Bump this thread every time you hear someone using the coronavirus as an excuse not to do something they didn't want to do in the first place

Two or three meetings cancelled over the last couple of weeks, coronavirus apparently having a big effect on the travel schedules of people based in the UK.

This will become an increasingly widespread and creative phenomenon over the next few months so let's chart the evolution of the form.

washing my hands, tbh

respire

Matt please rename this thread to Coronavirus: classic or classic?

I'm thinking of bumping a non-essential appointment my son has on the 10th on the grounds of pure altruism when about 90% of my motivation really is: can't be arsed.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/scotland-boss-steve-clarke-misses-21622580

I've been wondering whether there'd be any advantage to saying I'm self-quarantining instead of being crazy, timely thread

Mirror headline "1% of people who catch Coronavirus might end up dying" - real figure is obviously 100%

I used it as an excuse to avoid an 'industry conference' this week. Real reason is that I don't have an extra grand for airfare and hotel and I have no interest in ever going to Charlotte.

TBH if you're gonna fake your own death then there must be easier ways, the coronavirus plan is riddled with flaws.

Look at who else is taking a break, according to The Guardian:

"The situation is too serious for Johnson and Cummings’ personal vendettas and destructive tendencies to continue"

I'm sorry I can't engage with this politics thread bullshit I have coronavirus.

just bumped my son's hospital appointment for another 6 weeks because "we'll have a better idea where we are at with this coponius thingy by then".

There's an education program at the University of Washington that I signed up for this spring in hopes of becoming more employable. It starts around the end of the month, and there are in-person classes and a practicum where you're assigned to a high school classroom. I'm thinking about backing out of it, on the grounds that Seattle response to the coronavirus is agonizingly slow and they're unlikely to cancel classes even when they really need to. Not sure if I'm being practical or shooting my career in the foot.

my colleague's couples therapist doesn't want to see him & his wife because of coronavirus! I tried really really hard not to laugh when he told me this

sorry, your relationship is clearly so toxic it carries an unacceptable risk of infection

even though you would be paying me $100/hr (or whatever) to listen to your problems

Em’s training for the London Marathon (sponsor her! https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/forcasper) and is convinced they’ll cancel/postpone it. I can’t imagine it going ahead the rate things are spreading tbf. But you’ve gotta keep training until it’s official just in case, but is the training for nought? If they postpone it do you go into a holding training routine?

annual trip to las vegas trade show been cancelled this is glorious.

congrats Fizzles

honestly would love a bit of a mild dose of corona for the 2 weeks off of work if it weren't for the fact that my partner is a server and the lost wages would be an issue

thanks silby. obv means long overdue visit to LA can’t be tacked on but by god i hate that vegas trade show.

me going to work today

Things would need to escalate dramatically before they cancelled the marathon I think.

I was gonna clean my room
But then I got coronavirus
I was gonna get up and find the broom
But then I got coronavirus

The marathon is 40,000 people (and that’s just the runners; god knows how many spectators) from all over the world - surely that’s a massive public health risk at the moment?

yeah plus the one who infects ppl would be really fast so it'd be hard to track them down

i would be v surprised if it weren’t cancelled tbh.

I’ve quit drinking Corona

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne-UnC2QpsU

Speaking of Seattle, KEXP posted today that As a precaution, in-studio performances will be temporarily closed to the public until further notice due to the small size of the room and close person-to-person proximity. As always, you can still stream performances and our live radio broadcast at KEXP.org.

i wonder if limes will see an oversupply issue

xxpost

Yeah maybe - I can see it just being dramatically reduced especially if flight restrictions are in place. I always think of it as a predominantly UK thing when you exclude the frontrunners.

The writing will be on the wall if they start cancelling football matches I suppose.

it was dead cold saturday and I stayed inside because I had a minor cough but really because I didn't want to go outside in that, does that count

xp I think I saw that Italian football matches would be played sans spectators for a month?

The Boston Marathon is a little over a month away, pretty big call to have to make. You really can't postpone something like this - if you wait another month or so the weather becomes too warm for a decent race and you start to court all kinds of other problems like runner dehydration.

I would rather catch a lethal virus than fuck with the Prem schedule right now tbh

Festival season's going to be interesting - sporting events are one thing but they can't possibly allow thousands of people to come together in very crowded conditions and poor hygiene for days on end.

i thought about going to the trans fem meeting tonight but i'm not feeling it, i'm blaming the coronavirus

waiting for everybody to just quit showing up to work, mind you nobody was much showing up to work before covid

Oh god we’ve got Green Man tickets. Hadn’t thought of that being affected yet.

guess I have to (sigh) skip all the SXSW events I was planning to attend and just stay home and read books

I am extra not handing money to homeless people

Homeless guy gave my son a pound coin in the street once. That was odd.

Woke up at 4am struck by the possibility of all summer festivals being cancelled and the knock on effects for bands, festival promoters etc. No idea how insurance works, whether bands still get paid some of their fees if the festival cancels etc (at a rough guess for "usual" cancellations the headliners get paid and the bands lower down the order get nothing?).

Oh shit sorry. Tbh I know enough managers I could ask but have been holding off doing so on the assumption that the very question might send them into meltdown.

I would assume the big acts have some form of insurance against event cancellation but the insurance sector will have taken a hammering by then and will use any excuse not to pay out.

Tbh I know enough managers I could ask but have been holding off doing so on the assumption that the very question might send them into meltdownk

Big Sean D won't melt down under virus questioning

i have two trips coming up in april that i’m sorta like lol about. one of which is nola jazz fest which thankfully doesn’t go as far as requiring attendees to camp out but i imagine they’re rethinking having it at all rn

Thank you, Matt DC. Much appreciated even if it does get cancelled!

I am angling for all my UK events and activities to be cancelled, none of which i wanted to attend in the first place. There's a big teaching conference in Manchester in April i reckon is probably 60/40 likely to be nixed. I'm almost certain a boring gala dinner with a bunch of ambassadors from across Asia in a few weeks will be. The difficulty is that, having been overtly indifferent to the risk in going to Singapore last month, i can hardly claim to be particularly worried about it now.

I was gonna clean my room
But then I got coronavirus
I was gonna get up and find the broom
But then I got coronavirus

under-rated post.

The advice given to UK government officials is apparently that it's football cancellation or nothing - if they hold it without spectators then people will just gather in pubs to watch it. Obviously football fans shun the pub under most circumstances.

Can't imagine the Marathon will go ahead, the Olympics is apparently getting a cancellation push thanks to Akira.

Back on topic though - Flybe would love to continue to lose money hand over fist but, you know, coronavirus.

Lol never difficult to be a CEO. My workplace is presenteeism central so I’m wondering how long they’ll stick it out.

lol that’s balderdash. all my stuff has been cancelled and it’s great.

Yep, i'm not insensitive to the reasons - a couple of thousand attendees, plus exhibitors, plus sponsorship, is likely to run to about £2m lost revenue, so if the insurance payout isn't concrete, it would be catastrophic for them, but you can't realistically expect teachers from dozens of countries to mingle and then go back in to school the next week. I'd guess that it's going to be like the London Book Fair where all the exhibitors pulled the plug individually until there was no point in holding it at all.

_lol that’s balderdash. all my stuff has been cancelled and it’s great._


Yep, i'm not insensitive to the reasons - a couple of thousand attendees, plus exhibitors, plus sponsorship, is likely to run to about £2m lost revenue, so if the insurance payout isn't concrete, it would be catastrophic for them, but you can't realistically expect teachers from dozens of countries to mingle and then go back in to school the next week. I'd guess that it's going to be like the London Book Fair where all the exhibitors pulled the plug individually until there was no point in holding it at all.

Rome without tourists. This is surreal. pic.twitter.com/IhKODhKsGv

— Courtney Mares (@catholicourtney) March 7, 2020

This is great. Bet Courtney is having the time of her life.

The events industry is in real trouble, every big international event is a few million in revenue but pushing on ahead is probably a sunk cost fallacy if there aren't any delegates there. People might take the risk of travelling for a once a year holiday or a family wedding but for the chance to stand in a conference centre with the same people you see every year? Especially when anyone running a business has enough other things to worry about right now.

My train is way way emptier than usual, looks like a lot of people are staying home already.

Only four people showed up to cricket nets yesterday. I bowled a 1st XI batsman twice and almost nobody was there to see it ffs. There are very real problems people like me are facing

Just landed in London from Milan. Zero checks. No info. How can it be possible? #COVID2019 pic.twitter.com/4z81iKLtu1

— Federico Gatti (@federicogatti) March 8, 2020

Read the follow-up but I love the photo.

a towel each and a leaflet with DONT PANIC in soothing typeface

lol @ Zizek quoting shit Tarantino movies in RT "Coronavirus is ‘Kill Bill’-esque blow to capitalism"

Wondering what kind of lobbying effort the insurance industry is making right now.

― ShariVari

i'm in the insurance industry, lobbying isn't really a priority for us right now, mostly we're trying to figure out how to keep our business functions running in the event of quarantine

if you want to know my professional concerns about this it's the massive potential for telemedicine scams. the telemedicine industry hasn't impressed upon me to date its strong commitment to high ethical standards, and a certain number of people are, i suspect, going to make a whole shitload of money from this crisis for doing nothing of clinical value at all

lol @ Zizek quoting shit Tarantino movies in RT "Coronavirus is ‘Kill Bill’-esque blow to capitalism"

― calzino

what the fuck does that even mean, is he talking about the five point palm exploding heart technique specifically?

lol, he goes into a big video shop guy ramble about how a character gets killed in Kill Bill, fuck knows what it has to do with COVID 19!

What makes this attack so fascinating is the time between being hit and the moment of death: I can have a nice conversation as long as I sit calmly, but I am all this time aware that the moment I start to walk, my heart will explode and I will drop dead.

zizek clearly that situation calls for a "fist of the north star" meme, how the hell can you call yourself a public intellectual and not know that

the haystack is capitalism
https://media.giphy.com/media/iNpWOiqUFsgU0/giphy.gif

That Zizek piece is actually the opposite of the thread premise 'bump this thread every time someone uses the coronavirus as an excuse to do what they've been desperate to do for ages'.

Was hoping to use this as an excuse not to answer my coworker's phone - surely nobody wants someone else's mouth near their phone receiver at this time of international panic etc - but apparently that's not how it works.

I hate phones.

Peter Rabbit 2 has become the latest major film to have its release pushed back amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, which features the voices of James Corden and Margot Robbie, was due in UK cinemas on 27 March, and the US a week later.

But with uncertainty over whether fans will avoid cinemas, that has now been put back to 7 August.

someone using the coronavirus as an excuse not to do something nobody wanted them to do in the first place

We are very sorry to announce the cancellation of the BIFF BYFORD solo tour previously scheduled for April & May 2020. The cancellation is mainly due to low ticket sales, which may or may not have been affected by the current Worldwide Covid 19 Virus pandemic.

gonna go with "may not"

oH nO

Michael Gove has admitted coronavirus could derail the next round of trade talks with the EU amid “specific public health concerns”.

Asked what impact the outbreak of the disease, which has led to the whole of Italy being put into lockdown, would have on the Brexit talks, the Cabinet Office minister told MPs it was “a live question”.

Gove added: ” We were looking forward to Joint Committee meeting in UK on 30th this month and also looking forward, of course, to the next next stage of negotiations going ahead, but we have had indications today from Belgium that there may be specific public health concerns.”

Basically there's no way that artists and promoters won't take a big hit to their earnings even if things aren't anywhere near as bad as imagined. At the very least a lot of Asian tours are going to be cancelled.

― Matt DC, Thursday, March 5, 2020 3:40 AM

I just told my wife I couldn’t get a haircut because of coronavirus. I’m on the board.

this thread title aged very badly lol

I was supposed to travel to present at a conference next week and I'd been debating with myself about cancelling. Thankfully others jumped first and the whole thing is off.

I really really don't want to go to a wedding this saturday.

I was able to cancel a business trip I really didn't want to go on under the excuse that we were asked to cancel all 'non-essential' travel.

i'm officially in panic buying mode

apparently when i panic i decide i really need to order more lego sets

think i just got our residents association AGM postponed (was to be held next wed): one of the directors is ill w/"flu-like" symptoms and the secretary is aged and v.infirm and due to resign anyway -- and it takes place in a claustrophobic little basement room at a nearby bookshop lol

i didn't want to do it anyway bcz it's boring and every year we decide the exact same things and do nothing about them, plus no one else from my block ever attends >:(

aaah, from your block. there I was thinking you had an annual Residents fandom get-together.

A couple of film screenings I was on the fence about seeing have been cancelled. The National Gallery of Art is flat-out closing for at least 3 weeks. The Smithsonian museums are open for now, but Freer Gallery has cancelled screenings and other "gatherings."

My friends' poetry reading series canceled their next event, and it's a small relief not to go. It's an excellent series and all, but listening to poetry is not always what you want to do on a Friday night.

ohh man i really wanted to go to your burlesque variety show too. it’s just this pandemic. no i was so stoked for the fire eater and the pasties with the tassels and the star trek themed striptease. it’s just, like. this coronavirus you know

— rax ‘raccoon toddler’ king (@RaxKingIsDead) March 13, 2020

Buckingham Palace announced The Queen cancelled a planned visit to Camden on 26 March.

The Queen otm

Trooping the colour too.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/17/harry-and-meghan-appropriate-measures-coronavirus

probably Starmer's pathetic non-response to leaked internal LP report will be because he is prioritising the rona blah blah..not in the national interest right now ..blah blah

Hi

By this time using covid-19 as an excuse not to do something seems to legitimately cover a pretty large domain, including in some circumstances not wanting to take out the trash.

Capitolfest 18 is not happening because theaters in NY State are expected to still be shut down in August. I'll miss it, but the idea of traveling in the current environment is unsettling.

Yeah this thread looks dated now but you just wait until Trump tries to delay the Presidential Election.

That'd require Congress

NASA: James Webb Space Telescope's launch is delayed from March 2021 to October 31, 2021. Partly due to COVID-19.

— Emre Kelly (@EmreKelly) July 16, 2020

it's a godsend for never wanting to see my parents

Telescope would be pointing the other way anyway, map

The administration is now targeting people who are in the United States lawfully—in some cases for many years—by doing things like scaling back the printing of green cards and employment authorization documents (or work permits). These are critical documents that immigrants need to take part in many aspects of American life. Without them, people can’t work, obtain loans, or prove they are in the country lawfully.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently cut production of these documents after its contract ended with a third-party printing company. Reports indicate that 50,000 green cards and 75,000 work permits have not been printed. The agency said it planned to manage the production of these documents in-house, but that its ability to do so is limited due to budgetary constraints.

The people impacted by these printing delays have already had their petitions and applications approved by USCIS. They have paid the often-exorbitant filing fees, completed the necessary paperwork, and gone through extensive background checks. Despite this, the agency says it “cannot speculate on future projections of processing times.”

This leaves hundreds of thousands of people without the documents needed to support themselves. These documents are important in normal times—but are even more critical during a worldwide pandemic.

The administration claims that its reduction in printing capacity is due to a USCIS budget shortfall that it has blamed on a reduction in fee revenue during the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://immigrationimpact.com/2020/07/15/uscis-green-card-printing/#.XxYXxyHQhIY

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-54204929

London's New Year's Eve fireworks cancelled

(the day we finally leave the eu)

Heh, I was just commenting to my wife how covid has simultaneously provided the perfect excuse to get out of any function or activity while simultaneously canceling every function and activity.