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

according to andrew cuomo the cuny/suny schools are all remote starting march 19, not that the schools have announced a goddamn thing

hah, the closest location Argos suggests for that thermometer is Grimsby, 135 miles away

but I guess I too am stockpiling thermometers now as I bought a 2nd forehead strip thermometer from a local chemist since the first cheap one from Amazon didn't work and... it doesn't work? that or I might just be dead

well I guess if I'm dead already that takes a lot of the worry out of this coronavirus thing

I knooooow, I was just looking through locations, I have narrowed down various thermometers to Grimsby, Chippenham and...most of Kent? Boots say on their site they’ll get more stock in too, but I’ll keep looking.

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2020/03/empty-spaces-due-coronavirus-fears/607666/

I like the 'idle gondoliers' and the cat

huh I always assume if I have a fever I'll just know about it

my manager came back from a skiing weekend (in Bulgaria, not a high risk area) and has been sick all week, he looks rough as fuck and his voice is gone, coughing all over the place... luckily he looked at one of those symptom checker things and is like 90% sure it's not this virus, just some other virus that he is knowingly spreading around, so it's fine. He's still in the probationary period so won't get company sick pay if he's off, otherwise he def wouldn't be in. Today the head of the dept called HR about him and after hearing the symptoms they advised that he should stay at work. Pandemic aside it's fucking galling to hear "you should work if you're sick" as official word from a human resources dept

In other dismaying news there was an incident at my mum's work of some Chinese students being racially abused by some other students who were throwing stuff at them while pretending to cough. Hope the little cunts get kicked out

I get the feeling both music events I was planning on traveling to the States for (Long Play and Migration) are gonna get shitcanned :(

really glad my wedding is not until July.

not so glad that I work at a university and have no way to work from home. I basically have to hope a student or faculty member in this building gets confirmed with COVID for the university to be shut.

sitting in a meeting right now watching everyone rub their eyes, scratch their face, and lean their heads on their faces and wondering "WTF PEOPLE??!"

Have you ever had to quit biting your nails? Breaking unconscious habits that have lasted decades is fuckin hard.

I basically have to hope a student or faculty member in this building gets confirmed with COVID for the university to be shut.
same
my school hasn't even put out hand sanitizer much less prepared teachers or students for possible closure/remote classes
midterms are next week

i have touched my face (and bitten my nails) thousands of times, today alone. yeah, for some people (very much myself) the touching the face thing is not an easy thing to accomplish.

lean their heads on their faces and wondering "WTF PEOPLE??!"

seems like a reasonable reaction tbh, how do they do it?

my company just sent out guidance to managers: i'm being told that if someone wants to work home, i have to evaluate it on a case-by-case basis

these people are fucking morons, we should all be told to work from home as much as possible right now

grocery store update: plenty of tp, running low on certain varieties of canned soup and jelly

lean their heads on their faces and wondering "WTF PEOPLE??!

heh...woops. lean their heads on their hands

xxp yep, totally agree. Case by case, like public health needs some micromanagement nitpicking if the job couldn’t be perfectly done as well from home.

really glad my wedding is not until July.

mine is june, and i'm sweating a lil bit.

My workplace is still open and apparently senior management is split between the WFH/shut-it-down advocates and a group demanding we stay open and insisting this isn't a big deal. If anyone at work gets the 'vid I hope it's them.

rooting for jim and voodoo’s weddings

I’ve clearly gone full Australian because I just burst out laughing at that.

So I had to refresh all goddamn day to find a non-paywalled news source to confirm but, joy, someone who works in a building two blocks from my own workplace has tested positive. And now the fun begins!

Am I correct in my feeling that preparation for a situation like this can be broadly reduced to a lot of people in positions of authority saying 'psssh, nothing like this could ever happen to US'?

^^^ I think so. Although it's been interesting watching the cancellation of the Chicago St. Patrick's Day parade unfold. Publicly a handful of alderpeople were saying, "the parade must go on!" while behind the scenes they were essentially begging the mayor to come back from her vacation and cancel it for them.

Current irrational thinking: everyone is going to be exposed so I need to get it now before the hospitals are full and battlefield triage kicks in because I won't make the cut

good friend buried both parents this last three months and the other lads in the group of four island lads are kinda going full tabloid about their own aul wans after being faced with this sudden burst of mortality, im veering btwn sympathy and impatience with their freakouts

xps the parade thing is mystifying to me, considering the single example of how to mishandle a pandemic that i keep seeing is philadelphia's decision to hold a flu parade (maybe the parade wasn't 'for' the flu, but the flu certainly thought it was) in 1918

Just come to my doctors office, I broke a toe at the weekend and have been exhausted for a couple of days, but no fever or other symptoms. My doctor is great and fabulously unflappable. Diagnosed a gastro type virus and told me to take it easy but still took me though the whole corona drill, symptoms, list of known contact spots, advice on what to do to protect myself (wash hands, hand washing more effective than sanitiser, use a tissue to open doors). Said I could get tested at the royal Melbourne if I was worried but also said there was no reason to be worried and the wait was long.

However, my doctors office is in a building with a language school, medical offices, diagnostic clinics etc. and everyone who walked in with me walk straight past the hand sanitiser dispenser and into the lift. Very glad my button was pressed on the way up and elbow presses on the way down.

When you're sliding into first
And you feel something burst
Who cares, nobody around to see it
And nothing to wipe it with

I just checked the stocks & shares ISA I opened with 100 quid a couple of years ago and it was worth 97 quid, I was like fuck it just send me the cheque lol

I wonder if the IRS will allow 401ks who follow Safe Harbor to add special Hardship withdrawals for people financially impacted by it. They did in the past for hurricanes. This would be unusual but y'know...

I mean, it's all sorts of fucked up that someone would have to raid their retirement for this reason, but given the Senate rn.....

Also my doc was furious about the Grand Prix going ahead.

My doc is a good bloke.

I DON'T NEED AN EMAIL FROM MY FUCKING DENTIST ABOUT CORONAVIRUS

some bored PR ppl out there drafting emails about coronavirus today

probably soliciting clients. "iyo, do u need a coronavirus email? I'm drafting them for $5 and I'll give you my exclusive watermark to use in the background of ur email"

I got one from my kid’s field jockey league, thank god

quitting my job right before a pandemic-triggered recession was an interesting choice. wish I'd known I was making it at the time.

I've been getting a flurry of e-emails and social media posts from businesses and cultural institutions about their "measures" wrt the virus, most of which don't involve closing or cancelling anything. Are they just delaying the inevitable? And if there were a coordinated effort to close things now, might it in theory not have to be for as long? Obviously it would be a big financial loss, but isn't that inevitable as well?
I posted a little upthread about my selfish/trivial fear of missing out on things if they're closed/cancelled or I'm quarantined, but I'm getting the sinking sense that the responsible thing to do would be to avoid those things anyway?

GRRR.

OK so a few weeks ago we canceled our planned trip to Italy (for the kids' spring break, next week). Our alternative was a trip to New Orleans, where we were going to see the St. Patrick's Day Parade and the Mardi Gras Indians on Super Sunday. Well so of course New Orleans canceled ALL its public events, and we have now scrapped that trip as well (especially since New Orleans has just declared a state of emergency, which among other things means my wife would have to self-quarantine for two weeks when we got back, because of restrictions put in by the university where she works). So now we're telling the kids, like, maybe we can go to a movie one day?

But a lost spring break is a small thing, I know, compared to what a lot of people are dealing with.

Also the Big Ears Festival got canceled, which is the best weekend of the year every year here in town.

What a world.

Oh and also a conference my wife was going to in San Jose next month that I was going to totally tag along on is also of course canceled. We had reservations at NOBU! (I know, 1st world problems and all.)

Close to cancelling our Hawaii trip, which at this rate might be out of our control by next week anyway. We have friends going to Canada, Bahamas and Disney, and I believe all three have cancelled, or are trying to cancel.

canceled a trip home (both of my parents are in the high-risk age bracket and one has had a really bad health issue this year), almost certainly not going to pop conference even if there is a pop conference

still not sure at what point i'm supposed to stop doing things altogether, i have dinner reservations and tickets to see berio's sinfonia this weekend, should we still do that?

I had a slight cough/headaches/fatigue the last few days so I’ve been staying home. Kaiser told me not to bother getting tested. Symptoms are p mild so I’m kinda like eh whatever I’ll just wait this out.

More bummed that our trip to Disneyland in a few weeks is lookin less and less likely.

xp -- same, honestly

I am going to Va to visit a best friend next week.

Risk of getting it on flights is still relatively low, per the experts, and we're planning on staying in for most of it anyway.

I'm selling my tix to the Orlando City game Sat tho. Doesn't feel like a good idea to crowd in with 25k people.

buy low, sell high

I have the same question about if I am supposed to stop doing things and not leave my apartment for anything that's not essential. And for how long will that go on? A few months? A year?

If yr not sick do whatever you want