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

so it's 5 am and i just wrote this up, hope it's not inappropriate to c&p, i don't have anywhere else to say this shit

Everybody wants to be judgemental now. Monday morning quarterbacks, looking to assign blame, whose FAULT is this. Honestly? Honestly I don't see how things could have gone down any differently. No, we didn't immediately recognize the scale of the threat or understand how best to respond. It's something that we've never faced in our lifetimes! Learning through experience, this is a necessary expedient. You can make all sorts of plans for whatever might possibly happen, but shit is happening now and it took us some time to figure out what, exactly, it is, and what we need to do about it.

So this "If we'd implemented a global quarantine two weeks ago we could have saved so many lives", it fails to recognize that underlying reality. I'm not an expert, but what I believe and how I react matters, what I'm willing to accept matters. The Overton Window has to move and it doesn't do that instantaneously. Last week I was focused entirely on two statistics - the mortality rate and the infectiousness of COVID-19. And I was reassured because everybody else was "OH MY GOD WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE" and I did not see that as an immediate outcome. I assumed that I already had the coronavirus and that I was going to live.

Well, now we're starting to understand the actual fucking problem of this epidemic. Which is not mortality, but the number of people who are going to get seriously ill. For 80% of the population COVID-19 is mild, we were told. The implication of that is obvious and I chose not to think about it, chose to focus on the positive. There are going to be a lot of people who are going to be very sick, and the number of them who are going to die is directly dependent on our healthcare systems' capacity to treat those people. That is why this is a crisis. For a quarantine to have started two weeks ago, you would have had to convince the global population that what appeared to be a minor inconvenience was a major crisis, that everybody needed to stop leaving their house immediately despite nobody being sick, and more importantly to do that without having the entire populace completely overtaken by mass panic.

I've lived through a few hurricanes. People are capable of being convinced. People are capable of preparing for this shit. As long as, you know, it's happened in living memory. Which it hasn't, and all we can do is make pointless comparisons to the Spanish Flu which are about as valuable and useful as talking about the Antonine Plague as far as I can tell.

This is going to be difficult. People are going to die unnecessarily. A lot of things are going to go down that are outside anybody's control. My personal priority isn't pointing the finger right now, it's surviving and learning as much as I can from the experience.

xp I think my calculus in a situation like yours Josh, if indeed the factors seem to be too numerous and contradictory, would be to err on the side of caution and just not go.

The only certainty is that by not traveling you reduce the odds of becoming a vector. Yes, it's impossible to know by how much, but if it's the welfare of others we're talking about you may decide that doesn't matter.

xp Kate otm. Speaking of pointing fingers: I heard your presidetn referred to COVID19 as "the foreign virus"...

Not my presidetn.

xxpost I tend to agree. But I just got my first real world example of personal calculation. My daughter just asked me for a ride to school, and I said ok. Then she asked if we could give her friend a ride, since I prefer to carpool. OK. Then she added that her friend needed a ride because her friend's mom was sick. Whoa, wait a second. Sick how? She had to write her back for me to make sure it wasn't bad, and indeed no fever or vomiting, just doesn't feel well (turns out it was a UTI, which my wife knew). But if her mom *was* exhibiting ay flu-like symptoms, I guess I would have said ... no?

xpost kate: Modern people are very reactive instead of proactive (ex: their health) and that really needs to change. And the idealized/fetishization of separateness and individual freedom means people don't have an understanding of how everything is connected and what could be impacted.

I'm pretty much as lucky as I can be w/r/t risk to others or myself - I'm young, no risk factors, and in Canada where so far the confirmed infection rate is not very high (knock on wood); more importantly neither work nor life puts me in contact with elderly folks except in briefest passing via public transit; I did have US travel plans this summer but it seems like it'll be possible to get refunded on most if not all of that so all I'll experience is mild disappointment; I can work from home as needed so there's no financial risk.

Mostly I just wish there was something useful I could actually DO rather than just avoid doing. (I expect there will be no shortage of Gofundmes etc to help keep ppl afloat when they inevitably lose their jobs or risk eviction so I guess there's that.)

I'm uncertain who the we/us is in Kate's post?

i assumed it was a general we/us? And for clarification my post was also in general and not a criticism but just an add on of what kate wrote.

i will totally blame the US government though for lying and wishing it would all just go away and our entire history of failing to provide an adequate healthcare system that cares for everyone.

To clarify, too: "your presidetn" wasn't meant to in any way align you with Trump, Kate.

I just feel there's been some variance visible even in this thread on the metric "recognize the scale of the threat or understand how best to respond"?

I love this article (my post was touching it). It's mostly about climate change but also could be applied to how we got here.

https://harpers.org/archive/2016/07/the-ideology-of-isolation/

oh shit. sorry. I just realized this was not apolitical anymore.

Schools close, Tom Hanks, trouble in the big banks, no vaccine, quarantine, no more toilet paper seen.

Travel ban, Weinstein, panic COVID-19, NBA, gone away, what else do I have to sayyyyyy https://t.co/N86qx9wZxq

— The Caffeinated Therapist (@bellabee13) March 12, 2020

You're covered by the thread title tbf xp

Got a weird email from my manager at 10pm about figuring out how to keep our operations going remotely. So I guess I might be working from home soon.

Having said all that, in retrospect it does occur to me that "if you think you're sick stay home" probably wasn't terribly helpful advice. I'm not interested in assigning blame, but I am interested in knowing who on earth thought propagating that message was a good idea, and why they thought it was a good idea.

This is a new pathogen that none of us have experienced before. We don't know what its early symptoms are. We don't know in detail how it spreads. There's reason to suspect that there might be some period of time - we don't know how long - wherein an infected person is asymptomatic but can still infect others. Differentiating it from cold or flu or other common upper respiratory infections is extremely difficult. Under these conditions, what's the functional difference between "If you think you might be sick, stay home" and "Stay home if you feel like it"? And what logical thought process would lead one to conclude that either of these statements might possibly be an effective containment measure?

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This is mostly apolitical but since it came up... I don't speak for the President, the President doesn't speak for me, listen to me, care what I have to say, acknowledge me as human. I don't know what I can do here but shrug. We have in office a professionally incompetent President whose ideological and political base is centered around the sorts of people who only a few years ago were spinning wild conspiracy theories about "FEMA death camps". Do I think this bodes well for the effectiveness of the federal response to the crisis? No. Is it likely that people who listen to the President are more likely to suffer adverse outcomes because of the President's words and actions here? Yes. Would I like to see the President held responsible for those words and actions? Yes. Do I, at this point, have any practical opportunity to make this happen? Not really. Is all this even a priority of mine right now? No, my priority is, like I said, surviving and learning as much as I can out of the experience.

Like I said, a lot of things are going to go down outside of anyone's control, and if I can say anything about the last four years, it's that I've gotten very used to that. I have a much better sense now, I feel, of what things I can practically affect, and how, than I did in 2016.

I think a lot of state and local governments recognize that they cannot rely on the stupid asshole for help, let alone competence.

Looking into our trip, it seems the only catch is airbnb, whose cancellation policy is linked (for now) to explicit outbreak destinations. Ergo, if we cancelled our trip to Maui we'd likely have to eat the cost, unless the owners themselves (did the right thing and) allowed us to cancel or at least reschedule.

Oh great, another US politics thread

Babies and children have been ok so far haven’t they? They’re not getting it as much and I don’t think I’ve seen reports of fatalities.

― gramsci in your surplice (gyac), Thursday, 12 March 2020 11:58 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i understand why ppl are being fuzzy out of sensitivity to those held to me most at risk, but imo this us why clarity about this stuff has to be prioritised.

ppl will be dicks with the info ir not, but the info has to be clear

I’d be nervous about meeting a baby in case it gave it to me

Try to avoid handshakes with babies.

don't share a snorkel with a baby.

If you're going to a business meeting make sure no babies have been invited.

*must not make masturbating in front of babbies joke*

2020 Babby Annual Meeting has been canceled.

If you're going to a business meeting make sure no babies have been invited.

― God gave toilets rolls to you, gave toilet rolls to you (Tom D.), Thursday, 12 March 2020 13:21 (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

would that twere so simple

id be nervous meeting a baby, only cause they’re so judgmental

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAG-Ec4b-zw

lol

if you look around the room and don't see a baby, you're baby

Just received a company-wide 'remote-work capabilities' mandatory survey. FINGERS CROSSED. Although, having never been given the option of working before, my at-home set-up is woefully inadequate wrt doing my job at home. I'd expect a roughlyyyyyy (taps furiously at calculator keys) 80% reduction in productivity? I pretty much need two screens and my laptop only has one. Oh well!

yeah I usually have 2-3 huge screens at work and would only work on my little laptop in bed, but still worth it to work at home!

For sure.

What if your boss is a babby, like in the hit motion picture Boss Babby? What then?

I finally traded in my desktop PC at work for a work-approved laptop with VPN access to our network, making it easier if I need to wfh for an extended period of time. Which, if I see one more case within a 5-mile radius of my living room, is exactly what I'm going to do, after I seal my house in one of those big E.T. quarantine tents.

Oh great, another US politics thread

― God gave toilets rolls to you, gave toilet rolls to you (Tom D.)

look, i stay out of the dedicated politics threads, if people are going to bring this shit up in response to my posts i'm not going to pretend it doesn't matter

Still no working from home for me, the new thing is to come to work and set up online meetings I guess.

The title does say mostly apolitical…

So the university I work for is also now sending most students home and switching to online classes for the rest of the semester and having most people tele-commute. However, I'm apparently somehow considered "essential personnel", so I guess I just have to start assuming and planning as if it's a 100% certainty I'll get this in the next few weeks.

We share our floor in the building with Willis Towers Watson, and they have a large reception area & offices right out of the elevator lobby as well as several other spaces all controlled by security card access. As of this morning there are signs on every door stating that if you have traveled recently to China, Italy, Iran, South Korea or Japan, not to proceed beyond that point and to speak to your manager immediately.

Kinda surreal at work as we go about cancelling all our events through April but everyone is talking about what shows they're still going to next week despite SXSW being cancelled.

We’re still not working from home yet either. Someone sitting near me just fainted! Things are starting to feel surreal and I almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation.

just reading through this morning's posts.

sorry to be so blunt and judgmental, but josh if you're looking for clear messaging, here it is: do not go on your planned hawaii trip. ed (and many others) explained upthread:

It helps everyone. Very interaction is a chance you could pick it up or pass it on. So the fewer interactions the slower it spreads, the less chance someone vulnerable gets it and the more chance there is to find a vaccine before more vulnerable people get and the more able the healthcare system is able to cope with acute cases that do arise.

― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed),

you don't have to analyze this 4 million different ways. if you feel later that your life was ruined because you didn't go to hawaii in the middle of a global pandemic when everyone was being told* to distance themselves from others as much as possible, you can blame it on me.

*yes, i know that some people are sending a different message. let's try to pay more attention to the cautious people who know what they're talking about*

Karl otmfm

Okay, now the VP of our division emailed me and the rest of the hourly staff to see if we have the ability to work from home in the event that our office is shut down, so shit is most definitely getting real.

But, y'know, y'all wait to pull the trigger until I finally do get sick, I'm just gonna be home watching hours of MeTV on the couch and not doing shit for you for a while.

be kind, be kind, be kind, be kind.

also thank god TD Bank is here for me

I'm reaching out to you directly to say that TD Bank is here for you, especially when COVID-19 is affecting so much of daily life. We want to make sure banking is easy, convenient and available to you whenever and wherever you need it.

TD Bank used to be there for me, too. but then i switched to a different bank and we haven't been speaking, ever since.

i just got a coronavirus update from a hair salon i went to a couple years ago

Fwiw, flying itself isn't the issue. Even one of the virologists who was screaming about how bad the US is handling this stated it's difficult to spread on a plane due to the HEPA filters and that flying wasn't a big risk. It's more the 'interacting with people once you land' that's the problem.

Traveling by bus, otoh, is just asking for it.

I don't need to be preached at about what is right or wrong. I get it.