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

We have an outbreak thread but this one is meant as safe space for commiserating along the lines of "My bodega is out of toilet paper" or "I hyperventilated in the shower today because I'm afraid it's all over" or "I'm genuinely scared for my grandmother" and/or - god forbid - to be upgraded to more serious problems as necessary.

Personal experiences welcome, geopolitics are not. Please be kind.

One of the elementary schools that’s a feeder to mine just had its first confirmed case. I’m not looking forward to the finger-pointing and speculation that’ll ensue tomorrow.

― rb (soda), Sunday, March 8, 2020 10:49 PM

I still do occasional supply/substitute work at my old school, including two days last week. They just had a family return there from two weeks in Rome. None of the teachers seemed visibly concerned, although who knows. At some point, I have to believe school closures will be widespread.

I went to the Museum of Natural History in NYC today and when i asked the friendly lady manning the non-existent line at the butterfly exhibit "is this a REALLY light turnout for a Sunday," she laughed and said "Oh absolutely. But it's like 55 degrees out and daylight savings so it's not too surprising" and then both of us apparently agreed to not say "and also the pandemic."

I'm getting a Wile E Coyote feeling that the moment of tuna tartare tacos and free jazz at the club on Sunday night may be only allowable until i look down and existential dread and fear of a panicking metropolis is starting to gain steam. Called my mom to tell her she was going to hear a lot of scary things in the next few weeks but that I would do my best to keep it together and not to worry and she suggested I get toilet paper and lentils.

for those stressing, I'm hoping you will please take a few deep breaths (from six meters away) and strive to be human and i will try to do the same.

I don't feel excessively stressed, but every time I try to talk to my wife and kid about this they seem worryingly nonchalant about it all. Not sure how to convince them to take it seriously without coming off as a crackpot.

You could try telling them that the point of taking precautions like extra hand washing isn't about them saving themselves from getting sick, because kids and young adults tend not to be drastically ill and you aren't so worried about them. Tell them it is about being responsible for not making others horribly sick, like old people and people with chronic health problems - who tend to be kind of invisible in society, who could die or suffer lasting damage from this virus. It might work.

Anybody having any luck not touching their face? A friend who used to be a model says she had to learn it to avoid ruining her makeup but that's not really an option in my line of work.

it's hard! I just have a habit of doing it and I don't even notice when I'm doing it.

When I do feel stressed it's salutary to remember EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE PLANET has pretty much the same reason to be stressed about it, and I am not special or especially threatened.

I am really struggling with the not touching my face thing. A Doctor friend said one of the biggest benefits of wearing a mask is to make it much harder to touch your face, or at least the nose and mouth. (although I feel like its going to take a full face motor bike helmet to stop me from touching mine)

30 cases in Portugal, which while low is I think higher than average. No shortages of toilet paper or sanitizer or anything else. Doesn't really seem to be registering in the same way as in US/UK.

I went to a coding meetup last thursday and there were maybe fewer people than expected. It didn't occur to me turnout might have been coronavirus related until yesterday.

further cases of desperately needing to scratch an itch on my nose have resulted from not being able to touch my face

Have been wondering if any of the arts festivals this year are actually going to happen. There have been some cancellations of opening events because of the weather and now this may mean large gatherings aren't allowed later in the year.
So maybe the 2 events last weekend are going to be about it. I volunteered for the opening of Tulca which was on as part of several events over Galway 2020 when it's normally a festival in November. Then went to am opening that was part of the actual Galway 2020 set up or at least had volunteers with I'd saying Galway 2020 not the gallery name.

Just seen the headlines for an article in the irish independent repeating some of the myths including some of what Trump has been saying. Not sure how good that paper ever is as a news source since it seems to follow it's owner's agenda.

after about the 10th attempt I've finally learned how to pronounce the word "epidemiologist" properly, now got my chat authoritative sounding shit bout COVID-19 card.

hell of a time to have a really intense sinus headache

A Doctor friend said one of the biggest benefits of wearing a mask is to make it much harder to touch your face, or at least the nose and mouth.

My buddy is an ER doc and recommends against wearing a facemask. He wrote a really good article, "As an ER Doctor, I Need You to Know These Things About Coronavirus": https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/884d35/er-doctor-healthcare-workers-coronavirus

good article davey, i'm already planning on sharing it with one of my more fearmongering friends

the beginning of last week was tough, not because of the disease itself, but because of the panic. i'm a bit hypochondriac, have some fairly nasty paranoid tendencies, and have panic disorder. this has been hard for me. on the other side of it i do work for a healthcare organization, though not in direct patient care, so i do have access to reliable information. i've also shut off most forms of social and other media (years ago) and, at least when it comes to stuff relating to my profession, am decent at understanding what is reliable information and what isn't.

the panic comes in waves, and though i try not to let it affect me i feel like it's important for me to at least acknowledge what i'm feeling, acknowledge what's going on around me. the way people are talking, the nervous jokes (deflecting with humour)

i fairly quickly concluded when shit got real that i was probably going to get COVID-19, probably sooner rather than later, and i was probably not going to die from it, and while i still take safety precautions the idea that we could effectively halt the spread of this in it tracks never struck me as particularly plausible.

there's a certain balancing act going on here - on the one hand not giving in to the panic, which is for me personally probably a greater threat than COVID-19, and on the other hand not working on diminishing what is absolutely a global public health crisis. human beings aren't necessarily good at dealing with crisis, aren't necessarily good at differentiating "ok this is a serious and major thing and we have to address this seriously" from "OMG we're all gonna die".

on a personal level, i'm going to be fine, most of the people i know are going to be fine. i have one co-worker i worry about; she's young (barely sixty) but is in pretty poor health and has a lot of trouble breathing. that's part of "taking this seriously", thinking about the very real possibility that a person or people i care about will die from this. on the flip side maybe nobody i know well will die from this, it'll just be musicians i like and whatnot.

i'm weirdly enough more inclined to leave the house since it's started getting serious. i can and often do work from home, and i figure it's only a matter of time before the company i work for starts asking me to. i'm expecting cabin fever, and leaving the house while i can will hopefully minimize it.

honestly as a data analyst i'm really worried about that 3.4% number i see going around, and i'm not sure darragh does a great job on that front - he cites a number of 0.06% but then later on cites an overall mortality rate of 2.3%. this is some pretty wonky stuff, the difference between case mortality and overall mortality, and it's tempting to get into an extremely wonky argument about statistical methodology, but i don't see that argument remotely being productive. statistics, in a situation like this, seem mostly totemic in nature, either a ward or an excuse for panic. i don't cite numbers or percentages when talking to other people.

Find it very hard to avoid touching my face. Have taken to tying my hair back on the way to/from work to avoid needing to put my hands near my face, also less keen on using self-checkouts & other people seem to do the same. I don’t go to Starbucks but other people have told me they won’t accept people’s own cups anymore, so I’ve stopped bringing my folding cup with me.

Toilet roll thing is hitting here. Panic buyers clearing teh shelves. Hope it is just a temporary thing but not sure exactly where the supply levels lie wherever they're getting them from. I assume it is going to return to normal and not be blocked by international exchange somewhere down the line. people not trading the necessary commodities that go into the production etc.

I mean if society is going to collapse i would hope it would be with clean bums. Maybe we need a rise in bidet production?
THink somebody I know had a hose bidet substitute tehy got cheap in Dublin on Facebook last week. Maybe that's the future?

Luckily I’m already obsessive about not touching my face with unwashed hands / not touching other things after touching my face.

What’s with the toilet paper thing?

Panicked people incessantly shitting themselves, I assume.

As a person with a chronic lung disease I am:

- increasingly worried that this will hit me hard and at best will further damage my lungs and shorten my life
- pissed off with people growling at me because I cough a lot and they think I'm part of the plague
- a complete hypocrite who growls at everyone else with a cough as I'm scared that they have the plague
- thinking about the benefits of self-isolation in terms of reading and video games :)

xpost The best I can tell it's people worried they'll be stuck inside with ... not enough toiler paper to last two weeks?

Def. have noticed places out of hand sanitizer, and signs limiting purchases. Also other signs, like the one at the vet this morning declaring it a "no handshake zone." Proactively and helpfully, all of our doctors, dentists, etc. have sent out texts and messengers saying, please, if you're sick, stay home. (And affirming that that is always appreciated).

I'm a little annoyed because my kids were both sick last week with mundane stuff, and now, when I want to be at my sharpest and most vigilant, I have a stuffy nose.

my spouse hesitated about kissing me this morning and I was like "dude, you've stuck your dick in me, I am pretty sure you've got whatever I've got."

Yeah, but maybe not covid.

;)

we have not been touching our top faces. only our bottom faces.

now is the perfect time to invest in a bidet

have a wedding planned in june and an out-of-town bachelor party planned for april 2nd. not gonna lie, i'm slightly nervous about that second thing. hopefully, the panic will subside by the time june rolls around, and i'm going to that party unless the faa grounds flights (sorry, not sorry colorado). but covid has been a fun additional source of stress during an already-stressful time.

The Bidet: like a wet kiss for your bottom face.

cancellations are really bumming my kids out - mariachi performances, purim celebrations, soccer games, etcx.

Been thinking about life and mortality today. I’d rather die gloriously in battle than from a virus. In a way it doesn’t matter. But it kinda does. pic.twitter.com/m6vU5RTQHJ

— Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) March 9, 2020

if they don't get their Disneyland trip at the end of this month the tears are gonna be epic

xp

Disney hasn't closed or anything yet, right?

So far not much here has changed, as far as I can tell.

my work is definitely going to close when the virus picks up steam here and I can't do most of my job from home as things stand (and this will not be remedied in the near future). this is going to definitely create an "interesting" time for me, probable extra paid holiday from work followed by "too much fucking work" when I get back

it's a good thing that Paul Gosar was a dentist then.

Disney hasn't closed or anything yet, right?

they closed Disneyland Tokyo (different situation, obviously)

definitely create an "interesting" time for me

Maybe you'll finally get to watch "The Irishman" in one sitting.

JUst seen it confirmed taht teh St patrick's day parades are bing cancelled. Heard Dublin, Cork, sligo so far.
BUmped into someone i know this morning who was coming from a meeting about the local one and told me taht our local community centre had definitely pulled out but the town as waiting for the decision from teh council.
I thought it was pretty likely that if there was a panic over the last week a large close crowd event like that next week may not be likely to go ahead.

Pretty sure the St. Patrick's Day response here will be to drink *more*.

They won't need to dye the river, it'll just turn that color from all the covid.

Went to Costco and the big asian grocery store in town. Costco seemed to be out of toilet paper but didn't notice anything else weird.

The asian grocery store was pretty cleaned out though - 90% of the rice was gone, all of the dried chinese noodles were gone except the very thin ones, and like 75% of the all the huge chinese preserved vegetable aisle was empty.

I'm kind of fascinated by what was gone and what was still around - I imagine some of it is supply issues for chinese products, the fact that the vast majority of customers are chinese, etc. There was still lots of thai/vietnamese rice noodles, korean sweet potato noodles, kimchee, pansit noodles, and some stray bags of basmati, sticky, sushi, and brown jasmine rice. My son and I were also the only people there not wearing masks this time.

I'm not very observant, so on Saturday I learned that brown basmati rice is a thing.

that's interesting, I shop pretty much only at Asian grocery stores (south but mostly east) here and I haven't yet seen anyone in a mask, nor any shelves unusually out of stock.

Probably also touching my face the average (160 times an hour, I've read). Yesterday I donned one of my dog's neck bandanas inside the apt, so at least I noticed each time I rested my chin on my thumb. I imagine I'd get habituated to that, too.

I've long been in the habit of touching my face with my knuckles, or the back of my hand. Like "The Thinker."

I have a work trip that I spun into a vacation for my spouse and I (me?), heading from SF to Paris then Amsterdam next week. We are both wondering aloud if this is a good idea or not.

As for the workplace itself, we are extremely deadline-driven in my dept and if we close it will have an enormous, unpredictable impact on them. it's definitely making me anxious.

I'm slightly nervous about flying this week: first to Raleigh (for a Destroyer show lol), then NYC. But other than sanitizing the airplane seat table, what can ya do?

wipe down the tv screens, arm rests, belt buckles, remotes, etc too (if they have them). suck on a zinc lozenge the entire flight?

We met another Chinese mother at the supermarket, her daughter is in my son's class and she doesnt speak English. She was complaining that people weren't taking it seriously enough and that it was still not socially acceptable to wear a face mask in public.

Last week I bought toilet paper at Trader Joe's (not hoarding; I had just put the last roll from the previous package on the spindle). The checker immediately comments on the TP, as there had been a run on that store earlier for TP and hand sanitizer.

Are people anticipating a civilization that has collapsed enough that TP is worth its weight for bartering?

People with relatives in China, including Taiwan, seem to be way more aware of the need to take this seriously. As for TP, we have one more package than usual, but we have squeeze bottles that can be filled with water and squirted directionally, if necessary. <<-- this thought is new to me and I thank ilx for its recent bidet conversation for bringing this to the fore of my mind.

i think the recent bidet conversation was the ilx highpoint of the week.

feeling good about my choice to travel by Greyhound this summer if only because I'll be locked in with 8-12 disgusting strangers as opposed to hundreds

As I understand it, traveling by plane is no worse (and in some ways better, thanks to the HEPA filters) than any other means of transportation. Assuming you are not within 3 or so feet of someone actively sneezing or coughing up a lung, the usual caveats apply: wash hands, don't touch face, and so on.

I was watching SNL last night, thinking, boy, this is so not funny. So my mind started to wander to a parody of Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" where four people are stuck on a tiny raft, and the number of TP rolls stacked in the corner keeps going down and they have to find the cheat secretly burning through all the TP.

I refuse to not touch face!!!

http://healthyinfluence.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/kiss-lady-tramp.jpg

I have always been the "eh I'm sure it'll be fine" person in my family, so it was weird yesterday to be having A Talk with my 67-year-old parents yesterday about how they actually need to take this seriously. I need to find a good all-in-one guide (hint) and email it out to the family. The world is truly upside down when I'm the responsible one.

The bougie grocery store I live near seems to still have everything. Stocking up today. Already secured a significant amount of Dr. Bronner's.

Nhs guide is pretty good, simple sos and don’ts and the common questions section is good, I thought. Uk references but replace with your local, obviously.

Would trust a non-US guide more at this point. Thanks.

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/89254135_10158107111544281_2827637525147811840_o.jpg?_nc_cat=109&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_ohc=o7Xzg3JoZJoAX-k7MEd&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-1.xx&oh=2146ac8edf449b784e233df4f9175cd9&oe=5E940207

"The Bidet: like a wet kiss for your bottom face."

lool!

Or as I call them: the kitchen and bathroom sinks.

we purposefully removed our only bidet as part of a bathroom renovation last year because our kids kept touching inside of the bowl with their hands

and now I can only buy 20$ sheets of toilet paper from a stranger out the back of his van

run on tp -> tp shortage -> widespread use of the wrong kinds of paper -> plumbers' heyday -> buy chemed stock

Flying to Colombia for a wedding at the start of April and I'm slightly nervous at the prospect of getting off the plane and immediately being quarantined in a strange country. Weirdly this is worrying me more than getting the virus itself.

I need to find a good all-in-one guide (hint) and email it out to the family.

This guide, PSA regarding Covid-19, posted to r/Edmonton subreddit, is the best I've seen anywhere.

xp Yeah my 17 year old daughter is scheduled to go on a youth service trip to Panama in June and this is my main concern—that she’ll get stuck there

I had our CFO tell me this morning that he thinks the entire coronavirus story is overblown and no one will be talking about it a month from now. Too early for I told you so?

people are dealing with this in super strange ways. I don't know if they are trying to soothe themselves but it was annoying me when people would try to talk other people out of doing their own precautions.

For sure, idk if it’s a reaction againsr the panic but the competition to be the most sanguine about this seems to have turned a lot of normally smart ppl on my feed/in my life into quasi anti vaxxers - fortunately less in the sense of irresponsible actions so much as thoughtless statements so far but it still is annoying. No, cancelling some music festival or whatever is not “mass hysteria” ffs it’s a basic sensible precaution and they wouldn’t be doing it at great expense otherwise!

that's the thing that bugs me. the media response and some community response to Ebola *was* ridiculous, people sharing a pic that alleged improper handling of an Ebola patient that was actually well within recommended procedures, people talking about banning flights from Africa, banning teachers who happened to be in the city where 40 miles away from where someone was infected from coming to school. and yet everybody around me was like THIS IS SERIOUS SHIT MAN, THE GOVERNMENT, NOBODY IS TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY.

now this, and they're criticizing the media/community/government for "hysteria" when taking proper precautions(even though the government SHOULD rightfully be blamed for a lot of mishandling of this scenario).

like have they not noticed the size of the events cancelled thus far? many of which have 50,000 or more attendees? Mostly international? that's a no-brainer cancellation.

everybody gets so fixated on the mortality rate of these diseases because they always come at it from a "will I die from it?" focus only.

Yeah it’s like getting your flu jab: not everything is about you, personally, the protagonist of life

Anyway I have a hospital appointment next week, should be interesting - of course this thing cannot touch me because I am super young and healthy but I have a feeling the atmosphere will be very fraught

Also have a staff meeting tomorrow where management will go into detail re their covid contingency plans. Pretty much none of my work can be done from home so any kind of asymptomatic self-isolation would just be a paid holiday for me I reckon - the only downside might be that the business can’t take the impact and goes under, but that’s not worth worrying about at this stage

I've been virtual for 8 years so I'm already at home. but if my students don't show up to the office and can't WFH, that equals no classes for me.

none of our locations are in areas severely affected.....well, ok, most.

Since Friday I’ve developed a powerfully unpleasant dry cough with an accompanying wheeze, which makes it nearly impossible to get a good night’s sleep (including for my family, who have to deal with me waking up every 2-4 hours hacking and scrabbling about for my ventolin inhaler).

I’m 99% sure this is an allergic response to our new cats, especially because leaving the house for a couple of hours seems to be an almost perfect cure, but what if? What if indeed.

The answer is I probably can’t get tested at all, since I’m not running a fever. So I’ll sort of self-quarantine? See above: leaving the house is the thing that helps the best.

I heard moderating ILX for a few hours is just what the doctor ordered

No, cancelling some music festival or whatever is not “mass hysteria” ffs it’s a basic sensible precaution and they wouldn’t be doing it at great expense otherwise!

Surely these events are only getting cancelled because the attendees are canceling and dropping below profitable levels, not because any of the promoters care about public health?

My brother's company cancelled their part of a convention but the organizers asked them to delay announcing it by a day so that they don't tank the rest of the convention. That one day will surely make all the difference.

i saw someone discussing last week how it seems that our economy was totally run on superfluous conventions.
True true.

Do you think it would do any good if I stopped smoking, like, today?

Yes, I have no idea about how it might help you with corona virus, But fuck yes.

in orbit, if I was there I would smack it out of your hand. (and then hand you a drink so maybe I am not the best person to ask)

It's a shame I still have like 5 whole packs. Maybe I can use all these extra cigarettes for bartering after the collapse of the supply chain starves us all in our houses.

Undoubtedly, yes. I smoke when I go out on occasion and have been using this as an opportunity to quit altogether.

xp

Surely these events are only getting cancelled because the attendees are canceling and dropping below profitable levels, not because any of the promoters care about public health?

― change display name (Jordan), Monday, March 9, 2020 5:28 PM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

replace "attendees" with "sponsors" and i think that's it

xpost, you can hold on to them and get them doled out one by one until they become so stale and unsatisfying and you can no longer trade them for nudies.

Read this:

https://tobacco.ucsf.edu/reduce-your-risk-serious-lung-disease-caused-corona-virus-quitting-smoking-and-vaping

tbh i am self-isolating just bc i have a sinus headache, which is not uncommon for me to feel when the weather suddenly changes (it was 70 degrees in new york today and it's been unusually dry all weekend). no fever, but i can work from home so why risk it

on a busy college campus, feeling the fear. just used sanitizer.

All right I guess I'm cancelling the lobbying trip to Albany on Wednesday and figuring out what to do with my hands from 8-12pm. Here goes nothing.

You can start touching your face like the rest of us.

sew? I made a bookstore/library out of a miniature kit last year. It took me almost a day just to make and upholster the tiny armchair. I have a two story japanese house miniature kit all ready for me right now.

Which reminds me, I need to assemble my sake bring equipment before we go into lockdown.

I did see that on the WHO coronavirus prep guide.

I can run out of TP but heaven forbid I run out of Booze.

Speaking of prep, friend of mind put together a shopping list + recipes for 2-3 weeks of lockdown: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YAwdt5R0bDl-9aBqfYxzTWZYR1-vAKktO9bZZUSYoL0/edit?usp=sharing

er

I usually spend those hours reading and drinking wine, which is great but leaves my hands unoccupied and unfortunately goes really well with smoking contemplatively while turing pages. I already tried cooking elaborate meals every day since I'm not working right now, but that made us both fat so that's out. I tried to get C to take up crochet, maybe there's still a boxed kit around somewhere. I predict desperation.

xpost Booze. I could throw a bunch of dinner parties 10xs over OR have the supplies to do makeshift surgery here. Pick one.

in orbit ,caramelizing a huge batch of onions like 2 dozen takes forever, is worthwhile (it freezes well) and is meditative.

Or could make a lot of custard. It’s the stirring really.

surely onions kill viruses

Maybe I’ll finally make some progress on some books and videogames. Tomorrow I shall quit smoking AND ilx!

I'll think of something. Crochet or some kind of hand-craft really does seem somewhat likely, kind of the way I play Candy Crush while watching White Collar. Maybe I could rediscover calligraphy.

I’m betting on garlic right now. My last line of defense is the Hunan takeaway.

Everyoen I know went to Golden Plains over the weekend (big 3 day hipster music fest out in the bush) and no one seemed wary. I guess I'll find out if 3/4 of Brunswick suddenly falls ill in a week's time.

i plan on listening to a lot of jazz fusion

score match is available on the google play store

i'm also working my way through the resident evil movies again

Coachella postponed to October

No cases within 100 miles that I know of but I decided against a pizza buffet for dinner. There are enough snot-nosed kids in the best of times.

Fuckholes:

https://news.avclub.com/defying-all-logic-and-reason-the-world-record-for-larg-1842216045?rev=1583777288023&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_content=Main&utm_campaign=SF&fbclid=IwAR2LyXaKPo4jmlOvovpIKFooAiVDLCFozGhb9NbZjeuqImndMJUTb0aCJXY

Not sure if anyone's posted this page yet:

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

Seems like a good round-up of graphs. A couple of them ("Total Cases excluding mainland China") do look scary.

I was able to reserve 12 rolls of toilet paper at Target online to pick up. When I arrived, its surrounding plastic was all torn up as if someone squirreled it away among the rakes in case they needed to come back and buy even more tp for themselves later to clutch tontheir chest while sleeping. Or perhaps a poor employee had to fight off a riot to uphold the validity of the online ordering process and reserve what is rightfully mine. Either way, I made it clear to the nice person that helped me that I am not a prepper, and it's just that our normal household shitting cycle had bad timing.

so I'm guessing there are going to lots of people walking around unwiped in many cities in the near future?

man, my prospects on Tinder have just improved 200 fold

Is "the human bidet" your occupation?

already had one friend of a friend grouse that if we let everybody work from home, that's when massive timecard fraud might occur.

it just amazes me that the first thought process is 'how can people take advantage of the system'? Like, I've been a virtual employee for 8 years, and...if you're committing timecard fraud, actually not doing work you're being paid to do....you'll be discovered. It really isn't difficult. Not to mention, if you have the type of job you can do at home, chances are, you could find a way to shirk your responsibilities in the office too.

xpost dear god no I just mean finally I'll be less grody than more than half the population

also more timecard fraud is good

I mean I'm not sayin I once worked an 8 hour shift while secretly on a Greyhound bus to Atlanta to see Megadeth with only my work phone and no laptop in tow but.....

"I'm Too Sexy for This Job" by Time Card Fraud

From The Great Influenza

In Britain the War Office published recommendations for therapy in The Lancet. They were far more specific than any guidance in the United States, and likely did relieve some symptoms. For sleep, twenty grains of bromide, opiates to relax cough, and oxygen for cyanosis. The recommendations warned that venesection was seldom beneficial, that alcohol was invaluable, but that little could be gained by giving food. For headache: antipyrin and salicylic acid—aspirin. To stimulate the heart: strychnine and digitalis.

next, a run on white claws

this may be refractory anxiety from a recent health scare but this whole thing is giving me the fantods. we're prepping for an extended work from home period and I am not looking forward to that amount of isolation

Surely these events are only getting cancelled because the attendees are canceling and dropping below profitable levels, not because any of the promoters care about public health?

― change display name (Jordan), Monday, March 9, 2020 5:28 PM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

replace "attendees" with "sponsors" and i think that's it

Even if I do have to go into isolation, at least I will be able to sit on my roof and listen to the magpies and currawongs and watch the bats.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236933818654896129.html

italy - entire country in lockdown
france - time for a smurf festival https://t.co/32UpOnbp8a

— the irishman* (@mrgracemugabe) March 9, 2020

"There's no risk (from coronavirus) we're Smurfs!"

It could be the answer to the pandemic.

With every passing day I become more convinced this will kill me.

Have you considered coating yourself in blue from head to toes?

I saw those people
they were turning blue
Oh, I knew that soon
Their young lives were through

Smurfing while Rome burns etc.

Well wonder how long its going to be before it's France's turn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEl8IBv98vg

I'm not so worried about getting this/what will happen to me if I get this, which is funny because I am usually a super-hypochondriac. But I do worry about being a vector. Selfishly, there are a couple of concerts coming up that I want to go to and I'm feeling bummed about the prospect of maybe missing them if I get sick/them getting cancelled.

To put it another way: if I choose to go to said concerts, I'll feel guilty about not doing my part to support public health lol

i have accepted that i am probably going to be a vector. there's so much we don't know about this virus. it does appear to be more than usually contagious (and less than usually lethal). everything else? how does it spread, how long does it incubate in hosts? we do, we think, have a safe and effective method of testing for it now, but don't have the logistical infrastructure to test most people for it. as far a i can tell all of the advice, and it's good advice - yes you should fucking wash your hands - for containing the pandemic is mostly effective against the secondary pandemic, the panic pandemic, the mass fear that strikes when faced with things that we don't understand and can't really control. panic, there's a topic i do know a lot about and have a lot of experience with, and i'm putting it all to use right now.

I am also not that afraid of getting this per se, but am afraid of spreading it and of being an irresponsible person.
I also share the more trivial/selfish fear of missing stuff I want to do due to it being canceled/closed or to being quarantined .

Then there is my workplace, which with the foresight, preparedness, and sense of priority I have come to expect, first starting implementing work-from-home procedures just last week. We were told to "test" working from home, but I'm not sure they plan to use this unless the building is actually closed or something. They also told us to stay out of the office if we feel sick, but when I asked if we could then work from home rather than charge sick time, was told "probably not."

In the past few days I've developed a cough-not dry, no other symptoms, and feels pretty identical to coughs I've had many times before (I tend to be a bit of chronic coughed) but still feel uncertainty about going out...

I think there's a thin line between paranoia and denial here.

I also share the more trivial/selfish fear of missing stuff I want to do due to it being canceled/closed or to being quarantined.

Yep, there are several local film screenings in the next couple of months I want to see.

Then there's my mother. She lives alone; I'm not sure if she (or I, for that matter) have comorbidities; I could see her getting sick and being too independent to reach out to me and my sister before things take a turn for the worse.

Aaaaaand the DC Environmental Film Festival has already canceled a number of events: https://dceff.org/covid-19-and-dceff/.

I can't believe Chicago is, as of this moment, plowing ahead with their St. Patrick's Day parade. Seems wildly irresponsible as it's really starting to get a toehold here, but what do I know. Suspect there's a lot of "this is Amurica and no damn furren' disease is going to stop my day drinking and projectile vomiting" going around.

Holy shit really? That's awful.

Starting to freak out over here reading about Italy's healthcare system being overwhelmed.

You'd think they'd cancel out of an abundance of caution alone. But I dunno. I've somehow never been to the parade (and I've been here for almost 30 years!), but I imagine the parade isn't nearly as dangerous as all those slobbering drunk people congregating in tight-quarter bars afterwards. I wouldn't do either, regardless.

Re: Italy, I made light of it on the other thread, but I don't see how the situation can be so serious and pervasive, yet the quarantine situation be so seemingly lax.

I unfailingly self-quarantine the weekend of the St. Patrick's parade as a general thing. All the more reason to batten down the vomit-proof hatches, I guess.

I went for the first time ever last year, but only because we have family friends that walk in the parade with a group and they invited our son. He had a blast last year throwing candy to the crowd, but we won't be going this year.

The parade itself wouldn't be bad, but last year, just to get to the parade route, you had to literally shove your way through an unceasing wall of humanity to access Grant Park. That part gives me pause under the best of conditions, I can't imagine doing it right now.

What if you slathered yourself with Shamrock Shake first?

Then I could get a head start on the projectile vomiting!

For sure you'll look like someone already barfed on you.

Man, avoiding public spaces sucks. I was all, "OK, I'm fully stocked up and unemployed, I live with people I like, I'm near a park, I can go into semi-lockdown and be fine! I am DOING MY PART to slow the spread!" And now I just feel like a Jean Gabin character who's slowly going insane as he hides from the police.

Whereas I think I could literally hunker down in my home for a year with no psychological detriment that wasn't already present or imminent. P psyched for the prospect of a quarantine, tbrr.

Now ask my gf how she feels about being quarantined alongside me.

thats awesome

I would love to work from home tbh, but I'm pretty sure there's no way my company is going to sanction it. The closest they've gotten is allowing partial sick days when you're working from home (when actually sick).

And my wife is a physical therapist, so no option there, just have to go in and touch old people all day long.

i mean *boston* and *DUBLIN* canceled their parades, but carry on, nyc and chicago

ah well pic.twitter.com/QO6uSCcmBS

— #⃣1⃣ reanimated ♂feminst breakfast abolitionist (@damienredicamn1) March 10, 2020

Great opportunity to ban St Patrick's Day anywhere but Ireland forever.

I guess officials in Chicago are just impatient for this shit to start really spreading in earnest. Can't really think of a quicker or more efficient way to do it, myself.

I dunno, listening to the Gov. I felt a lot more confident than in anything I've heard from the Feds so far. But yeah, this can all change overnight. I have a good friend who was freaking out that SXSW was not being cancelled ... and then it was. Let's see where Chicago is on Friday.

Bagged the last packet of pasta in Morrisons, so I will live and the rest of you must eat toilet paper or die.

Petition to revise New Hampshire's slogan

Great opportunity to ban St Patrick's Day anywhere but Ireland forever.

Just one of these weird, meaningless things I tend to notice (like the knight from The Seventh Seal dying in the middle of a pandemic): first Dick Van Dyke campaigns for Sanders, now the National Guard is called out to New Rochelle.

can't wait to see how Alan Brady riffs on this during his monologue tonight...

I went to Hope Depot to get a dust mask for a painting project and then I realized ... oh right, everyone bought every kind of mask in the entire store

Home Depot. Hope Depot is a great typo tho

I don't see how the situation can be so serious and pervasive, yet the quarantine situation be so seemingly lax.

In the USA people are extremely resentful of and rebellious toward any interference in what they see as their personal prerogatives. Imposing widespread quarantines and travel restrictions here would not only require calling out the National Guard, but would inspire active rebellions, especially among the Republican base. Nothing would reveal the inability of the government to control the chaos like announcing strict quarantines. If they happen, I edict they will happen almost exclusively in states controlled by Democrats, and public cooperation will be poor... unless there are shoot-to-kill orders issued.

I predict

Been looking for a good guide to share with friends and family, this might be it: https://flattenthecurve.com

"I edict"

I momentarily felt reassured by the sudden realization that aimless was in charge.

When that happens I'll say "I decree".

I believe my workplace is now grounding any travel that is non-essential to the functioning of the business. Since I tacked a vacation onto this travel, it looks like I'll be eating about $800

I had our CFO tell me this morning that he thinks the entire coronavirus story is overblown and no one will be talking about it a month from now. Too early for I told you so?

― Biden my time/Drinking her wine (PBKR), Monday, March 9, 2020 4:58 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Update: I verified the ability of most of our employees to work from home and asked our accounting dept. to verify their capabilities to do this (no answers). After a week or so of trying to get CEO/COO/various prepare for coronavirus, I basically gave up in the face of scoffing/mocking/it's not as bad as the flu. So this afternoon during a management meeting someone asked what we were doing to prepare for coronavirus and the very people who were scoffing say, "Oh, PBKR is writing a plan." NB: I am not writing a plan. Fuck them.

Once your business continuance plan is finalized, please cc ilx at your earliest convenience.

Apologies for the previous error. Once your business *continuity* plan is final, please also forward to HR and Records Management for archiving.

lol, I just found out that one of the three Ohio cases announced by Gov. Dewine yesterday is an AIPAC attendee who works the Jewish Education Center about a mile from my house. And I have other friends that work there.

https://www.cleveland19.com/2020/03/10/coronavirus-patient-works-jewish-education-center-cleveland-heights-offices-close-weeks/

PBKR Coronavirus Preparedness Plan

Intro

We are all going to die!!!

Conclusion

A bit of cognitive dissonance here watching other states cancel events, gatherings and parades left and right, but getting emails for local (Chicago area) events and conferences reading, essentially, "we see no reason to worry or not proceed as planned!". Conferences for out-of-town groups are being canceled, but it seems like locals are just doubling down.

Tell you what, I'd rather be embarrassed six months down the road by looking overly cautious than I would be embarrassed for furthering the spread to immunocompromised individuals but, hey, that's just me. Probably why I'm not in charge of making those decisions.

Tell you what, I'd rather be embarrassed six months down the road by looking overly cautious than I would be embarrassed for furthering the spread to immunocompromised individuals but, hey, that's just me. Probably why I'm not in charge of making those decisions.

OTM

Local "presumptive" cases have jumped 0-3 in 24 hours.

I got my thermometer at the local Walgreen's (cheap fluid type), most were out of stock. Older gentleman perusing cough remedies 4 ft away coughed, and I nearly left the ground.

im a wee bit phlegmy today and I've had a cough or two. hwfg!

Dry coughing at regular intervals here but have stocked up on meds and can work from home for a while. Just don't fever me!

I think phlegmy is generally good as in not likely to be covid19

https://www.flattenthecurve.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/covid19-symptoms.png

Fatigue is the least helpful symptom of every illness.

the governor made us cancel all meetings, trainings, etc. but not the work we do where we encounter 10x more members of the public than we would sitting in a meeting. this came out an hour after our office had a meeting with like 80 people crammed into a room. whoops.

Good to know the stuffy nose and sneezing is just the year round 'seasonal allergies' I developed after I quit smoking

i have constant stuffy nose and sneezing to the point that i take sudafed nearly every day. it's how i know i'm "normal."

Gonna say, this time of year (particularly when the temp is rising/falling 10-20 degrees over the course of a given day) is a generator for all kinds of fun symptoms that I'd ordinarily dismiss as normal but now feel like I have to actively monitor in hopes that I'll recognize, say, an abnormal amount of pre-springtime post-nasal drip.

I shook hands by mistake and went into overdrive washing hands

My wife is at Target shopping right now and things are going super well!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ES1z2GCXsAAkIJR?format=jpg&name=medium

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ES10JQOXQAAXGm_?format=jpg&name=large

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ES10YHvWoAUHuXq?format=jpg&name=medium

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ES10bQcWkAAfczS?format=jpg&name=medium

all of my spouse's grads/postdocs who came back from Italy for the new semester are in 14 day self quarantine. I am like "DO THEY HAVE ENOUGH COFFEE AND WINE!?!" We don't know if the university or government sets them up with food.

have some cold symptoms today, glad to know they don't overlap strongly with covid symptoms

Stopped by the mini Target near my office, right next to a college campus, and pretty similar but extend that to the toilet paper aisle. As I was in there, no less than five people came in frantically asking about toilet paper to no avail.

I get that people respond to stress and anxiety in different ways and stocking up on essentials isn't entirely dumb, but do people typically live with razor thin levels of backup toilet paper in their places? I'm still shocked that this is one of the items in such short supply.

Chicago's St. Patrick's Day parade finally cancelled. Guess I just have to barf all over myself at home this year! (sulks)

Target in dwntwn Chi wasn't too badly hit when I went yesterday. Dry staples were picked over but I was able to get some lentils. TP seemed to be decently stocked. I might make another run tonight and see what difference a day makes.

I posted this in the other thread but it is agonizing being simultaneously told that I need to avoid public transit and stay home because it is a moral imperative due to herd immunity, flatten the curve, etc., and also being unable to do either of those things

i sympathize to that feeling of helplessness, but i hope you're not taking the "moral imperative" too seriously - i think on the other thread you likened it to being called a "murderer"? some people aren't very careful with their words, but i really hope no one is suggesting that you're a murderer or anything close to it.

if you can't do those things you can't do them. great majority of people living in cities can't!

it's the natural extension of the (largely true) fact that I am putting immunocompromised people at risk by doing so

basically, everything in this, which just went up https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3meg7/what-do-i-do-coronavirus-travel-public-transit-guidelines

i don't think that's the natural extension of that fact.

the last paragraph really says it better than I have been:

I am lucky in that, so far, coronavirus has had little impact on my life. But it, and the lack of clear directives plus the frenzy around it, have added tremendous moral weight to seemingly every decision I make. Going to my nephew’s birthday party is either a lovely family activity or an irresponsible act of potential violence against the people I love most and anyone I encounter along the way. I just want to do what will make people happy and healthy, so I don’t know what to do. I wish some public official would tell me, but that would require them to have the answers.

Yeah, I still have to spend time on public transport to get to my job and around to our other campus, I wish I could cut that out but driving, parking and getting back and forth would be cost prohibitive at this point.

Sounds like we might get some official direction on working from home soon, but I'm not yet sure what that would mean for me. 70-80% of my job I can easily do from home, but that remaining percentage is working on construction sites and that can't really be done remotely. So, wait and see at this point.

So glad Chicago came to their senses about the parades.

was just about to quote that last paragraph, katherine!

to me, that sounds like someone writing about what many millions (billions?) of people are thinking right now. it doesn't sound like anyone declaring a moral imperative or blaming anyone else for what they have to do. that's just how i read it, i don't know.

Cleveland St. Patrick's Day parade canceled as well.

ah yes, speaking of campus, cuny is still open despite there being a confirmed case (at john jay) and it's very damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't because, compared to, say, columbia or harvard, the students are far more likely to be in precarious financial or living situations (about 3-5 students in a class I am taking have said they don't have access to an Internet connection robust enough to stream live video lectures, which would be what class would be; a few students have offered to host them, and I'm trying to clear it with my roommates, but the fact that this has happened at all is indicative of how shitty a situation it is)

xp -- to clarify I'm not saying the article is the source of said moral imperative, but it describes it very well

Planning to go to Target on Friday; no idea what the aisles will look like (I'm in NJ, which has relatively few cases - only 23 so far, none near me).

Also scheduled to start my first 9-5 office job since 2017 on Monday morning. Genuinely curious whether or not I'll be told just to stay home, that they'll set me up to work remotely, between now and then.

I have booze, now I just need coffee, thanks thread for reminding me

Yeah I have boundless sympathy for decision makers at any university or college right now, even with just the barest scraps I've heard about meetings, discussions and frantic phone calls from parents (my position doesn't require me to be directly involved in any of the above). For every parent essentially demanding they close the campus ASAP, you have just as many fair points being raised about students that have nowhere else to go. Not to mention, were there a cause for concern, would just spreading the students all over the country (and world) just make things worse? I don't know that anyone has the right answer. FWIW, we don't have any known cases on our campus yet.

Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo (& major concert series) cancelled after running for the first of three weeks.

(uh, also to clarify, I don't attend classes at john jay and to my knowledge have not been exposed to the coronavirus any more than anyone else in new york has just by existing in new york)

My cousin just told me that her job in DC has moved exclusively to telework *and* that her classes in her master's program at Georgetown have all been suspended until further notice. So all the students currently on spring break have nowhere to return to if they aren't prepared to return home at a moment's notice.

I was at Costco today, and they had plenty of toilet paper. But indeed, everyone seemed to be buying toilet paper. Then again, that's what you get at Costco. I did see one guy with what seemed like 6 packages of paper towels, which means, like, a bazillion rolls, and the Costco guy politely told him they were limiting purchases to two per person.

FWIW, they had someone stationed by the carts, spraying and wiping down the handle before handing them off. And I saw lots of people around the store spraying and wiping down surfaces.

My wife's job just told her they are going to have everyone work from home tomorrow, as a "test."

I am pretty much of the opinion that the only rational decision is to shut everything down now, because you will be forced to shut everything down three weeks from now when it will be too late to have much effect.

Gotta say, it has not been displeasing to walk into CTA stations that smell like bleach instead of urine.

i feel like costco needs to have a temporary no returns policy on paper goods, water, etc to keep people from hoarding right now.

lol I've seen people return open bags of chips at Costco.

I hate Costco so much, never been and hope to never go

the worst retail customers I have ever dealt with, by a wide margin

I love Costco.

i love costco, but I was a late in life member. the one in nyc sucks so bad though. everyone is very aggro. it's kind of a mandatory membership if you live in hawaii though. the gas and most products are drastically cheaper than anywhere else. and everyone who works there is so nice.

Still only 41 cases across Ontario. maybe I should be nervous about tonight's Control Top gig but I'm really not.

xpost - I refuse to step foot in a Costco ever again. My wife knows better than to even suggest it. The worst customers ever, overcrowded, rude and angry people everywhere, shoppers that just ditch their carts anywhere to block aisles. I didn't consider myself an anxious person until I first set foot in a Costco.

they treat their employees well, I'll say that in their favor. their members, on the other hand, frequently came off as the worst humans alive when I dealt with them in a previous job

I think Costcos vary significantly from location to location. For example, I learned only recently that Costco *stock* varies from location to location. There are things you can get at one that you can't get at another. There are even baked goods that differ, since the bakers apparently have discretion. And a lot of those differences reflect the clientele. For example, I am equidistant from two Costcos. One carries a whole halal lamb, the other doesn't.

from the host of a gathering of friends next weekend; people, many of whom travel quite a bit, will be flying in from all around the country:

I am not particularly concerned about corona virus overall, however, given I have a severely immuno-compromised 80 year old cancer stricken mother in my house, I will ask that if you think you are any sort of risk for carrying it, obviously, bail

. . . c'mon lads

xpost - what pushed me over the edge for Costco was watching one shopper quite literally shove an 75+ year-old man out of the way to get at a fresh batch of free cheese samples

Well, tbf, free cheese.

lol

sorry to derail, talking about even fucking Costco for a few minutes helps pull me out of the Coronoavirus spiral I've been stuck in. This week reminds me of where I was about 3 weeks after 9/11, just constantly searching news updates and absorbing way more information than is healthy

xpost oh yeah have you ever seen the pics of all the amazing stuff in japanese costcos? The hawaii ones have a lot of beach stuff and always 3-4 different pokés, kalua pork, lots of macadamia nuts, fresh saiman/ramen noodles etc.

ohhh, and they have a steal of bubbies mochi ice cream (18 pack). although i think bubbies is everywhere now.

Yeah, we were told to stop at the Maui Costco for poke! (We're still planning to go, but recognize life might intervene, if not here then there.)

My favorite Costco story was when we were looking for cheap light weatherproof jackets for a camping trip. I did some research and kept seeing reviews of a jacket sold at Costco. So I click on a (video) review, and the guy is really thorough and informative and then ends with something like "and it fits perfectly in your go-bag." Um, ok. I click on the next review, and same thing, super useful review, ends with how perfect it is for your "bug out" bag. Surprising no one, Costco might be the only company equally beloved by suburban families and preppers.

the maui one does not have gas. boooo.

derp, disregard that. it looks like it does.

But do they have toilet paper?

(Apparently they do, say forums, but it's being limited.)

I've gone from a point of relative calm to dark circles around my eyes perma-refreshing BBC news and making infinite shopping lists in the space of about three days. Why ARE thermometers like £75 now? They can't always have cost that much.

I don't understand why everyone needs more toilet paper

like, hand sanitizer, bleach, disinfectants, ok I get that. But toilet paper?

omg! i had someone pick one up for me yesterday and it was like $6usd. I was shocked it was still so accessible and cheap.

I tried in a couple of Boots and they'd sold out, and online they're all either one-star reviews or £100.

All UK pharmacies now aggressively filling queue barriers with things that could potentially look like hand sanitiser - cleansers, moisturisers etc. Yesterday there was one filled with small bottles of lube.

If you have to quarantine for 2 weeks, you better have some toilet paper. Even moreso if you are a whole family that needs to quarantine. I don't see why this is weird to people.

LOL @ accidentally picking up a small bottle of lube thinking it's sanitizer

idk I guess we don't go through that much toilet paper
xps

Anyway, I'm stocking up on lentils &c.

like i think we buy an 8-pack once a month? TMI I suppose

on the other thread we went over how much toilet paper one person usually uses a week. I probably am lowkey annoyed by people who over use toilet paper but hopefully I will never have to be a first person witness to a lot of it. All people should be able to use the amount they need to self soothe.

but at max, even with single ply, i would think an average person needs one roll a week max, even taking into account shark week or food poisoning.

If those who poop at work will be working from home, it makes sense to stock up on extra toilet paper.

oh yes that reminds me, due to underfunding the campus bathrooms are frequently either closed or out of soap

sharkshart week or food poisoning.

tt i got this thermometer the other day, Amazon doesn’t have them anymore but Argos might. It has lots of others too.

If you have to quarantine for 2 weeks, you better have some toilet paper. Even moreso if you are a whole family that needs to quarantine. I don't see why this is weird to people.

some people like to wrap up their hands in TP like boxers preparing for a big fight. i always assume their anal cavities are in catastrophic condition

I'm just stocking up for the start of the next varsity sports season.

xp: Thank god I brush with crest every night.

Anyway, a case has been announced in my county in Maryland just now.

I wonder if there will be a covid baby boom this fall?

psa: if you're having sex while wfh and end up having a wfh/quarantine baby, it'll be a sagittarius. so use some judgment and practice safe sex.

— stan of cleves (@alex_abads) March 11, 2020

Sagittarius Baby sounds like a great fictional hippy name.

xps, thanks gyac! Alas all out of stock for delivery or nearby. I found this one on Amazon that doesn't look like the worst thing?

i am so glad we have a bidet in our household

i heard march is usually a peak month for vasectomies so I wonder how this is all going to pan out. xpost

according to andrew cuomo the cuny/suny schools are all remote starting march 19, not that the schools have announced a goddamn thing

hah, the closest location Argos suggests for that thermometer is Grimsby, 135 miles away

but I guess I too am stockpiling thermometers now as I bought a 2nd forehead strip thermometer from a local chemist since the first cheap one from Amazon didn't work and... it doesn't work? that or I might just be dead

well I guess if I'm dead already that takes a lot of the worry out of this coronavirus thing

I knooooow, I was just looking through locations, I have narrowed down various thermometers to Grimsby, Chippenham and...most of Kent? Boots say on their site they’ll get more stock in too, but I’ll keep looking.

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2020/03/empty-spaces-due-coronavirus-fears/607666/

I like the 'idle gondoliers' and the cat

huh I always assume if I have a fever I'll just know about it

my manager came back from a skiing weekend (in Bulgaria, not a high risk area) and has been sick all week, he looks rough as fuck and his voice is gone, coughing all over the place... luckily he looked at one of those symptom checker things and is like 90% sure it's not this virus, just some other virus that he is knowingly spreading around, so it's fine. He's still in the probationary period so won't get company sick pay if he's off, otherwise he def wouldn't be in. Today the head of the dept called HR about him and after hearing the symptoms they advised that he should stay at work. Pandemic aside it's fucking galling to hear "you should work if you're sick" as official word from a human resources dept

In other dismaying news there was an incident at my mum's work of some Chinese students being racially abused by some other students who were throwing stuff at them while pretending to cough. Hope the little cunts get kicked out

I get the feeling both music events I was planning on traveling to the States for (Long Play and Migration) are gonna get shitcanned :(

really glad my wedding is not until July.

not so glad that I work at a university and have no way to work from home. I basically have to hope a student or faculty member in this building gets confirmed with COVID for the university to be shut.

sitting in a meeting right now watching everyone rub their eyes, scratch their face, and lean their heads on their faces and wondering "WTF PEOPLE??!"

Have you ever had to quit biting your nails? Breaking unconscious habits that have lasted decades is fuckin hard.

I basically have to hope a student or faculty member in this building gets confirmed with COVID for the university to be shut.
same
my school hasn't even put out hand sanitizer much less prepared teachers or students for possible closure/remote classes
midterms are next week

i have touched my face (and bitten my nails) thousands of times, today alone. yeah, for some people (very much myself) the touching the face thing is not an easy thing to accomplish.

lean their heads on their faces and wondering "WTF PEOPLE??!"

seems like a reasonable reaction tbh, how do they do it?

my company just sent out guidance to managers: i'm being told that if someone wants to work home, i have to evaluate it on a case-by-case basis

these people are fucking morons, we should all be told to work from home as much as possible right now

grocery store update: plenty of tp, running low on certain varieties of canned soup and jelly

lean their heads on their faces and wondering "WTF PEOPLE??!

heh...woops. lean their heads on their hands

xxp yep, totally agree. Case by case, like public health needs some micromanagement nitpicking if the job couldn’t be perfectly done as well from home.

really glad my wedding is not until July.

mine is june, and i'm sweating a lil bit.

My workplace is still open and apparently senior management is split between the WFH/shut-it-down advocates and a group demanding we stay open and insisting this isn't a big deal. If anyone at work gets the 'vid I hope it's them.

rooting for jim and voodoo’s weddings

I’ve clearly gone full Australian because I just burst out laughing at that.

So I had to refresh all goddamn day to find a non-paywalled news source to confirm but, joy, someone who works in a building two blocks from my own workplace has tested positive. And now the fun begins!

Am I correct in my feeling that preparation for a situation like this can be broadly reduced to a lot of people in positions of authority saying 'psssh, nothing like this could ever happen to US'?

^^^ I think so. Although it's been interesting watching the cancellation of the Chicago St. Patrick's Day parade unfold. Publicly a handful of alderpeople were saying, "the parade must go on!" while behind the scenes they were essentially begging the mayor to come back from her vacation and cancel it for them.

Current irrational thinking: everyone is going to be exposed so I need to get it now before the hospitals are full and battlefield triage kicks in because I won't make the cut

good friend buried both parents this last three months and the other lads in the group of four island lads are kinda going full tabloid about their own aul wans after being faced with this sudden burst of mortality, im veering btwn sympathy and impatience with their freakouts

xps the parade thing is mystifying to me, considering the single example of how to mishandle a pandemic that i keep seeing is philadelphia's decision to hold a flu parade (maybe the parade wasn't 'for' the flu, but the flu certainly thought it was) in 1918

Just come to my doctors office, I broke a toe at the weekend and have been exhausted for a couple of days, but no fever or other symptoms. My doctor is great and fabulously unflappable. Diagnosed a gastro type virus and told me to take it easy but still took me though the whole corona drill, symptoms, list of known contact spots, advice on what to do to protect myself (wash hands, hand washing more effective than sanitiser, use a tissue to open doors). Said I could get tested at the royal Melbourne if I was worried but also said there was no reason to be worried and the wait was long.

However, my doctors office is in a building with a language school, medical offices, diagnostic clinics etc. and everyone who walked in with me walk straight past the hand sanitiser dispenser and into the lift. Very glad my button was pressed on the way up and elbow presses on the way down.

When you're sliding into first
And you feel something burst
Who cares, nobody around to see it
And nothing to wipe it with

I just checked the stocks & shares ISA I opened with 100 quid a couple of years ago and it was worth 97 quid, I was like fuck it just send me the cheque lol

I wonder if the IRS will allow 401ks who follow Safe Harbor to add special Hardship withdrawals for people financially impacted by it. They did in the past for hurricanes. This would be unusual but y'know...

I mean, it's all sorts of fucked up that someone would have to raid their retirement for this reason, but given the Senate rn.....

Also my doc was furious about the Grand Prix going ahead.

My doc is a good bloke.

I DON'T NEED AN EMAIL FROM MY FUCKING DENTIST ABOUT CORONAVIRUS

some bored PR ppl out there drafting emails about coronavirus today

probably soliciting clients. "iyo, do u need a coronavirus email? I'm drafting them for $5 and I'll give you my exclusive watermark to use in the background of ur email"

I got one from my kid’s field jockey league, thank god

quitting my job right before a pandemic-triggered recession was an interesting choice. wish I'd known I was making it at the time.

I've been getting a flurry of e-emails and social media posts from businesses and cultural institutions about their "measures" wrt the virus, most of which don't involve closing or cancelling anything. Are they just delaying the inevitable? And if there were a coordinated effort to close things now, might it in theory not have to be for as long? Obviously it would be a big financial loss, but isn't that inevitable as well?
I posted a little upthread about my selfish/trivial fear of missing out on things if they're closed/cancelled or I'm quarantined, but I'm getting the sinking sense that the responsible thing to do would be to avoid those things anyway?

GRRR.

OK so a few weeks ago we canceled our planned trip to Italy (for the kids' spring break, next week). Our alternative was a trip to New Orleans, where we were going to see the St. Patrick's Day Parade and the Mardi Gras Indians on Super Sunday. Well so of course New Orleans canceled ALL its public events, and we have now scrapped that trip as well (especially since New Orleans has just declared a state of emergency, which among other things means my wife would have to self-quarantine for two weeks when we got back, because of restrictions put in by the university where she works). So now we're telling the kids, like, maybe we can go to a movie one day?

But a lost spring break is a small thing, I know, compared to what a lot of people are dealing with.

Also the Big Ears Festival got canceled, which is the best weekend of the year every year here in town.

What a world.

Oh and also a conference my wife was going to in San Jose next month that I was going to totally tag along on is also of course canceled. We had reservations at NOBU! (I know, 1st world problems and all.)

Close to cancelling our Hawaii trip, which at this rate might be out of our control by next week anyway. We have friends going to Canada, Bahamas and Disney, and I believe all three have cancelled, or are trying to cancel.

canceled a trip home (both of my parents are in the high-risk age bracket and one has had a really bad health issue this year), almost certainly not going to pop conference even if there is a pop conference

still not sure at what point i'm supposed to stop doing things altogether, i have dinner reservations and tickets to see berio's sinfonia this weekend, should we still do that?

I had a slight cough/headaches/fatigue the last few days so I’ve been staying home. Kaiser told me not to bother getting tested. Symptoms are p mild so I’m kinda like eh whatever I’ll just wait this out.

More bummed that our trip to Disneyland in a few weeks is lookin less and less likely.

xp -- same, honestly

I am going to Va to visit a best friend next week.

Risk of getting it on flights is still relatively low, per the experts, and we're planning on staying in for most of it anyway.

I'm selling my tix to the Orlando City game Sat tho. Doesn't feel like a good idea to crowd in with 25k people.

buy low, sell high

I have the same question about if I am supposed to stop doing things and not leave my apartment for anything that's not essential. And for how long will that go on? A few months? A year?

If yr not sick do whatever you want

hm emoji

that's the whole problem, though, is that there is no way for anybody to know for certain that they're not sick

staythefuckhome.com imo

(actual guidance at that link)

lemme try that again https://staythefuckhome.com

pretty much staying in unless i need food

i'm not eating food until this is all over

cool a local person who attended the AIPAC conference has tested positive

i have also chosen to stay home. other than walking my dog i've been home since sunday. i'm lucky that i CAN choose to do that.

I was kinda joking, nobody listen to me i’m not a doctor

maybe we should all sign a quick nda

maybe this is all a trick to 1) get us all into our homes, 2) cut off internet, 3) break us all from our internet addiction

and we've been addicted for so long that this is what it looks and feels like to try come out of it

*slo-mo shot of me crying out in anger while reading a book on day 11 of no internet*

The doc appointment I was at yesterday, the receptionist loudly greeted and HUGGED a lady I guess she knew personally. Then when the lady said "actually Im here cos Im sick" and said she had a fever they made her put on a mask.

AFTER THE RECEPTIONIST HAD JUST FULL BODY HUGGED HER.

Tbh I'm in major need of saving money so i am down with laying low anyway.

Other than the one excursion.

It would be nice if state and natl govt could agree on whether we have community spread, but since fuckin' Desantnis is the one denying it, I'm sure he's lying

I think my work's about to make us all work from home and I am totally down with it. We can all do our jerbs from home anyway.

Lol, just after I left work this afternoon, I saw a couple of business bros shake hands and their faces simultaneously fell once they realized that we're no longer inhabiting the world of casual hand contact with our work colleagues.

I had lots of awkward moments with handshakes today. I asked more than one person, "Are we still shaking hands?", and did elbow bumps instead.

We have no confirmed cases in our county, so I'm being overly cautious, but mostly trying to get into the mindset.

Cancelled gym, Criterion memberships tonight. Waiting til HBO Now renews tomorrow so I'll be able to finish the Outsider. Going to be up all night listing as much shit as I can on EBay and Reverb to hopefully build a little cash for a worst case scenario.

"there is no right or wrong amount of actions to take" somewhat at odds with "stay the fuck home"

Im having a little social soiree at a bar right by my house for my birthday on saturday. I'm trying to pretend nothings wrong at the moment and just let it go ahead, because I havent seen any of my mates in fnyears and I dont want to be The Piker Yet Again, for once. No one's expressed "ew germs" concerns, and yet...

Friday 13th. Full Moon. Coronavirus. Stock market crash.

What could possibligh go wrong?

"there is no right or wrong amount of actions to take" somewhat at odds with "stay the fuck home"

― like, I’m eating an elephant head (katherine), Wednesday, March 11, 2020 11:18 PM bookmarkflaglink

it's basically saying "hey we know not all of this is within your control". also it's an improvement over what's happening now where a large portion of the populace is doing this, another large chunk isn't paying attention to the news and is wiping their butt without washing hands and holding 40,000 people parties with sneezing people at it, another large chunk is paying attention and defying the conventional wisdom, and lots of big events happened instead of being cancelled where people likely got infected.

I read an article in Medium where the author pointed out China actually had 27 times the infections it thought it had during the initial outbreak, and that we probably do too.

I skimmed this quickly--I don't feel like reading it now, but looks to be pretty exhaustive. Maybe posted earlier, I don't know.

http://thewalrus.ca/anatomy-of-an-epidemic/

holding 40,000 people parties with sneezing people at it

oh you mean my pepper parties? but they're FABULOUS

it was a 40,000 people pepper party paroxysm!

tonight's Control Top gig was a first: a punk show where everyone in attendance was consciously making an effort to keep a tiny bit of physical distance from everyone else for the most part. could get used to this tbh

Overkill was so empty that it was ridiculous. my claustrophobic self was happy but i went into the bathroom to wash hands four times

Gobbing still allowed, though?

also got super drunk and apparently ordered Wawa hoagie via Uber Eats and then fell asleep so the driver showed up, gave up trying to wake me up, and hung the bag around my hotel door handle. woke up to find a bag with a sandwich and my name written on it waitign for me on the door, 9 hours later

haaaaa

Living the dream

i don't even remember placing the order. didn't eat the sandwich obv

Dang man, door sandwich is the best kind of sandwich

I am lucky enough to live walking distance from work but I am a lazy moron and run late every morning and this morning I was running extra late and it was raining quite hard so I got the bus, which was bad because it was v full (which on reflection was inevitable since it was raining quite hard) and so I was pressed into several other people, and then by the time I got to work a) there was nobody else here who would've noticed me being late and b) it had stopped raining anyway

I disinfected my hands with a wetwipe after getting off the bus, and then with hand sanitiser on arriving in my building, and then washed my hands when I reached the right floor of the building, but yeah, I need to 1. get better at mornings and 2. maybe talk to my boss who is a p. reasonable person and will almost certainly agree that it's better for me to be 20 minutes late (and stay 20 minutes late at the end of the day, which is fine as I walk home anyway) but at a lower risk of making the whole team ill

Boy oh boy is the train ever empty this morning.

Yes, I should be walking to work, laziness + shit weather is my excuse.

This is so true..... @rivm #COVID2019NL #Corona pic.twitter.com/0tfcWnPmJl

— Lisette Paap (@Mama_Liset) March 12, 2020

This is indeed otm. Dutch gov not bothering with any real measures up till now, and it's beyond irresponsible at this point. It's mostly pointing to regional govs, science and health institutions and individual schools to come up with things. So it's p much left to everyone individual's judgement. Which will of course be totally fine, because people are sensible and logical beings erring on the side of caution amirite?

I would happily have walked to work, but I would've needed to get up an extra (checks) 3.5 hours early.

Yet another argument for switching jobs and ending this ridic commute.

The messaging (across the globe, tbh) has been a mess. It's everywhere. It could be everywhere. Limit exposure. You're already exposed. You may have it. You may have already had it. Stay inside. Avoid crowds. Avoid big crowds. Avoid everybody. And for how long? Each and every one of these things alters my personal daily calculations.

For example, our in-the-balance trip to Hawaii. Do we need to go? Of course not. What is gained by not going? Well, maybe we won't get exposed, on the plane, in the airport, in Maui. Or maybe we'll stay and get exposed here. Or maybe we've been exposed and we might bring it to Maui. Maybe we've been exposed, might go to Maui, come back, and *then* exhibit symptoms. Maybe we've been exposed, go to Maui, and then exhibit symptoms there. Maybe we stay and nothing happens. Maybe we go and nothing happens. Maybe it's all over Maui. Maybe it's all over Chicago. Maybe it's not all over both places but is by the time the trip comes around in a week. Maybe it all happens midway through the trip.

It feels like the *right* thing to do is not to go, but I'm also having trouble pinpointing exactly who that helps, or at least how it helps them.

I'm going to meet a newborn baby tonight and I'm very nervous about this.

It helps everyone. Very interaction is a chance you could pick it up or pass it on. So the fewer interactions the slower it spreads, the less chance someone vulnerable gets it and the more chance there is to find a vaccine before more vulnerable people get and the more able the healthcare system is able to cope with acute cases that do arise.

Babies and children have been ok so far haven’t they? They’re not getting it as much and I don’t think I’ve seen reports of fatalities.

xpost I can't remember when your trip is or if it's direct, through Honolulu, but if the airline(s)/accommodation loosened up the cancel policy, I would probably take it. If you are already having these thoughts you will be too stressed to enjoy it properly. Like IS THIS SNORKEL PROPERLY SANITIZED!?!?!

P sure I heard some casual Sinophobia on my way into the building this morning. Something akin to 'Asian people get it more easily! It started over there!'

I've heard a LOT of that.

heh, someone actually told my friend on the ny subway to get away from her (he's from singapore). Relatively pretty mild, he was so upset.

Heh, good point re: sanitizing snorkels. No, we're direct to Maui, and yes, they loosened up the cancellation policy, so I don't think we would lose *too* much money. It's more a thought experiment. Yeah, I know limiting exposure is the right idea, but there is no indication that, let alone self quarantine, is happening on anything sort of a large scale in this country. Yeah, the reason we wouldn't want to travel is, in the off chance we have it, we don't want to spread it. But in the off chance we have it or get it here, we don't want to spread it here, either. And that is a consideration every time we leave the house. Yet the messaging has not been clear or consistent on that point. Even Italy, they imposed quarantine .... with a bunch of loopholes, incl. closing restaurants early but not entirely. And they since seriously tightened restrictions, because half measures might as well be no measures. It seems if America is seriously about stopping this early, we all have to stay home. But America is rarely serious about anything, and I doubt that would happen.

and maui is not dense at all comparatively. We've driven all over that island and you could totally hide out on some beaches and not see people.

there was a recent article though about a canadian doctor who just returned from HI and tested positive, but they don't know when she got it (she had still been seeing patients).

Yeah. I wish we could drive there! A couple of our friends, driving is their compromise. One has a sick mother in Milwaukee, but may drive to visit rather than train it. Another was going to NY, but may drive instead of fly. Not that either ultimately may help. Just perhaps slow. By, like, a couple of hours.

I should, er, stress that I'm not particularly stressed. I and my family are healthy, and there is no one in our lives (here) at particular risk. Our older parents, who recently traveled, are out of the incubation range and doing well. Our families overseas in the UK and Australia are doing well. We are in a position to weather things for a while. For that we are quite thankful. My biggest issue these days is getting over a cold (yes, a boring cold, nothing but the sniffles) that my kid gave me that has somehow reduced my sense of taste to next to nothing.

so it's 5 am and i just wrote this up, hope it's not inappropriate to c&p, i don't have anywhere else to say this shit

Everybody wants to be judgemental now. Monday morning quarterbacks, looking to assign blame, whose FAULT is this. Honestly? Honestly I don't see how things could have gone down any differently. No, we didn't immediately recognize the scale of the threat or understand how best to respond. It's something that we've never faced in our lifetimes! Learning through experience, this is a necessary expedient. You can make all sorts of plans for whatever might possibly happen, but shit is happening now and it took us some time to figure out what, exactly, it is, and what we need to do about it.

So this "If we'd implemented a global quarantine two weeks ago we could have saved so many lives", it fails to recognize that underlying reality. I'm not an expert, but what I believe and how I react matters, what I'm willing to accept matters. The Overton Window has to move and it doesn't do that instantaneously. Last week I was focused entirely on two statistics - the mortality rate and the infectiousness of COVID-19. And I was reassured because everybody else was "OH MY GOD WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE" and I did not see that as an immediate outcome. I assumed that I already had the coronavirus and that I was going to live.

Well, now we're starting to understand the actual fucking problem of this epidemic. Which is not mortality, but the number of people who are going to get seriously ill. For 80% of the population COVID-19 is mild, we were told. The implication of that is obvious and I chose not to think about it, chose to focus on the positive. There are going to be a lot of people who are going to be very sick, and the number of them who are going to die is directly dependent on our healthcare systems' capacity to treat those people. That is why this is a crisis. For a quarantine to have started two weeks ago, you would have had to convince the global population that what appeared to be a minor inconvenience was a major crisis, that everybody needed to stop leaving their house immediately despite nobody being sick, and more importantly to do that without having the entire populace completely overtaken by mass panic.

I've lived through a few hurricanes. People are capable of being convinced. People are capable of preparing for this shit. As long as, you know, it's happened in living memory. Which it hasn't, and all we can do is make pointless comparisons to the Spanish Flu which are about as valuable and useful as talking about the Antonine Plague as far as I can tell.

This is going to be difficult. People are going to die unnecessarily. A lot of things are going to go down that are outside anybody's control. My personal priority isn't pointing the finger right now, it's surviving and learning as much as I can from the experience.

xp I think my calculus in a situation like yours Josh, if indeed the factors seem to be too numerous and contradictory, would be to err on the side of caution and just not go.

The only certainty is that by not traveling you reduce the odds of becoming a vector. Yes, it's impossible to know by how much, but if it's the welfare of others we're talking about you may decide that doesn't matter.

xp Kate otm. Speaking of pointing fingers: I heard your presidetn referred to COVID19 as "the foreign virus"...

Not my presidetn.

xxpost I tend to agree. But I just got my first real world example of personal calculation. My daughter just asked me for a ride to school, and I said ok. Then she asked if we could give her friend a ride, since I prefer to carpool. OK. Then she added that her friend needed a ride because her friend's mom was sick. Whoa, wait a second. Sick how? She had to write her back for me to make sure it wasn't bad, and indeed no fever or vomiting, just doesn't feel well (turns out it was a UTI, which my wife knew). But if her mom *was* exhibiting ay flu-like symptoms, I guess I would have said ... no?

xpost kate: Modern people are very reactive instead of proactive (ex: their health) and that really needs to change. And the idealized/fetishization of separateness and individual freedom means people don't have an understanding of how everything is connected and what could be impacted.

I'm pretty much as lucky as I can be w/r/t risk to others or myself - I'm young, no risk factors, and in Canada where so far the confirmed infection rate is not very high (knock on wood); more importantly neither work nor life puts me in contact with elderly folks except in briefest passing via public transit; I did have US travel plans this summer but it seems like it'll be possible to get refunded on most if not all of that so all I'll experience is mild disappointment; I can work from home as needed so there's no financial risk.

Mostly I just wish there was something useful I could actually DO rather than just avoid doing. (I expect there will be no shortage of Gofundmes etc to help keep ppl afloat when they inevitably lose their jobs or risk eviction so I guess there's that.)

I'm uncertain who the we/us is in Kate's post?

i assumed it was a general we/us? And for clarification my post was also in general and not a criticism but just an add on of what kate wrote.

i will totally blame the US government though for lying and wishing it would all just go away and our entire history of failing to provide an adequate healthcare system that cares for everyone.

To clarify, too: "your presidetn" wasn't meant to in any way align you with Trump, Kate.

I just feel there's been some variance visible even in this thread on the metric "recognize the scale of the threat or understand how best to respond"?

I love this article (my post was touching it). It's mostly about climate change but also could be applied to how we got here.

https://harpers.org/archive/2016/07/the-ideology-of-isolation/

oh shit. sorry. I just realized this was not apolitical anymore.

Schools close, Tom Hanks, trouble in the big banks, no vaccine, quarantine, no more toilet paper seen.

Travel ban, Weinstein, panic COVID-19, NBA, gone away, what else do I have to sayyyyyy https://t.co/N86qx9wZxq

— The Caffeinated Therapist (@bellabee13) March 12, 2020

You're covered by the thread title tbf xp

Got a weird email from my manager at 10pm about figuring out how to keep our operations going remotely. So I guess I might be working from home soon.

Having said all that, in retrospect it does occur to me that "if you think you're sick stay home" probably wasn't terribly helpful advice. I'm not interested in assigning blame, but I am interested in knowing who on earth thought propagating that message was a good idea, and why they thought it was a good idea.

This is a new pathogen that none of us have experienced before. We don't know what its early symptoms are. We don't know in detail how it spreads. There's reason to suspect that there might be some period of time - we don't know how long - wherein an infected person is asymptomatic but can still infect others. Differentiating it from cold or flu or other common upper respiratory infections is extremely difficult. Under these conditions, what's the functional difference between "If you think you might be sick, stay home" and "Stay home if you feel like it"? And what logical thought process would lead one to conclude that either of these statements might possibly be an effective containment measure?

-

This is mostly apolitical but since it came up... I don't speak for the President, the President doesn't speak for me, listen to me, care what I have to say, acknowledge me as human. I don't know what I can do here but shrug. We have in office a professionally incompetent President whose ideological and political base is centered around the sorts of people who only a few years ago were spinning wild conspiracy theories about "FEMA death camps". Do I think this bodes well for the effectiveness of the federal response to the crisis? No. Is it likely that people who listen to the President are more likely to suffer adverse outcomes because of the President's words and actions here? Yes. Would I like to see the President held responsible for those words and actions? Yes. Do I, at this point, have any practical opportunity to make this happen? Not really. Is all this even a priority of mine right now? No, my priority is, like I said, surviving and learning as much as I can out of the experience.

Like I said, a lot of things are going to go down outside of anyone's control, and if I can say anything about the last four years, it's that I've gotten very used to that. I have a much better sense now, I feel, of what things I can practically affect, and how, than I did in 2016.

I think a lot of state and local governments recognize that they cannot rely on the stupid asshole for help, let alone competence.

Looking into our trip, it seems the only catch is airbnb, whose cancellation policy is linked (for now) to explicit outbreak destinations. Ergo, if we cancelled our trip to Maui we'd likely have to eat the cost, unless the owners themselves (did the right thing and) allowed us to cancel or at least reschedule.

Oh great, another US politics thread

Babies and children have been ok so far haven’t they? They’re not getting it as much and I don’t think I’ve seen reports of fatalities.

― gramsci in your surplice (gyac), Thursday, 12 March 2020 11:58 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i understand why ppl are being fuzzy out of sensitivity to those held to me most at risk, but imo this us why clarity about this stuff has to be prioritised.

ppl will be dicks with the info ir not, but the info has to be clear

I’d be nervous about meeting a baby in case it gave it to me

Try to avoid handshakes with babies.

don't share a snorkel with a baby.

If you're going to a business meeting make sure no babies have been invited.

*must not make masturbating in front of babbies joke*

2020 Babby Annual Meeting has been canceled.

If you're going to a business meeting make sure no babies have been invited.

― God gave toilets rolls to you, gave toilet rolls to you (Tom D.), Thursday, 12 March 2020 13:21 (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

would that twere so simple

id be nervous meeting a baby, only cause they’re so judgmental

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAG-Ec4b-zw

lol

if you look around the room and don't see a baby, you're baby

Just received a company-wide 'remote-work capabilities' mandatory survey. FINGERS CROSSED. Although, having never been given the option of working before, my at-home set-up is woefully inadequate wrt doing my job at home. I'd expect a roughlyyyyyy (taps furiously at calculator keys) 80% reduction in productivity? I pretty much need two screens and my laptop only has one. Oh well!

yeah I usually have 2-3 huge screens at work and would only work on my little laptop in bed, but still worth it to work at home!

For sure.

What if your boss is a babby, like in the hit motion picture Boss Babby? What then?

I finally traded in my desktop PC at work for a work-approved laptop with VPN access to our network, making it easier if I need to wfh for an extended period of time. Which, if I see one more case within a 5-mile radius of my living room, is exactly what I'm going to do, after I seal my house in one of those big E.T. quarantine tents.

Oh great, another US politics thread

― God gave toilets rolls to you, gave toilet rolls to you (Tom D.)

look, i stay out of the dedicated politics threads, if people are going to bring this shit up in response to my posts i'm not going to pretend it doesn't matter

Still no working from home for me, the new thing is to come to work and set up online meetings I guess.

The title does say mostly apolitical…

So the university I work for is also now sending most students home and switching to online classes for the rest of the semester and having most people tele-commute. However, I'm apparently somehow considered "essential personnel", so I guess I just have to start assuming and planning as if it's a 100% certainty I'll get this in the next few weeks.

We share our floor in the building with Willis Towers Watson, and they have a large reception area & offices right out of the elevator lobby as well as several other spaces all controlled by security card access. As of this morning there are signs on every door stating that if you have traveled recently to China, Italy, Iran, South Korea or Japan, not to proceed beyond that point and to speak to your manager immediately.

Kinda surreal at work as we go about cancelling all our events through April but everyone is talking about what shows they're still going to next week despite SXSW being cancelled.

We’re still not working from home yet either. Someone sitting near me just fainted! Things are starting to feel surreal and I almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation.

just reading through this morning's posts.

sorry to be so blunt and judgmental, but josh if you're looking for clear messaging, here it is: do not go on your planned hawaii trip. ed (and many others) explained upthread:

It helps everyone. Very interaction is a chance you could pick it up or pass it on. So the fewer interactions the slower it spreads, the less chance someone vulnerable gets it and the more chance there is to find a vaccine before more vulnerable people get and the more able the healthcare system is able to cope with acute cases that do arise.

― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed),

you don't have to analyze this 4 million different ways. if you feel later that your life was ruined because you didn't go to hawaii in the middle of a global pandemic when everyone was being told* to distance themselves from others as much as possible, you can blame it on me.

*yes, i know that some people are sending a different message. let's try to pay more attention to the cautious people who know what they're talking about*

Karl otmfm

Okay, now the VP of our division emailed me and the rest of the hourly staff to see if we have the ability to work from home in the event that our office is shut down, so shit is most definitely getting real.

But, y'know, y'all wait to pull the trigger until I finally do get sick, I'm just gonna be home watching hours of MeTV on the couch and not doing shit for you for a while.

be kind, be kind, be kind, be kind.

also thank god TD Bank is here for me

I'm reaching out to you directly to say that TD Bank is here for you, especially when COVID-19 is affecting so much of daily life. We want to make sure banking is easy, convenient and available to you whenever and wherever you need it.

TD Bank used to be there for me, too. but then i switched to a different bank and we haven't been speaking, ever since.

i just got a coronavirus update from a hair salon i went to a couple years ago

Fwiw, flying itself isn't the issue. Even one of the virologists who was screaming about how bad the US is handling this stated it's difficult to spread on a plane due to the HEPA filters and that flying wasn't a big risk. It's more the 'interacting with people once you land' that's the problem.

Traveling by bus, otoh, is just asking for it.

I don't need to be preached at about what is right or wrong. I get it.

The same reason I wouldn't go anywhere is the same reason anybody shouldn't be going anywhere.

sorry to preach, but your posts don't indicate that you get it

josh otm afaict

unless we're presuming everyone not flying is literally indoors religiously self-isolating, like?

xpost Whatever. Fine, replace Hawaii with Ohio. Or downtown Chicago. Or the store on the corner.

see what i mean

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the pandemic thread!

I don’t necessarily think it’s unfair to want hard, unambiguous statements about what to do and not to do. yes, there’s “stay home if you’re sick,” but that does precisely nothing to clarify things for people who aren’t sick. (not to mention if “home” = around roommates or, more serious, inmunocompromised relatives, but that’s neither here nor there.)

like, for instance, I have canceled pretty much all travel until late may, and late may might also be canceled, but it’s not up to me in that case. (ironically one trip was to get some lab work done, but I guess I go without). one job is remote already, one is in person but likely to go remote.

but beyond that, what? do I go to restaurants? do I go to readings/events/parties/game nights/etc.? do I order stuff online, via usps or otherwise? do I see people in public at all? the guidelines on this are both maddeningly vague and heavily (and in this case understandably) morally charged. (and there’s also a lot of research suggesting that isolation is bad for your mental health as well as physical)

Agree. I mean, the UK govt line is increasingly controversial but at least it's a line and they're sticking to it. My US colleagues instead have a giant shrug and a "the markets are fine" as official advice.

my wife and I decided last night we should postpone the trip we had planned for Disneyland at the end of this month. there's gonna be tears.

also, “buy food and supplies. but not too much food, you monster. but also you should buy food and supplies, and more than usual. if you don’t use hand sanitizer you are typhoid mary. if you buy hand sanitizer you are stealing it from everyone else who needs it more. if there’s no hand sanitizer don’t buy the resale stuff. but you need to use hand sanitizer. also, hand sanitizer is not helpful. oh also you shouldn’t be in crowds so stores are out. no, stores are ok. but not too much.” the whole thing is fucking nightmarish to try to optimize, but also it is a consensus that somehow one must

stores are crowds? I don't shop anywhere where there's more than like 50 people in the store at a time.

if you live in new york city that’s a fucking miracle, the average grocery store is as cramped and crowded as a rush hour subway train even on a good day.

katherine otm. do yr best, don't be a dick, stay informed, but no sense in worrying yrself sick over it (do u see what I did there)

yep

yeah, no one can know your exact situation so everyone just needs to make the best decision they can for themselves based upon current information and your own sense of what is going on.

lol I'm getting all these emails from reps that are like "Just want you to know I'm thinking about you."

The only moral challenge I expect to face in the short term is if I do fall ill before the IL primary next Tuesday. But I gotta vote, man. I just gotta.

vote by mail!

I don’t know that it’s otm when the gist of my post is “I have no idea what the fuck to do and nobody will tell me”; I feel like fleabag with the priest right now

if you live in new york city that’s a fucking miracle, the average grocery store is as cramped and crowded as a rush hour subway train even on a good day.

I live in NJ and when I go to the grocery store the aisles have 1-2 people in them and there's maybe 3 people ahead of me at the register. I once did an interview at the Jazz Standard and figured I'd swing by the Trader Joe's near there afterward, to pick up a single item, and when I walked in there was a line from the front door to the registers. It was fucking stunning. I turned around and walked out. I don't know how people live like that.

ha, I guess I took yr post as a way of saying there's too much contradictory messaging getting thrown around so it's useless trying to satisfy all possible conditions perfectly xp

vote by mail!

― Karl Malone, Thursday, March 12, 2020 11:49 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think it may be too late at this point, as you have to request a ballot which they then have to mail to you. Maybe, though. I'll look into it.

i'll continue bluntly saying things i guess, even though it's not a good look and i understand everyone is stressed out (including me, that's for fucking sure)

if you don’t use hand sanitizer you are typhoid mary. if you buy hand sanitizer you are stealing it from everyone else who needs it more. if there’s no hand sanitizer don’t buy the resale stuff. but you need to use hand sanitizer. also, hand sanitizer is not helpful.

who is saying all these things????

"if you don’t use hand sanitizer you are typhoid mary" translation: use at least some hand sanitizer
"if you buy hand sanitizer you are stealing it from everyone else who needs it more" translation: don't buy a 60-pack from costco
"if there’s no hand sanitizer don’t buy the resale stuff" translation: i don't know what i'm talking about
"but you need to use hand sanitizer. also, hand sanitizer is not helpful" translation: i am just trying to troll you

no one is going to be able to give precise advice because everyone's situation is different. just use common sense, as much as you can, that's all anyone is asking for

how the fuck is your fucking takeaway from this that I am trying to troll people and not that I am scared

Just got approval to have our remote-work app installed. Inching ever closer to...well, probably to my place of work continuing to kick the can down the road and stick with their 'wait and see' approach until they wait and see an office full of employees succumb to viral infection. But a candle of hope yet flickers in the darkness.

like can we please assume the actual goddamn fucking MINIMUM of good faith for the love of fuck

"but you need to use hand sanitizer. also, hand sanitizer is not helpful" translation: i am just trying to troll you

i am saying, whoever is saying to YOU is trying to troll you

xpost unperson. I used to go to the chelsea Trader joes every saturday morning after the gym and it was empty.

you just have to know the off times.

yeah every workplace i hear about is "Monitoring the situation" which is the same phrase they use when they hold off on closing down for a blizzard until everyone is at work and the roads and train lines are shut down.

Every store I've been in for the past, what, 3-4 weeks? has been completely out of hand sanitizer. And then over the past couple weeks, they've also been out of disinfectant wipes, alcohol swabs, etc. Clearly, some overzealous people will be refashioning dozens of unused sanitizer bottles into furniture and decorative tchotchkes over the coming years.

I do think a lot of this stuff is not rocket science but if ppl really are struggling to figure out what a reasonable amount is then stores need to implement fair use policies (as quite a few already are)

I found a one quarter full tiny bottle of hand sanitizer in my glove compartment last night and it was the same feeling as finding $20 in a jacket I hadn't worn for a year.

Like, yeah, ppl are being called dicks for clearing the shelves of toilet paper so nobody else can get any; no, you will not be called a monster for buying an economy pack

I'm going to make what I hope to be one last stop at the store tonight and stare dejectedly at the ravaged shelves and then hope that I can somehow sustain myself for the foreseeable future on the twenty boxes of taco shells and clearanced chipotle mayo that I leave with.

The thing I'm most profoundly failing to understand atm is the number of people in this very office who already have the ability to work from home and who work from home multiple days in any given week who are unaccountably in the office right now. Just why.

Presenteeism...the real disease

xp because they still think this is Somebody Else's Problem, I reckon.

my 60something parents have been struggling with severe flu-like symptoms since sunday and my diabetic/epileptic brother for a whole week now

they're made of stern stuff (brother's condition/dad's chainsmoking notwithstanding) but this has me a bit worried. and it takes a lot to worry me. what is reassuring is that they've had it (whatever it is, probably coronavirus) for a few days and no respiratory difficulties reported

I mean I can't speak for anyone else but I am in the office because I fucking have to be

katherine the best all-in-one guide to how to respond to coronavirus that I've seen is https://flattenthecurve.com. From a member of the public health faculty at the U of Oregon.

I’m disgusted with my workplace. It’s becoming clear to me that they are not going to trigger WFH until forced to by the city. This is not safe. Not for the many twentysomethings in the office even, and not for those of us pushing fifty with chronic health shit.

What do you guys think if I just tell them I have a persistent low grade fever. I’m tired of this dance.

The Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall have canceled performances through the end of the month. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is also closing.

Good strategy imho xp

Xps hope they get well soon, LJ

Forgot to mention, but pasta was the only non-TP, non-sanitizer section I saw at Target last night. Went specifically to grab a few things, including linguine, and I got literally the last two boxes of pasta.

i get what katherine is saying in the sense that, just like with lots of other stuff in this shitty performative age, there's a group of people (not necessarily anyone itt) who are going to stake out the most extreme position and then act like even the slightest nudge against it makes you some kind of moral monster. i think people have an especially difficult time resisting this impulse when you have a group of people on the other side of the spectrum politically who are being aggressively ignorant and reckless about the danger. but yeah, there are a lot of slippery slopes here: I shouldn't go to a concert, but can I go to the grocery store? should I go to work? to church? i caught some of Scott Van Pelt on Sportscenter last night having this discussion with some other guy and SVP was trying very gently and with a million qualifiers to try and navigate what is and isn't acceptable right now and the other dude was basically just shutting him down and sort of implying that anything short of cancelling everything sports-related right now is monstrous. I mean, the easiest thing to do rhetorically is just say you shouldn't leave your house at all and you're killing people if you do.

Very curious to see what happens with a friend's wedding at the end of the month

an important point they are hammering home in the UK is that this is a marathon not a sprint. They're not closing schools now because it's not feasible to keep children locked down for 16 weeks, and the peak is still 10-14 weeks away.

(which is what makes fucking testing so important, because who knows exactly where the US is on the curve?)

I don’t think it’s remotely controversial to say feeding yourself is fine? Or that the distinction between picking up a few extra things in case you’re staying home for a while before going out again vs taking more pasta than you’d ever eat in a year isn’t clear?

for real

I have a handful of friends that like to vent but absolutely don't want any advice, so I am usually like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ until they ask explicitly.

Presenteeism...the *real* disease

I have a handful of friends that like to vent but absolutely don't want any advice, so I am usually like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ until they ask explicitly.

this seems like the better way to respond

Yeah, if they haven't made the WFH call by like tomorrow, Imma be makin' the call for them, and my call will be all about the H without any of that pesky WF.

ty gyac

all county schools now closed for 2 weeks by order of the governor, all county residents now advised not to leave the county

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/nyregion/coronavirus-new-york-update.html

New York will ban most gatherings of more than 500 people, including Broadway shows, and restrict smaller gatherings in an extraordinary step to fight the growing outbreak of the coronavirus in the state, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Thursday.

The restrictions represent New York’s most forceful move yet to try to mitigate the spread of the virus. They are expected to have a profound impact on the city’s cultural institutions, including Broadway, a multibillion dollar industry at the heart of New York’s tourist trade.

The ban will take effect at 5 p.m. Thursday for Broadway theaters and will go into effect for other venues on Friday at 5 p.m., Mr. Cuomo said.

Welp, so much for my NY trip in April.

and restrict smaller gatherings

Welp, so much for my NY trip in April

Already spiked mine.

travelling before like July (at best) seems inadvisable now

yup :(

well i stopped (I actually never began) studying for an exam I was supposed to take in May.

Heard through the grapevine a moment ago that someone in another of our company's buildings (not in our company's office, but still) just tested positive. And we just keep on a-whistling past that ol' graveyard.

company president just sent out the email, fucking finally. a couple of days late IMO but good faith somewhat restored

Of course the fucking Republican woman who works across from my wife decided it was fine to travel and come back into work this week. Today she called out sick and says she's trying to get tested for the virus.

You can all rest assured, we canceled our trip. Phew, outbreak averted!

Seriously though, we managed to get full refunds or credits on everything but the airbnb rental, which is mostly up to the owner, who did the best they could and got us 50%. The economic impact of this down the road is going to be huge, even when the virus is gone and the markets settle (assuming either of those things happen any time soon). Cancelling our trip to Maui alone means a couple thousand dollars not spent in a small, insular island tourist community. Losing SXSW lost Austin an estimated $350 million. I imagine there are hundreds of examples between those two extremes.

I'm in NYC at the moment. I've never seen LGA so quiet at noon. My plane had 17 passengers at my count. I do feel some trepidation and I've considered returning early but I figured the trip was in motion and there were a couple people I really needed to see.

Now I feel some guilt.

My university ended face-to-face classes yesterday thru April 4 at least.

The governor just ordered all schools in my county closed. Said to avoid theaters, gyms and stores.

What about bouncy houses?

using them as makeshift hospitals

If I had to choose between a hospital and a bouncy hospital ...

bouncy hospital = less prolonged contact with surfaces

But potentially more contact with a variety of surfaces/other wildly-bouncing patients and medical staff.

i get what katherine is saying in the sense that, just like with lots of other stuff in this shitty performative age, there's a group of people (not necessarily anyone itt) who are going to stake out the most extreme position and then act like even the slightest nudge against it makes you some kind of moral monster. i think people have an especially difficult time resisting this impulse when you have a group of people on the other side of the spectrum politically who are being aggressively ignorant and reckless about the danger. but yeah, there are a lot of slippery slopes here: I shouldn't go to a concert, but can I go to the grocery store? should I go to work? to church? i caught some of Scott Van Pelt on Sportscenter last night having this discussion with some other guy and SVP was trying very gently and with a million qualifiers to try and navigate what is and isn't acceptable right now and the other dude was basically just shutting him down and sort of implying that anything short of cancelling everything sports-related right now is monstrous. I mean, the easiest thing to do rhetorically is just say you shouldn't leave your house at all and you're killing people if you do.

― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Thursday, 12 March 2020 17:42 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

booming post

I definitely don't want to shame anyone for their choices with this, and I apologize if I came off that way in any of my earlier posts. Obviously no one really knows how to handle it on a personal level. I'm bristling because I'm scared. It is definitely frustrating not feeling like there's a clear program to follow, especially when it comes to "social distancing" etc.

TBF I usually do wind up killing people whenever I leave my house.

I didn’t accuse anyone specifically; it should be clear to anyone paying attention the massive amount of sometimes contradictory but equally weighted mandates (with real stakes) coming from all directions

Hope your family will be ok LJ.

anything short of cancelling everything sports-related right now is monstrous

No, this is true. Only greedy fucks would actually go forward at this point. And I say this as a Flyers fan who hasn't had a team this good in ten years, but I will be shocked if there are any NHL or NBA playoffs this year.

That's literally the only thing I've heard the wanks behind me getting worked up about in the midst of this shit. Naw, man! You can't take our sports!!!!!

my nephew has a fucking hockey tournament this weekend and my mother has decided not to go, i guess the mn youth hockey association sent out a email saying old or compromised ppl shouldn't attend...but they aren't cancelling?

and it's not even greed! they probably lose money putting this shit on

but MN and hockey is fucking nutso, who knows

xxxp is this new username part of your social distancing

not sure how I feel abt it

Very best wishes, LJ.

I help coach my son's indoor flag football team, which is still on for the time being. Two weeks ago we shifted the kids from post-game "good game" lineup from slapping hands to elbow bumps, but maybe this time we'll just have them shout "good game" at each other from a respectable distance.

I'm mostly afraid of how many people will be financially devastated by this. I don't trust our government to take care of us. I have too many loved ones who might be severely fucked.

These were the right moves by the country. But we have an ass backwards government that will probably let its populace suffer.

I am sooooo thankful that I can work from home and I have decent savings, but there are way too many who don't.

I had a customer today who was complaining that people were making way too big of a deal about this. 10 minutes later I see my county has its first case. Cool!

Making a big thing out of it would have been a good idea

A MONTH AGO

many xps it's just my feelings about Star Wars

All Ontario schools are being closed for two weeks after March break.

http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/all-public-schools-in-ontario-will-be-closed-for-two-weeks-after-march-break-due-to-covid-19-1.4850653

On the FB chat group I'm on for my old school, the immediate reaction was twofold: good, and will we get paid? Which I totally understand (doesn't apply to me, being retired). They're currently in extremely acrimonious labour talks/work-to-rule with our Trump-like premier, and if anyone would try to withhold payment, he would.

xp sorry I thought for a moment you were KM returning to a variation on his bygone identity

lollll I live in SF and someone just posted to FB "poly peeps: how should we handle multiple relationships in the current context? what's the math on this?"

best wishes to your family, imago

just saw imago's post, so sorry to hear about that and best wishes for your family!

^^^

finally, someone has posted an answer to my questions upthread

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-what-does-social-distancing-mean/607927/

(not sarcasm, this does answer a fair amount of those questions)

hey PBKR

Wash your hands for 45 seconds, 1 second for every consecutive year the Flyers have gone without a Stanley Cup

— SinceFlyersLastCup (@SinceFlyersCup) March 12, 2020

(throws battery)

My partner gets medical hand sanitiser on prescription, usually more than he needs, so we are awash with the stuff. We’ve stuck a bottle just inside the front door. I might even eventually start remembering to use it.

I start rehearsals next week for a Eurovision-themed comedy musical, that we are putting on in Rotterdam in Eurovision week. So I am very aware of the deafening silence coming from the Netherlands. I’ll be amazed if we actually get to perform it.

Disneyland closed

Pornhub open

Goofy getting tested

14 local cases. Finally saw masks on all staff and most of the patrons of the local Chinese grocer. I felt embarassed that I didn't bring one (still sealed in a 5 pk at home). I tried not to breath on anybody...

I'm actually impressed by how quickly things seem to be cancelling or reducing. I think everyone knows the (federal) government is absolutely no help here, but the state governments seem to be appropriately aggressive (however belatedly!).

Cuomo basically told all the State governors "you're on your own, don't wait for help from the Federal government"

ty everyone, about time i checked on 'em again

my company had to evacuate it's San Juan office today as one of the employees was infected. one of my team members was over there and they put her back on an emergency flight. She wasn't in the same room with this person, to my knowledge, but they evacuated the building to sanitize it, they have closed it tomorrow, and when they return, for a period, they're having everybody work from home, and those who can't will be paid Emergency Pay.

for once....I'm thrilled with my company.

Disneyland is apparently paying its employees during the closure. I worry about my brother losing his gigs at Universal, as they pay most of his bills.

The feds are gonna need to bail out a lot of ppl financially tho. States cant do that

But yes I’m glad stat govs appear to be stepping up

Sorry, stupid phone

Maybe Bloomberg can just bail everyone out lol

xxxpost which is exactly why I feel so fuckin' miserable rn. I have little faith it will happen. and if it does, what, $600 to everybody? it won't cut it.

hoping sanity prevails. a lotta people will go under otherwise.

Just used my fancy new WFH app to log in to my work email and see if any decision had been made about closing the office...aaaaaaaaaand it would appear that our systems have completely shit the bed for about the fourth time this week and absolutely nothing is accessible remotely (or, presumably, locally). Huh. Well. Hmm.

Everyoen I know went to Golden Plains over the weekend (big 3 day hipster music fest out in the bush) and no one seemed wary. I guess I'll find out if 3/4 of Brunswick suddenly falls ill in a week's time.

Ha I spoke too soon, there was a confirmed case at the festival.

Was surprisingly able to stock up on a range of nonperishables at the store! TP, however, was completely gone. I think my gf is picking some up from her folks in the burbs tho.

out of TP, using Rand McNally maps instead

Idg the TP thing but then we order 48pks of recycled tp off the internet so not an issue for us anyway

shit yea

I think a better strategy is "shit no."

I just ordered a bidet attachment for $20.

my (public) school was shut down an hour ago. our district has a lot and lots of connections with biogen. there are a few presumptive cases in town –– family members of students – and the hysteria reached a fever pitch. two weeks minimum at home. I'm going to have to teach from my couch..

I went to the supermarket on the way home to get something for tea and bought some TP just because it was literally the last one in the shop and I don't have a whole lot left but am still mystified why people are doing this. And I'm Colonel Poo! If I don't know why, nobody does

Amazon is out of toilet paper. toilet paper holders, on the other hand.

Have a bad feeling any success from e-teaching is going to have fallout down the line.

students at most US colleges don't want it and wouldn't pay nearly as much for it

and public K-12 schools won't offer it at all because of equity issues

I have a conversation class hosted by someone who is >70 tomorrow evening and thinking I should prob cancel just in case, but if they are less panicked than me then maybe my cancellation will seem weird, or induce panic that I may be definitely ill and therefore already have infected them, or just annoy the teacher who won't get paid? Eh.

Probably the right thing to do but will need phrasing carefully - in an sms-sized chunk of not-my-1st-language, yay!

also the bf thinks I'm overreacting (which is fair, I'm a worrywort/hypochondriac) so if I stay home I'll need to tell him an excuse that definitely doesn't involve me cancelling

OTM Silby/Milo. But also, I've DEFINITELY taken great online classes. However, they are engineered from the ground up to foster digital engagement, not just videos that's transferred to Blackboard or Canvas or Moodle, and have discussion boards monitored by a disinterested TA.

However, teaching scared little guys is a different issue. I've got preadolescent children to think about. I'm going to try to provide consistency and emotional stability. Some nominal objectives, but mostly just a sense of community. It's gonna be rough.

News from the front: Whole Foods I stopped at this afternoon looked ravaged for the first time and the shoppers generally looked shook. Pasta aisle was almost completely picked through except for some of the specialty/high-end brands. I had bought $300 of shelf stable stuff (pasta, rice beans, lentils, etc) three weeks ago but you can't help pick up some vibes from the herd.

I just want to wish the best to all ilxors; let's be good to each other over the next couple weeks.

the large department store I went to today was out of toilet paper, most bags of dried beans/rice, and all sanitizer & alcohol.

here we go.

oh and no digital thermometer, of course

My mom (71) just emailed to tell me she and my aunt are going on a Viking river cruise in October, up the Danube to Prague. "Viking has cancelled all cruises in Europe this month and next. Those travellers are pushing into autumn so I needed to jump in."

xps: TP isn't a high margin item for grocers/discount stores, certainly not by volumes required. Sensibly, most stock more days of supply of canned goods etc than of TP. A not-so-great uptick in demand from those stocking up to self-quarantine, and TP is among the first things to disappear; that starts an entirely different sort of consumer demand fed by scarcity value. Hear about TP being out of stock in Sydney, Australia, and some will race to their Costco. Costco out of TP? There must be some sense to stocking up at the grocer.

We've witnessed similar runs with gasoline before hurricanes. If everyone filled their tanks at once, the stations would be out of fuel for about a week...

I got TP at the gas station

Ah, white people:

https://apple.news/AeYT3Z5mdTYis0-6Ml8TbFg

formula 1 grand prix in melbourne just got cancelled. our local park gets disrupted massively for this thing, and suddenly it’s off (they definitely made the right decision though).

Mandatory telework day tomorrow for everyone. This is as close to a serious COOP exercise as we’ve ever done in my 13 years working at this (very COOP-wary) agency.

Almost all the chicken, rice and pasta is sold out at local grocers, plus the other stuff people have already talked about to death. Funny to see what’s left - you could go for the Jordan Peterson 🍖 🥩 🥓 diet, easily. And anything organic, that shit costs too much to hoard, apparently.

I went to a local pizzeria for lunch and the three people in the front of the house (bartender, self, other customer) had a short rap session about mortality and how silly it is to take extreme measures to avoid death when you could get hit by a truck crossing the street

I was loling at the stuff left at TJ’s today — people turned up their noses at the fully stocked freezer of frozen carrot spirals and the only canned tomatoes left wee the ones w green chiles, of which there was an entire shelf.

I had some quality lols w students, fellow shoppers, and store clerks today. School finally announced a plan, I’m willing to admit that I’m going to miss being around people.

Might be time for me to be growing more food than I do now.

My face let me touch it

i like those TJ tomatoes with green chiles in the can.

and I would totally buy some local pizzeria pizzas to freeze if there was a decent one near me and it was that moment in time to hunker down.

vote by mail!

― Karl Malone, Thursday, March 12, 2020 11:49 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think it may be too late at this point, as you have to request a ballot which they then have to mail to you. Maybe, though. I'll look into it.

― Unparalleled Elegance (Old Lunch)

oh, dammit. the deadline was today, 5pm. :(

Writing shit down seems important to me right now, like it did on 9/11. Probably presumptuous to me to think any of this crap is going to be useful to posterity but I want it down for the record that I'm doing my best not to panic, but that I don't know what exactly is going on or what the "right thing" to do is. Today was a very bad day at work because I do have panic disorder and I'm not blind to what's going on around me. I know what my voice sounds like, it sounds like I'm having a hard time of it, and I probably am.

I don't want to be a downer. I don't want to be negative. It's not my style to dance around the possible negative outcomes, to pretend they won't happen. Because maybe they happen anyway, and I don't know if it's me, but a lot of people I know tend to blame themselves for everything bad that happens, and I feel like I need to tell them: Bad things might happen to people you love, and if they do, it's not your fault. A lot of my co-workers have living parents. I have a living parent who's over 70 years old and like many 70 year olds, has multiple health problems. I'm making sure to stay in contact with the people I know. There's so little I can do but right now at least I can still tell the people I care about that I care about them, and that feels important. I have two close relatives who are ER travel nurses. They are going to have it very hard so I want to at least support them as much as I can. Was very hard to talk to my brother because he was expecting the usual coronavirus bullshit - so many people are still apparently viewing "risk" purely in terms of individual risk of mortality. My brother said don't worry about me, worry about my patients. I had to tell him, I'm working on communicating this stuff to him, look, I know you're very unlikely to die from this, it's not about that. You're my brother, I care about you, you already don't have the resources you need to do your job, this is going to be hard, I just want you to know I love you and I care about you. And he accepted that, which is so hard to get to with him and so great.

But I am starting to deal with the possibility that people I care about will die, and everybody I talk to, whether they're at risk or not, is dealing with the same. And if they're not... most of my family is fine, but my other brother, he's had trouble with depression of late, works in the restaurant industry, already isn't getting enough hours, and how many millions of people like him are going to be hit by this? Saying "I'm lucky" isn't about diminishing my subjective experience.

I've cancelled everything, or rescheduled it so that I can do it over the phone. I'm working from home and will avoid leaving the house to the greatest extent possible.

But I am starting to deal with the possibility that people I care about will die

It's hard to conceive of. I wish my meditation teacher had more than one lung.

Two credit card companies have raised my limit this week. Too bad it's so hard to fake your death these days.

High school closed tomorrow, "e-learning" next week.

this is… not a great time to be unemployed

Unless you have kids sent home from school, I guess.

Finally got into our work system and saw an email from the vp about rumors of everyone in the company defaulting to working from home over the next several weeks. So I wrote my boss and said, hey, looks like I'm connected to everything I need to be connected to, any way I can expedite this working from home thing so I don't have to unnecessarily expose myself to a viral outbreak? And he gave me some mealy-mouthed shit about, well, y'know, just plan on coming on in tomorrow and, well, y'know, we'll play it by ear from there.

Well, y'know, I believe I'm going to be 'contracting a fever' (or, after another day riding the dirty-ass train, contracting a legitimate and scare-quote-less fever) over the weekend, so either y'all get your mothafuckin ducks in a row or I'm going to be on an unplanned vaycay for the foreseeable future.

We're going to be testing work from home to test our call software on the laptop softphones next week. I'm looking forward to it, I love working from home. I guess I'm well placed in an industry that may do well out of all this, we sell/support VoIP, mobile and teleconferencing networks.

Universal Orlando closed. my brother is getting paid while closed though. that was my worry so I'm relieved.

oh, dammit. the deadline was today, 5pm. :(

― Karl Malone, Thursday, March 12, 2020 7:16 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Dunno if you'll see this, but:

We're extending Vote By Mail applications online through midnight tonight, Mar 12. You may also drop off a paper form at 69 W Washington on 1st Floor through midnight.
Online application and paper forms are here: https://t.co/L0RGQd0fGs

— ChicagoElection (@ChicagoElection) March 12, 2020

This is where we need the @ feature/notifications

@old lunch: vote or die!

Thank u for info and link but I am unfortunately just over the Chitown border so I think our vote by mail ship has sailed. I'll still rally on Tuesday even if my insides are on the outside of me at that point.

work is likely to close to the public tomorrow and suspend operations shortly thereafter. this is going to be hell on the backend when all our very tightly plotted deadlines unravel. COVID aside, this is a totally new and unpredictable workplace situation, very weird

things in australia are going down like dominoes today. grand prix cancelled, no public events of 500+ people, no international travel unless necessary, loads of events being cancelled all over the place. just suddenly happening today all at once.

yeah. i feel like the last couple days were like that here in the US. dominoes is a good analogy. take care. things are weird.

xp sparkle motion i feel very similarly. it's very strange, the work situation. a big thing our program does is energy assessments, and they all just got canceled until mid-may at the earliest. just a very strange thing to deal with, apart from everything else. i've had a lot of difficulty concentrating, too.

xpost I'm beginning to wonder how busy I will be soon. I'm a full time instructor, BUT clearly with today's infection in the San Juan office, it's only a matter of time before other offices have that same issue, and when one office closes, another has to step up, which means pulling people from the phones to put into training is....going to be discouraged?

There is a special training redesign project, and I'm assuming our third party is still working as I presume most of them don't actually work in an office, but....that ain't enough to keep me busy. wondering if they tell us to peace out for a bit and pay us. I would not mind that at all.

suffice it to say, when shit like this happens, it's unbelievable how I suddenly stop caring about performance issues. my company isn't gonna lay anybody off now, cos they know how optics look, but I am betting come like...November, suddenly it will be "hmm, do we really need 6 trainers? can we get by with 5? and coincidentally can the one that has an unusually high salary for this role?"

All schools and colleges in the area closed til end of month. So it's taken several talks and dance classes and things with it.
Also the library and community centres for same duration.
& art galleries in the middle of exhibitions which may or may not continue after that date. Not sure how concrete a reopening on that date is. Cos nobody does.
Just gingers crossed that things improve don't go further the other way.
Did get to ask what "total collapse of society" was in Irish before the classes were put in a forced break.
But still god what a drag.
Art festivals and events already had a bad start because of frequent storms. Now this.
Galway 2020 seems to have had bad luck since before it started. Didn't raise the funds it was intended to beforehand either. & has now presumably lost a load.
Grand opening was the night of Ciara so got shelved.

I wonder if Trump will be stubborn enough to hold one of his rallies...

oh please do.
Book a tour even

'gingers crossed'

I am enjoying this typo

trying to persuade my 68 year old mum who had a p bad case of pneumonia a couple of years ago to give the bingo a miss tomorrow night. not having much luck so far.

suffice it to say, when shit like this happens, it's unbelievable how I suddenly stop caring about performance issues. my company isn't gonna lay anybody off now, cos they know how optics look, but I am betting come like...November, suddenly it will be "hmm, do we really need 6 trainers? can we get by with 5? and coincidentally can the one that has an unusually high salary for this role?"

― sorry for butt rockin (Neanderthal)

my wife has the same worries. trying to stay "mostly apolitical" because i've already had my hand smacked once but when it comes to this i tend to think of it in terms of how many people are uncertain and worried about how they're going to keep the lights on for the next month, not in the sense of guilt or privilege or whatever but in the sense of... if stuff like that starts happening on a wide scale, you or i probably aren't the first or the most likely people to be hit with that. 2020 was already going to be a super unpredictable year. worrying about my long-term financial health isn't a priority for me because i can't do anything about it, can't predict what's going to happen, can't take any reasonable or meaningful steps to prepare for whatever that is. it's more important for me to work on being flexible and capable of adapting to whatever happens, that's a lot of what i mean when i say i want to learn as much as i can from this crisis. controlling panic for me is declaring certain concerns arbitrarily "out of scope" and putting them on a shelf until later.

trying to persuade my 68 year old mum who had a p bad case of pneumonia a couple of years ago to give the bingo a miss tomorrow night. not having much luck so far.

The bingo was packed on Wednesday! I thought i could roll into an empty hall and win all the money, but alas.

My mother's asthmatic and a former nurse / radiographer and currently won't stay at home, despite me offering to do all her shopping for the next few weeks. My dad, who had a severe respiratory issue two years ago, is just getting off a twelve-hour flight, trading a country with no coronavirus and lousy hospitals for one with decent hospitals but a growing outbreak. Might just weld their locks shut and pipe in soup through a window.

Wanted to link this quickly while I'm still thinking about it - one question that has been vexing me was determining how long a surface can be contaminated. There are basic advisories on avoiding shaking hands, touching door handles, sharing phones and other common items but little on whether or not you should scrub down the last remaining bags of rice on the shelf at Whole Foods. I'm working under the assumption that all of Pasadena has been coughing on them.

This article is new (March 9), hasn't been peer reviewed yet, but builds off another paper from January.

Aerosol and surface stability of HCoV-19 (SARS-CoV-2) compared to SARS-CoV-1

We found that viable virus could be detected in aerosols up to 3 hours post aerosolization, up to 4 hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to 2-3 days on plastic and stainless steel. HCoV-19 and SARS-CoV-1 exhibited similar half-lives in aerosols, with median estimates around 2.7 hours. Both viruses show relatively long viability on stainless steel and polypropylene compared to copper or cardboard: the median half-life estimate for HCoV-19 is around 13 hours on steel and around 16 hours on polypropylene. Our results indicate the aerosol and fomite transmission of HCoV-19 is plausible, as the virus can remain viable in aerosols for multiple hours and on surfaces up to days.

So our best friends flew to New Orleans for her Mom's 80th Birthday Party . . . with her Mom. I told my friend they are insane. Surprise Mom . . . we got you coronavirus for your birthday!

From January (HCoV-19 specifics aren't fully listed here yet).

Persistence of coronaviruses on inanimate surfaces and their inactivation with biocidal agents

Most data were described with the endemic human coronavirus strain (HCoV-) 229E. On different types of materials it can remain infectious for from 2 hours up to 9 days. A higher temperature such as 30°C or 40°C reduced the duration of persistence of highly pathogenic MERS-CoV, TGEV and MHV. However, at 4°C persistence of TGEV and MHV can be increased to ≥ 28 days. Few comparative data obtained with SARS-CoV indicate that persistence was longer with higher inocula (Table I). In addition it was shown at room temperature that HCoV-229E persists better at 50% compared to 30% relative humidity.

A guy I know at work, who is supposed to be going to the pub with us tonight, just tested positive. He's been disinvited. Also, apparently he was in work yesterday when he was ill.

Christ, that sucks.

It looks like a) basically only people from my department are in the office so far today (read: other people with sensible managers are sensibly working from home), b) only a handful of my department is actually coming in at all today, and c) all of the management in my department are spending the day cozily ensconced in their comfy comfy beds instead of deigning to come into our germ-ridden office. The handful of us here atm are getting increasingly grumbly and 'fuck this'-ish.

I don't directly work with him and I haven't been in his company for well over a month, so it could be worse.

Haven't been for a few days, but apparently the freezer aisle at our local Trader Joe's was literally cleared out. We know someone who works there, and their usual average daily sales are around $65,000, but they doubled that yesterday. We popped in to a different store yesterday, just to check it out, and they were out of TP and some cleaning stuff, but mostly seemed stocked. A Target I was at wasn't that bad (yet) either.

Oh, I just heard through the grapevine that the manager in the department directly behind me, who was here at least through like Wednesday, was sent home sick at some point in the last day or so. Don't know what 'sick' means but can't wait to find out. Caaaaaaaaan't wait. Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan't wait.

All employees (about 30k) at my company advised to work from home for the foreseeable.

In keeping with my company's general state of bumblefuckery, they're apparently making decisions here on a department-by-department basis. So a department on the other side of our floor has already been told that they'll be working from home starting Monday and for at least the next three weeks. Whereas our department is sharing the dribs and drabs of information that each of us has learned from our respective managers, as we're each apparently only privy to certain information pertaining to the near future of our work situation. It's fun! Like a scavenger hunt!

same here at my job. a bunch of vague emails about preparing to shift to offsite operations, documents about how to work from offsite, but no communication about who is going to be working from home or when it will start

Apart from anything else, presumably there's no work getting done in this situation?

i am working from home (and hence posting) as i normally do, very extremely unsure when and how i'm going to get paid for much of it and thus ardently wishing my various editors and their finance departments the best of all possible health wherever they may end up doing what they do, and swift communications to all inc.uninterrupted BACS activity

5:30am email: Normal operations; everyone report to work
6:48am email: The university is closed; stay home

After 36 hours of searing chest pain, shortness of breath, and a battery of tests, a friend was just told by her doctors she "probably" has it, but no COVID tests are available in our area and no likelihood of getting them soon, and no likelihood of her even being allowed to take one since she hasnt left the country or had a proven contact with a confirmed case. She is recovering from a splenectomy a couple months ago and freaking out.

Just had a jolly-hockeysticks email from the higher-ups saying in v rallying-the-troops tones that nothing has changed but we're all ~thinking very hard~ about the serious changes that we may eventually get round to deciding on.

Apart from anything else, presumably there's no work getting done in this situation?

Aargh, I spent months refreshing Brexit news constantly and having it fill up all my available brain space that I was supposed to be using for other things and now I'm back in that place. I don't really understand how anyone else is not, and one colleague made tentative noises re similar earlier, but apparently everyone else was happy to Just (Let Someone) Get On With It re Brexit, so maybe it's just me...

(and this thread. Thank you, this thread)

The most popular route to Mount Everest is shutting down as Nepal seeks to check the spread of the pandemic.

Priorities!

Wanted to link this quickly while I'm still thinking about it - one question that has been vexing me was determining how long a surface can be contaminated.

― Elvis Telecom

This is one of the things that frustrates me most about COVID response. While I understand wanting to avoid panic, a lot of people recommended - and in fact are still recommending - measures to prevent COVID despite not knowing how, exactly, COVID spreads, and in some cases directly counter to the emerging knowledge of how COVID spreads. If COVID can remain viable on a plastic surface for up to 72 hours, how on earth are we supposed to believe moving to shift work will be an effective means of containment?

There are costs to well-intentioned falsehoods. I feel like the best thing I can do here is not assume people's intentions and to not map my assumptions about panic and social dynamics onto other people's actions, so I will just say that whatever the reason, when supposed experts recommend measures to prevent the spread of disease that turn out to be utterly inadequate, it erodes the level of trust in those experts, erodes anybody's attempts to keep people from panicking. I am suspending any further judgements on the topic for the present moment.

Mt Everest is closed??

Went to Target this morning. It opened at 8 and at 7:45 there was a line forming at the door. Not full-on Black Friday, but surprising. As we all shuffled in the door, one employee said jokingly to his manager, "Maybe they're all here for Animal Crossing!" Later, as I was in the (largely empty) toilet paper aisle, a different employee said to another, "It's like a Prada boutique."

We got everything we needed except for Clorox disinfecting wipes, which were completely gone, and honestly it wasn't that crowded or frantic inside. Now I'm wondering how it will be when I go to my regular grocery store on Sunday morning.

Man, you got my hopes up that Animal Crossing released early, would have made my kid so happy while she's stuck at home.

I was planning mt everest as my quarantine location :(

Speaking of which, just because we'll be stuck together for a while, more or less, we did some meal planning last night and absolutely no one in my household was the least bit helpful.

Me: Since who knows what's up and when it won't be, we should probably think of some practical staples we need.
Family member one: we should get the cereal with red berries.
FM#2: Ugh, I hate that one, get the one with green berries.
FM#3: Why don't you get one of each?
Me: OK. Will you eat either of those?
FM#3: No, get me the one with blueberries.

And so on across all categories.

I dunno, sounds like they have their priorities in order to me. Whereas I failed to get any berry-adorned cereal whatsoever.

Since I'm back downtown again today anyway, I'm thinking: fuckit, another Target trip wouldn't hurt. When I finally batten down the hatches, I'm just planning to not leave my building at all for the foreseeable future (except for going to vote, which is probably when the bug will likely strike me down).

I still had some stuff left over from the no-deal Brexit prepping so the biggest immediate expense has been loading up on cat food / cat litter.

I went to the doctor this morning to get my asthma prescriptions refilled so I will be set for the year and he also prescribed me a flu shot ( so I can jump the queue) because I guess they are going to make an announcement on Monday that tit's mandatory (chile)? I don't know how they make it mandatory. But my spanish is also trash. ( I feel kind of bad about this but I think this will be the first flu shot I have gotten in ??? I don't recall my last primary physician ever giving me the flu shot, unless she snuck it in. I am sorry).

I have not left the house since Tuesday for any reason other than going to work or the grocery store or pharmacy. I stocked up on staples, and paid out-of-pocket for a prescription refill my insurer would not cover, so that I can avoid the stores for the next couple of weeks -- as I see it, the risk is only going to increase as the infection spreads, while the reward decreases with the many predictable out-of-stock goods.

I am also a single man, living alone, with some money in the bank, no dependents, and a job I can do remotely. I don't expect everyone to do what I am doing; I do it because I'm one of the ones who can.

The hardest part is going to be missing the 3 or 4 AA meetings per week I usually go to. But my sponsor has been able to stay sober for the past 10 years despite being partially paralyzed and unable to attend meetings, so I have a good example to follow.

I am also a single man, living alone, with some money in the bank, no dependents, and a job I can do remotely. I don't expect everyone to do what I am doing; I do it because I'm one of the ones who can.

Yup this is gonna be me in a week or two I suspect, depending on how fast it ends up spreading here in Toronto. I'm not ruling out some very limited (4-5 person) hangouts just to break up the isolation / ward off insanity, though.

Xposts to rusho

This is what enraged me so much about de blasios statement earlier this week that HIS scientists have found it only persists on surfaces for minutes.

my spouse's university sent out an email that they have 5 liter cans of alcohol gel that faculty can buy. I told him to find people to split it with because there are only so many places you can put that.

my friend tried to ask me if I was busy and wanted to hang out last night and I made up an excuse because I just was feeling too miserable to hang out. i told him maybe on the weekend.

i'm in a similar place of privilege and tbh now that pretty much any concerts I had tickets for are cancelled, I was only going to leave the house to go to the movies anyway, and tehre's plenty of that I can watch at home.

Has anyone grappled with how much to walk the dog/whether to let the dog play with other dogs

NB he is a puppy but big (6 months 55 lbs) and while he could probably ‘remember’ how to pee inside on pads, it’d be hard from a sheer volume perspective

Went ahead w/ meeting a friend I hadn't seen for a long time yesterday, and am still having dinner out tonight w/ my bro. But after that I don't have a lot of one-on-one's planned, and the bigger meetings (some book presentations etc) will be cancelled anyway.

jon not jon where are you? I remember walking my dog during Katrina for what ended up being 10 times because I stayed up all night to make sure there was no flooding and any break in the wind/rain I ran him outside because I was so worried we would be cooped up (he was 75lbs).

I would totally not let my dog (if he was still around) socialize with other dogs right now. Because that means you will also be socializing.

ugh, I meant Hurricane Sandy in ny.

I still had some stuff left over from the no-deal Brexit prepping so the biggest immediate expense has been loading up on cat food / cat litter.

Cat food and cat litter is a worry as it's so damn bulky/heavy and there isn't really room to stockpile much of it.

The other half told me off for Brexit prepping and is still in "everything will be fine" mode so we just have a couple of extra kgs of rice and cereal (not actually sure how long those would last if they were the only food left) and a lot of extra soap. Will try to sneak some tinned goods home if there are any left - beans, soup, some tinned milk wouldn't go amiss for the cereal. Local shop is already empty of loo roll so not sure if there'll be tins left.

We have a small fridge/freezer which is permanently almost full despite having basically nothing useful in, so not much use stockpiling anything not canned or dry.

Sent a message to my dad to see how they're doing and if they curtailed their travel plans, and he responded "Mea culpa...we're in Israel". Coming back today I think.

Still having to go into work, but on the upside, traffic is great??

Seat to yourself on the bus *thumbs up*

saw a guy at Trader Joe's buying
* four boxes of cereal
* four boxes of frozen rice
* ~ 50 protein bars

I am going to lose my mind with this social distancing business. After class yesterday I realized just how much I enjoy being around people! Aggghhhhhh

hope all my erstwhile pen pals are ready for a revival of correspondence :)

I went into my dark classroom at my closed school to empty out my little mini refrigerator. I ran into one of my students, who was cleaning his locker. We stood ten feet apart from each other and said “be good!” and it rang really hollow. The biggest source of my happiness is my students, and... I can’t do anything for/about them right now. Feels super helpless.