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

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Facemasks are a pretty rare sight here in Norway. OTOH it appears that the early and broad closedown measures, which appear to have seen a good level of compliance, worked out well, and that the easing up of the last few weeks haven't yet resulted in a resurgence of cases or deaths (which may of course still materialize). Of course, no place in Norway, even our cities, are anywhere near as densely populated as major world metropolises, which surely helps.

― anatol_merklich, Monday, 8 June 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Oslo has 700k, what has that been like?

Better than Sweden, which is even less densely populated than Norway.

Not to be flippant here, but didn't y'all, like invent ski masks?

The main difference between Norway and Sweden (which is about 40% more densely populated than Norway, not less) has surely been the Norwegian choice of early closedown and persistent reminders of social distancing, the path that Sweden has notably not followed.

I live pretty near central Oslo, and have been taking walks most days, including to the central parts of the city. Distancing has been complied with pretty well in general, though maybe not universally, with recent BLM-related protests probably the main non-random exception (not having attended, I don't know for sure to what degree the official 1-metre-distance advice (reduced from 2 metres about a month ago) was followed). Norwegians being Norwegians, there were days at the early closedown weekends where the city centre was pretty much deserted while there were reports of worrying congestion along the most popular hiking trails in the woods just outside the city.

Now, a few weeks along the lifting of closedown, things do seem more normal, although there are still reminders to avoid public transport if possible, limits to the number of simultaneous customers in shops, ubiquitous disinfection-liquid dispensers, bakery tongs that you pick up at the entrance, use once and hand over to the cashier for cleaning, etc. But, as noted, only the occasional facemask.

I have wondered whether there was something hidden from the COVID case/death numbers, as has been reported in other countries, and checked out official overall countrywide deaths-per-week statistics (which I do trust until having specific reasons not to). So far, I can see no anomalous increase whatsoever when comparing with the last few years -- with the significant caveat of a few weeks' lag in the stats, currently complete only up to about 24 May, which means a bump may still turn up, given that easing started around the start of May.

I guess there is also the point that if the Swedish path should in hindsight turn out to have been the right one, there would probably be no way of detecting that at the current point in time anyway; data supporting any such conclusion would surely need several more months to emerge.

xp to YMP: if you ask a Norwegian to enumerate their skiing equipment, I honestly do not think a mask would turn up among the first few items mentioned, no. To me (not a skier for the last few decades tbf), such a thing has connotations either to Finland (finlandshette) or Crimea (balaklava).

Oh, right, another recent arena for systematically dubious distancing: the newly-opened outdoor drinking establishments. We do love our utepils the few months of the year when it is meteorologically sensible, and I've passed many places where the one-metre rule seems to have been only barely respected, if at all. Inside, seating seems to be more strictly controlled.

which is about 40% more densely populated than Norway, not less

Oops, right. Sweden is still very sparsely populated by European standards!

Not to be flippant here, but didn't y'all, like invent ski masks?

I know I'd feel safer if everyone was wearing these.

https://www.augustcaps.com/thumbnail.asp?file=assets/images/spider%20hats%20and%20princess%20hats/11192011/threeholemask1.jpg

Private pools got the OK to open in Florida last week. I finally used my condo pool last weekend and did a few laps this morning. After closing from September to December for its first renovation in forty years (!), it closed in March thanks to COVID fears. All social distancing rules apply: the new furniture was spaced out, masks required when not in the pool, no more than 11 guests. I was the only one. It felt great -- one more small way of feeling normal.

so my friend, who runs a small theater that I used to perform at, is doing little 2 hour "introspective" video conferencing specials, bringing back panels of people from each previous season. I jointed this week. it was just 10 of us who were in the theater's second season, remembering the shows we were in. The idea is that the people who were in each show would talk about it and share memories, and funny stories, and it's broadcast for an audience of friends of the theater, who we hope will give small donations to keep the theater going.

instead, it quickly fell apart when instead of letting the people from each production talk, 2 chatterboxes decided to hijack every production's conversation so that the people who were actually IN the productions could barely talk about them. We got to a production I was in (25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), and I planned to share a memory from the time I pulled my (still to this day) best friend on stage as a guest speller, only to get interrupted by one of these loudmouths, who then proceeded to tell the story I was in process of telling. She wasn't even part of the show! She just happened to see the night in question.

so I left the broadcast 30 minutes early. lol...I should have known, I fucking hate zoom when it's more than like, 5 people.

Going to go buy a tallboy and a pack of American Spirits and smoke three on my porch, first alcohol and nicotine in... three months? I expect them to taste like shit. (Especially because the top shelf at my corner store will probably be Dos Equiis.)

get a lime stuck in there and enjoy

some days even shit beer hits the spot these days

I remember beer :/

so a ton of people receiving unemployment in Florida, my mother and two friends included, were receiving the $600 weekly federal checks, which stopped for no apparent reason on 5/19. at first, the answer given from FL DEO was "we're moving to a biweekly pay schedule", but two weeks came and went for most without payment.

one of our local representatives, Anna Eskamani, has been harassing them for months, and finally, the DEO asked her to get a list of all of the people who hadn't been paid since 5/19.

Gee, wonder why people are rushing back to work when sick and under less than optimal circumstances.

Florida's the only state whose trust fund increased in the months since the CARES act was passed. this is starting to look very deliberate now.

Desantis for jail 2020!

i've now been waiting for three months for the unemployment system to process my claim here in honolulu. great fun.

I'm sorry to hear that, davey....it's ridiculous how bad the unemployment programs are in some states.

after much noise and insistence, the DEO finally looked into the fact that thousands of people are saying their payments stopped and they realized that everybody who filled out a form to backdate their claim (since it took most people a month just to file a claim) was accidentally excluded from the last payroll files.

I've been taking my glasses off before heading into stores, to prevent my (inadequate, cloth) mask from fogging them. I usually leave them in the car, but if I forget to do that, I'll sometimes tuck them into the collar of my t-shirt. I've come across three pairs of someone else's broken, crushed glasses in parking lots in the past week.

It's not fair...
THERE WAS TIME NOW

lol. my life goal has always been to be that guy in the apocalypse

lol Neanderthal

So as others have said we are a looong way off widespread takeup of mask wearing in the UK. I was masked up in budgens (who have one of the better covid setups ime) & I was buying wine & the checkout person hesitated before selling it to me & then said “um, can I see your face?” (I never get ID’d usually because I have a face ravaged & bloated by age - also a beard)

So I had to pull my mask down lol

Cpap nose mask seal meant no glasses fogging, but made it impossible to breathe in. Not recommended :)

Neanderthal, I've alluded to your central Florida updates every time we discuss COVID in our state.

So cases rising in 24 out of 50 states, including going back up in states that peaked early (Michigan being a big one). Hoping someone can talk me off the ledge that this news isn’t quite as bleak as it looks. At this rate it’s hard to imagine we won’t all be back under lockdowns by mid-July.

Idk seems bleak.

We're not going under lockdown. Trump's forgotten about the virus already. As ever it's up to the states.

Well that’s what I mean by lockdown, all the states going under lockdown.

I don't care about an upcoming lockdown itself, my mental state is already wrecked and isn't going to get any better, and it's weird how I have gotten used to it.

but I do care about how the working class will once again suffer massively for it as little to no relief is offered.

but yeah, I doubt we go under the same lockdowns. death toll will probably go to 200,000 - 300,000 k and half the people will say it's fake numbers.

i'm gonna be so happy if I'm wrong. pleasantly happy that neither of my folks got it, which is the main reason I wanted to get out of the house, cos I dont' wanna infect him.

Yeah, my fear is that we won't go back into lockdown even when we clearly need to. At least here in Seattle we're only in Phase 1.5 of our reopening, and have pretty clear guidelines for when to enter Phase 2 that we are definitely not going to meet any time soon due to the protests. But I also don't really see us going back to Phase 0 regardless of what happens.

I'm really scared for my cousin who's about to fly off to King Salmon, AK to commercial fish. It seems pretty much inevitable that the virus will get into the canneries, the villages will be overwhelmed, fishing will get shut down halfway through the season, and everyone will be stuck there unable to get a flight out.

I don't think any states will go under lockdown again, no matter how bad it gets. The feds aren't going to do any of the things that made it vaguely feasible in the first place.

According to Google, yesterday the new case count in Michigan was 108 - the lowest count of new cases since mid-March.

Some bars opened in MI this week and I saw a picture of a big line of maskless people waiting to get in to a college town drinking establishment exactly as they were in mid March after classes were cancelled but before things shut down. I’ll see what happens in two weeks.

the strip clubs reopened in Cocoa. cos that's a good idea.

i'm pretty sure they're not socially distancing, unless they're getting lap dances from women on stilts

Ours reopened with no lap dances, so you're just going to throw dollars on the main stage I guess?

Given that situation, I'd prefer the Portland drive-thru strip club model. At least that's funny.

do you pull up to the drive-thru window and instead of getting a Big Mac thru the window, u get a butt

I think you end up getting both.
https://www.insider.com/oregon-strip-club-drive-thru-show-and-takeout-food-coronavirus-2020-4

RE: Michigan counts - it looks like the spike in cases some are reporting is due to a new classification of "probable" cases being included in the overall counts instead of just "confirmed" new cases. http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/did-michigans-coronavirus-cases-spike-last-weekend-yes-and-no/ar-BB15kU0r?ocid=ientp

I find the reporting (both from the states and from the, well, reporters) to be very muddled and unclear. As far as I can tell, there are places with rising positives, but that's because of more testing. There are also states with rising positives but flat hospitalizations, which isn't terrible in and of itself. Then there are places with rising positives *and* rising hospitalizations, which seems less good, but also as far as I can tell the hospitals across the board have said they are in a much better position now (in terms of preparation, equipment, and so on) than they were at the start, and that even in places with increased hospitalizations, afaik no hospitals are currently being flooded with Covid patients. But I do think doctors and hospitals (and sure, reporters, if not necessarily states) are keeping an eye on those ICUs. "Flatten the curve" never meant "reduce to zero" or "prevent all illness and death," it was always intended to give the hospitals space to work with those who need them the most. So far that plan seems to be holding within whatever margin, but as always this thing runs on a two week lag, more or less. All they/we can do is check back in a couple of weeks and check the numbers.

But anyway, an ancillary is that *no* states ever really went on lockdown, let alone enforced one. To a large extent it's always seemed to be up to individuals, with some degree of guidance and restriction. The question is how long will people in places where mitigation efforts are apparently working stick with it and, conversely, in places where they never tried that hard in the first place, what if needed will it take citizens to implement social distancing policies and so on *without* government guidance? Because god knows in places like Florida, Georgia, the usual suspects, what you got from the state is probably about as good as you'll ever get from those in charge.

Yeah. I've repeatedly written that Miami-Dade and Broward counties have responded as if it were autonomous states.

check back in August

it won't be pretty

A physician friend who's been on the front lines in Brooklyn says things there at least will be slower until October, when he's planning on the flu + the rona to fuck things up bigger than so far. He's taking a vacation now in anticipation of the hell to come.

Heard a doc on the radio say his number one recommendation right now is to get your flu shot this year ASAP, not only because it covers even more strains than usual (I think) but because it will make it much easier to eliminate (or at least lessen) the flu as the source of Covid-like symptoms should the fabled Next Wave manifest itself. And also give the docs even more breathing space.

Looking at covidexitstrategy.org, a lot of states, even the usual suspects with current increases, have doubling rates around 30 days or so or much higher. For example, New York's right now is 301 days, but at its peak it was doubling every day. Illinois at its peak was every two days, now it is down to 92 days. For comparison, Arizona and Alabama are currently on track to double at less than 20 days, with a couple of other states nipping at their heels, but no one is close to past peaks (yet), and hospital capacity is holding (so far). And FWIW, those states doing worse right now were never particularly trying hard in the first place, so it could be much worse. And maybe it will be.

We have riding cases, riding positivity %, and rising hospitalizations here, so not good

*rising

It's mind boggling and depressing that we've mostly been keeping things in check and not letting it get out of hand until right now, three months in.

i think the US is taking the path that other countries are starting to take - accepting that there will be a lot of deaths, normalizing it, and moving on. there was a NYT story on that last night, although that one focused on countries that are re-opening due to economic hardship - iran, india, mexico (which never "shut down"), and others.

i'd blame it all on trump and his croneys, but it's the governors deciding when to re-open.

oops, sorry forgot which thread this was

it's all the same thread though, literally