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

I saw that and I thought “yeah no shit there’s less virus out there: you’ve been on incredibly tough lockdown for months now”. There’s surely more to it than that, though.

Deny the virus a chance to transmit to new hosts for long enough that the present hosts to develop immunity (or die) and it goes away. Even when this is done at less than 100% effectiveness, there will be less virus around. This is what the strict lockdowns are all about.

otoh, when there is still virus circulating among a very large 'naïve' population (like there still is) then as soon as you give the virus free reign to transmit by letting everyone mingle again at will, then you get right back into the soup, with exponential growth. that's the message the epidemiologists keep reinforcing: stay masked and distanced in public, stay home whenever possible, it's not over.

A very suspicious quote from the one Italian physician who seems to be convinced that the virus is less lethal now:

“We’ve got to get back to being a normal country,” he said. “Someone has to take responsibility for terrorizing the country.”

^^Shit That Looks Like A Trump Tweet But Isn't

sounds like a bad translation of a more innocuous comment

never mind, looks like he meant to say that

Yeah that comment stuck out too.

Not really, it's even worse in the original Italian:

Clinicamente il nuovo coronavirus non esiste più

Terrorizzare il Paese è qualcosa di cui qualcuno si deve prendere la responsabilità

xps

Secondo il professore, "c'è un solo numero che vale" ed "è l'evidenza: noi in questo Paese abbiamo sentito un mese fa un professore di Boston, che è un epidemiologo-statistico che si chiama Vespignani, condizionare le scelte del governo dicendo che andavano costruiti 151 mila posti di terapia intensiva. Domani uscirà un editoriale a firma mia e del professore Gattinoni in cui diciamo ufficialmente perché questo non va bene, perché è una frenesia, perché terrorizzare il Paese è qualcosa di cui qualcuno si deve assumere le responsabilità, perché i nostri pronto soccorso e i nostri reparti di terapia intensiva sono vuoti e perché la Mers e la Sars, le due precedenti epidemie, sono scomparse per sempre e quindi è auspicabile che capiti anche per la terza epidemia da coronavirus. Dovremo stare attentissimi, prepararci, ma non ucciderci da soli".

So he says that the addition of 151,000 intensive care beds is a bad thing, calling it a "frenzy" and that "to terrorize the country is something for which someone must assume the responsibility". We must be very careful, we must prepare ourselves, but don't kill ourselves.

oops xp

Yea that quack is why i am not sharing the article. He seems motivated by outside things

no idea if he's a quack but apparently he's Berlusconi's personal doctor

So he's probably an STI expert at least

lol

Italy is one country that once saw seismologists arrested for failing to predict an earthquake. Granted, it was later overturned but talk of going after leading health officials for being cautious worries me in that context

I left the building today for the first time since early March. It was weird! I went out early so that it wouldn't be too crowded outside or in the supermarket I wanted to go to, and it wasn't. For now the virus is circulating rather little here. I'm still not going to ride public transport, but you can walk everywhere here if you need to. today I just went 1km each way. It felt good!

Since March? That's incredible.

After three months of not being in a crowd (except in one supermarket's aisles) or around other humans on purpose at all, marching or rallying or getting teargassed & bolting in a crowd, four days in a row, is a sharp adjustment

xp Yes. My city is very dense & the disease was circulating freely in my area. My wife was able to do our grocery shopping (a 5 minute walk) every three days, and otherwise none of us had need to go anywhere. Today we enter "phase 2" of deconfinement, with some middle schoolers going back to school (not ours). I wore a mask in the supermarket but mostly not when walking, since outside seems to be pretty safe right now. I passed a decent number of people but no crowds, since it was 9am & still most businesses are closed, so there's not much to be out for.

Now I have lots of soy sauce & noodles, things I wish I'd stocked up on before the lockdown.

I commend your discipline. I don't know if I could do that, and luckily I'm somewhere where it was never an issue.

After three months of not being in a crowd (except in one supermarket's aisles) or around other humans on purpose at all, marching or rallying or getting teargassed & bolting in a crowd, four days in a row, is a sharp adjustment

― massage angry pixels (sic), Tuesday, June 2, 2020 10:32 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm terrified about the increase in Covid from the protests. I understand the need to protest, but just a week ago we were mocking Republicans for their protests in Michigan and flaunting of gathering rules at beaches. "We'll see how happy you are in 14 days..." In comparison, those were rather small. We consistently get better numbers in the streets.

Someone's going to write this off as "concern-trolling", but it's genuine concern. Covid has already been hitting black communities worse. And it's real, it really sucks, and it hasn't gone away. My wife sees cases every day at her job and it truly puts people in bad shape.

My sister and parents both marched this weekend, although my parents went to a smaller, more socially distanced gathering. I'm worried about the availability of healthcare for them in case they are infected with this life-threatening virus in the coming weeks.

But at the same time, the USA is completely in a crisis of racist police and the brutality that has occurred both leading up to and during the marches has driven that point home.

So what the fuck. I don't have an answer or even a recommendation or an opinion. Shit is fucked. That's all I got.

euler, I haven't left the apt since early March as well. We are hitting a peak here and have had a curfew for two months?

wow y'all aren't even going for a spin around the block or a nighttime stroll? i would completely absolutely lose my mind under those circs tbh

i guess not nighttime bc curfew but still

xpost

I've been thinking the same thing looking at it from the UK. Has everyone at the protests just given up on trying to protect themselves? The US hasn't even peaked yet, and thousands of people are putting themselves straight into the virus's path.

Then again:

But at the same time, the USA is completely in a crisis of racist police and the brutality that has occurred both leading up to and during the marches has driven that point home.

So what the fuck. I don't have an answer or even a recommendation or an opinion. Shit is fucked. That's all I got.

xpost. i have been out on the terrace so that is my outdoor space. but we are completely fine. Neither one of us are extroverts though.

people haven't given up trying to protect themselves, where i am. almost everyone in the chicago protests is wearing a mask. some other protests around the US, though - not so much.

and yeah, shit is fucked. my partner and i have been very careful, since early March. but over the last few days with all the protests, i know our behavior has been much more risky, just in terms of being fairly close to other protesters (with masks). within the context of the protests, i'm on the risk averse side - i'm the one 10 feet from everyone else in the back, or participating in a "caravan" of vehicle protests, honking the fuck out of my horn, instead of in the big walking mass in the middle of the streets. but just being there, being close to everyone, even with masks, is risky.

but i don't know what else we can do.

no, I hadn't taken a walk or left the building at all. I'd left the apartment to take the trash to the bins a floor down a couple times a week, that's all.

& yeah, there are five of us in our little apartment but we love each others' company more than anything else so it's been fine! the main drag has obviously been the lack of physical exertion : we've tried to do step aerobics but it's not the same as a walk. & lack of certain ingredients for cooking---I know everywhere is as starved for yeast as we are (& I found none today at the east Asian supermarket alas), but following the advice to shop only at our closest food store meant other lacks as a function of the character of our neighborhood (for instance, no pork and very little beef for sale---again, east Asian supermarkets sell those, but this neighborhood is almost entirely Muslim, with a considerable south Asian as well (that is itself partly though not entirely Muslim). So today was a score for those things. We've eaten much more vegan than ever before during the lockdown, and otherwise have had chicken. Good preparation for the meatless future I suppose. (We've eaten very well in any case.)

I have a dentist appointment today. Who would have guessed that Covid would be only one of several concerns when going out and about?

xpost I'm worried about the numbers climbing from the protests as well. I haven't gone to any, but from the pictures and video I've seen, it looks like a lot of the time people start out trying to distance and then the police herd them into a confined space?

Kettling, yeah.

It occurs to me that this'll be one more thing to blame on the protesters - there was the greatest recovery, before these lunatics.

xpost I'm worried about the numbers climbing from the protests as well. I haven't gone to any, but from the pictures and video I've seen, it looks like a lot of the time people start out trying to distance and then the police herd them into a confined space?

On Saturday, the cops shut down most of I-5 to herd the marchers off, then kept it reduced to one lane and shut the off-ramps so that no proper, car-operating citizens would go near / see what was happening. They then kettled the protesters into one street block on 5th, between the library and city hall. Coming down from the Madison overpass, I was just reaching the north end of the block when they fired tear gas into the crowd from the other end - a lot of people broke back up the hill, but the mass of the crowd, unable to see clearly, were directed in a straight line down into the retail district and the exact corner where, coincidentally or not, Old Navy and The Gap were looted immediately afterward.

The cops starting last night's riot - after six hours of peaceful marching, assembly, and speeches - a block from Cal Anderson Park, rather than in a confined space, is probably because it's also a block from the precinct house (that does so much to quell bridge-and-tunnel homophobia on normal Saturday nights). They had the entire street barricaded between Pike and Pine next to their front door by Saturday afternoon, so good luck dropping in to report a pickpocketing, or whatever.


And yeah, it's super-unsafe even with a mask - I've seen lots of people with N95 and duckbill masks (and a few gas masks), but my best-fitting one was literally sewn by a child. Once yesterday's march resumed after the rally at city hall, and got compressed into a single block of folks packed tighter than a regular march, I queased out. On Friday night, the black bloc was taking two blocks at a time, holding them for ten minutes, and progressing -- but attempting to distance by standing elbow-to-elbow, not shoulder-to-shoulder. Too many people showed out on Saturday and Monday to even organise like that.

I live a few blocks from Cal Anderson and have been feeling really guilty about not going to the protests, but also really worried about ending up part of a huge superspreader event. Two of my housemates just went off to tonight's protest, wearing N95s and ski goggles, hopefully they'll be all right.

tbh both of my roommates have been required to go back to work so my official position is Fuckin Whatever

i went to a protest in my neighborhood and we were lucky to not have cops hemming us in but we were way too close to each other regardless. but we were outside and weren't breathing directly on each other so who fuckin knows really. again my roommates have been required to go back to starbucks/their office to work, respectively, can't say i think walking to a protest rates at a significant height above being in an enclosed space that a lot of people revolve in and out of

my partner is helping drive people home from jail tonight (chicago releases them right after curfew so that they're more likely to get fucked over by police).

the county jail is the biggest hotspot in chicago, and one of the biggest in the country. so although she's being as careful as she can be (mask, duh, driving with windows down), i think there's a good chance that at least one of the people she transports might be infected. going to be self-quarantining for 14 days, for sure (unless i get tested before)

<3

Lily - distanceable arms of the protest at 12th/Pike or 13th/Pine rn fyi

Thanks!

National Guard at 13th & Olive too, facing off against a single umbrella on the crosswalk

One of the US news podcasts I was listening to yesterday was talking about people at the protests handing out masks and hand sanitiser. So seemed to be at least trying to head in the right direction .
I have worried about the spread of covid too. Since a lot of the people attending protests will be exactly the people needed to vote and actively rebuild the country in the near future.
Obviously it is essential that something is done to correct this endemic wrong in the policing of society in the US. But I hope the price paid for attempting to correct things isn't going to be a great loss of life among the progressive element needed to further protest. Not sure how else things could be done though.

I see the protests in the US as pure desperation - die of COVID, die because a cop saw you and felt like pulling the trigger, what's the difference? - and think most people participating are doing it while aware of the danger, as opposed to the right-wing nuts who were protesting because they thought it wasn't a thing - but I'll confess I feel more reservations about solidarity demos in the UK/Europe. Difficult to put that into words without minimizing the oppression black people suffer under here, though.

Cops held off an extra few hours before using CS gas and explosives on the crowd last night - guessing their overtime allowance cuts off at midnight and they needed to get back to the suburbs?

Pretty rational to think that these tactics, which are illegal during actual war, might be creating additional risk for the populace during an airborne pandemic imo

I feel more reservations about solidarity demos in the UK/Europe.

I view these as analogous to non-Africans protesting South African apartheid. It's OK with me. I hope people take reasonable covid precautions and mass protest every day for months. Because 'no justice, no peace' is the only way I can see this ever improving.

went off for a test today, not worried but need to isolate for a couple of days

I view these as analogous to non-Africans protesting South African apartheid. It's OK with me.

My reservations aren't that I don't think people outside the US shouldn't protest US police brutality! Non-Africans protesting apartheid didn't happen during an epidemic.

Basically I feel like the protests in the US right now are a clear emergency situation where breaking isolation is justifiable. I'm not convinced that solidarity protests here fall under the same umbrella - there are many causes that should have protests happen under ordinary circumstances, but obviously that's not practicable.

The counter-argument to that, however, would be that black people in the UK and Europe may feel that the same logic of desperation holds true here, which is probably true. As I said, I'm conflicted.

The Préfecture de Police de Paris did not approve the Adama Traoré manifestation on Tuesday, because of the health crisis, but 20,000 people manifested anyway at the tribunal de Paris. As you may know, Adama Traoré was killed by the police in 2016 as a result of their restraining him by a method like that used by the Minneapolis police to restrain George Floyd. He was a resident of a suburb north of Paris and tried to escape the police during an identity check related to suspicion of his brother's involvement with crime, because, though a French citizen, he happened not to have his identity card with him at the moment. After being caught by the police, they violently restrained him, and in the car as they drove him to the station, he said "I can't breathe", then died. Traoré was of Malian descent and as such his death continues to signal to our ethnic minority population that they must live in fear of police murder. I think they rightly feel desperate that nothing has changed here since 2016: indeed, the official autopsies continue to attest that he died of a preexisting heart condition triggered by his running away, rather than as a result of his having been violently restrained. So I think French protesters with reason judge the need to mobilize at this moment, in solidarity and alignment with the movement in the USA, worth the risk of contracting and spreading the virus.

Or, alternately, from our version of the Onion: La France va partager avec la police américaine son expertise en matière de classement en affaires sans suite.