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Daily coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - March 19
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
I'm staying home from work today because my wife is presenting mild flu like symptoms. It's kind of a relief because I was so stressed at work even though we're now closed to the public.
Monaco’s head of state Prince Albert II has tested positive, making him the first head of state to test positive (or at least the first one to admit it).
Working from home since a week, not much to report. If I didn't have family I wouldn't worry much, since I'm only really exposed when going to buy food. My parents live in the country side and don't take much risks, but if they caught it I probably wouldn't even be able to go see them.
I've already lived isolated for more long period of times in the past, so that's not an issue, plus I'm in frequent contact with my colleagues (we sometimes do virtual coffee breaks).
The most annoying thing right now is the weather ; spring fully bloomed the last week... flowers, trees, birds, cloudless sky for days and it's so warm. It just makes you want to go out. I'm even tempted to go running... and I haven't ran for years.
Are you not allowed to go out where you live? From what I've seen the point is to avoid other people, not the outdoors.
I do go for a walk once or twice per day, it's just that I'm supposed to work, plus there's a lot of other people walking around since everything is closed and the weather is so nice, which makes avoiding people not so easy.
I've been working from home for three days now. The VPN is pretty slow especially with larger files. A lot of back and forth as I put things onto the C: and back onto the ones I use for work. It's been nice not having to commute. My boyfriend and I already have a VERY short commute so this is like an extra cherry on top.
We've been staying in even after work because that's just our inclination. We're going to try to get some laundry done today, and at my apartment management changed it so it's only a dollar per load for each machine, to help promote frequent laundering and just being more clean in general.
I get to play animal crossing tomorrow and took the day off so ime ready for that.
That's a nice gesture of your apartment manager. It's good to see that not everything is about selfishness and grabbing what you can.
My mom went to the doctor today for what she thought was the flu and they decided to test her for COVID-19. We won't know the outcome for a few days. They live in a fairly rural area of Tennessee so if she does indeed have it then I suspect a lot more people do...
I get this whole thing is a massive loss for some people and don't want to make light of the people who are struggling but I have honestly been loving the quarantine. My company has us all working from home for the next two weeks, and now that I have my set up ready I have been getting tons of work done, not to mention no commute. I can get out of bed early enough and start working at my own pace. I made sure to get food and everything I needed early last week before the rush started so I am good for at least the next week or two if stores are still out of everything, even though I expect things to be calm down a bit next week as far as panic buying goes. I have friends and family who have definitely seen the other side of this whole ordeal, and I'm trying to help them out as much as possible, but personally, I haven't had a negative experience.
I find I also work better from home, I can work on whatever I want, no interruption, I feel like I can focus and do some real work.
Sent a concerned email to HR about this half and half plan, going to assume it's going to fall down a hole until this has all blown over.
I did get a response, they are following the measures implemented by the government, and I can take sick days if I feel uncomfortable and we will be informed if the procedures change.
I get that maybe I'm being unreasonable, and we want to have as much uptime as possible and everybody is depending on us and yay duty of capitalism, but if we're trying to not get people sick and can work just fine from home, why are we not sending everybody home?
You are not being unreasonable. Take them up on their offer and use the sick days.
My parents went to a retail store and they said everyone was freaking out so that's good to know. Unfortunately it flies in the face of social distancing, which is not being pushed by our government enough.
Yeah, if it looks crowded, turn around and go somewhere else.
I've seen a local report that Costco is better now, so it seems it's temporary.
I'm in Brazil so Costco isn't an option here. Absurdly large retail stores aren't common in Brazil.
Hopefully that means there are more choices. When and where are people not shopping?
So far, I'm getting through fine.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've been making sure to buy a few extra items every time I go to the supermarket, and I've been going to twice a week instead of once a week. I'm now stocked up for a potential 14-day quarantine (not for months, just for a couple of weeks). All I need to do now is buy my normal supplies every week to replace what I use. I got extra lucky yesterday: I walked into the supermarket just as dozens of staff members were re-stocking the shelves, and I scored a shiny new bottle of hand soap by asking the staff member if she could please open that box for me. (I'll take my small victories where I can find them.)
On the other hand, my neighbour seems stressed. They're a young family: father, mother, 2 or 3 young children (pre-high school). Last evening, the father was walking around outside in their patio area, which is just over the fence from our patio. He started shouting at one of the children. Our side door was open, and I heard every word: "Go inside! You can't come out here! You're walking where I just walked with my wet feet! Go inside! I can't be anywhere near you! People get sick from this! You think I want to be out here?" He was using an angry-worried tone of voice: the tone you use when you're angry at someone because they're putting themself in danger.
I gather someone is in isolation/quarantine. I think the father is scared of infecting his son. He sounded very worried.
I told my housemate what I heard, and now he's worried about us catching the virus from next door. We had just been out shopping, and he touched everything within reach in every shop we went to and he's not conscious of touching his face... but he's worried he might catch the virus from it drifting over the fence in the open air. <sigh>
P.S. I noticed something amusing at the supermarket yesterday.
Even though everyone's panic-buying, there are certain things they still won't buy. There are whole ranges of products missing from the shelves - except for certain flavours/styles which people don't like. The canned meals of sausage & veg, steak & veg, steak & onion were all gone - but not Irish stew or chicken curry. All the tomato sauce was gone - except for the organic version (made by a popular brand, just organic). And so on, across a variety of products. Even in the midst of a panic, people still have limits!
It was most amusing to see this among the Mi Goreng noodles. The shelves were bare of all these noodles (and all the other quick-cook noodle brands) - with the exception of anything that said "hot" or "spicy" or "curry". Those flavours were still quite plentiful. Don't people realise that the flavours come from little sachets which they don't have to use? I hate spicy food, but I bought a couple of packs of spicy noodles. I'll cook up the noodles, discard the flavour sachets, add some frozen vegetables, put a bit of butter on top - yum! I often eat this during winter as a yummy lunch. And it's still readily available because people are silly.
I’m pretty much in quarantine.
My laptop broke.
My computer monitor broke.
I bought an adapter to use an old VGA monitor. When I got home I discovered my brand new desktop computer was dead.
My PS4 and the living room TV are keeping me sane.
PLEASE GOD STOP BREAKING MY STUFF.
Spouse's employer just lost a major client that's being impacted badly by the crisis. His employer is cutting pay across the board by 20% to avoid layoffs, so we've got belt-tightening for the foreseeable future.
I drove out to the park to get a walk in; I'm still seeing too many cars on the road and parked at shops that are still open. My hair salon still wanted me to come in. The local newspaper, billboards, and everything else shows CDC information, but people aren't taking the virus seriously enough, even with cases in the area.
PSA: Support your local newspaper - ours has been great at tracking business and public service closures, providing community service information, and generally giving good advice while trying to keep people's spirits up.
I am doing okay mostly staying inside. I'm done with my retail job, so it's pretty easy to avoid contact with anyone except my SO. She has been pretty congested the last day or two (though that's her only symptom), and I found out that one of my parents is sick as well. Nothing serious enough to warrant a testing for COVID at this point in time, but it does make my whole travelling across the country need interesting.
My biggest worry is honestly that I'm one of what seems to be the relatively common cases where there's no symptoms but you carry the virus. I wouldn't be shocked if I interacted with at least one sick person working in retail, so who knows.
Anyway, after getting in touch with the company I'm supposed to be starting with, it doesn't seem like they know what's going on either. I think their struggle may be between having people work or onboard from home, and working with client security restrictions. That was from the HR guy who hired me, at a different office from where I'll be though, so tomorrow I think I will try to touch base with the person who is supposed to be my direct superior, and see if the extra 48 hours has clarified anything over there.
Part of me wants to book the bear minimum of travel that I need to get there ASAP and just get it over with, but I know it would be good if I could wait until I can get home and get some of my items from there. Plus, if I am going to be onboarded remotely, I might as well do that in the apartment that I am already paying for rather than getting something temporary where I'm going to just sit there!
Michigan Dept. of Public Health just combined the confirmed case results of public COVID-19 testing, and private (which I didn't even know was a thing).
We've gone from 80 confirmed cases this morning to 334 as of now. The lack of widespread testing is the most culpable part of the crisis, and what's going to contribute to worst-case scenarios in the U.S.
Kinda freaking out today. California is now in a state of lockdown. And Los Angeles came out with their own version as well. I'm not as concerned about the lockdown itself (although the impact on the economy is not going to be insignificant) as much as the effect on people. I've spent the past few hours talking to people I know who either think they won't be allowed to work, or who think they won't be allowed to leave the house whatsoever. Just talking to them about the list of exemptions, which is long, and helping to walk them through some of the emotional response.
These are intelligent people, capable, and competent. They're my cultivated circle of people who I surround myself because of these qualities. And there are orders of magnitude more people who lack these qualities. How are they going to react? And then how are the police going to react to them?
In the past week or so, the few times I've gone out I've observed a noticeable increase in human kindness. People talking to each other more openly (from a distance), sharing their stories, trying to alleviate their anxieties a bit by connecting with each other over the shared experience. I genuinely hope that this aspect takes the driver's seat in the coming days.
It definitely still doesn't seem to be at the point where it should be, but a lot of people's attitudes do seem to be changing very quickly. The Harris Poll did a couple of surveys only 3 days apart about what activities people were willing to do and there was a pretty major shift.