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

I’ve been leaving mine on between shops more and more.

I have to go in to our campus a few days a week, fortunately most things I'm doing require me to be outside and I'm always masked. My coworkers and contractors on campus have been really great and consistent about masks, but the general public seems to be fucking awful about it and it infuriates me.

Our campus is technically private, but it's not blocked off at all from the general community and it connects to a lakefront path and to main sidewalks in a few places so we encourage the public using it to bike, walk and dog walk through. Normally, in non pandemic times, this is something I love but it's infuriating how often people just walking their dogs or jogging/biking through campus aren't wearing masks at all. Just this morning I had to hop out of the way of four assholes barreling down the sidewalk on their expensive bikes and not one of them had a mask, not even lowered. It's been worse now too, since our campus is relatively empty with 95% of the students remote learning at home, so joggers and bicyclists don't have the typical crowds to keep their speeds in check.

Anyway, venting, but that's the point of this thread.

people who wear their masks under their nose are not just public health hazards, but it really highlights their nose in an unflattering way. it has a way of making even medium schnozzes look gigantic. and makes me more likely to look at your nose hairs cos I'm constantly monitoring whether you're wearing yours right.

my close friend had one on the other night and it kept sliding down his nose and I just kept thinking "Christ obviously that mask doesn't fit you, so it's not offering you much protection, man!"

I wear a mask for the whole of my workday (unlike most at my work) but I have to take it off when I have a lunch/coffee break and then put it back on - I am obv keeping my hands clean and being careful but the whole taboo about touching the outside of the mask before you are back in your home is a nonsense to me (and like 50% of the working population) so I will gladly take it off when I am outside in a place with no people and put it back on when entering a place with people. I don’t think this means I suck - I know the protection for me is compromised by touching the mask all the time but I can’t like boil it and dry it out every time I take a break, and the protection for other people, the main point of the mask, is not affected

people who wear their masks under their nose

These people are everywhere and almost always over the age of 60. Drives me up the fucking wall whenever I go to the grocery store.

Definitely did not feel good this afternoon when I went to my normal lunch pick-up spot, the owner/main cashier was yakking with a bunch of guys right outside, mask below the chin. The customers sat at a small table together, no masks on. I buy sandwiches from her all the time, or least, I used to.

search tip for the face cages -- they are called "3D silicone mask brackets"
trying to search for stuff i want or need without the correct search terms gives me the worst agita

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, August 27, 2020 11:58 AM

Thank you for this! These are making a big difference for glasses-fogging and comfort.

I had to be in a large medical facility Tuesday and sat glaring at the one douchey guy with his dicknose hanging out as he sat next to a properly masked pregnant person. Mask-policing nurse gave him hell eventually.

wins, you should be getting your coffee and lunches intravenously. How can you be so selfish?

had to go to the ER and felt safer there than anywhere else in town (it was also like 2am and I may have been literally the only patient there)

wins, you suck! jk. I was thinking more of some people i see on the street who put it on when they pass another person on the sidewalk and then take it off as soon as they pass and I am like wtf are you making it so difficult???

I was sitting on a bus yesterday and the person in front of me had her mask on right. A friend of hers acame over to talk to her and had hers under her nose apart from when she pulled it down to make herself hears which seems to work ok with mask in its right place.
She was standing facing me.
Seemed to be in her 20s or 30s. Felt a bit uncomfortable since she must have been about 5ft away from me.

NOt just over 60s doing it, seen a few others doing that too who I think must have been much younger than taht.

one person who did the under nose thing, my friend asked him why and he said "it's mouth droplets that spreads this" and she said "and nose" and he was like..."oh", like he'd never considered that before.

i thought it was, like, to show solidarity with the anti-covid19 movement, or whatever

I know they did it for a really short time around here, but I'm starting to think we need auto play ads that cover basic COVID safety precautions every single time someone starts up Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime or any other streaming service.

2 days with "face cages" + gaiter in ceramic studios got the job done for me pretty well. only downside is that after the third hour the condensation makes them pretty gross but a quick rinse off and dry with paper towels puts you back at square one. Thanks for the recommend!

Dicknose is definitely a national movement

Always makes me think of the one guy from bazooka joe comics

i assume the people with their noses hanging out need breath mints.

there's nothing wrong with taking a couple months off of brushing your teeth. that's what the mask is for

the whole taboo about touching the outside of the mask before you are back in your home is a nonsense to me

My impression is that all the "how to properly wear a mask" videos and advice articles that were circulated when mask-wearing became recommended for the wider public all came straight out of rules and guidelines that were developed for use in hospitals. They weren't 'toned down' for general societal use because 'why not pass along the best and safest guidelines available?', even if they are too stringent to apply to ordinary daily use by everybody everywhere.

and in general people are bad at taking recommendations and assessing risk for their own situations.

i mean i GET that people are having a hard time breathing! I have fucked up sinuses myself and stress or anything covering my mouth tends to make them close up and i have severe issues on the regular. So i understand! But fuck's sake, quit fronting like you're being safe and just don't wear a mask if you're gonna do that shit so I can avoid you! You're missing the point!

Yeah it’s just a fatal failure of messaging, this idea that anything short of 100% might as well be 0% that led to all this idiotic chat about the “efficacy” of masks. It took our govt a third of a year to come up with the term “face coverings” to explain the concept that a barrier will mitigate transmission which is literally the same concept as social distancing

if you stay on the far side of the sidewalk, i don't give a fuck if you're masked up! It's okay! Just give me the space and we're all good.

Like I'm not necessarily looking forward to the 'depression' stage we'll be moving on to at some point but we've really been stuck on 'bargaining' for a long goddamn while now.

yeah, i just glare at the person and make a wide arc around them and carry on.

the people who need to be told in detail what to do for public health are the same people who don't want to be told what to do.

Because I'm retired and can choose for myself, I've succeeded in staying out of any public spaces enclosed within walls, except for grocery stores since mid-March. The exceptions to this have been so few and so brief as to be negligible. In grocery stores I've masked up since early April.

My sympathy goes out to the masses of working adults who have to struggle with limiting their exposure on a constant ongoing basis. You guys have it much much worse than I do and I know it. The mask issue cuts much deeper for you, too.

not always easy to make a wide arc around somebody if they come towards yo in a confined space. Or if you're both stuck in the same space for a while.
Or ofi there's another nose flasher on the other side of the space you're confined in.

Therre's now officially seats for 8 people on the bottom deck of a bus so they get taken quite fast

wins and Yerac OTM

Where I live hardly anyone is masked outside but it's just not that dense, one is never in an outdoor situation where you can't make that wide arc.

Yeah it’s just a fatal failure of messaging, this idea that anything short of 100% might as well be 0%

Absolutely this, but to be honest this point is just hard to grasp for people and I don't feel like I could come up with messaging that would make it clear.

I thought this explained that point pretty well:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/opinion/coronavirus-schools-tradeoffs.html

Each decision we make to reduce risk helps. Each time we wear a mask, we’re throwing some safety on the pile. Each time we socialize outside instead of inside, we’re throwing some safety on the pile. Each time we stay six feet away instead of sitting closer together, we’re throwing some safety on the pile. Each time we wash our hands, eat apart and don’t spend time in large gatherings of people, we’re adding to the pile.

If the pile gets big enough, we as a society can keep this thing in check.

But rather than focus on the cumulative benefits of individual actions, our attention too often rests on the few who refuse to act safely. We rage online over a couple of people who throw a fit about wearing a mask in a store. We spend far less time being grateful that so many Americans do wear one.

We don’t need everyone to wear a mask. We need more people to wear masks. We need to be willing to wear a mask even if others refuse, because every little bit matters.

wondering how longits goingto take people to get used to having to wait for the cleaners to get on and off the bus before they let passengers on.
Since it seems to be something that people are still not used to and it seems to have been going on for several months if not all 5.

So people have to be told every time that they have to wait. Or act like they must be ahead of you inthe queue if you hang back waiting for them to get on and off before moving for the door.

JUst remembering back in March when one of the girls in Debenhams was stuck with having to wipe down the escalator handrail or maybe it was just seeing it for teh first time. Now seems to be a common place that somebody is cleaning things on taht level.

Attending our first virtual high school open house right now. So inspired by these teachers (so far). Calculus teacher just made a really good observation that so much of school is now silent, since Zoom doesn't really let everyone talk at once. As she pointed out, there is no hum of the classroom, which takes some getting used to.

YES, that New York Times piece was fantastic, and I think people are just... not... hearing it.

I mean, it's pretty bonkers, because everyone wearing a mask very much in essence *is* herd immunity. So all these dum-dums apparently want everyone to get sick because, der, herd immunity, but they can't or won't apply the same principle to a simple action - wearing a mask - that would *stop* lots of people from getting sick. Like, in effect, the mask *is* a vaccine. It won't protect you 100%, 100% of the time, but it will most likely protect enough people to help slow and hopefully stop the rapid and easyspread of this thing. But anyway, god help us, if you can't get people to wear a mask because ... reasons, good luck getting them to get a shot.

everyone wearing a mask very much in essence *is* herd immunity.

I just meant that enough people wearing a mask helps reduce the spread, which in turn helps those who don't wear a mask, just as getting a flu shot (or most other vaccines), even if not 100% of people get the shot, helps those who don't or can't get a shot.

Oh well yeah, I see
All the reduction measures should help, really - not making unnecessary trips included. I guess it's hard to see a direct benefit of being prudent with your own trips/use of masks/distancing/mixing with others/ sanitising your hands on entering shops etc.

The direct benefit is numbers of cases & deaths going down aiui? I guess maybe that's not "direct" in the sense that is a cumulative measure that applies equally to everyone instead of like accruing to an individual--although the tangible direct individual benefit is NOT GETTING COVID.

Put on a mask? What's in it for me? I'm not a LOSER

I wore a mask for 2+ hours yesterday because I drove in a car w someone--windows cracked, both in masks, someone who is at the same level of "precautions" that I am and has been observing them for months. It was fine. We chatted the whole time and tbh I forgot I wear wearing it.

Otoh my boyfriend's kids are at his house right now along with two unrelated school friends being teenagers and not taking any precautions at all (which is why I'm not there). I may not be able to see him for much longer if he doesn't start calculating risks tbh. He's going to be very unhappy when I quarantine him for 14 days after every time he does something dumb.

Everyone's ability to withstand anxiety & scrupulous procedures is different? My bf could handle a temporary situation of great anxiety pretty easily, but he isn't adjusting well to our longer term situation where we have to define a "new normal" baseline of scrupulousness and sustain a lower anxiety level over more time.

had to go to the ER and felt safer there than anywhere else in town (it was also like 2am and I may have been literally the only patient there)

― avellano medio inglés (f. hazel), Thursday, September 3, 2020 1:45 PM (yesterday)

omg hope you are ok f hazel!! i can't imagine anything minor bringing someone to the ER at 2am :(

Everyone's ability to withstand anxiety & scrupulous procedures is different? My bf could handle a temporary situation of great anxiety pretty easily, but he isn't adjusting well to our longer term situation where we have to define a "new normal" baseline of scrupulousness and sustain a lower anxiety level over more time.

― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit), Friday, September 4, 2020 9:14 AM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

The roles are precisely reversed in our household. My gf has been cautiously and mindfully social on the semi-reg while I've noped out completely on that front, but I seem to have settled more easily into this inarguably-shitty new groove of hunkering down until the dust has cleared. As much as the idea of doing normal everyday stuff almost as if it's just a bemasked version of 2019 makes me anxious on practical grounds, the idea of pretending that things are at all normal right now (however briefly) makes me at least as anxious. I personally find it much easier to cope with all of this by focusing on how fucking marvelous it will be to do normal things again in a COVID-free future as I put my head down and grind through the mediocre and compromised present day.

xps

my partner has been giving rides home to people getting out of the local jail (a national hotspot for covid19) for months now. for a long time, they were only testing incarcerated people there on the way IN to the jail, not on the way out. so basically they'd throw people in close quarters in a covid19 hotspot with a bunch of other people, and then not even bother giving them a test on their way out (along with not giving them any assistance in getting home, not helping locating all the shit they confiscated from them from, releasing them after hours without any money for a cab ride or public transport, etc - seriously, they are fucking bastards).

anyway, obviously i have been very worried about covid19. but she rolls down the windows, everyone wears masks, and they just use common sense. she gets tested every week (chicago has a minimally viable testing system, at least, where you can voluntarily get tests and get results within a few days). things have been ok. really, just wearing a mask and not being in a totally enclosed space - even a car with open windows! - seems to do wonders. it's amazing how much people resist this!

Put on a mask? What's in it for me? I'm not a LOSER

Exactly - I'm unfortunately seeing a few instances of this in my family. Calling them out on it...
It's like people flouting lockdown 'rules' and moaning about how long the rules need to be in place for.

they even make vanity masks for people who don't want to "look like a nerd".

I have a Baphomet mask, a Deicide mask, and a King Diamond one, amongst the surgical and plain cotton ones.

SWANS did the FILTH teeth

My apologies to people who have discomfort around crowds and people and going out at the best of times, but is there still anyone who's not immunocompromised/hi-risk still staying completely indoors? I talked to a neighbor outside yesterday for a while and it helps so much to stay connected.

For me now it's really about figuring out who is on the same "level" of cautiousness as me, and being (cautiously) around those people, outdoors, distanced...it will be different in winter for sure. But many of my friends are taking the subway again...not often, and with masks, sanitizer, obv. My roommate may have to go to physical work in a school soon, with children (shudder), and my bf's kids are going back to part-time physical school soon which will last exactly as long as it takes for cases to cascade and shut down schools again, which seems pretty likely to happen?

Compared to that shit, walking outdoors and talking to people from 10 feet away looks reasonable.

But I've been in a rural area this whole time and even in Brooklyn my neighborhood isn't crowded and I'm not trying to go anywhere there are lots of people. So ymmv with my whole deal.

i'm going out here and there, but not into big crowds, mostly outdoors, and always safely. my mind would have exploded otherwise.

weirdly, that was a pre-requisite for the Moderna phase 3 trial. you can't be self-quarantining to where you never leave the house, as otherwise, they can't really test the efficacy of a vaccine if you never have the potential to come in contact with it. they actually asked me to make sure I was at least leaving the house a few times a week (not suggesting to go into crowds or TRY to get COVID or antyhing, naturally)