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

so I'm guessing there are going to lots of people walking around unwiped in many cities in the near future?

man, my prospects on Tinder have just improved 200 fold

Is "the human bidet" your occupation?

already had one friend of a friend grouse that if we let everybody work from home, that's when massive timecard fraud might occur.

it just amazes me that the first thought process is 'how can people take advantage of the system'? Like, I've been a virtual employee for 8 years, and...if you're committing timecard fraud, actually not doing work you're being paid to do....you'll be discovered. It really isn't difficult. Not to mention, if you have the type of job you can do at home, chances are, you could find a way to shirk your responsibilities in the office too.

xpost dear god no I just mean finally I'll be less grody than more than half the population

also more timecard fraud is good

I mean I'm not sayin I once worked an 8 hour shift while secretly on a Greyhound bus to Atlanta to see Megadeth with only my work phone and no laptop in tow but.....

"I'm Too Sexy for This Job" by Time Card Fraud

From The Great Influenza

In Britain the War Office published recommendations for therapy in The Lancet. They were far more specific than any guidance in the United States, and likely did relieve some symptoms. For sleep, twenty grains of bromide, opiates to relax cough, and oxygen for cyanosis. The recommendations warned that venesection was seldom beneficial, that alcohol was invaluable, but that little could be gained by giving food. For headache: antipyrin and salicylic acid—aspirin. To stimulate the heart: strychnine and digitalis.

next, a run on white claws

this may be refractory anxiety from a recent health scare but this whole thing is giving me the fantods. we're prepping for an extended work from home period and I am not looking forward to that amount of isolation

Surely these events are only getting cancelled because the attendees are canceling and dropping below profitable levels, not because any of the promoters care about public health?

― change display name (Jordan), Monday, March 9, 2020 5:28 PM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

replace "attendees" with "sponsors" and i think that's it

Even if I do have to go into isolation, at least I will be able to sit on my roof and listen to the magpies and currawongs and watch the bats.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236933818654896129.html

italy - entire country in lockdown
france - time for a smurf festival https://t.co/32UpOnbp8a

— the irishman* (@mrgracemugabe) March 9, 2020

"There's no risk (from coronavirus) we're Smurfs!"

It could be the answer to the pandemic.

With every passing day I become more convinced this will kill me.

Have you considered coating yourself in blue from head to toes?

I saw those people
they were turning blue
Oh, I knew that soon
Their young lives were through

Smurfing while Rome burns etc.

Well wonder how long its going to be before it's France's turn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEl8IBv98vg

I'm not so worried about getting this/what will happen to me if I get this, which is funny because I am usually a super-hypochondriac. But I do worry about being a vector. Selfishly, there are a couple of concerts coming up that I want to go to and I'm feeling bummed about the prospect of maybe missing them if I get sick/them getting cancelled.

To put it another way: if I choose to go to said concerts, I'll feel guilty about not doing my part to support public health lol

i have accepted that i am probably going to be a vector. there's so much we don't know about this virus. it does appear to be more than usually contagious (and less than usually lethal). everything else? how does it spread, how long does it incubate in hosts? we do, we think, have a safe and effective method of testing for it now, but don't have the logistical infrastructure to test most people for it. as far a i can tell all of the advice, and it's good advice - yes you should fucking wash your hands - for containing the pandemic is mostly effective against the secondary pandemic, the panic pandemic, the mass fear that strikes when faced with things that we don't understand and can't really control. panic, there's a topic i do know a lot about and have a lot of experience with, and i'm putting it all to use right now.

I am also not that afraid of getting this per se, but am afraid of spreading it and of being an irresponsible person.
I also share the more trivial/selfish fear of missing stuff I want to do due to it being canceled/closed or to being quarantined .

Then there is my workplace, which with the foresight, preparedness, and sense of priority I have come to expect, first starting implementing work-from-home procedures just last week. We were told to "test" working from home, but I'm not sure they plan to use this unless the building is actually closed or something. They also told us to stay out of the office if we feel sick, but when I asked if we could then work from home rather than charge sick time, was told "probably not."

In the past few days I've developed a cough-not dry, no other symptoms, and feels pretty identical to coughs I've had many times before (I tend to be a bit of chronic coughed) but still feel uncertainty about going out...

I think there's a thin line between paranoia and denial here.

I also share the more trivial/selfish fear of missing stuff I want to do due to it being canceled/closed or to being quarantined.

Yep, there are several local film screenings in the next couple of months I want to see.

Then there's my mother. She lives alone; I'm not sure if she (or I, for that matter) have comorbidities; I could see her getting sick and being too independent to reach out to me and my sister before things take a turn for the worse.

Aaaaaand the DC Environmental Film Festival has already canceled a number of events: https://dceff.org/covid-19-and-dceff/.

I can't believe Chicago is, as of this moment, plowing ahead with their St. Patrick's Day parade. Seems wildly irresponsible as it's really starting to get a toehold here, but what do I know. Suspect there's a lot of "this is Amurica and no damn furren' disease is going to stop my day drinking and projectile vomiting" going around.

Holy shit really? That's awful.

Starting to freak out over here reading about Italy's healthcare system being overwhelmed.

You'd think they'd cancel out of an abundance of caution alone. But I dunno. I've somehow never been to the parade (and I've been here for almost 30 years!), but I imagine the parade isn't nearly as dangerous as all those slobbering drunk people congregating in tight-quarter bars afterwards. I wouldn't do either, regardless.

Re: Italy, I made light of it on the other thread, but I don't see how the situation can be so serious and pervasive, yet the quarantine situation be so seemingly lax.

I unfailingly self-quarantine the weekend of the St. Patrick's parade as a general thing. All the more reason to batten down the vomit-proof hatches, I guess.

I went for the first time ever last year, but only because we have family friends that walk in the parade with a group and they invited our son. He had a blast last year throwing candy to the crowd, but we won't be going this year.

The parade itself wouldn't be bad, but last year, just to get to the parade route, you had to literally shove your way through an unceasing wall of humanity to access Grant Park. That part gives me pause under the best of conditions, I can't imagine doing it right now.

What if you slathered yourself with Shamrock Shake first?

Then I could get a head start on the projectile vomiting!

For sure you'll look like someone already barfed on you.

Man, avoiding public spaces sucks. I was all, "OK, I'm fully stocked up and unemployed, I live with people I like, I'm near a park, I can go into semi-lockdown and be fine! I am DOING MY PART to slow the spread!" And now I just feel like a Jean Gabin character who's slowly going insane as he hides from the police.

Whereas I think I could literally hunker down in my home for a year with no psychological detriment that wasn't already present or imminent. P psyched for the prospect of a quarantine, tbrr.

Now ask my gf how she feels about being quarantined alongside me.

thats awesome

I would love to work from home tbh, but I'm pretty sure there's no way my company is going to sanction it. The closest they've gotten is allowing partial sick days when you're working from home (when actually sick).

And my wife is a physical therapist, so no option there, just have to go in and touch old people all day long.

i mean *boston* and *DUBLIN* canceled their parades, but carry on, nyc and chicago

ah well pic.twitter.com/QO6uSCcmBS

— #⃣1⃣ reanimated ♂feminst breakfast abolitionist (@damienredicamn1) March 10, 2020

Great opportunity to ban St Patrick's Day anywhere but Ireland forever.

I guess officials in Chicago are just impatient for this shit to start really spreading in earnest. Can't really think of a quicker or more efficient way to do it, myself.

I dunno, listening to the Gov. I felt a lot more confident than in anything I've heard from the Feds so far. But yeah, this can all change overnight. I have a good friend who was freaking out that SXSW was not being cancelled ... and then it was. Let's see where Chicago is on Friday.

Bagged the last packet of pasta in Morrisons, so I will live and the rest of you must eat toilet paper or die.

Petition to revise New Hampshire's slogan

Great opportunity to ban St Patrick's Day anywhere but Ireland forever.

Just one of these weird, meaningless things I tend to notice (like the knight from The Seventh Seal dying in the middle of a pandemic): first Dick Van Dyke campaigns for Sanders, now the National Guard is called out to New Rochelle.

can't wait to see how Alan Brady riffs on this during his monologue tonight...

I went to Hope Depot to get a dust mask for a painting project and then I realized ... oh right, everyone bought every kind of mask in the entire store

Home Depot. Hope Depot is a great typo tho

I don't see how the situation can be so serious and pervasive, yet the quarantine situation be so seemingly lax.

In the USA people are extremely resentful of and rebellious toward any interference in what they see as their personal prerogatives. Imposing widespread quarantines and travel restrictions here would not only require calling out the National Guard, but would inspire active rebellions, especially among the Republican base. Nothing would reveal the inability of the government to control the chaos like announcing strict quarantines. If they happen, I edict they will happen almost exclusively in states controlled by Democrats, and public cooperation will be poor... unless there are shoot-to-kill orders issued.