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

I ordered some dumbbells about six weeks ago and they never arrived. The tracking number showed they had been delivered somewhere in HI in February (I'm in NY). I cancelled the order and received a refund. Then they showed up about two weeks ago (four weeks late).

Wow. Apparently the USPS is even worse shape than I'd imagined, this was the response I received:

After investigating the service request this parcel is still in transit. I currently have over 50 customers who have been waiting for package well over 45 days. We are understaffed and transportation is limited across the the country. We are doing our best to get all shipments delivered as soon as possible. Please continue to patient with us and the parcel will be delivered as soon as it arrives at (your local) facility.

I have acquired a new mask. (Prior to this I was wearing a black bandana across my face, antifa supersoldier style.) It's one of those that has a little pouch that you tuck a filter into; the seller sent me about 30 filters, so I should be good for a while.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbdVwA-XQAA78fJ.jpg

I haven't had any mail disruptions lately. A month or so ago, though, I had several packages that wound up sitting in distribution centers for weeks at a time (one of which, when it finally arrived, looked like it had been jammed up someone's ass just before that unfortunate individual was hit by a train and dragged for several miles).

I got word last week that I’d be working from home until September at the earliest, and now an email suggesting that since I can do my job entirely from home I’ll probably not be back in until next January. And then who knows.

my company just changed their WFH policy to basically allow you to do it whenever you like, indefinitely. That's pretty nice. It doesn't look like having everyone abruptly work from home has caused any disruptions or loss of productivity whatsoever.

my wife's job on the other hand is making her go back Monday, 2 weeks on then 4 weeks WFH. it's really dumb. there are no in person meetings or anything.

does her job require someone to actually keep the doors open or something?

We were just told this week that it will be Labor Day before they even weigh the option of reopening our office and that, even when/if they do reopen, on-site attendance will be strictly voluntary for some time to come. I mean, doy, everyone has continued working from home without much of a hitch so why not, but it's still pleasantly surprising that my workplace is being sensible about this.

as far as I know I'm working from home at least for the next month or so; part of me likes this, part of me knows that's just because I have the apartment to myself

The word on the grapevine at my work is that we're basically working from home til this is over and that's expected not to be any time this year or next.

Celebs with shit WiFi, a list:
Judy Dench
Heston Blumenthal

(Both have been on broadcast TV lately looking like CDROM quality video. Heston's would've been better if he hadn't been jumping around)

Current plan to square the circle re: staying safe yet helping the struggling restaurant industry in the UK for me is to start picking up more delivery from places that have opened but not dine in. Is this a good idea?

Definitely!

don't forget to add a tiny dash of bleach to each dish just to be on the safe side, though

^ chlorinated chicken tikka

flash chicken madras

I’m in line to get tested. Went to bed early last night, chills but no fever last night, gastric symptoms, no cough till this morning. Generally weak and lethargic. Doc says probably just a gastric virus but get tested and isolate till the results come back.

good luck. other illnesses are less like playing Russian roulette with your future health.

I just learned what my local alma matter plans to do with reopening, and it sounds like such a PIA. Semester starts mid-September then ends with Thanksgiving, only freshmen get guaranteed housing, only single rooms, 40% occupancy dorms, no parties, plus I assume the usual masks, etc. And pretty sure no discounts on tuition.

I am so annoyed at the discussion surrounding college campuses because they always focus the discussion around traditional/residential students as if that's what ALL COLLEGE STUDENTS are. The country is teeming with commuter students, nontraditional students, and people for whom there is an entirely different calculus wrt "college." (I work at one of these places) It's like we and our students don't exist. Uncool!!

That's why my uni's doing better (so far) than the others in Florida. Our "traditional" footprint is minimal.

well residential students are what are going to make the universities into Covid factories

if you widen your focus to university education globally rather than just the USA, then residential education is a tiny part of the story. It just happens to include the wealthiest universities in the world (for the moment).

idk whether I have more anxiety over the fact that we have a government who is literally just abandoning its civilians and small businesses or the fact that I seriously have doubts that our lives will ever be the same again.

the fact that another relief bill is not even being debated on the floor yet, much less signed and on the President's desk is malpractice. and it's all Trump/McConnell.

my mother's unemployment resumed for a week two weeks ago, stopped again out of nowhere. have now given her $3,000 to help her pay bills due to the failure of FL DEO, and some on twitter are starting to say their cars have been repoed, relying on food banks to feed their families, and they're facing immediate eviction proceedings as soon as the moratorium is lifted in August. We're doing this to our own fucking people.

also my dad needs swallowing therapy now, and I was the one who foolishly kept telling mom it was probably nothing. if not for her diligence in making him go to the doctor, he could have gotten aspirational pneumonia.

shit is straining me. s/o is comfortable going anywhere anytime as long as masked and equipped with hand sanitizer. i’m like “nowhere is safe “bunker mentality :/

by anywhere I mean like Target

I still go to Target tbh

Same. Target, grocery, take out food. I'm good with that, and not much more.

yeah I mean, I’m down, it’s just that if I there’s something I want I’m inclined to wait as long as possible and just get everything at once. or just get it online. just feel uncomfortable with the spontaneous trips

of course after a stressful day of work, my mom wanted to call to chat (which I didn't mind), but naturally we got to talking about the unemployment thing, which of course began stressing me out more. then my best friend calls me stressed because the house she and her boyfriend are moving into had massive mildew damage that was undisclosed (fortunately their other lease runs through end of month) and she's having to demand they rectify it by law within 5 days. I could have told her "i'm really up not up for speaking atm" but she was stressed and she's the type that needs to let it out so I let her, but now I'm just exhausted. and worried that they won't have a place to live.

meh. so I'm buying myself a new turntable, cos I stress buy

I go to one of four markets per week, rotated through the month (Costco, the greengrocer, Vietnamese market/bakery, the Persian butcher), Target once a month, to an empty parking lot where I sit three spaces away from my friends and drink bad wine from flasks once a week, and on a walk around a local pond most dats. That is it. I could be on a spaceship with a treadmill. I want more, but I am afraid of everywhere still.

I was fine the last few months, but now I am in fact scared to go to the grocery store. Had been doing backyard hangouts, but everyone I know called off Fourth of July plans this weekend after Texas exploded with new cases. Back to Zoom happy hours!

Officials: COVID-19 positive young people party instead of quarantining in Tuscaloosa

From an article a couple of days ago:

Mike, from Old Town, who did not want to share his last name, ordered a vodka Red Bull before getting back in line with friends at Old Crow Smokehouse’s curbside bar. He had just gotten back from a vacation in Dallas, Texas, with a friend, where he left a day early due to the spike in cases and the state’s rolling back on its openings.

“(It feels) like I’m the problem,” he said with a nervous laugh as he talked about being out and about amid the pandemic. Looking around at the throngs of people drinking and walking around Wrigleyville, he said it is concerning.

Outside Vines on Clark, a patron said he felt guilty as things are going back to what he described as “normal.” Then he joined his friends on the patio.

From a brewery in response:

This bullshit will squander every sacrifice made over the past few months; render all of our painstaking efforts to get back to business safely useless; and frankly, is deeply disrespectful to our industry and to the health of our community.
We're calling for the reporting and citation of any and all bars operating in this manner. We give zero fucks about the possible loss of sales to these accounts. We care about the life and health of our community above profit - always have. Always will.
If you're heading out to places like this and plan to behave so irresponsibly, as far as we're concerned: NO BEER FOR YOU.

Keep in mind, things here are reportedly going relatively well. I can only imagine what things are/were like in other places.

I really do understand why everyone wants to die but it’s just so selfish of them.

(chuckles sheepishly) Gee whiz, I dunno, shucks, feels like I could maybe possibly be part of the problem! (shrugs guiltily, runs through crowd randomly licking the faces of strangers)

everyone is the exception

well to be fair quarantine is like quitting smoking, except instead of not going outside to smoke anymore you can't go outside to do anything at all

I went to a grocery store for our first food shopping run in three weeks. It wasn't crowded at all and the customers (almost all of them Instacart shoppers this a.m.) and staff were wearing masks, but it felt like almost no one was thinking about six feet of distancing and the basic precautions in the store seem laxer each time I return.

Oregon, like most states, is experiencing jumps in its numbers of infections (even though at far lower levels than AZ, TX and FL) and I must say I'm getting very nervous about entering any enclosed space for any reason. Even encountering people outdoors is feeling riskier than it did last month. Just had to vent a bit of my growing fear and loathing over the death cult crazies, selfish oafs and and ignorant louts who are undermining our whole society.

My partner works in the ED of the city's largest hospital, so we're cautious as hell, but I'm also noticing a dramatic increase in people hunkering down.

My county put in a mandatory masks-at-all-times order last night; we had not retreated from March's mandatory masks-indoors rule.

Although Miami-Dade has the highest totals in Florida, those cases look concentrated in, of course, the poorest and blackest parts of town, and for the first time less than half of new cases are in South Florida. I just haven't seen evidence of the lunacy Neanderthal describes upstate, thanks to the mask ordinance.

I'm still not particularly nervous. My family has a beach vacation on the Gulf coast; we plan to walk straight from condo to beach and avoid everyone.

Saw my first two tense arguments break out in a store a couple of days ago, at least one mask-related. And they were in a very granola co-op.

In San Francisco it's been interesting, because while there'd been some light retail opening a few weeks back -- primarily curbside pickup still, but moving a touch forward on certain fronts -- they, wisely, put a halt to what would have been an accelerated opening otherwise allowing outdoor bars and the like. That initially was going to be around July 15th, then pushed up to June 29th, but on Friday the 26th they'd clearly seen enough from SoCal in particular as well as some lightly rising numbers here and went, "Yeah, no." (However much London Breed was or wasn't involved in the nuts and bolts, she's two for two on the biggest announcements so far.) So essentially we're frozen in place rather than retreating -- at least so far -- and thus avoiding the clearly obvious fuckups elsewhere. In terms of masks, the requirement's been tightened a little more but it pretty much was actively encouraged the whole time and required for anything indoors; you do see the occasional person outside without them, more at certain times of the day, but less so now, and pretty much I haven't seen anyone while inside anywhere for my usual weekly errands (laundry, shopping, once-a-week takeout) without a mask. No cheers for us until we're all through it but we seem to have settled into a norm, though let's see what the next two weeks bring.

Texas just issued a mandatory statewide mask order.

oh, is it april already?

For counties with 20 or more cases. All those other counties can party on!

That's like every county that isn't 75% desert tho.

Although if this drives all anti-maskers to live free in the deserts and badlands, then hey-hey.

Right, I was wondering which counties could possibly fly under that radar.

As long as the people who make barbecue mask up, I'm okay with the rest of the rubes wandering off to the desert to live free and die.