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

Yeah, thankfully my work says we are still a long, long way from being back in the office, although my role means I will have no choice but to be in from time to time (been about once a week for the past month).

My wife also has fully adapted to WFH and likes it, which was a surprise. She notes that one big plus is that meetings now start and end on time. One drawback is she doesn't have time on the train to read. But another related plus is that she is "home" from work an hour earlier each day, and gets to wake up for work an hour later.

I wish that were closer to my experience. I've found my commuting savings, as little as they already were, have been completely obliterated by longer hours. I'm working far longer than I ever had before. And meetings? Someone my work has even managed to perfect the art of dragging Zoom meetings on half an hour to an hour longer than scheduled.

that's inexcusable.

a slightly pass-agg way of dealing with that: you could try asking for the invite to be changed to reflect the meeting length, to make it easier for everyone to manage their diaries

It's been an ongoing problem that we bring up again and again, but we have two or three people that just love the sound of their own voices and can't stop talking, endlessly, needlessly. We have these biweekly department meetings that have about 30 minutes of actually good and valid info exchange but are scheduled for an hour and a half and routinely stretch well over two hours.

Calls need a moderator who is willing to cut ramblers short and keep things on track

that's Robert & his Rules

Get an airhorn and blare it anytime someone goes past the one minute mark of talking

we had one the other day that lasted two hours and the one lady who is ALWAYS shaming people for having their microphones on while someone else is talking left hers on the entire time
smh

agree about moderator. whoever’s meeting it “is” needs to periodically pipe up with “okay - we only have (x) minutes left - mary, can you take us through (y)?”

even if there is no mary present, obv

fair points all, except the "owner" of the meeting is among the worst ramblers, so...

our 10 minute start-of-day zoom standups now have an optional 10 minute social prelude, which helps get a lot of the chatter done.

I miss the UK lockdown proper. Traffic noise and crowded streets are returning and as these are two major provokers of chronic (sometimes not so) low level anxiety or maybe irritation for me the reduction has been relatively delightful.

Our county is, I think, about to see a peak. Local schools are delaying opening by at least a week.
I'm keeping off the UK politics threads, but is there any indication of whether we'll ever move to pre-emptive testing of any sort (e.g. for key workers, planned reopenings, super locally etc) rather than waiting for symptoms to present?

how are places gonna enforce the 'no public transportation' rule? do you have to buy a newspaper and take a selfie holding it next to your car?

In Houston we're still planning on sending kids back to camp/school in July. I'll be almost out of vacation days and will have to go back to work. 5 year old's Montessori school transitions to "camp" in the summer, so she's all set. 10 year old's scheduled camps are all cancelled for the summer and all of the other camps we've looked at are booked solid. Our one option is to put her into the same Montessori school/camp which has an opening and is relatively affordable. She really doesn't want to because the camps she was expecting to go to were all cool and awesome and this will definitely not be cool and awesome. But it makes too much sense to do otherwise. Even if we could find another camp, it would be crazy expensive. The other benefit of them going to the same camp is that the potential exposure is much lower than it would be if they were going to different places. So she's going to lose her shit when the decision is handed down.

Meanwhile, 5 year old is regressing and going mental and screaming and is getting lost because she doesn't have other kids to model her behavior on. Getting her into online therapy because it's out of control and we don't know how to deal with it. I love my children but dear god I am so tired of being locked in a house with them. Everybody's feelings are starting to feel like challenges and burdens instead of natural reactions to an extraordinary situation.

my job's HR department just sent out an amazing message to everyone. they gave us all a 20% "hair cut" on our paychecks, starting a few months ago. since then, everyone has been wondering how long that will last, if we might be compensated (since everyone is still working 100% of the time, not 80%), etc.

HR says they have set up a "2020 special incentive". they will start a special fund for reimbursing employees for their pay cuts. this special fund will kick in AFTER they achieve their goal of $72M in profits. at that point, the first $5M will go into a special incentive fund, and then after that, 25%.

but first, they have to hit their $72M profit target

morale is SKY HIGH

they should be fined for calling it a "haircut"

the only kind of haircut that anyone can get right now

/trenchant

Your company's executives know that their employees are their most valuable assets, because if you squeeze them they generate more profits. all they ever get out of their capital assets is a generous depletion allowance.

if someone gave me a 20% haircut, I would make 20% more mistakes each day on purpose

including teaching students about the elusive Medicare Part F

I'm getting word that one of the teachers at our day care tested positive

luckily we haven't sent our kids back but a few of our neighbors did

ok what the fuck this is my hometown https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article243033126.html

Local sainsbury's local keeps tweaking things to make them safer - latest is arrows on the floor, 2m apart, describing a sensible route around the shop. Would work quite well if everyone took notice.

The one bloke in there acting like this thing wasn't happening, and telling the staff their jobs etc, his phone went off whilst at the counter sorting out his lottery tickets. "No income tax, no VAT..."

Just been out for my longest walk since the lockdown began and it's pretty much over out there, traffic back up to annoying levels etc.

things are trending this way even in california and I have to remind myself that the point of lockdown wasn't to lockdown everything and everyone until there's a vaccine; there may never be a vaccine. It was to keep hospitals from getting overwhelmed, and they haven't. shit is going to have to open back up and people are going to have to wear masks, period, if they want to engage with society until this a vaccine is found (hopefully).

that said, our school district essentially said this week that there will NOT be in-person school next fall, which isn't a surprise to me since every teacher and every in-school administrator I've talked to here said there was no way. campuses will be used for 'supplemental' and necessary stuff (labs, band).

Most people in London don't seem to be wearing masks. If you're in a country where mask-wearing just isn't a cultural norm, it seems to be very difficult for a lot of people to adjust (not just macho Americans). They feel 'silly'. So everyone meanders around, breathing on each other, and inevitably there's a new wave of infections. Somehow I can't see the UK government ordering people to do things any differently either (apologies for minor political digression there).

I don't think it's down to silliness so much as a) the goverment not insisting on the wearing of masks and b) the lack of availability of masks. a) and b) are linked, of course.

I'm exercised about schools going back the same time that social lockdown (in England) is eased to the point of no-one really caring. Staggering would've made more sense - as it is loads of families with kids are going to be seeing the grandparents etc, for the first time in months, a week or two before all the kids go back to school and spread it around. I've been diligent so far but am trying to navigate how to say yes/no to my parents coming for a 'garden visit'. It would be ok if I knew they weren't being more blase than they've let on!
Every stage of 'easing' seems to be 'lets see how bad it gets if we allow this', rather than 'we're planning these release measures, lets try extra hard to identify where the outbreaks are and shut them down'. Not that I think there'd be much compliance with that at this point.

I went to Cabela's (guns and outdoor shit) to look at a budget kayak and shockingly a larger percentage of shoppers there were wearing a mask than any supermarket I've been to.

My middlering burb seems a very very high % mask in shops, and quite high on sidewalks. Local outdoor paths and trails are probly 50% in high traffic/narrow tracks.

I’d be shocked to see no mask in a supermarket- I think it’s mandatory maybe?

The wife is talking about hiring a nanny to come be with the kids while we're at work instead of sending them to daycare.

I understand her reluctance, but the kids are going crazy being cooped up here. We're torn over this. She's scared of the kids catching Corona or some of these other mysterious related syndromes. I'm worried about our 5 year old getting developmentally stunted. This has been so hard on her, and at some point schools are going to open up and it's not like Corona is going away. We can't do this forever.

And we need to make a decision about camps soon while there is still an opening.

has anyone started selling “tactical masks” yet?

As an out-of-work teacher, I don't know whether to be frantically applying for jobs at all the school districts I can think of, which is what I would normally be doing this time of year, or - not. I have no idea what public school teaching will look like next year or how safe it will be, and I don't want to move for work during COVID, especially for a job that might start in-person and then suddenly go distant again. It's kind of a moot point right now because I've seen no jobs posted in my content area yet, and of course the job fairs were all canceled, so the odds of my being hired at all, anywhere, are pretty slim. But if I really tried I could maybe find something, I just don't know if I should even be trying.

It seems cowardly to be nervous about going in to teach, but teachers are so vulnerable to illness, and new teachers especially. Last year was my first year of public school teaching, and I was sick for 2-3 months with something alarmingly similar to COVID and I never want to go through that again.

Lily <3

A rolling thread where we are teachers

come to the teacher thread pls!

where are you teaching lily?

Seattle. I used to be an adjunct, then got my teaching degree a couple years ago. I taught French last year in one of the Seattle suburbs, but that didn't last (got bumped from my job by someone asking for a transfer) and I'm really an English teacher anyway, so I was subbing in Seattle this year hoping they would eventually hire me to teach full time. COVID seems to have derailed that plan for the moment.

If you're in a country where mask-wearing just isn't a cultural norm, it seems to be very difficult for a lot of people to adjust (not just macho Americans). They feel 'silly'.

They weren't a cultural norm in Portugal either but people are wearing them. Yes, it helps you're not allowed in stores or on public transport without them, and they're readily available in supermarkets. But compliance is 100% as far as I can see and high even on streets and in parks where they're not mandatory

tomorrow is June; technically speaking I know about my furlough status up until the end of May. I assume I'm still on furlough, but am I really? am I jobless? who the fuck knows, since no one will tell me!

FWIW (and i know it's not much as people keep telling me the same thing), most of us are in the same boat there Katherine. I, mostly, am.

i certainly am

Gonna email my recently former boss tomorrow to find out if she thinks she'll be able to bring me back in July. On the bright side, my application for unemployment was approved.

my unemployment went through mid-May, most (not all) of the backed up unemployment came through a week later. PPP went through roughly the same time.
there's been no confirmation that I can find of whether or not you can take PPP _and_ unemployment but every finance person i talk to suggests that the general guidance is that if you're receiving payment of any kind that can be tracked by the government, you are not eligible to collect unemployment. But if I get off unemployment, I imagine it will again take months to get back on. Which leaves me with two options:

1) continue taking unemployment and give it back if asked, with the potential risk that they may not honor the loan forgiveness so you could get snakebit.
2) continue registering for unemployment for the eight weeks that the PPP loan covers but register during that time as "having made more than $500 this week" then (hopefully) get back on if necessary at the end of that 8 week period

I've opted for the second but i have no idea if i'm doing this right.

'luckily' i'm unable to work, in the hospital and living on borrowed time and family resources

so my furlough is irrelevant

xp so to reiterate, i am NOT receiving unemployment payments for the eight week period covering the PPP loan's applicable span but i AM registering weekly and hoping that keeps me on the rolls until such time at which it's necessary to transfer back on if there's not another stimulus package.

Better case scenario: my frozen contracts reactivate and I can just go back to work promoting live events but you may be able to figure out what the issue there is.