realised there’s going to be culture wars about trick or treat in October. That should be fun.

Ima get lasers that incinerate non-mask wearers on my porch

My costume will be a non-mask wearing choad.

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.

I agree with this katherine, I also haven't been able to detect any real demographic pattern to whether people wear masks or not. I mean, apart from Asian people adopting them way earlier and in very large numbers - assuming these are mostly people with ties to South East Asian countries that got the memo when the bird flu hit.