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

Cos my mobile hotspot ain't that strong

idk, now that I've read up and nagged family, feel like staying offline probably the best thing for my anxiety. I won't though.

I was in a Park Slope supermarket line behind some 80yo b**** who was removing items AND WEIGHING THEMAT THE REGISTER; it took her 15 minutes to check out less than a dozen items. If she exposed me, I hope to see her in hell.

Xpost I bought a new Chromebook cos i don't wanna use my work laptop to browse non work stuff. Not for a month

that's wise!

Flappy, you needn't apologize to me; rather the other way round. You were right.

wfh tomorrow even though my employer is still officially expecting its employees to come into Central London into a building that holds approx 1000 people, many of whose jobs involve flying to and from countries all over the globe. cause Fuck That

just saw a half hour special on the first two months of lockdown in Wuhan and it was v sobering. Film followed a guy who’s part of a network that drives doctors to work (because no public transport) and delivers retrovirals from donors (who have AIDS!) to corona patients, for whom the retrovirals seem to relieve the symptoms somewhat. Also follows a nurse who gets it and has to stay at home because no beds in the hospital. Her boyfriend takes care of her, wearing full spacesuit when he enters her room. They mainly communicate via phone, even though just one room away. She gets worse and cries on the phone to get husband. Just heartbreaking. She finally gets a bed in a hospital and eventually recovers. Not just an “old people” thing. Kind of can’t believe schools are still open in London. Wuhan’s bigger than London. If anything I’m looking for an excuse not to leave the house. Just shut it all down. Keep the Internet on. Keep the corner shop open. That’s enough.

We have a full team meeting tomorrow to discuss how we're going to stay away from each other.

If you didn't laugh you'd cough uncontrollably for a week.

my sister just sent me an FB message near-begging me to come live with her in southern CT, FOR NOW.

"we can take care of you"

I think she underestimates how fast I can get a weekly chemo drip set up at another site.

"I'm really worried about looting, violence, etc."

well of course she is.

Not looking fwd to the phone call with her after dinner. Cuz … I think she's wrong, but what if she isn't?

I don't think the likelihood of looting/violence is v high tbh

looting is so far down on the list of things to be fearful of.

wait this is on 77 right

I was in a Park Slope supermarket line behind some 80yo b**** who was removing items AND WEIGHING THEMAT THE REGISTER; it took her 15 minutes to check out less than a dozen items. If she exposed me, I hope to see her in hell.

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Sunday, March 15, 2020 6:36 PM (forty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

would love to have a Morbs-cam for this

anyway man I hope you consider sister's offer, not out of crime concerns but just because it might be preferable in general, all things considered?

I do dread being alone, mostly, for the duration. But how do I hang onto my apartment if this takes 6-12 months?

I know whatever decision I make, it will be the wrong one.

A cliche, Morbs, but one day at a time. Funnily enough, I just texted one of my best friends wondering, "Hey, uh, I'll get bored; can I stay with you?"

Yeah, Morbs. Being with people, even if not inside of six feet, is good.

I'm not bored. I'm scared.

I'm an at-risk cancer patient who has to goddamn telecommute to stay alive.

you should check into getting that chemo drip set up (how long it will take, where) just to know all your options..

Yep if you're a chemo patient, absolutely check out all your options now. My brother is an oncologist - he tells me his department is already triaging which patients will/won't get chemo once beds get scarce. This is in Sydney, Australia, where infection rates are relatively low compared with Europe and health system pretty good.

I just had zero chemo for 2 months while they reevaluated me. I don't need another pause this soon, it's true.

I'm on a NY State marketplace health plan... I can only imagine the nightmare of changing states mid-year -- then changing back again if I move back?

Bill <3 <3

Just as an update:

FINALLY (!) my brother in law's COVID-19 test came back NEGATIVE. This is huge, but not because he isn't still walking a tightrope with death, but because it means he is not in isolation and his immediate family can start visiting him. And almost as big a relief is that his wife is not likely to be a vector to the remainder of her family and friends.

Now all he needs to do is survive and recover, which remain two very big questions, but at least he can do it accompanied by those who love him.

That's news in the right direction, at least. Good to hear.

Yes, may the positive news keep rolling in. Just having loved ones nearby can help with healing.

that's very good news, aimless!

We take it as such, very much so. Death can't always be avoided, but facing death alone in ICU, isolated from loved ones, is not many people's idea of a good option.

Maybe someone has already covered it here, but I’m just starting to wonder, is our digital infrastructure actually up to the task of handling this new week where half of everyone is suddenly videoconferencing and streaming things? I’m sure this is as unanticipated as everything else, but perhaps we’ll get lucky, eh?

for the most part yes, isp data caps are a scam and not there for any functional purpose

I admit I'm curious to see if my work's VPN server is going to get annihilated tomorrow it's about to see a fiftyfold increase in connections

nyc and la are closing bars and restaurants too

State of Washington tomorrow, King County immediately tonight

MA closed them excluding take-out

re communications infrastructure, I had my first work-from-home teleconference call today (voice only) and it took about 5 minutes of redialing to get through - not a great sign if their capability is that stretched at this early stage (i am in Sydney where the viral times are still in the process of kicking off but starting to gather stream alarmingly rapidly (pardon mixed metaphor))

Telephones are terrible for conferencing (or speaking to other humans), even if it's audio only the quality from Google hangouts, Zoom etc. is far superior. Also the infrastructure is much more scalable than the phone system.

just did the math; I didn't buy enough groceries because I was afraid of hoarding, and I'm going to run out of food probably before this all is over.

I have no idea what to do in this case since obviously even if I was allowed to go to restaurants they're closed as of tuesday, and as for groceries I'm not supposed to go out, let alone go to stores, let alone to crowded stores, and there's a chance the stores will close too.

like "hoarding makes you evil" and "this will last for months" and "don't go outside" are incompatible together, unless you starve

It is inconceivable that grocery stores will be ordered closed. Go get groceries when you need more.

Think more along the lines of "don't go outside unless absolutely necessary". Italy's on lockdown but people there can still go to the grocery store and make trips for which they have a good reason for needing to do so.

My wife’s University is going online only from the end of the month although it’s seems like events may overtake that decision. The NSW, ACT and Queensland unis all seem to be scrambling to go inline as quickly as possible.

Might be worth a separate thread for online teaching / learning and how that's going.

If we think that the UK situation is going to stretch into the next academic year, and it looks almost inevitable that it will, i can't begin to imagine the impact that's going to have on enrollments, particularly of overseas students.

My wife is well prepped for this they had to start with up to 40% of her students stuck in China. Part of the assessment for one of her classes is a group project and she made sure that each group had some overseas members (only one Edgelord in a different section complained about this). Online lectures won’t be as good as in person but the tech seems to work. Plus I’m booked as a guest speaker for a couple of classes and she’s trying to find more who will remote in.

i feel like a lot of the conflicting advice is because of the uncertainty, we don't know what will happen, and we can't prepare for every eventuality. the more severe the quarantine the more it will hurt people in economically and socially precarious situations, but the more likely it is to prevent an italy-type situation

in healthcare the overriding goal is to make sure as many people as possible have access to any sort of medical care they need to stay alive. hospitals are cancelling elective surgeries so they can better focus on giving people treatment they need.

differentiating between what's convenient and what's necessary isn't a decision a lot of people are used to making. hoarders buy things in quantities they are vanishingly unlikely to need or find useful, and by doing so prevent other people who need them more from getting them. "this could last for months", on the other hand, is sort of preparing people to deal with one possible way this could go down.

there are a lot of worst-case scenarios and it's literally impossible for them all to happen. everybody has different ways of coping with the uncertainty, and one of the ways some people do it is trying to imagine all the bad things that could happen and planning for every contingency. unfortunately other people hear about this and take this coping strategy as prediction. combine this with different people focusing on planning for different contingencies...

well, i ignore most of what i hear, and certain risks, like the risk of increased political instability for instance, i decide to define as out of scope, which is why i hang out in this thread and don't hang out in the other one.

Seems like either the guardian was wrong (whod’ve thunk it) or things are moving quickly because my wife’s classes are online from Wednesday as texted from the break in her current one.

A U.K.-based company, in collaboration with Senegalese research foundation Institut Pasteur de Dakar, holds out prospects of a 10-minute coronavirus test costing less than $1 https://t.co/VkjTOPbL37

— Bloomberg Africa (@BBGAfrica) March 16, 2020

I haven’t heard anything here about how they are planning to feed the students in the halls. My friends who work in the kitchens are clueless. If you can’t run the cafeteria that could be three meals a day for someone on full board to be replaced somehow.

St. Andrews has two sources of income, and both tourism and the university are going to be badly hit by this.

my company is telling everyone to work from home and I think is going to actually close the office at the end of this week.

in practice, this makes no difference to me, I'm already in isolation anyway, was working from home almost every day to begin with, and don't leave the house very often. I did go out on Saturday to visit some friends, perhaps not the best idea but there aren't a lot of cases around here... yet. I went to the supermarket yesterday - tbh it wasn't that bad, didn't really seem busier than usual, didn't notice any empty shelves but then I wasn't shopping for pasta or TP (when I got home I thought I probably should've bought some pasta).