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

the problem is that there IS a right and wrong way to have handled this and some of us are wrong and some of us are right and all of us THINK we're right but none of us can know until several years in the future at which point checking back in on this thread is going to be very yikes for most of us. but it is important that future yikes people understand that we didn't know! we couldn't know! smart people didn't know! dumb people didn't know! we were left to make it up as we went along and were constantly terrified! there was a complete idiot driving the car! we didn't know whether to buckle up or kick open the door and tuck and roll. most of us lost a year. be kind to us future people.

I don't see a scenario where I look back and regret doing volunteer work, going for a walk/jog, or buying essentials, aka the only things I've left the house for in a year

The RIGHT way to do this would be an aggressive top down approach at the federal level that shut everything down completely until the virus was at an extremely low level, followed by comprehensive contact tracing and more localized shut downs when needed. What we got instead was wishy washy language and a vague notion of individual choice leaving each of us responsible to try to sort out what the right/wrong things to do are when it is far too complex a question for any one person to completely grasp. So each of us has our own flawed personal approach and can be angry that everyone else isn't reading our minds and copying our behaviors.

xp you may regret not doing more! the future is a harsh territory

I personally would like the vaccine, please. Ideally delivered door-to-door from a truck playing Turkey in the Straw RZA's new ice cream truck song

forks 100% otm

my only other comment is that anyone otherwise healthy who is severely limiting their activities due to perceived risk might wanna reconsider ever getting into a car again, it's probably more risky. but yeah, we don't know.

Forks otm.

I am realizing, though, that I have a lot of residual anger from the very early days - February and March - when it felt like I was constantly trying desperately to tell people that this was A Thing and was getting nowhere. I'd say, "Hey, this virus is absolutely tearing through all these other countries and they're having to lock down; it's going to happen to us too, we should start preparing now." And I'd get, "I think we'll be fine." "Locking down seems exaggerated." "You shouldn't let fear stop you from living your life." And my favorite and by far the most frequent: "Oh, I don't think it'll do that here." And when I asked why they thought a virus would act differently in the US from the way it acted anywhere else, I'd get answers like, "Well, maybe people in those countries don't wash their hands as much as we do here." Really racist American exceptionalism bullshit. That was hard enough to deal with, but then the virus hit Seattle, and I was trying to tell my friends in other parts of the US that this was here, it was happening, it was probably in their town already, and it was like they couldn't hear me.

I guess I felt at the time like I was going to eventually get some acknowledgment from the people I'd spent so long trying to persuade, a "Hey, sorry about that, looks like you were right." And for the most part I didn't, and I won't, and that's frustrating to think about. And I know that's just the way people are, that most of the people I know are doing their best and have been for most of the pandemic, and that I need to be kind. For the most part I just don't think much about those early months. But the anger and the frustration is definitely still there somewhere.

The thing about all this I find wildest is what people accepted without a fight, and what people continue to push away. Hand sanitizer? Sure. Masks? Nah. Work from home? If you say no. Vaccines? Eh, you go first.

Right way or not, there was no way a total shutdown was ever going to work in the U.S. (and even then, essential workers, etc)

forks and Moodles both otm

I am realizing, though, that I have a lot of residual anger from the very early days - February and March - when it felt like I was constantly trying desperately to tell people that this was A Thing and was getting nowhere. I'd say, "Hey, this virus is absolutely tearing through all these other countries and they're having to lock down; it's going to happen to us too, we should start preparing now." And I'd get, "I think we'll be fine." "Locking down seems exaggerated." "You shouldn't let fear stop you from living your life." And my favorite and by far the most frequent: "Oh, I don't think it'll do that here."

oh yeah, I expended so much energy begging people to take it seriously. most all of my friends took it very serious from the jump, but one of my best friends started spouting Elon Musk theories one day and I said THE GUY HAS A BACHELOR'S IN SCIENCE DEGREE, HE'S NOT AN EPIDEMIOLOGIST, and he backed off and now doesn't believe him anymore.

xxposts remember the anti-hand sanitizer "you don't need that shit, just use soap" folks?

or "it's a virus, it won't work!"

I'm more surprised about the resistance to masks than to vaccines. It's stupidly easy to wear a mask if you have to go out and it has no obvious downside. If you truly have a health condition that makes it impossible (highly unlikely) then you shouldn't be out in the first place. The groundwork for vaccine resistance was already there with the anti-vaxxers.

I suppose a big part of it is that the messaging around masks was badly botched early on

yeah but like even then, the complaints defied logic.

"there's no proof it works" - ok, in the early stages, before studies were actually commissioned to measure the impact of masks on COVID transmission, at least I can understand this line of thought, but why does it hurt to try it?

"It's harmful and will kill you with CO2 poisoning" - yeah, just like the billions of doctors, surgeons, and nurses who have kicked it due to wearing surgical masks.

"You're more likely to get sick" - yeah, if you lick or eat your mask, sure. besides, where's the evidence, what happened to "there's no proof?"

"It's uncomfortable" - so are boxer briefs and fedoras.

no, you're right, there was never any logic behind it, and there's even less now when it's clearly acknowledged to be one of the best safety measure you can take around other people

I mean i hate wearing masks but like....really, that's the inconvenience that's going to be point of no return for people?

"we deserve the right to spread the disease to whomever we want!"

"You're more likely to get sick" - yeah, if you lick or eat your mask, sure.

you would think this is ludicrous but remember: people are dumm

i like my mask with syrup and butter

I use masks instead of oranges in my Negronis.

People are also stubbornly contrarian, especially Americans. If they wanted them to wear masks they should have told them they weren't allowed to wear masks.

if Ted Nugent wore a mask, you would have seen 100+ million MAGAs with NUGE masks.

I always assumed that *was* a mask.

I suppose a big part of it is that the messaging around masks was badly botched early on

A lot of that was down to WHO iirc? I mean, the same think happened in the UK.

Or else doubts over the efficacy of wearing masks was used in the UK to cover up the fact government had done next to no pandemic planning - would be more accurate maybe.

"I reused my kn95 as a coffee filter b/c 'green' and then I got Covid so masks don't work"

my friends were out one day and heard someone behind them telling her husband "did you hear about those people who were forced to wear masks at Disney and then died?", like there were people who believed thousands of people were putting on masks and dying. and yet she said it not as someone with genuine concern but more like "lol, they wore a mask and died, they're stupid, unlike me, the non-mask wearer"

every step of this pandemic has also revealed the widespread innumeracy of the general population

reconsider ever getting into a car again, it's probably more risky

I can guarantee you that there has never been a year where deaths from automobile accidents in the USA reached half a million.

How many other adults are yall eesponsible for exactly

I think a big factor was the "It makes me look like a timid sheep" aspect.

xp ~39,000 deaths per year in the US according to this site, so yeah, not comparable to Covid.

Annualized per century tho

Sure, but what if the century is 2019-2118?

thread's becoming an Adam McKay film

So they moved up the dates in WI, now everyone with a BMI over 25 will be eligible for vaccination starting on Monday.

Wow!

(ok there's a list of medical conditions, but that's the one that makes it 'why not just say everyone')

The small minority of Wisconsinites with a BMI under 25 will be eligible for free cheese curds

xxposts remember the anti-hand sanitizer "you don't need that shit, just use soap" folks?

?? I don't remember these folks but this is true? I've carried a little dispenser for a year, and was using it after touching any public surfaces for the first few months (when surface transmission hadn't been ruled so unlikely, and I was still more apt to touch my mask). I still use public countertop dispensers when they're around, as much as a signal of consideration toward retail staff as anything. but hand sanitiser when you re-enter a domicile is not necessary if you wash your hands properly.

(the last time we had humans visit, when it looked like socialising would be happening in people's homes for 3 months instead of not at all for a year, I put out multiple dispensers and little takeaway ones. this weekend, my vaccinated household is having a vaccinated couple and their new kittens over, arriving by car, and I'll still put out one hand sanitiser out for general use. but soap works!)

I thought soap was more effective than hand sanitizer, which you're mainly supposed to use when soap isn't readily available?

I never use sanitizer at home. That's what soap is for -- to help us through it.

I use sanitizer at the office and in the car.

I mean "you don't NEED sanitizer" is true, but a lot of people were essentially suggesting it was useless because it's antibacterial and COVID-19 is a virus, but in lieu of soap and water, any hand sanitizer at least 60% alcohol can likely help clean your hands of virus.

I personally don't use it much because I prefer soap anyway and there aren't many moments where I don't have it handy or available. but I use it when it's my only option.

i had a few friends telling other friends "don't buy hand sanitizer, it won't work" as opposed to "hand sanitizer shouldn't be your primary, use it only when you don't have soap".

Great New Yorker article from 2013 worth a read: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/03/04/hands-across-america

One reason that hand-washing-compliance rates among doctors and nurses have been scandalously low—in some cases, just twenty per cent of the recommended frequency—is that repeated washing with soap and water can be very hard on hands. A study in the nineteen-nineties showed that, after a group of nurses who washed primarily with soap and water began using Purell, their skin condition improved. Gojo recently conducted a test with nurses who used Purell Advanced a hundred times a day for a month. At the end of that period, their skin was in better condition than it had been at the start, and had high moisture content and less visible irritation. Arbogast said that hand rubs are also more efficient. “With soap and water, you lose time going to the sink, and you lose time drying and walking back from the sink,” he said. “But with a hand rub doctors and nurses can get some and then perform hand hygiene while they’re walking to the next patient.”

Gojo has never marketed Purell as an anti-soap; indeed, the company also sells some of the most widely used soaps in health care, food service, and other industries. But, starting in the nineteen-nineties, a number of studies demonstrated that alcohol hand rubs could be more effective than ordinary washing. In 2002, the C.D.C., after reviewing the accumulating science, rewrote its “Guideline for Hand Hygiene in Health-Care Settings.” The C.D.C.’s report concluded that alcohol-based products were “more effective for standard handwashing or hand antisepsis . . . than soap or antimicrobial soaps,” and that alcohol-based products were better at killing drug-resistant pathogens than even soaps and detergents containing powerful antibacterial agents. Seven years later, the World Health Organization issued similar guidelines, and said that alcohol rubs should now be considered the preferred cleaning agent for all medical workers, including surgeons, whose hands are not visibly soiled.

In 2005, the Army, in conjunction with Gojo, conducted a study of the efficacy of Purell outside health care. (The military is a rich source of subjects for such studies, because it consists of large cohorts of closely matched individuals who do what they’re told.) Historically, illness and infection have felled more soldiers than weapons have. The Army had already imposed a stringent hygiene protocol for new recruits, but illness-related absenteeism during boot camp remained high and was costly. Arbogast, who worked on the study, told me that the Army “didn’t want soldiers to get partway through the training and then get knocked out due to illness.” Gojo installed Purell wall dispensers in mess halls and other strategic locations, and designed a bottle that would fit in a uniform pocket, survive a parachute jump, blend in with camouflage, and not stand out when viewed with a night-vision scope. (It looks like a small green hand grenade.) After thirteen weeks, the Army found that two test battalions had experienced forty per cent less respiratory illness than the control group, forty-eight per cent less gastrointestinal illness, and forty-four per cent less lost training time. The military is now a significant Gojo customer. Michael Dolan, who is the company’s vice-president for science and technology, said, “It’s hard to go through boot camp today without being exposed to Purell.”

Of course, it's possible this is all outdated, especially in the context of covid.

I read that article with much interest at the time. I wash and sanitize pretty fastidiously, have since I was teaching in person while undergoing chemo and there was a mumps outbreak at my institution (2019).

I use antibiotics very sparingly because of the whole "creating antibiotic-resistant superbugs" thing, but I don't get judgy about individuals using sanitizers here and there.

I too don't get judgy about individuals doing something completely unrelated to antibiotics because of my opinions about antibiotics.

Sanitizer is effective against covid because the alcohol kills it, not because of any specifically antibacterial properties