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

Alcohol is the worst for me when I have a cold. Tylenol is Paracetamol?

yup

One beer is fine imo. No need to overdo it.

Idk how much credence to give this but maybe take Tylenol instead of Advil if you have it?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/14/anti-inflammatory-drugs-may-aggravate-coronavirus-infection

I also answer to morbid, Puffin

I believe I was warned off Advil when I got cancer

tbh my favourite bit of the guardian piece is this comment from the french education minister: “this coming period is not one in which the youngsters don’t have to work”

I had hesitated to post a fb thing here from a couple of days ago but it's from a friend (reg nurse too in CA) whom I trust and I think it gives good advice:

Fellow citizens, you may develop symptoms and want to be tested.

You may not get tested. It’s very likely you won’t given government malfeasance.

Assume you’re positive and behave as though that were your result for the sake of others.

The presence or absence of a test will not benefit or harm you as an individual. It will not determine your treatment or necessarily your recovery.

The tests are to help us collectively find outbreaks and make better and more targeted epidemiology decisions to hopefully reduce the rate of transmission and deploy the right resources in the right places.

Engage in:

Self isolation, supportive care, nutritious food, fluids, rest, handwashing, mask, watch for worsening symptoms. Use sunlight and good ventilation to the outdoors. It’s old school and always fantastic.

Talk to people you love and who love you right back via phone text and FB so you feel loved and not alone.

You don’t need to go to the emergency room unless you need to go to the emergency room.

The emergency room is not the place to go because you sort of don’t feel well and are anxious or curious about getting tested.

The emergency room is for shortness of breath or a fever you can’t bring down with acetaminophen or any other potentially life limiting symptom.

Don’t panic: 80 percent of people have mild to moderate symptoms which will resolve.

Let’s breathe.

So apparently paracetamol is flying off the shelves faster than toilet paper now.

tbh my favourite bit of the guardian piece is this comment from the french education minister: “this coming period is not one in which the youngsters don’t have to work”

Children don't seem to have a hard time with coronavirus, so I say we should be training them up to drive buses and dig roads etc.

He was talking about a 'continuité pédagogique à distance', i.e. switching to online courses.

They can fit that in in between driving buses and digging roads.

'Travailler' strikes me as a slightly broader concept than 'work' – there's a bit of a language barrier/mistranslation here. Against the backdrop of France's healthier take on work-life balance in general, it's kind of a weird joke tbh.

make a big batch of your favorite soup to freeze and have on hand

lol making soup, sure, I know how to do that

never logging off is also work

Never logging in is play iirc.

When I'm bored, I often snack. Today for "breakfast" I ate some kettle chips, a microwave egg roll, and a few graham crackers. When I went to to the refrigerator to get some milk for my coffee, I accidentally knocked a Jello pudding cup from the shelf and onto the floor, cracking the plastic container. "Welp," I thought, "may as well eat that, too." At least until the food supply runs out, I think a side effect of this social distancing will be that I will gain 20 lbs. Which will be ironic if there is - God forbid - a mass food shortage at some later date.

I find that staying on my computer and compulsively refreshing news feeds is keeping me too distracted and anxious to feel hunger, if that helps.

i am at my local algerian hairdresser for a trim. i was suddenly hit with the idea that everything will be closed indefinitely soon and i started panicking about my... hair? (though apparently in Spain hairdressers have an exemption from the shutdown, which they’re not particularly happy about; not sure why they can’t just close anyway but apparently official reasoning is that ppl with disabilities rely on hairdressers for washing?)

this might sound dumb in a few days, but i’m not sure why supplies of food and basic medicines would be threatened? why is this a worry? trains and boats and trucks and deliveries will all still happen. nowhere in the world has closed grocery stores and pharmacies afaict.

/stevolende

(wondering how many Brooklyn barbers will be open this week)

OK, I've been silently cursing mask-wearers on the street, assuming they're not sick/positive and the mask does nothing.

Then here I read

Assume you’re positive and behave as though that were your result

So we should ALL be wearing masks NOW, right?

This is feeling futile already.

I think by that they mean be reasonable and don't do anything or go anywhere if you don't have to. The idea is not to stop - too late - but mitigate and slow to allow doctors and hospitals and so on to keep up.

I suppose the concern is that the supply chain could be interrupted. If enough drivers or workers got sick then companies and shops might have trouble keeping up with demand. You can only make chickens lay eggs so fast, you know.

fwiw re: otc painkillers, acetaminophen, ibuprofen, naproxen et al, and alcohol, I think generally people are considering how much potential damage they can all do to your liver, and in that sense none of them are "good" for you and all of them are potentially problematic with alcohol, but mostly (afaik) warnings apply to longterm usage. Likewise, it's generally safe for most people to take higher doses than what the bottle recommends, too, as necessary - obviously they give much higher doses than, say, 200mg if you're in the hospital for something - but again I think the idea is to limit levels in the liver the best you can.

Interesting theory re: ibuprofen and covid, though. I heard an interview the other day with a man with a serious case of arthritis, one that requires prescription anti-inflammatories to reduce his serious pain. He said he's kind of in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, since a side effect of the medicine is that it leaves him immunocompromised, but to not take the medicine would not only lead to the return of debilitating pain, but also hyper inflammation of his joints, which would lead to his body's immune response going into overdrive and thus leave him potentially more susceptible to other illnesses, anyway.

in re trucks and trains and boats

i mean

yeah, until... maybe they dont?

or, as ive been wondering, until say for instance countries that buy from the UK say look lads fair play on trying something different but we're no longer allowing people, goods, anything from ye until we see how yr lil experiment shakes out

(which if twasnt already too late shouldve been our message tbh)

etc etc

Tracer, you have great hair, babe.

I also answer to morbid, Puffin

I was going to say--in a cheerful, not-critical way--that's what you call a Freudian slip squared.

Tracer, you have great hair, babe.

likewise, it's generally safe for most people to take higher doses than what the bottle recommends, too, as necessary

This is true of most NSAIDs, but very much NOT for Tylenol/Paracetamol, where the effective dose is very close to the level where it can cause liver damage.

Good to know!

p sure the "assume you're positive" meant "if you get sick."

There are plenty of people who will get a "normal" cold or flu right about now, especially since a lot of us are cooped up inside together.

So, given that a vaccine is a year away - and testing remains impractical and rare - the treatment for novel coronavirus and the treatment for a bad cold are the same. So if you get sick, treat it along the lines outlined upthread. Those will be the right things to do regardless of the etiology.

Also ibuprofen, naproxen, aspirin etc are much more likely to bugger up your stomach and intestinal lining before they have much of an effect on yr liver. Though if you are a heavy enough drinker to be worried about liver issues then your guts probably aren't in the best shape anyway, so...

Otm

I bought a new Chromebook to deal with isolation so I don't have to use work laptop

Xpost

I'll be sane at least until the USPS shuts down and the internet stops working

Then, all bets are off, folks

Are any other freelancers, independent contractors and other self-employeds getting nervous about getting paid for services rendered before this crisis hit? I'm a little worried those $150 invoices I sent a week or two ago (which, when cobbled all together, make up about 75% of my income) are very, very low priority atm, and I'm not exactly expecting a whole lot of work in the foreseeable future

less worried about that than the ability to render services in the future (both short- and long-term; one short-term thing is that no sports also means no sports transcription)

(speaking of ibuprofen, another thing I am worried about: while thankfully I did restock on iron pills before all this, I did not restock on melatonin and have run out of advil pm, so given the disruption to my schedule I am really hoping this doesn't turn into "it's 9 am, you are only now sleepy" as has happened before)

I'm optimistically thinking that my main problem with being around home a lot is a lack of routine. I've had to burn some vacation days around the end of year holidays and end up being a mess, but actually having to work while stuck here is going to give me a routine, at least.

Maybe I'll come up with a way to remind myself when it's standard working hours. Maybe a dunce cap.

I'll be sane at least until the USPS shuts down

Not getting medical bills, cool (not 'going green' pays off).

Not getting chemo pills, not so cool.

Assume you’re positive and behave as though that were your result

So we should ALL be wearing masks NOW, right?

This is feeling futile already.

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius)

it's not _futile_ but it's not _effective_. effective containment would have been total quarantine two weeks ago. at this point containment is on the off-chance there are people who aren't infected yet, because we don't know one way or the other.

you have pre-existing comorbidities that significantly increase your risk should you get sick. do what you can to take care of yourself.

yeah the assume you are positive i took to mean you will get symptoms and won't be able to get tested so act accordingly.

I never knew that about ibuprofen. I was just discussing this with my spouse and we kind of think this is why he had recurring pneumonia years ago, because he pops advil like crazy. I may take one every other month or so for shark week.

Xpost I will pay whatever it takes to get you your chemo pills

Not a joek.

This shit is scary :(

Maybe I'll come up with a way to remind myself when it's standard working hours. Maybe a dunce cap.

― mh, Sunday, March 15, 2020 12:13 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

my advice: get dressed. I've worked from home a lot on project-based (rather than time card-based) work, and I have found that setting your alarm in the morning, showering, and getting dressed as if you were commuting and expected to report at 8am or whatever actually helps a lot. Establishing and maintaining a routine is key, at least for me.

They are finally starting to shut things down here. I think there are two cruise ships quarantined now in Patagonia because a Briton tested positive.

my advice: get dressed. I've worked from home a lot on project-based (rather than time card-based) work, and I have found that setting your alarm in the morning, showering, and getting dressed as if you were commuting and expected to report at 8am or whatever actually helps a lot. Establishing and maintaining a routine is key, at least for me.

Co-sign this 100%. I've been working from home since mid-2016, and I set my alarm to get up at 6-6:30 on weekdays and find that I get a tremendous amount of work done before 10 AM. Then I go for a walk sometime between 10-11 AM (check my PO box, pick up lunch) and go back to work, at a more leisurely pace, in the afternoon and evening, with breaks to read or play Tetris or Mario Kart.

At tip for working from home, based on 5+ years experience: After ~3 days the moderating influences of civilization fades and you begin a quick and irreversible descent into a feral state governed by your basest impulses. Don't worry, it happens to everyone.

— Adrian Chen (@AdrianChen) March 10, 2020

I'll third it. Even on weekends I'll set my alarm (although my body clock is fairly accurate) for the sake of maintaining a routine.

Having a moral & philosophical argument about whether or not to go to a restaurant tonight

with working from home, i know some people are better with routines but I liked just having a list of things to do for the day and they had to be done before I went to bed (to include things like exercising or duolingo or prepping food.)

I've worked from home since Nov. 2001 and it messed me up so bad I became an ILX mod.

I do all the normal showering/clothes/etc things when working from home. My main indulgence is that I'll respond to email and maybe attend the morning check-in meeting before showering. tbh I usually end up chatting and spending a while getting coffee after that while in the workplace, so I'm more productive from home