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

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!

otm

Biden, Pelosi and Schumer are not the crew to assuage economic concerns.

Nor concerns about the climate crisis, escalating in visible real time.

The defense budget will only grow at 8% per year.

It's true that we're caught in an avalanche of multiple simultaneous global disasters (economic, medical, climatic) which we have effectively no agency to ameliorate -- still vote though, of course! -- but there was one piece of unequivocally good news:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/health/fewer-babies-are-being-born-premature-during-covid-19-1.5056815

I can see no downside to this! It's shocking! I see downsides to virtually every other phenomenon to ever exist, but this seems like a genuinely purely ☆good☆ thing.

So that's what I try to come back to whenever the news gets me down, which is any time I encounter the news.

And if anyone can think of a reason why it's not good just shut the hell up about it or I'll hunt you down and give you a hard stare.

Of course it's not over! I didn't nearly die last year for it to be over...

but also, as someone who has dipped in and out of society for the past decade or so, I want to say that my pessimism remains a constant and that so does my stupid belief in the resilience and dignity of most individual people. Holding these views at the same time is difficult but oh well, that's among the reasons that I write poetry.

I gotta admit, my belief in the resilience and dignity of individual people has taken a big hit in 2020. It's hard to imagine us overcoming the climate crisis when people resort to punching 72 year-old veterans in the jaw because they don't wanna wear a mask for two minutes.

There is no overcoming the climate crisis.

Fair point, swap out that for "dealing with the climate crisis in any meaningful way" and my larger point still stands.

this op-ed was nice to read as far as looking for silver linings goes (and in the nyt of all places)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/09/opinion/left-politics.html

Yeah, even a semblance of mitigation would help, but it's just delaying the inevitable.

You see? I'm really not a ball of sunshine.

There's very little we can do about a lot of these external forces, and so the real issue (to me) is how to live life in the best and most ethical way in the present, even when everything is crumbling round us.

At the same time, for those with kids and families and the economic ability to do so, I'd buy some land in the North Woods near a fresh water source. At least then, your kids will learn how to live on and with the land in a way that they will need to in the future if they want to survive.

(Also, those of us without kids or families should also do so, to pass on to future generations of queers)

I wear a size 7 3/4 fitted hat (pretty large) and the disposables plus an earsaver are the most comfortable for me.

oops

lol from Bryn Mawr college:

I have been approached by a number of people worried about those who will not comply. Some staff and faculty are focused on student compliance. I do want to remind you that Bryn Mawr students are not a random sample of 18- to 22-year-olds. In a recent survey for residential life, reading was the most popular leisure activity.

My mom went there and indeed, I grew up with babysitters who went to Bryn Mawr...and yes, that is mostly true. If they're not bookish lesbians, they're somewhat wild international students with uptight religious parents. (I had a number of babysitters from Pakistan, for example, all of whom were really into hip-hop and hitting my parents' liquor cabinet).

did the cabinet hit them back at least?

I worked at the sister school Haverford, and BM students had a bit of rep for wildness among the students there

Wow, Haverford seemed sober but not that sober! I spent a lot of time there as well, my piano teacher's husband was a music prof. Cacioppo was his name

checking back in to say i dodged a bullet and didn't get sick, whew

also to post this shot-for-shot remake of the final sequence of 2001: a space odyssey, filmed entirely in lydia cambron's apartment in brooklyn. p funny/cute

https://vimeo.com/446927270