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

trying to work from home while facilitating 2 kids doing "remote/distance learning" and 1 pre-K kid just cruising in boredom is god tier difficulty level

Well, I was overyjoyed that my job finally authorized working from home, but it looks like the VPN connection is overwhelmed, so I'll probably have to go in anyway (or use a sick day). At least I took my time and made cornbread this morning.

What's the obsession with VPNs, do you all work for spy agencies?

It's absolutely not necessary for this job/industry imho.

I mean in public WiFi of course. Maybe companies just like to think that they are important enough to be a target of sophisticated espionage.

no noel i work for a healthcare organization dealing with protected health information, how on earth would I be able to do my job over an insecure connection?

When I worked for a big publishing org we had to have VPN with a stupid passcode key dongle that changed every minute, just to access the company records and the purchase ordering system. Which I mean I guess that's sensitive stuff but also what's a hacker going to do, order an extra 5000 Joyce Meyer reprint?

interesting interview here from german virologist handling cases there, mentions diarrhoea being a common symptom which I've not heard elsewhere

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/gesundheit/coronavirus/virologe-hendrik-streeck-ueber-corona-neue-symptome-entdeckt-16681450.html

I got a p intense, slightly mysterious flu w/ diarrhoea in early february after coming back from amsterdam, wonder if there's any chance I was an early case?

Hmm… I thought it wasn't, hence all the jokes about how stockpiling TP makes it seem like a cholera pandemic is unfolding as we speak.

There was a very good thing in the NYT (I think covid stuff is free to read, not linking it so I don't stress people out) about two chinese women doctors in their early 30s who had it and it described their different progressions. Diarrhea and vomiting were symptoms.

no noel i work for a healthcare organization dealing with protected health information, how on earth would I be able to do my job over an insecure connection?

Same

From what I read, diarrhea is a possible symptom, but not a common one.

he's saying 1/3 of the cases in germany have diarrhoea. diarrhoea and flu is an odd combo generally, no?

3.7% of cases involved diarrhoea according to Wikipedia.

Worldwide, that is. Data comes from the WHO.

Just looked, and if some 88% of people get a fever, supposedly only 4% get cloudy with a chance of diarrhea. Maybe data is changing?

At work this morning we were told, even if we close the building to the public, we'll still have to come into work while they think up stuff for us to do. Also, the entire organization has run out of hand sanitizer and some of us have to pass material back and forth to the public all day.

Yes, it's the UK, folks!

Not to worry, you'll have the last laugh as Britons are about to develop a super-herd immunity that will be the envy of foreign nations the world over.

Made in Scotland, from girders.

Too bad Sears Sears catalogs aren't still ubiquitous

Gonna be striding around empty Italian tourist destinations with my super-Brit immunity radiating off me like a glow.

Not like these dickheads in Spain nb:

Outrageous the behavior of #British tourists in #Benidorm, amid the #coronavirus pandemic. Is somebody going to do something? @BBCnews @BorisJohnson @interiorgob @sanchezcastejon pic.twitter.com/bcv9enh3wo

— Maria Lluïsa Vivó (@mllvivo) March 15, 2020

wtf I love martial law now

many xps here:

I think a lot of large corporations have a VPN because traditionally, having all your shit on the intranet was the way things went. And companies are slow to change.

fortunately I was able to figure out how to navigate the vpn I need for work without installing an app (a couple of people on the sysadmin subreddit said it was relatively non-intrusive, but still, the only google results being their oracle-esque corporate propaganda did not fill me with hope) but am not looking forward to being coerced into the general privacy catastrophe that is most remote apps; I don't know what I'll do if/when something asks me to use zoom

honestly, zoom's presumptive security holes last year were them trying to solve unintuitive UI issues (clicking a link in a browser and it either downloading a file or giving a weird prompt instead of just opening their app) with insanely bad hacks. afaict they've fixed that idiocy and it's a pretty good piece of software

we're trying to switch to telehealth in a week but i honestly have no idea how patients are going to access it -- phone appointments are permissible for pts that refuse to come to clinic, but discouraged because (wait for it) we can't bill

How many of those tourists in Spain are going to be dead in a month? jfc.

This has me a bit scared -

Coronavirus & Age:

•64% of those critically ill in Italy are under 70
•50%+ of those critically ill in France are under 60
•50%+ of those critically ill in Netherlands are under 50
•80% of those just infected in Portugal are under 60

— Tory Fibs (@ToryFibs) March 16, 2020

we're trying to switch to telehealth in a week but i honestly have no idea how patients are going to access it -- phone appointments are permissible for pts that refuse to come to clinic, but discouraged because (wait for it) we can't bill

― gbx

that is already changing fwiw

just got the email I've been expecting for a while: everyone not specifically asked to be in the office is required to WFH until further notice. this is gonna suuuck.

i suspect we'll be a little slower here (NM), but i hope not. the response from the state itself has been fairly brisk, given that we had zero known cases this time last week

i've had one pt actually show up today, i'm guessing we'll close out the day with like a 75% no-show rate

love unsourced twitter accounts

xps

Source: the internet.

Up to now, all of MS's positives had been in the south half of the state, but the north half just got their first case...in this county. From what I'm hearing, in my town.

we’re a reasonably big (FTSE250) company who has shifted a lot of their workforce onto WFH this week. we’ve been asked not to use teams video chat and told not to even stay logged on, due to bandwidth constraints. we have to log on and off to collect emails. quite surprising I thought - had initially thought all of our traffic would be e.g. being handled by staff’s internet bandwidth but it must be routed through a VPN or some other server?

He gives the sources here

1. https://t.co/RDmn3xQXAK
2. https://t.co/ZaS3yBtnak
3. https://t.co/kala9i2kQu
4. https://t.co/y7pUj8yOP6

— Tory Fibs (@ToryFibs) March 16, 2020

Expecting / hoping you'll rip these apart now

FINALLY got wfh directive, been anticipating it but it's going to be quite a jarring transition. i think i'll need to tidy up my space and stick to a routine of some kind (aka not work in pajamas)

Whatever the specific numbers are, I do agree it's been underreported how many people younger than 60 or 70 or whatever are being hospitalized with serious conditions, whether or not they are in mortal danger. And of course the latter potentially becomes higher for everyone the worse the care or availability of care gets.

Donadio seems like a legit journalist

xps

in an unsettling reversal of my teenage years, I am now yelling at my parents for going out

— Brigid Delaney (@BrigidWD) March 16, 2020

The Portugal stat is not news or scary, it's what you'd expect for pandemic that everyone is going to catch.

The French one is more worrying and I don't understand it.

my coworker - after being in the office all last week - has decided that she should self-isolate for 14 days from when she arrived back in the country (she got back from a country that has less confirmed cases of COVID than we have in this province). basically a complete excuse not to come into work that doesn't make any sense and which ups my workload at a particularly trying time. she has answered an email or two in our shared inbox thus far this morning.

Donadio works for The Atlantic - do they love Fake news or something?

p as much as you do

Finally a directive at my work: "vulnerable people" will be working from home. Which in my office is my diabetic boss, one person recovering from surgery, one with a seriously immunocompromised partner, someone pregnant, maybe the person who lives with their 80+ mother... there actually won't be many of us left. But I'm still coming in, for now.

At least I asked my boss if we could be slightly lenient about start times (which we are anyway but I wanted to check) so that if I'm running late I don't have to squeeze onto a bus, I can take my time and walk in.

Hopefully the walk in will be relatively free of people, though it will help if schools shut, as there's a primary school near both ends of my commute and a couple more just a bit further along, so from 8:20 to 9 there are packs of kids being herded down the footpath.

xxxp don't be too mad you'll be working from home any day now yourself

Citation required:

My observation: Kids pulled outta schools, People out of their jobs, Everyone doesn’t have money or enough to go for long.. Stress is at an all time high.. ‘Pressure Busts Pipes’ Shit could get very hectic…. Just sayin.

— ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) March 16, 2020

Source: Ice T

I know who I'm phoning next time my boiler is fucked!

Ice T [blue tick mark] actually