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

Oh YMP, I wasn't trying to diminish yr daughter's illness and/or belittle your sense of relief! I was merely sharing, sorry if it came off as dismissive. I totally get yr sense of relief. I hope yr daughter feels better!!

totally cool, table. I didn't think anything of the sort.

Just to add to fun, my son slept much of the day, seemed a bit off, and then pointed to his throat. So I took him off for a strep test... which turned out negative. So who knows what the heck is going on.

“ The anonymous account, @Sciencing_Bi, was an active participant in the corner of Science Twitter that frequently discusses issues of sexual misconduct in the sciences. It claimed on at least one occasion to have grown up in Alabama, to have “fled the south because of their oppression of queer folk,” and to have attended Catholic school. The account began to pointedly make reference to being Native American and, earlier this year, began to identify as Hopi.”

... and that professor’s name? Luna

Lol

Good day!

went to the grocery store for the first time in almost 5 months (!!!) and it was nice to see pretty much everyone wearing masks, with the exception of the meat guy who took it off mid-order to tell me "these things are driving me crazy"

did see one group of women sans mask at the checkout and one of them was joking "oh be careful, I feel a scratch in my throat..." - fucking morons

my county is still relatively low but our July total is 3x all the other months combined. I probably shouldn't have gone but I find the more this goes on the more I start to get the attitude of "fuck it, it's been 5 months, there's no end in sight, I'm probably gonna get this anyway..." which obviously is not the best attitude to have when most states are still hitting high scores on the daily

in london i’d say it’s about 95% mask compliance in big shops and public transportation. what does my head in is that among EMPLOYEES in the big supermarkets it’s more like 20%. wtf? how can they mandate customers to wear masks but not their own employees??

increasing numbers of shop staff wearing clear plastic face protectors which do v little

went to my pottery studio for the first time since March. Temperature taken, bags dropped off, hands sanitized, signed in for tracing, masks on while indoors. Maybe 12 people there. Subway not too bad either. Baby steps.

It seems so day to day around here. Went for a walk Wednesday evening and, of the maybe 30-40 people I saw, the only person I saw in a mask was a pizza delivery driver running up to a house. Otherwise, not a single mask.

But took a walk last night and didn't see a single person not wearing one. It's weird.

There was a guy asking for money outside of Walgreens today. He was super jittery, relatively scabby and unmasked. Then I saw him go *inside,* without his mask on, and I thought, ugh, gross. And *then* he was in line in front of me, but ... he was standing on his proper socially distant spot and had put his mask on! Granted, he still wiggled a lot and kept scratching himself, but he was following the rules and in fact when he left, even gave himself a little squirt of hand sanitizer from the counter. So, good for you, scratchy jittery guy. If you can do it, everyone should be able to do it.

so in most of the cities I'm reading about in this thread y'all don't have mandatory mask ordinances?

We do have one, but my walks are all outside so the way our ordinance is written basically implies that if you can stay socially distant while enjoying outdoor activity, you don't need to wear one.

masks mandatory indoors and on public transit in toronto. I spotted a mask and sanitizer vending machine at one of the subway stations - cool idea but I wish many more masks were being distributed free

Mandatory here. And, almost universally, followed.

A couple months ago, I saw a guy in a liquor store who had apparently forgotten his mask, and dealt with it by pulling the collar of his t-shirt up over his nose and he looked so embarrassed and guilty about it that I had a hard time being mad at him.

I like that one of our wine/craft beer spots set up cans/bottles of everything in the window so you can still browse, then call when you see what you want and they roll it out on a cart with a Square reader. Simple, yet really great idea.

What still baffles me: epicenter Miami-Dade County, beholden to a mask ordinance since late March, has seen its cases explode, as you all know (they have slowly leveled off in the last week, though). Why and where? I doubt indoor seating at normal restaurants (i.e. not clubs) contributed much. I know about several secondhand cases of house parties and such, and my friend's mom who died, my friend learned, because she wasn't taking mask wearing seriously. I'm thinking it's, as usual, the poorest and brownest among us: the people who clean hotel rooms, menial custodial work sweeping strip malls, chauffeurs, county drivers and garbage men, etc.

Our mandatory mask order started two days ago, now that our state has the highest positivity rate in the country. Tonight is my 1st bar shift since it went into effect, I'm sure it will be comedy gold.

Mandatory in shops - but certainly not being followed by everyone and especially not by staff (as Tracer pointed out). Also mandatory on public transport, I'm walking everywhere myself but I keep seeing buses go by with plenty of unmasked people on them.

Mandatory in all shops, and very much enforced.

Now, right outside of those shops is a different story.

Mandatory in shops and other public closed spaces (including public transportation obviously) here in Paris. Soon to be mandatory outside as well in places where people congregate (as determined by the city). Compliance is high.

The area outside my home has embraced masks head on. I'm proud.

5 miles east tho.... it's Thunderdome

the vilest Cuban American Trump voter is masked like Tutankhamun.

Mandatory here, plus we have 8pm curfew and only allowed out once a day for exercise and once a day for shopping. Nonessential businesses are now closed.

Feeling taunted by the dickheads building a couple of houses on the corner. (Permitted as long as no more than 5 people on site). Not a mask to be seen, even for activities where you should be wearing a mask for non-Covid purposes (eg. Cutting timber and plasterboard)

Mask compliance is pretty much 100% otherwise.

I've started seeing more people skirt the rule when they know a store isn't going to do anything. A woman walking around the grocery store with her mask around her chin Facetiming someone, etc..

Two acts that should get you sent to a gulag imo

Masks appear to be like seatbelts. You should definitely wear a seatbelt or mask, but they can only do so much if you drive like a maniac or are in a country with fundamentally broken government at all levels, distrust of expertise, limited healthcare, and you refuse to pay people to stay home.

I went out of town for three weeks (to a wild and more lawless area with a minuscule number of cases and a whole lotta right wing assholes) and nobody was wearing masks outside but most were in the few places I went into. A favorite restaurant was doing carry out only and all the people waiting outside were masked but one, a totally archetypical “Karen” was not - until she realized that every single other person was a sheepishly pulled one out of her purse. Peer pressure about this is interesting and felt kind of promising.

Back home now and mask use by people outside has dramatically increased since I left. The university campus where we spend a lot of time biking and Pokémon hunting now requires them inside or out and compliance seemed pretty high, and the downtown development authority is going to require them at all times within their defined area starting Monday.

Everything just continues to get worse and worse and worse and worse. There is never good news or hope. I'm so tired of feeling so overwhelmed by constant anxiety and stress. I hate this.

yeah

There is always some reason to hope. Here, for instance, deaths and daily numbers are dropping again. I'm not one to offer chin-up bromides, jon, but, really, don't despair.

Indeed. The problem is a simple one in many respects: the terrible stuff is, essentially, obvious and immediate (that Georgia school going from damn-the-torpedoes pack-em-all-in last week to closing today and tomorrow and probably beyond this week being an obvious example). The progress is quieter and incremental in terms of further research, vaccine development, etc.; while accelerated, it's still not felt or seen the same way.

today and tomorrow and probably beyond this week

I'm no optimist but I am generally content with my life, which is the least anyone can ask for. However, there's so much shit going on, yes, today, tomorrow, next week, that I have absolutely no power over and which leads me in the direction of despair. Like the gutting of the post office, for no good reason, or curtailing the census, for no good reason, or refusing to extend benefits to those out of work for bullshit reasons, and so on and so on. In some ways covid is the least of my major concerns, because I at least have some agency, some control over my own safety. All this other bullshit that is just degrading the country, making things bad and the bad stuff worse, it can feel incredibly frustrating to almost unbearable. And again, I am happy with my life, so I can only feel all the more frustration and despair for all those facing far worse than me on a regular basis, which weighs on me as well.

Yeah, building on what Josh said, covid itself is the main target of my despair today, but it's just the cumulative impact of so much depressing news that feels like it's spinning out of control with very little hope on the horizon. For all of the reasons Josh hit on and many more, not to mention waking up to the news that Chicago was once again shutting down it's bridges and tollways like some sort of fucking Batman movie and all of the disinformation floating around today about that mess.

I think what is eating away at me the most right now is the lack of solid specifics or data to hold onto as hope. Like, of course there are a lot of very smart and capable people working on treatments and a vaccine, but it's a lot harder to wrap your head around "it's being worked on" as a vague concept when you are constantly seeing very real specifics - 97,000 children testing positive in a two week period, 1,064 new deaths, that stuff is very real.

There will be a point in the future where we'll be able to say, 'wow, that sucked, I'm glad it's over now'. When the black clouds start to gather, I try to focus more on that and less on the news of today.

when this started in March I remember thinking "man, it's gonna be awesome when this is over in May or June and everyone can go out again", even knowing how awful our leadership is I never thought we'd be in an even worse place in August. that's where the despair is coming from right now, there's just no end in sight. the schools opening really upsets me, yes I know every single option is awful but there is no reason we should be in this position at all

the nation have lost their minds
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/superheroes-coronavirus/

wrong thread i know but wtf is going on here

frogbs, that's a good point. I don't think I ever thought it was going to be "over" by any point this summer, but I do remember thinking that by my birthday (end of August), we should have a really good handle on things and how we can at least take the right steps and minimize the deaths and impacts. But seeing just how much worse things are now and how little we've apparently learned (or refuse to learn, in some cases like Sturgis) makes me despair how truly awful things will be in five more months. Like I never would have dreamed August would be even worse than April, but here we are. What happens in five months when we are looking back fondly on how relatively calm we had it in August?

I'm not the only one despondent with the selfishness on display from the American public.

As people across the US visiting parks and taking trips to the mountains encounter bears, the National Park Service reminds you not to "push your slower friends down in attempts of saving yourself" in the event of an attack. https://t.co/4O8IuMaSiK

— CNN (@CNN) August 10, 2020

fuck, someone caught me

usually when I see a bear charging toward me, I run out of the bar.

that belongs in the 2020 images thread tbh

you can outrun the slow ones -- it's the fast ones you need to push down

There will be a point in the future where we'll be able to say, 'wow, that sucked, I'm glad it's over now'.

citation needed

Bear say die to me

Still less concerned with dying from the 'rona than dying under an overpass post-economic apocalypse tbh

I am frequently buoyed by Masha Gessen's reminder that we still have the power of the vote and that is a start. People who are so cynical that they don't even believe in that should go to an isolated place, scream it out, and come back ready to fight for everyone's right to vote. I'm extremely sick of fighting but that is not a reason to give up/shrug/call it a day. It's not over yet, assholes!