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

Luckily I’m already obsessive about not touching my face with unwashed hands / not touching other things after touching my face.

What’s with the toilet paper thing?

Panicked people incessantly shitting themselves, I assume.

As a person with a chronic lung disease I am:

- increasingly worried that this will hit me hard and at best will further damage my lungs and shorten my life
- pissed off with people growling at me because I cough a lot and they think I'm part of the plague
- a complete hypocrite who growls at everyone else with a cough as I'm scared that they have the plague
- thinking about the benefits of self-isolation in terms of reading and video games :)

xpost The best I can tell it's people worried they'll be stuck inside with ... not enough toiler paper to last two weeks?

Def. have noticed places out of hand sanitizer, and signs limiting purchases. Also other signs, like the one at the vet this morning declaring it a "no handshake zone." Proactively and helpfully, all of our doctors, dentists, etc. have sent out texts and messengers saying, please, if you're sick, stay home. (And affirming that that is always appreciated).

I'm a little annoyed because my kids were both sick last week with mundane stuff, and now, when I want to be at my sharpest and most vigilant, I have a stuffy nose.

my spouse hesitated about kissing me this morning and I was like "dude, you've stuck your dick in me, I am pretty sure you've got whatever I've got."

Yeah, but maybe not covid.

;)

we have not been touching our top faces. only our bottom faces.

now is the perfect time to invest in a bidet

have a wedding planned in june and an out-of-town bachelor party planned for april 2nd. not gonna lie, i'm slightly nervous about that second thing. hopefully, the panic will subside by the time june rolls around, and i'm going to that party unless the faa grounds flights (sorry, not sorry colorado). but covid has been a fun additional source of stress during an already-stressful time.

The Bidet: like a wet kiss for your bottom face.

cancellations are really bumming my kids out - mariachi performances, purim celebrations, soccer games, etcx.

Been thinking about life and mortality today. I’d rather die gloriously in battle than from a virus. In a way it doesn’t matter. But it kinda does. pic.twitter.com/m6vU5RTQHJ

— Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) March 9, 2020

if they don't get their Disneyland trip at the end of this month the tears are gonna be epic

xp

Disney hasn't closed or anything yet, right?

So far not much here has changed, as far as I can tell.

my work is definitely going to close when the virus picks up steam here and I can't do most of my job from home as things stand (and this will not be remedied in the near future). this is going to definitely create an "interesting" time for me, probable extra paid holiday from work followed by "too much fucking work" when I get back

it's a good thing that Paul Gosar was a dentist then.

Disney hasn't closed or anything yet, right?

they closed Disneyland Tokyo (different situation, obviously)

definitely create an "interesting" time for me

Maybe you'll finally get to watch "The Irishman" in one sitting.

JUst seen it confirmed taht teh St patrick's day parades are bing cancelled. Heard Dublin, Cork, sligo so far.
BUmped into someone i know this morning who was coming from a meeting about the local one and told me taht our local community centre had definitely pulled out but the town as waiting for the decision from teh council.
I thought it was pretty likely that if there was a panic over the last week a large close crowd event like that next week may not be likely to go ahead.

Pretty sure the St. Patrick's Day response here will be to drink *more*.

They won't need to dye the river, it'll just turn that color from all the covid.

Went to Costco and the big asian grocery store in town. Costco seemed to be out of toilet paper but didn't notice anything else weird.

The asian grocery store was pretty cleaned out though - 90% of the rice was gone, all of the dried chinese noodles were gone except the very thin ones, and like 75% of the all the huge chinese preserved vegetable aisle was empty.

I'm kind of fascinated by what was gone and what was still around - I imagine some of it is supply issues for chinese products, the fact that the vast majority of customers are chinese, etc. There was still lots of thai/vietnamese rice noodles, korean sweet potato noodles, kimchee, pansit noodles, and some stray bags of basmati, sticky, sushi, and brown jasmine rice. My son and I were also the only people there not wearing masks this time.

I'm not very observant, so on Saturday I learned that brown basmati rice is a thing.

that's interesting, I shop pretty much only at Asian grocery stores (south but mostly east) here and I haven't yet seen anyone in a mask, nor any shelves unusually out of stock.

Probably also touching my face the average (160 times an hour, I've read). Yesterday I donned one of my dog's neck bandanas inside the apt, so at least I noticed each time I rested my chin on my thumb. I imagine I'd get habituated to that, too.

I've long been in the habit of touching my face with my knuckles, or the back of my hand. Like "The Thinker."

I have a work trip that I spun into a vacation for my spouse and I (me?), heading from SF to Paris then Amsterdam next week. We are both wondering aloud if this is a good idea or not.

As for the workplace itself, we are extremely deadline-driven in my dept and if we close it will have an enormous, unpredictable impact on them. it's definitely making me anxious.

I'm slightly nervous about flying this week: first to Raleigh (for a Destroyer show lol), then NYC. But other than sanitizing the airplane seat table, what can ya do?

wipe down the tv screens, arm rests, belt buckles, remotes, etc too (if they have them). suck on a zinc lozenge the entire flight?

We met another Chinese mother at the supermarket, her daughter is in my son's class and she doesnt speak English. She was complaining that people weren't taking it seriously enough and that it was still not socially acceptable to wear a face mask in public.

Last week I bought toilet paper at Trader Joe's (not hoarding; I had just put the last roll from the previous package on the spindle). The checker immediately comments on the TP, as there had been a run on that store earlier for TP and hand sanitizer.

Are people anticipating a civilization that has collapsed enough that TP is worth its weight for bartering?

People with relatives in China, including Taiwan, seem to be way more aware of the need to take this seriously. As for TP, we have one more package than usual, but we have squeeze bottles that can be filled with water and squirted directionally, if necessary. <<-- this thought is new to me and I thank ilx for its recent bidet conversation for bringing this to the fore of my mind.

i think the recent bidet conversation was the ilx highpoint of the week.

feeling good about my choice to travel by Greyhound this summer if only because I'll be locked in with 8-12 disgusting strangers as opposed to hundreds

As I understand it, traveling by plane is no worse (and in some ways better, thanks to the HEPA filters) than any other means of transportation. Assuming you are not within 3 or so feet of someone actively sneezing or coughing up a lung, the usual caveats apply: wash hands, don't touch face, and so on.

I was watching SNL last night, thinking, boy, this is so not funny. So my mind started to wander to a parody of Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" where four people are stuck on a tiny raft, and the number of TP rolls stacked in the corner keeps going down and they have to find the cheat secretly burning through all the TP.

I refuse to not touch face!!!

http://healthyinfluence.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/kiss-lady-tramp.jpg

I have always been the "eh I'm sure it'll be fine" person in my family, so it was weird yesterday to be having A Talk with my 67-year-old parents yesterday about how they actually need to take this seriously. I need to find a good all-in-one guide (hint) and email it out to the family. The world is truly upside down when I'm the responsible one.

The bougie grocery store I live near seems to still have everything. Stocking up today. Already secured a significant amount of Dr. Bronner's.

Nhs guide is pretty good, simple sos and don’ts and the common questions section is good, I thought. Uk references but replace with your local, obviously.

Would trust a non-US guide more at this point. Thanks.

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/89254135_10158107111544281_2827637525147811840_o.jpg?_nc_cat=109&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_ohc=o7Xzg3JoZJoAX-k7MEd&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-1.xx&oh=2146ac8edf449b784e233df4f9175cd9&oe=5E940207

"The Bidet: like a wet kiss for your bottom face."

lool!

Or as I call them: the kitchen and bathroom sinks.

we purposefully removed our only bidet as part of a bathroom renovation last year because our kids kept touching inside of the bowl with their hands

and now I can only buy 20$ sheets of toilet paper from a stranger out the back of his van

run on tp -> tp shortage -> widespread use of the wrong kinds of paper -> plumbers' heyday -> buy chemed stock

Flying to Colombia for a wedding at the start of April and I'm slightly nervous at the prospect of getting off the plane and immediately being quarantined in a strange country. Weirdly this is worrying me more than getting the virus itself.

Huh, I haven't polled which version of the jab they got, but seems like most folks I know have reported being hit way harder by this one than the other rounds.

Novavax m/l universally reported as having no side effects and little to no arm pain.

Starbucks still reluctant to leave cream out. They fucking _pour_ the cream into the coffee as if they were Dunkin Donuts. Judging from those portions, I didn't realize Americans prefer a side of coffee with their cream.

We both did.

I have to wait until early November to get my next covid booster (4 months), but plan on getting the covid, flu, and RSV shots all in the same day.

The Shingrix vaccine (which I got with two other shots) made my arm hurt the most of any I can remember, but I have never had any other side effects from vaccines.

Friend of mine is traveling and just posted a picture of a portable CO2 monitor he carries with him. This is while the plane was idling on the ground:

https://scontent-dfw5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/395318428_10161359009294085_6501657829487761960_n.jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg_s1080x2048&_nc_cat=107&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=vLrCAi2xpxUAX-1pnXd&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw5-2.xx&oh=00_AfA9sVbd8F8zxkfiHDv7cQp6fU06zO8KhS13YuTwmU9NTw&oe=653C3705

Hence my masking on planes.

supposedly once they turn the engines (and therefore the hvac system) on, planes are one of the safer places to be. but just sitting at the gate they are bad news.

yeah, my dad, who works in AOG, says planes do an outstanding job of filtering air, but even the best systems get taxed when every seat is filled

when every seat is filled

So literally every flight I've ever been on in my life.

OSHA limit is 5,000 ppm for 8 hour periods of exposure.

I do miss the days of flying in half-empty planes.

I caught covid over the summer after flying home; my family, seated near me, did not get sick. My wife caught covid after coming home on a flight last week; I was sitting next to her, I did not get sick (yet/again). Maybe she got it on the flight. Maybe she got it in the airport. Maybe she got it at her doctor visit last Thursday, or maybe at the Taylor Swift movie Friday. By the standards of circulation, yeah, planes are supposed to be pretty safe, but at this point it's just one giant public pool of potential exposure.

It's unpredictable. I flew pretty much throughout the pandemic, hence my comment about half-empty planes. (Don't even get me started on empty LA freeways.) AFAIK, the only time I caught it was when my middle schooler brought it home.

It's weird, my flight from Dublin to Washington three weeks ago was only half-full, which I have not experienced on a plane for a long time.

My second bout, this summer, happened after international travel.

But here is the thing: there will never be a way to know if it was the hotel shuttle, the other hotel shuttle (that we had to switch to because the original shuttle broke down), the line for customs and immigration, the line for security, the VERY intimate security screening I got the gate, the plane, the other gate, the other plane, the OTHER other plane, the taxi home, or some random sneeze in the restroom or the bar the night before.

Maybe it was all of those places!

I took my youngest to a birthday party this past weekend at a video arcade/bowling alley. I could practically feel the viruses and bacteria seething around us.

something i have gotten used to in the last 3+ years:
don't touch anything
don't touch face
repeat to self as many times as needed

esp as someone who works with numerous people in a room in two public-facing jobs

two nights ago at the restaurant i served a couple that were clearly on a first date. three hours later, she went to the bathroom and he chose that opportunity to blow his nose -- twice! -- into his cloth napkin and then place it on his plate. he looked around to see if anyone was watching. i did not touch his gross snotty napkin.

Everyone in my family has had covid at least once. Two of us have now had it twice (that we know of). To date, none of us have ever had it at the same time.

just had to explain to my mom, in 20-fucking-23, that people can be totally asymptomatic and still transmit COVID. sigh.

boomers do not understand epidemiology!

This new vaccine kicked my ass. I got it at noon and had full-body chills all night starting at around 10 PM. Woke up this morning completely drained of energy. Breakfast helped, but I'm still shivering somewhat.

re: "covid detritus" upthread:

https://covid-signage.net/

OK, here's some anecdotal data. I watched the football game with friends Saturday night. There were five of us in the living room, total, including the host. He was sipping tea because we was feeling a little run down, but had tested negative for covid, and wasn't coughing or sneezing or anything. The next day, however, Sunday, he was feeling worse and *did* test positive. So far the rest of us are negative. But here's what's (perhaps) useful to know. I asked him if he had gotten the most recent vaccine, and he said no. In fact, he had only gotten the first two, apparently. He's not an anti-vax guy, just lazy, but two things. One, fwiw he and his family have had covid more than almost anyone else I know; they are all more recently vaxxed than he is, and so far no one else in his family is sick. And two, he says this most recent bout has been the worst one yet. So ... get vaxxed! You heard it here first.

Also I've been seeing an uptick of local mask wearing, too.

Sounds very similar to what I posted in one of the other covid threads:

Completely anecdotal, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. Back in early December I went to go watch a friend's band play in a local, small bar. It was unannounced and a pretty small bar, so I went (unmasked) figuring it was relatively low key and a rare risk I was willing to take. And it mostly was, the bar stayed pretty sparse, though near the end of their set the bar was crashed by a very large group of folks on some ugly sweater bar crawl type thing. It got crowded fast and I was kind of kicking myself for not at least having a KN95 in my pocket to pull out, as I usually do.

Fast forward to a few days later and my buddy texts me to tell me that the guy who owned the bar (a friend of his) heard that the travelling ugly sweater thing was rumored to have turned into a super-spreader and that we should test. Long story short, of the group of 8 people that we were with, 4 ended up getting (fortunately mild) cases of COVID. The other four of us never fell ill and never tested positive. The interesting part though, was confirming that of the 4 who tested positive, 2 had never gotten more than the initial two vax doses and the other 2 had only gotten the first booster. The 4 of us who never tested positive had all gotten each booster as they'd come available.

Coincidence? Luck? Probably. Maybe. But still served as a good reminder to stay current. (Also learned that folks I knew who I'd assumed were vigilant about boosters were actually not - fortunately they all agreed to get back to getting boosted.)

I think I already posted the same thought in one of these threads, but my big COVID conspiracy theory is that staying up to date with the vaccine does actually help protect you from infection

I don't wanna jinx myself, but aside from an asymptomatic infection in September 2022 (not so much a sniffle, detectable only b/c my doctor gave me an antibody test a month later) I haven't gotten sick after seven jabs.

one concern w/covid is the possibility that multiple infections can fuck you up over time. anecdotally the people i know who have had it a few times have been increasingly sick w/not-covid illnesses as well, just really knocked flat by various viruses.

meanwhile on my local next door someone is claiming they'll never get a vax because they know five(!) people who died right after they got a shot. i have my doubts about that tale.

i'm really fortunate to WFH, i feel terrible that my poor kid is on the front lines, especially with the new Cali guidelines which give full permission for covid-positive but asymptomatic kids to be sent to school.

A good friend of mine's son, after catching covid some three years go, lost a lot of his sense of smell and taste, and when it came back there were certain things he mysteriously could no longer stomach, like eggs and meat. Well, three years later and his taste for eggs and meat has returned ... after he got back from a semester in China! Maybe they engineered a new counter-virus?