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

I don’t necessarily think it’s unfair to want hard, unambiguous statements about what to do and not to do. yes, there’s “stay home if you’re sick,” but that does precisely nothing to clarify things for people who aren’t sick. (not to mention if “home” = around roommates or, more serious, inmunocompromised relatives, but that’s neither here nor there.)

like, for instance, I have canceled pretty much all travel until late may, and late may might also be canceled, but it’s not up to me in that case. (ironically one trip was to get some lab work done, but I guess I go without). one job is remote already, one is in person but likely to go remote.

but beyond that, what? do I go to restaurants? do I go to readings/events/parties/game nights/etc.? do I order stuff online, via usps or otherwise? do I see people in public at all? the guidelines on this are both maddeningly vague and heavily (and in this case understandably) morally charged. (and there’s also a lot of research suggesting that isolation is bad for your mental health as well as physical)

Agree. I mean, the UK govt line is increasingly controversial but at least it's a line and they're sticking to it. My US colleagues instead have a giant shrug and a "the markets are fine" as official advice.

my wife and I decided last night we should postpone the trip we had planned for Disneyland at the end of this month. there's gonna be tears.

also, “buy food and supplies. but not too much food, you monster. but also you should buy food and supplies, and more than usual. if you don’t use hand sanitizer you are typhoid mary. if you buy hand sanitizer you are stealing it from everyone else who needs it more. if there’s no hand sanitizer don’t buy the resale stuff. but you need to use hand sanitizer. also, hand sanitizer is not helpful. oh also you shouldn’t be in crowds so stores are out. no, stores are ok. but not too much.” the whole thing is fucking nightmarish to try to optimize, but also it is a consensus that somehow one must

stores are crowds? I don't shop anywhere where there's more than like 50 people in the store at a time.

if you live in new york city that’s a fucking miracle, the average grocery store is as cramped and crowded as a rush hour subway train even on a good day.

katherine otm. do yr best, don't be a dick, stay informed, but no sense in worrying yrself sick over it (do u see what I did there)

yep

yeah, no one can know your exact situation so everyone just needs to make the best decision they can for themselves based upon current information and your own sense of what is going on.

lol I'm getting all these emails from reps that are like "Just want you to know I'm thinking about you."

The only moral challenge I expect to face in the short term is if I do fall ill before the IL primary next Tuesday. But I gotta vote, man. I just gotta.

vote by mail!

I don’t know that it’s otm when the gist of my post is “I have no idea what the fuck to do and nobody will tell me”; I feel like fleabag with the priest right now

if you live in new york city that’s a fucking miracle, the average grocery store is as cramped and crowded as a rush hour subway train even on a good day.

I live in NJ and when I go to the grocery store the aisles have 1-2 people in them and there's maybe 3 people ahead of me at the register. I once did an interview at the Jazz Standard and figured I'd swing by the Trader Joe's near there afterward, to pick up a single item, and when I walked in there was a line from the front door to the registers. It was fucking stunning. I turned around and walked out. I don't know how people live like that.

ha, I guess I took yr post as a way of saying there's too much contradictory messaging getting thrown around so it's useless trying to satisfy all possible conditions perfectly xp

vote by mail!

― Karl Malone, Thursday, March 12, 2020 11:49 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think it may be too late at this point, as you have to request a ballot which they then have to mail to you. Maybe, though. I'll look into it.

i'll continue bluntly saying things i guess, even though it's not a good look and i understand everyone is stressed out (including me, that's for fucking sure)

if you don’t use hand sanitizer you are typhoid mary. if you buy hand sanitizer you are stealing it from everyone else who needs it more. if there’s no hand sanitizer don’t buy the resale stuff. but you need to use hand sanitizer. also, hand sanitizer is not helpful.

who is saying all these things????

"if you don’t use hand sanitizer you are typhoid mary" translation: use at least some hand sanitizer
"if you buy hand sanitizer you are stealing it from everyone else who needs it more" translation: don't buy a 60-pack from costco
"if there’s no hand sanitizer don’t buy the resale stuff" translation: i don't know what i'm talking about
"but you need to use hand sanitizer. also, hand sanitizer is not helpful" translation: i am just trying to troll you

no one is going to be able to give precise advice because everyone's situation is different. just use common sense, as much as you can, that's all anyone is asking for

how the fuck is your fucking takeaway from this that I am trying to troll people and not that I am scared

Just got approval to have our remote-work app installed. Inching ever closer to...well, probably to my place of work continuing to kick the can down the road and stick with their 'wait and see' approach until they wait and see an office full of employees succumb to viral infection. But a candle of hope yet flickers in the darkness.

like can we please assume the actual goddamn fucking MINIMUM of good faith for the love of fuck

"but you need to use hand sanitizer. also, hand sanitizer is not helpful" translation: i am just trying to troll you

i am saying, whoever is saying to YOU is trying to troll you

xpost unperson. I used to go to the chelsea Trader joes every saturday morning after the gym and it was empty.

you just have to know the off times.

yeah every workplace i hear about is "Monitoring the situation" which is the same phrase they use when they hold off on closing down for a blizzard until everyone is at work and the roads and train lines are shut down.

Every store I've been in for the past, what, 3-4 weeks? has been completely out of hand sanitizer. And then over the past couple weeks, they've also been out of disinfectant wipes, alcohol swabs, etc. Clearly, some overzealous people will be refashioning dozens of unused sanitizer bottles into furniture and decorative tchotchkes over the coming years.

I do think a lot of this stuff is not rocket science but if ppl really are struggling to figure out what a reasonable amount is then stores need to implement fair use policies (as quite a few already are)

I found a one quarter full tiny bottle of hand sanitizer in my glove compartment last night and it was the same feeling as finding $20 in a jacket I hadn't worn for a year.

Like, yeah, ppl are being called dicks for clearing the shelves of toilet paper so nobody else can get any; no, you will not be called a monster for buying an economy pack

I'm going to make what I hope to be one last stop at the store tonight and stare dejectedly at the ravaged shelves and then hope that I can somehow sustain myself for the foreseeable future on the twenty boxes of taco shells and clearanced chipotle mayo that I leave with.

The thing I'm most profoundly failing to understand atm is the number of people in this very office who already have the ability to work from home and who work from home multiple days in any given week who are unaccountably in the office right now. Just why.

Presenteeism...the real disease

xp because they still think this is Somebody Else's Problem, I reckon.

my 60something parents have been struggling with severe flu-like symptoms since sunday and my diabetic/epileptic brother for a whole week now

they're made of stern stuff (brother's condition/dad's chainsmoking notwithstanding) but this has me a bit worried. and it takes a lot to worry me. what is reassuring is that they've had it (whatever it is, probably coronavirus) for a few days and no respiratory difficulties reported

I mean I can't speak for anyone else but I am in the office because I fucking have to be

katherine the best all-in-one guide to how to respond to coronavirus that I've seen is https://flattenthecurve.com. From a member of the public health faculty at the U of Oregon.

I’m disgusted with my workplace. It’s becoming clear to me that they are not going to trigger WFH until forced to by the city. This is not safe. Not for the many twentysomethings in the office even, and not for those of us pushing fifty with chronic health shit.

What do you guys think if I just tell them I have a persistent low grade fever. I’m tired of this dance.

The Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall have canceled performances through the end of the month. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is also closing.

Good strategy imho xp

Xps hope they get well soon, LJ

Forgot to mention, but pasta was the only non-TP, non-sanitizer section I saw at Target last night. Went specifically to grab a few things, including linguine, and I got literally the last two boxes of pasta.

i get what katherine is saying in the sense that, just like with lots of other stuff in this shitty performative age, there's a group of people (not necessarily anyone itt) who are going to stake out the most extreme position and then act like even the slightest nudge against it makes you some kind of moral monster. i think people have an especially difficult time resisting this impulse when you have a group of people on the other side of the spectrum politically who are being aggressively ignorant and reckless about the danger. but yeah, there are a lot of slippery slopes here: I shouldn't go to a concert, but can I go to the grocery store? should I go to work? to church? i caught some of Scott Van Pelt on Sportscenter last night having this discussion with some other guy and SVP was trying very gently and with a million qualifiers to try and navigate what is and isn't acceptable right now and the other dude was basically just shutting him down and sort of implying that anything short of cancelling everything sports-related right now is monstrous. I mean, the easiest thing to do rhetorically is just say you shouldn't leave your house at all and you're killing people if you do.

Very curious to see what happens with a friend's wedding at the end of the month

an important point they are hammering home in the UK is that this is a marathon not a sprint. They're not closing schools now because it's not feasible to keep children locked down for 16 weeks, and the peak is still 10-14 weeks away.

(which is what makes fucking testing so important, because who knows exactly where the US is on the curve?)

I don’t think it’s remotely controversial to say feeding yourself is fine? Or that the distinction between picking up a few extra things in case you’re staying home for a while before going out again vs taking more pasta than you’d ever eat in a year isn’t clear?

for real

I have a handful of friends that like to vent but absolutely don't want any advice, so I am usually like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ until they ask explicitly.

Presenteeism...the *real* disease

I have a handful of friends that like to vent but absolutely don't want any advice, so I am usually like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ until they ask explicitly.

this seems like the better way to respond

Yeah, if they haven't made the WFH call by like tomorrow, Imma be makin' the call for them, and my call will be all about the H without any of that pesky WF.

ty gyac