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

someone oughta put them out of their misery. anyone got a referral for a good oh fuck

put them to sleep

Surgeons are the purported dumbasses, from what I've heard. The anesthesiologists I've known have been OK.

Anesthesiologist is a great American word.

so I've actually been going to the office*, currently 3 days a week but I may increase it to 5. given my pretty much daily volunteer activities** which take me around the city, often via public transit, this really doesn't pose any additional risk to myself or others AFAICT. the office has a capacity of 110 normally, now reduced to 30, but I've never seen more than maybe 8 people here at any given time, usually hovering around 4, which makes the "population density" lower than it is in the actual house I take up the basement of. most of my co-workers are older suburbanites who have entire houses to play around in so it's no wonder they're almost all opting to WFH in perpetuity. meanwhile I have been monopolizing our massive boardrooms and cranking Spotify while I'm at it, and there's a shower here so I can go for a run on the path outside at "lunch". honestly it's pretty fucking nice, I wish you could all benefit from this insanity.

*for anyone who doesn't know I'm in Toronto; our last briefing said we'd had 58 new patients over the previous 48 hours which is imo pretty good for a city of ~3 million

**I've said this before and I'll say it again, if there is ANY capacity you can volunteer in throughout this, even if it doesn't involve leaving the house (eg phone line support, cooking, etc), I really can't recommend it highly enough. even if you think you don't have the energy or bandwidth or whatever, I find it becomes an energy source all its own.

I'm going in two days a week - as of last week. Only 5 hours a day too.

our relatively small county has gotten 100 new cases over the weekend. our total is only around 550 so that is a pretty big chunk. regardless, the school district decided yesterday to do that dumb hybrid plan, 2 days on, 3 days virtual. they said they'll leave the windows open. LOL, this is Wisconsin. good luck with that. my wife is most likely going to have to return to work in September. I have no idea what we're gonna do.

can COVID spread thru cheese?

Only Swiss, iirc.

Call me an alarmist if you like, but if you think the Cov' has been spreading like wildfire up to now, just you wait until school is back in session. Boy oh boy oh boy.

lol josh

Gouda, on the other hand…

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/vitamin-k-found-in-certain-cheeses-may-help-protect-against-covid-19-researchers-say-1.4983748

there's never been a better time to be a short canadian cheese eater

Vitamin K2 is also found in various hard and soft cheeses, including Gouda, Jarlsberg, and Munster.

Hmmm…

Slipknot, Gwar and The Residents chime in
https://www.spin.com/2020/07/the-masked-bands-survival-guide-to-your-new-masked-life/

GWAR have re-released Slumdogs of the Universe and the date it's coming out got delayed due to COVID. their email on the matter was actually quite funny.

“It’s hard to convince the government you’re an essential worker when what you do is stand onstage and play music and shoot a bunch of blood everywhere and strangle people to death,” Blöthar says. “As much as I appreciate the vacation time, I would love to be able to throttle some humans. But no, they can’t even agree on things long enough to get their shit together and wear masks, so they don’t kill each other.”

“For one thing, people won’t really know what you look like, and that’s a great advantage, especially when you’re trying to commit armed robbery at your local convenience store,” Blöthar says. “The other thing, especially if you’re really ugly, which most humans are … at least you get to walk around and not be as ugly as you usually are. There’s a big plus to that. Another big plus is other people don’t have to look at your ugly mug. And their days are not ruined.”

GWAR’s frontman had but one bit of advice for those adapting to masking: “Just wear a mask. Just do it. Stop kicking and screaming about it. For GWAR, looking at all this stuff happen, it’s just reconfirmation that people need to wear masks so we can get out there and give you the well-deserved ass-kicking you all are in line for.”

The main thing is to find a mask that fits,” Taylor says. “I know a lot of people complain about it, like, hurting their ears and shit, but that’s because your mask is too small. Or your head’s too big. Whichever is the case, I’m not too sure."

DRINK BLEACH!!! Retweet so your so called friends know too! Another great PSA from JiZMak Da Gusha. #GWAR #DrinkBleach #Covid19 @JiZMakOfficial pic.twitter.com/Ijg9FEEr03

— GWAR (@gwar) April 29, 2020

Me, I'mma wait till we hear from this guy

http://www.themoviejerk.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Frank.jpg

6 days into the government making it mandatory to wear a face covering in shops and I've made my first trip to my local mini Tesco. Face coverings more necessary in smaller shops than larger you would think? Think again! Half the customers and none of the staff wearing face coverings. Not that much difference from a month ago.

I went to everyone's favorite, the Post Office, a couple of days ago, and one of the two workers behind the counter was not wearing a mask. She wasn't helping me, and I did not have the heart to scold her. The person she *was* helping was not wearing a mask, either. They were both the only ones in the post office that I saw sans mask.

I'm here in one of the worst hit areas of the US where masks are mandatory and just had a run-in with a militant anti-masker at the store here. It can be so unnerving.

I just never would have imagined that masks would become this much of a political firestorm. Obviously, yes, there would be dissenters and fringe idiots, but never to the centerstage like this. It's soul crushing, really. To know that just that simple fucking step, while not being able to solve this crisis, would have put us all in a much better position right now.

It really is the fight scene from "They Live," except on a huge scale.

this country was deeply broken before Trump came along but he's very much ushered in the era of "trust no one smarter than you"

We don't even have that excuse here, seems to be more people can't be arsed wearing them.

see also death cult

the only explanation for anything in the USA is that 40% or so of the population worships death

Just sitting here hoping that Trump starts riding hard for some Covid 'cure' that's legitimately toxic and that his flock will unquestioningly start guzzling down like a bottle of sarsaparilly.

Well, his "cure" seems to be just waiting it out, which will take out some people, but slowly, and not just his idiots.

The 'quin actually already did kill some people, so eh no effect

Anyone else besides that couple that ate fish food?

Regardless, the virus in America is killing minorities disproportionately. There's a lot to be galled at but seeing Governor Abbot in TX refuse to allow a mask order in the worst-hit border area is egregious.

the only explanation for anything in the USA is that 40% or so of the population worships death

What's the overlap between the cult of Thanatos and the cult of Mammon?

Honky death cult is the MO of much of the US.

More like 'death for you, immortality for me'.

^^^ this

It's not death for themselves, they are all going to be saved in the rapture. It's death for all the rest of us they are actively cheering on.

idk some of them were saying "don't shut down the economy to save me!!!" mere weeks ago. I think they want to die.

Honky death cult is the MO of much of the US.

― blue light or electric light (the table is the table

this is a little harsh on Missouri, but fair, it is fair

lol I wanted to make that joke but I'm glad you did

i'm happy to deputize you to make fun of MO whenever you want. however bad you think it is, it's worse

my dad's family moved around a few times so he was a Hickman High School Kewpie

yeah, those damn Hickman babies destroyed our marching band in every contest, every year. sucks to get yr ass kicked in MO

I have a question no one I know can seem to answer: what can/will companies do with their office spaces, especially the ones they own, as WFH becomes the new norm in so many industries? Like I'm glad I have the luxury of coming to an office, but there's no denying it's a tremendous waste of resources. Has anyone written about this?

i was going to say "they could open them up to the general public" but my nose kept growing

death cultism, i.e. valorizing certain forms of death as the only way to make life meaningful (succinctly depicted in the mad max reboot), in the us is very real imo and i know no one thinks anything of freud these days but he was onto something wrt sex drives and death drives being closely related.

i'd say that it's more than 40% of the u.s. that believes in death cultism to some degree, it's the logical endpoint of a lot of power structures including patriarchy, racism, etc.

The Reformation was a cosmic mistake

... for the US maybe.

i know no one thinks anything of freud these days but he was onto something wrt sex drives and death drives being closely related.

Time for Wilhelm Reich to be rehabilitated... partially.