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

Seriously, I have a lovely office that I haven't been to in four months, and have no plans to go to any time soon. Lots of space, plentiful kitchens and bathrooms, good HVAC, already supplied with paper and pens and school supplies..."

this idea is dope and i def haven't seen it voiced elsewhere!

― Its big ball chunky time (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Wednesday, July 15, 2020 5:00 PM (three hours ago)

it's appealing, but it's not especially viable in many areas due to insurance, difficulty of cleaning spaces, the special needs of classrooms w/r/t accessibility and safety, transportation... etc. sometimes local publically-owned spaces (e.g. libraries, town-halls) might step-in, but privately owned buildings come with a host of difficulties.

My pal's current prediction is that schools where I live will open as scheduled (albeit as a part home/part in-class hybrid in the case of K-8 schools; high school is 100% remote) but that they will be shut down a month later. Really they should all be remote for at least the immediate future. There's a school in the burbs that had a sports camp for football and baseball players, iirc, and 36 kids just tested positive.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, July 15, 2020 8:10 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is the subtext to most openign plans! Nobody expects schools will be open for business-as-usual come October/November (flu season, colds, etc.), but there's a desire to get kids in for face-face interaction and socialization as early as possible.

Moodles where are you located?

Austin, TX

Houston starts Sept 8th. First six weeks are remote, after that we can choose remote or in class. We can change our mind every six weeks. Everything subject to change.

I guess this is as good as it gets under the current circumstances. Bitter that everything has been mismanaged so badly that we are here.

i mean nobody cares but melbourne’s daily case load is creeping up (although nothing at all compared to brazil, the usa, leicester etc) and it looks like our second lockdown (currently underway) will get even tighter and i think this is about as much as i can take of this fucking year

So last night a girl I dated in high school with whom I've stayed close reported her mom died of COVID. She and her dad were hospitalized last Friday; at first she thought her diabetic dad would go first. She's gutted, in large part b/c she had to say goodbye on the phone on Faceetime.

That's how this shit works: concentric circles of doom.

oh fuck that’s devastating

xxxpost damn, Chris. Keeping you in my thoughts. Really really hope it's just a quick bug!

oh jeez Alfred, very sorry to hear that

alfred, that’s awful, i’m so sorry.

Chris let us know how you’re feeling if you get a chance

I just had this horrible realisation that even if Trump loses he’s in power until late January. Those 2-3 months could be critical.

Sorry Alfred. Terrible.

Thanks, all.

That's terrible news. I have two very good friends who had a parent die in the past few months (neither of covid), and the social distancing and other restrictions made things that much more rough.

melbourne’s daily case load is creeping up

Curious, how much chillier is it in Melbourne than Sydney? Cool enough that people need to spend more time inside? For a bit it seemed like Covid was at least tangentially related to the weather, in the sense that where and when it was too cold or too hot to spend long stretches outside there seemed to be big spikes (New York/here et al. in March/April, southern states and CA now), but this country has been such an erratic mess I'm sure there are big exceptions due to outright incompetence. For example, I've wondered if it will happen again here as we creep toward the fall, where northern states suddenly see spikes and southern states get things better under control, but the southern states seem to be dealing with a whole different level of stupidity and stubbornness. Though I guess even Texas and Alabama have finally come around to mandatory masks, so apparently progress is possible. On the other hand, Kemp in Georgia literally just signed an executive order Wednesday night explicitly banning cities from enacting their own mask mandates, so ...

I don’t think it’s got much to do with the weather it’s a concatenation of poor decisions* that have lead to the virus getting out into the community.

*poor decisions include, poor management of quarantine, a prime minister goading the premier of Victoria into opening up to quick, not going for elimination when we were so close (and the virus is pretty much eliminated in all but 2 states) again because our prime minister did a selfish short sighted prick, not paying people in precarious jobs to stay home when sick, not protecting people adequately form being fired when the got sick.

All in all very little to do with the weather.

Negligence for sure trumps climate.

Thanks everyone, my fever has gone down along with the chills, it probably is a bug but I'm getting tested later. I was in a bad state yesterday, my mother passing away a few weeks ago and the perpetual bleak news not helping.

it's pretty frickin cold here in Hobart and we've had no new cases in over a month

Good to hear Chris. it can come and go though. Testing a good idea!

Hope you feel better soon Chris! I get it, my anxiety is absolutely through the roof with the unending flow of bad news. I gave up on hope weeks ago. My baseline assumption at this point is that we won't have a vaccine for probably three to five years and the US is already beyond hope in terms of controlling things in the meantime. It's fucking bleak.

Had a distanced picnic with some friends last night, and we all agreed that at this point, fall 2021 is the best case scenario for any sort of semblance of before, and that's best case scenario.

My wife asked me whether I could just return to normalcy tomorrow and I said that I probably couldn't. Frankly it took a lot of emotional and mental labor to get me to acquiesce to this situation, and if I get out of this mode I am not sure how I'd get back in.

In March, I thought a month of it would be impossible. That was four months ago. I feel like I've built up an immunity to this "new normal" (gah) and can just barely get by. If I got a taste of my old life - gigs, friends, family, night life, restaurants - and had to go back to this, I am not sure my heart could take the whiplash.

Oddly, this is probably the most carefree day we will get this summer. One of the precisely TWO kid-free days we will get, probably until October. (Son is with his longtime babysitter; daughter is assistant-teaching at a socially distanced dance camp.

We discussed going out to lunch at an outdoor restaurant, and I'm stupidly, irrationally nervous about it. How do restaurants work, again? Will there be chairs? How do you, like, sit at a table and ask people to bring you things? How do you, like, pay for it? Do I bring my own fork or do they already have forks there?

xpost - I would love to share whatever your friends were enjoying during that conversation. Maybe in the EU, but there is fucking way imaginable that the U.S. is even close to "before" by 2023 or 2024.

I think a recovery could be relative fast if there's a vaccine, no Trump, and a few more answers to Covid questions. tbd.

He said "semblance of before", not "it's all exactly as it was", and stated "best case scenario"

Yeah, it's especially that middle one that worries me, no matter how promising the polls seem today. If we don't get rid of Trump in November, there's not a fucking chance in hell the other two matter in the least, since the GOP will somehow figure out how to shit the bed on even distributing a vaccine should one exist.

Right, that's what I'm saying too Neanderthal. "Exactly as it was" is out the fucking window and will never come around again. I'm saying "best case scenario" of "semblance of before" is still 3-4 years out

And again, I'm only speaking of the US here since we have managed to fuck things up so colossally. I think a lot of other countries are going to come out of this well before we will.

Xxpost Vaccine would take a while to begin working in the population due to distribution times, as well as time for active cases to resolve and requires a specific percentage to take it.

It won't be like a switch flip

But it would be at least a step in the direction of recovery. Vs now.

If I got a taste of my old life - gigs, friends, family, night life, restaurants - and had to go back to this, I am not sure my heart could take the whiplash.

I really enjoy Zoom happy hours with friends, but once I sign off I definitely experience an emotional crash that is almost the total opposite of how I feel charged up after hanging out with people in person.

My wife asked me whether I could just return to normalcy tomorrow and I said that I probably couldn't. Frankly it took a lot of emotional and mental labor to get me to acquiesce to this situation, and if I get out of this mode I am not sure how I'd get back in.

Yes, this. My gf is gently + safely dipping her toe back in the water, having bemasked and distanced small gatherings outside and I'm all 'nope, none for me, thanks'. I'm living life in precisely the same 'safer at home' manner as I was at the start of this thing and I plan to continue doing so until this is over. However goddamn crushing it might be at times. And not being with my family on the 4th like I am every year was goddamn crushing. Trying to not even think about xmas.

Quite honestly I'm having trouble seeing a reason to even wake up most mornings. I've completely given up all hope that things will ever get "better".

my one and only COVID question: why are some tests a simple self administered nostril swab and others a 12 foot probe into your brain matter

is the latter simply more definitive than the former

Idk but both tests i had this week were relatively non-invasive, but after last weeks brain-tickle I immediately forgot the words to "Seasons in the Sun"

please put more doom itt i’m loving it

Quite honestly I'm having trouble seeing a reason to even wake up most mornings. I've completely given up all hope that things will ever get "better".

― soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Thursday, July 16, 2020

aw man really?

might be time to rescue an American with marriage

Xxxpost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3LNi-aPXuc

I mean, I just don't see the glimmers of hope that others see. I wish I did. It's just a constant onslaught of bad news and setbacks. Couple that with the intensity of my work rocketing to all time highs because they somehow expect our team to be prepared for "any possible configuration of learning" on campus by mid-August, without giving us the proper resources to do so and I've never felt more anxiety and overall hopelessness than I do right now. I would love to have the optimism some of you guys have, but I just don't see any hope to hang my hat on.

I think optimism is relative. Someone on some other thread dismissed my posts as, iirc, optimistic and naive, and trust me, I am absolutely neither of those things. But I think when you're near the bottom, or even sinking in that general direction, I think by default there's nowhere to look but forward or up.

Tbh any daily struggle I have I think is primarily due to exhaustion after so many years of the Asshole in Chief. At this point I'd probably prefer four more years of Covid to four more years of him. How's that for irrational?

You can't sever the two, Josh, in my mind. We wouldn't be where we are now -- this deeply in the shit -- if Hilary Clinton were in the Oval Office.

Though I'm sure "murderous lesbian President won't let me leave my house" would have been the new Benghazi

It's been helpful for me that I started voraciously boning up on world history in recent years inasmuch as, however bad shit gets, I'm now acutely aware of how much worse shit has been in other times and places. This too shall pass.

We've been taking quarantine very, very seriously, but I highly recommend seeing friends if they are able and can do so safely (i.e outdoors, distanced, small groups). My wife and I have done this a handful of times in the last six weeks and each time it makes me unspeakably happy.

xpost (Of course, ancient Assyrian despots didn't have nuclear weapons at their disposal, but I digress.)

yeah, I still see friends outside. It's done wonders for my mental stability.

j/v/c/ 2.0, you're definitely not alone in feeling hopeless. i am equally fearful and anxious about a physical return to my classroom in august, currently overwhelmed by new responsibilities and a creeping workload, and experiencing a general sentiment of voicelessness. my partner works in public health and is FAR more skeptical of (even the partial efficacy of) vaccines than anybody around here.

add'l'y: now that politicians, pundits, and armchair-experts have abruptly decided to weigh in on MY area of expertise, i'm learning that (my) experience does not hold a candle to (their) self-appointed authority. conversations about the intersections of racism, public health, and education aren't *interesting fodder* for thought – they're existential.