Random covid-19 observations

[D.A. Ridgely]

I know nothing about OCD, but I think about pushing people in front of buses all the time. In fact, I'm imagining doing it to someone this very moment.

Fortunately I'm only near a universal serial bus. And at least 6' from you in keeping with social distancing guidelines and the geographical separation of Texas and Colorado.

Yeah, but you're not on my list.

At the moment.

[Aresen]

I wouldn't shove someone in front of a bus, but for some people I might be a little slow in giving warning that they were about to step in front of one.

[Warren]

My list got to the point where it was easier to list the people I wouldn't throw under a bus. And then I started scratching names off that.

[Mo]

Ron DeSantis is a scumbag

Yes. What did he do?

The cruise ship that’s docking with 4 dead from Corona has about 250 Americans and 300 Canadians. He is only allowing the Americans that are Florida residents to come ashore and go into hospitals/isolation and leaving everyone else on the ship.

[Warren]

On my last supply run I discovered that the local quilting bee has turned to making face masks.

[Jennifer]

Cross-posted from another thread (background: I'd recently learned a Facebook friend of mine had to go into a care home after coming down with a "Parkinson's type neurological disorder" as one of his relatives put it; I wondered what sort of small affordable cheer-up gifts I could send someone now suffering a severe-to-complete lack of motor skills; ultimately sent him a cheerful letter plus a colorful book of short amusing anecdotes I found in a thrift store for less than the cost of a greeting card; and was relieved when members of his family told me that he and they all enjoyed the book, which they'd go through with him whenever they'd come to visit. And then I said):

... [since] he does at least have people coming to visit him most days, then books like the one I sent (a Ripley's Believe it or Not compendium) would actually be pretty-near perfect for a situation like that: his visitors can read to him when they run out of things to say, and since it's all short standalone bits ranging from only a couple sentences to a couple paragraphs each, that makes it far easier and less exhausting to read out loud .... unless his aunt offers other suggestions (or I think of something better), I'll keep an eye out for another suitable book next time I'm at the Goodwill or similar store.

If we-all were characters in a story -- possibly an epic multi-volume saga about life before and during The Great Pandemic, for readers far enough in the future that 21st-century America is ancient and exotic -- that bit, and indeed the entire subplot, would be what's called "ironic foreshadowing." Horribly unsubtle ironic foreshadowing, too. Whoever wrote this story was a potboiling hack.

[Andrew]

great idea putting all those young and healthy fuckers out of work. All he really needed to do is tell the oldsters to stay the fuck home, because everyone else is fucking walking all over the fucking place spreading their germs while the economy crashes and burns. This is the biggest shit show I have ever witnessed.

This part sounds remarkably like Arizona as well. Lots of traffic on the road, and every gas station I passed today was packed with people hauling trailers, atvs, etc. and heading out for the weekend. The campgrounds and national forests are going to be packed.

[Jennifer]

Interesting piece about the toilet paper shortage -- it's not due to irrational hoarding but because demand has actually gone up: Americans are not making more bathroom visits than before, but they are making far more bathroom visits at home, rather than at work, a restaurant restroom or other public facilities. And the home and commercial toilet paper markets are completely different things, usually made by completely different manufacturers.

https://marker.medium.com/what-everyone ... 12e1358fe0

[Twba]

great idea putting all those young and healthy fuckers out of work. All he really needed to do is tell the oldsters to stay the fuck home, because everyone else is fucking walking all over the fucking place spreading their germs while the economy crashes and burns. This is the biggest shit show I have ever witnessed.

This part sounds remarkably like Arizona as well. Lots of traffic on the road, and every gas station I passed today was packed with people hauling trailers, atvs, etc. and heading out for the weekend. The campgrounds and national forests are going to be packed.

Those of us deemed essential must work but everyone else is on a mandatory unpaid vacation. There are almost no sports to watch. Not everyone wants to binge watch Tiger King. The lockdown will fail.

I now think it was wrong to close the universities and send the students home to infect their grandparents. How many UT students tested positive after spring break? Warehouse them on campus.

I am now a full on contrarian. If I still lived in Arizona, I would play golf on my day off. You can have my six iron when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

[Pham Nuwen]

I wish people would just stop saying essential* and say what they really mean. Sacrificial.

*I am incredibly amused that I get the designation

[Highway]

The job is "essential". The worker is "sacrificial".

(and my work is designated as "essential" as well)

[Aresen]

I wish people would just stop saying essential* and say what they really mean. Sacrificial.

*I am incredibly amused that I get the designation

If you insist:

[Jennifer]

Even if you're okay with the word "essential," that still leaves a hell of a lot of room to debate what does or does not qualify. A couple days ago I saw a photo on Facebook -- a display of vegetable-garden seeds in a garden-store section, marked off-limits and partly covered by a sign to the effect of "Hey, shoppers: by order of the state of Vermont, we cannot sell non-essential items at this time. Sorry, Walmart." I searched and confirmed that yes, this is true (link below). Apparently, you CAN buy garden seeds and such via ordering ahead for curbside pickup; you just can't pick them up and buy them while you're already in the store. And somewhere here recently, either on this or a different thread, I mentioned how good the timing was for me, in the specific sense that had this pandemic struck a couple years ago when I'd just moved from a northern clime to the Deep South, I'd've been fucked in regard to "Crap, I need to acquire a whole new deep-summer wardrobe."

Sudden additional thought: for people still living in the north, where I gather the season is still officially "winter" (whereas in my neighborhood, we're in the bad part of pollen time), there's a LOT of still-growing kids who can fit into their cold-weather clothes just fine, but in a few weeks when things warm up and they try putting on the warm-weather garments they last wore in early autumn .... nope.

Thing is, though -- at least in regard to the in-store purchase of clothes, rather than garden seeds -- I CAN see the rationale, and arguably even the NEED, for these limits. Like, say the Walmart super-center or Target megastore is open, but only allowing 50 people in at a time while everyone else waits in line outside (actual policy in some areas already): I understand why they'd say "When you're inside you can go to the food, medicine and home/personal care sections, but you CAN'T be browsing through the clothing department, let alone try things on, while people are outside waiting for you to leave." I suppose they'd also not sell things like kids' toys in-store, too.

But it still really sucks all the same.

https://www.wcbm.com/2020/04/03/vermont ... -of-seeds/

[Andrew]

I am now a full on contrarian. If I still lived in Arizona, I would play golf on my day off. You can have my six iron when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

I'd be at the gym or yoga every day if they were open.

[Ellie]

This part sounds remarkably like Arizona as well. Lots of traffic on the road, and every gas station I passed today was packed with people hauling trailers, atvs, etc. and heading out for the weekend. The campgrounds and national forests are going to be packed.

Are parks and campgrounds still open? I had heard from a full-time RVer that a lot of the parks in her area were closed overnight (although still open during the day. As she put it, "I guess the virus only comes out after dark?")

[Twba]

I am now a full on contrarian. If I still lived in Arizona, I would play golf on my day off. You can have my six iron when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

I'd be at the gym or yoga every day if they were open.

Just don't go paddle boarding.

[Highway]

So I don't know if my mail carrier is quarantined, if the USPS is in a slowdown or on strike or something (you'd think that would be big news even with the virus coverage), or what, but we have not gotten any mail in the last 3 days. Which is rather odd, even if it would just be junk mail. Perhaps all the marketing mail is dead now because they can't work to put it out?

[Twba]

So I don't know if my mail carrier is quarantined, if the USPS is in a slowdown or on strike or something (you'd think that would be big news even with the virus coverage), or what, but we have not gotten any mail in the last 3 days. Which is rather odd, even if it would just be junk mail. Perhaps all the marketing mail is dead now because they can't work to put it out?

I have barely received any mail and assume that many postal workers are finding ways to avoid working. There is probably a lot of mail piling up somewhere.

[Jennifer]

I got the electric bill and this week's Economist in the mail today, but that's all -- no junk mail.

[Kolohe]

I’m getting regular mail delivery but at irregular times with a rotating cast of carriers

[Shem]

So I don't know if my mail carrier is quarantined, if the USPS is in a slowdown or on strike or something (you'd think that would be big news even with the virus coverage), or what, but we have not gotten any mail in the last 3 days. Which is rather odd, even if it would just be junk mail. Perhaps all the marketing mail is dead now because they can't work to put it out?

I signed up for Informed Delivery when we had some mail theft issues. Every day I get an email with a scan of the mail I'll be receiving that day, plus a note about any packages.

[Jennifer]

I was just going through the big box of long-hair accessories which I either don't use anymore, or never used, and I have a LOT of ponytail-band and other elastic stretchy-things, ranging in size from "a circle barely an inch in diameter" all the way to "headband/hairbands big enough to fit completely around my head." I'll bet there's some way these can be useful for making makeshift face masks, but I haven't yet figured out exactly how to do this.

[Mo]

We were at the park playing with the boys today and an NHS nurse walking her dog yelled at us (and presumably others) to go home. This really pissed me off because as far as I saw everyone was engaging in proper social distancing, there were no play dates or people that were not in a family unit hanging out. It was basically an ideal situation as far as these things go. It pissed me off because of you force everyone to stay inside all the time, people will break and you’ll get people just blowing off the rules. You need some way to safely blow off steam and if you kill those opportunities people will engage in unsafe behavior in the medium term.

[thoreau]

I've spent the 21st century developing more and more sympathy for constitutional monarchy. I'm all in, now.

[Warren]

Capital idea old bean. Why don't you see if you can get a position at Oxbridge or Camford? I'm sure Mo will put in a good word for you.