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

this would probably the best about using sound judgement with pets based upon what they know.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/quarantine-cat-disinfect-dog-latest-advice-about-coronavirus-and-your-pets

besides going to work i barely leave the house or have interactions with other people anyway but just idly toted up how much of my home time is usually spent watching sports and.......probably time to find a hobby or start duolingo or something

here is my grocery report: i'm off today so i decided to torture myself unnecessarily. i have enough food in my house to survive for a while but i just got salt fat acid heat and i want to make a bunch of the recipes this weekend and next week. i didn't realize it was quite this bad but things just accelerated yesterday. i want ground lamb and a whole chicken.

store 1: i figured i would just go to wegmans first thing in the morning and assumed they would have restocked overnight. i was very wrong. there was almost no meat. i got 2 packages of chicken/turkey sausage because it was the only thing left. i wasn't expecting ground lamb to be something people buy in emergencies but people apparently wanted everything last night. there were full stocks of pretty random produce. i was able to get a good cabbage, cilantro and parsley, a bag of apples, and limes. there were no jalapeños and all the big bags of onions were gone. the small bags were there. there was no yogurt (there was some yogurt but i wanted the 2 pack of plain nonfat greek yogurt) but adequate milk and eggs. i got a gallon of milk to make my own yogurt. i got an extra 18 eggs for the future.

store 1.1: i wanted to try costco so i could get coffee and test the yogurt supply but it was too early and they weren't open yet.

store 2: whole foods is on the way home from wegmans. google indicated "more busy than usual" or whatever. it was kind of bad and weird. greek yogurt is obv more expensive there but i got 2 qts of store brand plus a fage for recipes. plus coffee. few remaining jalapeños were very sad-looking.

store 3: indian/halal store. incredible success! only two other customers in the store, normal for that store. fully stocked of every imaginable legume and rice. i got 2 big bags of chick peas, a bag of lentils, and 4 lbs of basmati. i have never bought meat there but i got 2 lbs of ground lamb and a small very fresh-looking whole chicken from the butcher. plus fresh green chiles and more cilantro.

The World Health Organization has announced that dogs cannot contract Covid-19. Dogs previously held in quarantine can now be released. To be clear, WHO let the dogs out.

— Liam Hackett (@DiageoLiam) March 12, 2020

Just got back from a store (we had to get a few things, regardless; I've got two tiny girls, but I feel for parents of multiple hungry boys), and things weren't that bad. Plenty of everything, people working, restocking, and so on. A few people clearly stocking up on a few things, and by that I mean a few very select things. I passed one guy with a cart full of water, pasta and giant cans of Ragu. I mean, if that's your favorite food ...

Our cat has responded to the crisis by going to sleep for the day.

Hope the dogs do a better job of running the world than we did.

Per that article, who the fuck is testing their pet for Covid, and why would you do that? Like, of all the vectors, why would you waste the time on that unless you're, like, Barbra Streisand.

Pro tip for others in Williamsburg or bushwick etc
Go to the supermarkets in Spanish neighborhoods
The Associated which caters more Spanish is exactly one block further from me than the key food which caters yuppie and they have plentiful toilet paper, plentiful everything except bottled water and disinfectant

You know, one of those "I was feeling a bit down, running a low fever, I assume I caught it from the dog" situations that we hear about every year.

i haven't told my cat yet what's going on out there

In a year everyone is going to be overweight and nursing newborns. And Hostess is going to buy Amazon.

If we don't tell our pets the truth, who will?

oh yeah also 90% of the frozen section was bare. you could still get a big bag of frozen chicken nuggets.

【パンツをマスクにしました】
Turned briefs into masks#lifehack pic.twitter.com/SJmMdzy5aJ

— ウエスP(Wes-P／Mr Uekusa) BGT2018&AGT2018 (@uespiiiiii) March 2, 2020

I am just confused now because that joke tweet links to something from WHO that doesn't even mention dogs??? The WHO thing I saw was just that it was unlikely a dog could pass it to a human. but you guys all have the internet you can see the recent mainstream articles about the dog still under quarantine.

Is Food Bazaar in wburg near the JMZ.

Just to be safe, I would not eat your dog.

ugh, that should've said go to the Food Bazaar.

my dog is dead. I probably would not eat him either. although I did use to nibble on his ears.

first Bolsonaro, now the dog. RIP

can't log into Ocado to edit an order, everything is ruined!

Just because these anecdotes are useful and full of practical information, my wife heard an interview with a 37-year old Seattle woman with Covid. She said she apparently caught it at a house party where several others caught it. All had similar stories: after a couple of days they started to feel wiped out and came down with a fever, which soon spiked to maybe 103 and stayed up there. In her case, at least, she said she never got any other symptoms, no cough or anything, just felt bad and had a fever. So a PSA that yeah, fever and fatigue/feel bad seem like the most common symptoms, at least for young or healthier people, followed by a dry cough, though apparently not always the latter. Fortunately (for potential impact) and unfortunately (for diagnosis) for a lot of folks, fever and fatigue are both pretty mild symptoms but also pretty common among all illnesses.

The woman interviewed, by the way, said her mom broke down in tears when she told her. Her own reaction to that was "hey, mom's gonna mom."

i think it was this woman.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/12/health/coronavirus-survivor-elizabeth-schneider/index.html

Yeah, I think so!

Just saw an ambulance pull up and double-park on my street. My heart sank, and then I saw that the EMTs were just stopping to pick up donuts

Did they have their flashing lights and siren on? Because if so, I understand.

xpost These are the exact stories that I find helpful. Not the worst case scenarios, which we should all be aware of even if not necessarily personally anticipating, but the most common scenarios for many people, those not at risk. Because it helps them/us ( those generally not in a high risk group) get a better bead on whether we ourselves may be ill or should self-isolate even if we don't need to go to the hospital.

New data from @CopernicusEU #Sentinel5P reveal decline of air pollution, specifically NO2 emissions, over Italy. This reduction is particularly visible in northern Italy which coincides with its nationwide lockdown to prevent spread of the #coronavirus 👉https://t.co/4BQX4vD6P3 pic.twitter.com/7SDN8XB2vH

— ESA (@esa) March 13, 2020

i have no idea what is true here, all i saw is some meme going around. gist was 'WHO let the dogs out'

― ooga booga-ing for the bourgeoisie (voodoo chili)

woof.

xpost My wife mentioned there was a apparently big reduction of pollution in China, too. Silver linings ...

xpost These are the exact stories that I find helpful. Not the worst case scenarios, which we should all be aware of even if not necessarily personally anticipating, but the most common scenarios for many people, those not at risk. Because it helps them/us ( those generally not in a high risk group) get a better bead on whether we ourselves may be ill or should self-isolate even if we don't need to go to the hospital.

― Josh in Chicago

it's a good story but who decided to use the word "survivor" in the url?

xps they didn't but I'm sleep-deprived rn and not really thinking about obvious stuff

I'm sitting here and suddenly realizing, omg, all of my muscles ache, holy shit, it's the cov, oh no wait, that would be because I made like a prepper's pack mule last night and schlepped 50 lbs. of food halfway across the city.

My gf's school is now closed effective Monday and through at least the rest of the month. Whereas I and my coworkers have literally heard not one single solitary peep from anyone in management today about anything. It sure feels like an abdication of responsibility to me, like they're deciding not to decide. If they need me to decide for them, I'm happy to oblige.

New data from @CopernicusEU #Sentinel5P reveal decline of air pollution, specifically NO2 emissions, over Italy. This reduction is particularly visible in northern Italy which coincides with its nationwide lockdown to prevent spread of the #coronavirus 👉https://t.co/4BQX4vD6P3 pic.twitter.com/7SDN8XB2vH
— ESA (@esa) March 13, 2020

― mark s, Friday, March 13, 2020 11:31 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

OMG, what if the cov is nature's way of solving global warming, what a wonderful world

gaia sez HALLO

have now been officially asked to work from home for the rest of the month which i was already planning to do

looking forward to seeing what's left at the grocery store this evening

These are the exact stories that I find helpful. Not the worst case scenarios, which we should all be aware of even if not necessarily personally anticipating, but the most common scenarios for many people, those not at risk. Because it helps them/us ( those generally not in a high risk group) get a better bead on whether we ourselves may be ill or should self-isolate even if we don't need to go to the hospital.

Yes--I felt a little better when I saw that on CNN this morning. I check this page periodically, and the 7% death rate for closed cases is above the 3/4% I've been hearing for the last couple of weeks.

http://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

So...while I certainly don't want Trump's phony and dangerous optimism, I do take some solace in the occasional concrete reminder that most people are surviving.

Yes--I felt a little better when I saw that on CNN this morning. I check this page periodically, and the 7% death rate for closed cases is above the 3/4% I've been hearing for the last couple of weeks.

http://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

― clemenza

my suspicion is that death rate for closed cases is going to be a little artificially inflated rn because, well, you're not gonna close a case until somebody either dies or gets better, right? and the latter outcome takes longer to verify than the former, right?

that's just a guess though and i may well be completely wrong about that

I can feel my blood pressure slowly rising with every passing minute that our absentee management maintains absolute radio silence about wtf we're doing. Oh, but I'm still getting emails from them about business matters as if this was just any other day. No worries there. Shmucks.

xp

also, the mortality rate will go down once testing is more widely available. there are a lot of people who have mild symptoms who haven't been tested.

These are the exact stories that I find helpful. Not the worst case scenarios, which we should all be aware of even if not necessarily personally anticipating, but the most common scenarios for many people, those not at risk. Because it helps them/us ( those generally not in a high risk group) get a better bead on whether we ourselves may be ill or should self-isolate even if we don't need to go to the hospital.

Yes--I felt a little better when I saw that on CNN this morning. I check this page periodically, and the 7% death rate for closed cases is above the 3/4% I've been hearing for the last couple of weeks.

http://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

So...while I certainly don't want Trump's phony and dangerous optimism, I do take some solace in the occasional concrete reminder that most people are surviving.

― clemenza, Friday, March 13, 2020 9:43 AM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the prime minister and his wife likely both have it (unless Justin doesn't kiss his wife, which seems unlikely) and she's mildly sick and he's asymptomatic. it's not all doom and gloom

xp:
There was an early report from Hong Kong of a dog that had tested "weakly positive" for COVID-19.

It's somewhat important to me. I have a dog, my sister has one, my elderly parents have three. In the event my parents get sick, I would expect to have to care for their dogs for the duration of their illness, and vice versa. And if dogs were contagious, it would create issues with kenneling similar to those for schools.

also, the mortality rate will go down once testing is more widely available. there are a lot of people who have mild symptoms who haven't been tested.

― Karl Malone

good point, the only confirmed COVID cases at this point are going to be the most serious cases!

yep, exactly

of course...most of us are likely to get it this year, anyway. was reading a TPM thing this morning mentioning that since the whole point of tests is to try to contain it, the whole effort right now to ramp up testing is kind of a moot point. we're already past containment - we lost that battle before it even started, practically.

of course, normally, the point of tests is also to diagnose it for immediate treatment. but since there's no vaccine...that's also a moot point.

in other words, the advice for everyone now is to socially distance and try to prevent further community spread as much as possible. not much point in testing people, just so they can find out they have covid19 but there's no vaccine, and then tell them to isolate themselves, when that's what we're supposed to be doing anyway

Obviously very small bananas compared to everything else in the world, but my favorite bookstore (Literati in Ann Arbor) just announced they are closing their shop "indefinitely, effective immediately" though still taking orders online.

I'm hoping the wording is such because they just have no idea when they will reopen, but it really sucks. A great shop. I immediately ordered a couple books I'd been eyeing lately.

Just got paranoid when I started coughing from eating a salty cookie too quickly, mostly that I would be shunned

our absentee management maintains absolute radio silence about wtf we're doing.

My first reaction is you were talking about the federal government.

Local hot dog stand to the rescue

bigguyssausage_
So we’ve reviewed our SOPs and sanitation procedures, as extra precaution we’ve removed all self serve disposables, we have a tight-small staff and we’re all on the same team to limit the spread of this virus. We take our responsibility of serving safe food seriously, if you dine in we are constantly wiping the customer counter area and we also have hand sanitizer and wipes for extra precaution, we have a new hand washing station coming for the customer area as well. We figure people will be ordering a lot of delivery, we are partnered with door dash, and overall that has resulted in really fast deliveries. All we ask is if you do order please try and use our link below thru our website because our commission to them is greatly reduced that way. Stay safe and healthy and seriously come get some corned beef this weekend!
https://bigguyssausage.com/order-online/

xpost Yours and mine both. It sure as hell feels like the Trump administration is running my company atm.

trump admin. is more like if your company was running the whole gov't

95% of the stuff on my FB wall that's supposed be funny is pretty lame to my perhaps peculiar sense of humour. I did find an e-mail from the Nixon Library announcing closure amusing. I assume Nixon Twitter will have a comment: "Goddamnit, Bob, I made it back from WWII, and they can't keep a fucking library open?"

Two week quarantine for the assisted living facility where my mother lives. I wish I'd asked the director if there was a precipitating event when I had her on the phone, though she said it was just precautionary. My mom's main gripe is that she won't be able to go for her perm appointment next week.