All things COVID-19

[Mike]

I went in for toilet paper, because I am legitimately in need of toilet paper, and the entire aisle in Walmart is bare shelf. Weird. The grocery store had my brand, so I bought a single mega-pack like I always do. Two hours later when I came to fill a prescription, they were bare shelves as well.

It's annoying, but understandable.

[Mike]

Does anyone have a handwashing song? Y'know... to make sure you get in your 20 seconds of scrubbing?

I use Little Room by the White Stripes. The speed I sing it (in my head) takes 22 seconds for the lyrics, and then i rinse and dry through the Da-da-da's. Little Room was mine and Kyle's unofficial theme for Animalball, so it makes me happy.

[Stan]

[Mike]

Did NOT realize it was a song.

[Phoebe]

My kids' music teacher is doing video conference lessons for the foreseeable future. Hopefully this will work for Eliahad too!

Here are some things I discovered that I was either very happy I bought more of or unhappy that I didn't buy more of recently, for those of you who are making a venture out to the store or have a delivery service:

Candy
Salt
Seasoned salt
Tomato sauce (I have so much and yet cannot have too much)
Chili seasoning
Coffee
Sweet potatoes
Orajel
Laundry detergent

[Kyle]

Isolating for work. Bought a new laptop (I haven't had a laptop for a couple of years). Will either work from home or work from my remote office (which I share with another lawyer) on days he's not there. My family cancelled their six week road trip up the west coast to Vancouver and back- it was planned for early May. There was a hippie festival that we go to every year that we cancelled for this weekend. I rescheduled the advanced mediation training that I was going to do next week.

Still playing Pathfinder tomorrow, but we'll be conscious of what we're doing and be careful.

I predicted the toilet paper crisis and bought two months worth three weeks ago when it was plentiful (and thus wasn't depriving anyone).

[DMDarcs]

Went to the shopping mall to go get out and do something, then stopped to get groceries on the way home. The produce was pretty well picked over, and most of the bread and meat was gone. The corned beef brisket was remarkably untouched, which just proves that even with St. Pat's and a doomsday plague coming, people still won't eat it BECAUSE IT ISN'T GOOD. I didn't check the toilet paper situation, because we don't need any right now.

I am probably going to have to end up canceling the all-county festivals that take place next month. Schools are not closed yet, but I highly expect that they plan on doing so. I seem to be in the minority in this thought, but it seems like there is some overreaction going on here.

[Ronster]

popped into Dollar tree to get a few items:
salt
mixes that do not need milk
pasta
vienna sausages...there were tons and they last forever
pretzels
peanut butter
ketchup
fiddle faddle


one lady had 4 carts loaded down...it was 311.00 worth

[Phoebe]

Actually did not ever occur to me they sold food at the dollar store, apart from candy! But I suppose they do. I considered buying one or two of those sausages but the people here will just eat it immediately so the whole point is lost.

Initially I was having thoughts like, if one person gets it, where will we isolate them? And now after observing the fam for a few days I realize this is impossible. Where one goes go all, with or without any natural protections they might enjoy.

[FlameBlade]

Just saying -- this is the real deal. Best thing to watch how bad it is in your area is to look to hospitals. How full are they?

So far, USA is following similar trajectory as Italy, only that we're like few days behind Italy in terms of how the virus are spreading.

It's going to be real bad, and it won't start to improve until at least 2-4 weeks ahead. At least, many people are changing their social behaviors lately.

[Tahlvin]

Yep, it's likely to get pretty bad. Thanks to the delay in ramping up testing, we really have no idea how widespread it is and how much community transmission is really occurring. Before it's completely over in 12-18 months, the expectation is that 70-80% of the population will have had it, and 1.5 million Americans may have died from it. If we keep on the same trajectory as Italy, which is what it looks like we're doing, then hospitals in many areas are going to be overwhelmed within a week or so. Seattle is probably days away, if not already there. And based on the statistics from France, 50% of their ICU cases are people under the age of 50, so it is not just a case where the 60-and-older crowd needs to worry. One paper from a UCSF panel that I read indicated the fatality rate for age 70+ will be 10-15%, and for age 90+ is will be 20%+. It's serious.

I fully expect everyone in our family will get it at some point. And with two of us (myself included) that have asthma, it could be serious. Our hope is to delay that as long as possible, so we're not requiring hospitalization when demand is at its peak. I've had to be hospitalized for pneumonia in the past due to difficulty breathing, and it's not something I care to repeat.

[Phoebe]

[Tahlvin]

There is a shortage of ventilators. There are going to be shortages of masks and gloves for medical staff. We are not properly prepared at all.

[Phoebe]

Yes, it's amazing that all these healthcare providers march forth to treat people, knowing their own risk is going up and being so totally exhausted. Praying they get through the next month, especially.

[Mike]

A with visuals to help people grasp the importance of flattening the curve.

[Tahlvin]

I’m resigning myself to the fact that there’sa his chance my parents will not make it through this. I spoke to my dad this afternoon, and they still went to church this morning, went out to a restaurant to eat afterwards, and then my mom met her brother and sister in law from Michigan and they went to a cousin’s funeral in Ohio. And dad said he went to the bank yesterday to get some cash and there was some guy coughing like crazy, and that’s why he didn’t go to the funeral, in case he picked up something from that guy and didn’t want to pass it on to a bunch of my mom’s older relatives. News for you, dad: if you got something from him, then mom’s got it, and she’s going to give it to her brother and his wife and all those older relatives at the funeral, not to mention all the people you two may have infected at church and the restaurant this morning.

I hope I’m wrong, but they’re older and not online, so they rely on the newspaper for most of their news, and it is just moving way too fast for them to keep up with.

[Phoebe]

I'm sorry, it's so frustrating. I hope they lucked out and now will start noticing the BIG moves on the part of many governors to shut down activity. My parents are being pretty good but I think I scared them and caused undue stress, and I'm still frustrated that they will not wipe down certain things to disinfect outer-world contact. But hopefully they're doing enough.

My big question is when is it safe for me to go near them. How will I know unless we shelter in place here for two weeks of total isolation? My biggest fear is being rendered useless as a nurse for them in case one gets sick, and then if only one gets sick, what do we do with the other? My brain breaks on this. I think of my parents pretty much constantly. Not good.

[Tahlvin]

You need to be self-quarantined for 14 days without symptoms to make sure you are not infected. Once the 14 days is over, you're not out of the woods. However, you can begin to expand your social circle to include others that have self-quarantined and show no symptoms. So after 14 days of both your family and your parents being self-quarantined has passed, it should be safe for you to go see them. The thing is that you as a group still need to practice social distancing from others in order to ensure the group doesn't get exposed. So if your kids or your husband are still being exposed to people outside of your group and could be infected from those other sources, you still cannot safely interact closely with your parents without risking transmitting the infection to them. It's a weakest link sort of situation: the group as a whole is all exposed as much as the most exposed individual within the group.

One neat thing I have seen is that some grocery stores are offering early hours exclusively for elderly and people who are immuno-compromised. That way, they can shop when the store is the cleanest, and at a time when it is not very crowded, in order to minimize their exposure. I'd love to see more places doing that. Or see more places offering free or reduced price grocery delivery services.

[Phoebe]

It's a problem to judge how isolated I am because of my husband. His work could do a variety of things to keep people separated and they aren't. I'm kind of pissed about it tbh, but he's doing the best he can and is often alone at work. I realize this is OCD speaking but in no universe do I trust my husband's capacity to handwash/Clorox wipes surfaces/stay several feet from people. I can rest assured this will be... Porous. But I went to a grocery store last week, so... I'm probably even worse.

Update:
Can someone tell me why Kyle's able to work from home but my husband is not? There are certain circumstances where I understand people might have to appear, but none of those are occurring. What could possibly be the excuse important enough to be exposing not just our family but dozens of other families to extra risk, and then exponentially more beyond that? I'm just so f****** over it and I'm not hearing any kind of rational explanation and I don't understand why this entire group of dozens of otherwise smart people is behaving like idiots collectively. They're like, oh yeah it's great to be alone in my office, except for the 20 times a day that I converse with someone else and then their germs and breath are all over my office and then we all go share a bathroom together. W. T. F.???

Update: husband doesn't want to be asked about it. We can't discuss it further. I have no idea what is "normal" because my brain gives me a constant, "Terminator"-style inner screen cataloguing every possible means of contaminating exposure. Whole body suffused with palpable terror at not being able to see/care for my parents adequately in case anything goes wrong. Literally physical sensation. The school lessons from home go poorly. It's very easy to prepare for other things but much more difficult to prepare for these human things.

[Kyle]

The reason I'm able to work from home is because my office invested in the technology over the last several years to have all our files and materials digitized and available from any location where I can securely log into my account. But that's pretty labor and resource intensive to set up and a lot of lawfirms (particularly bigger ones) haven't taken the financial investment to properly do it. But it involves scanning and organizing each piece of paper, having mobile routing of calls and a databank that is in the cloud. We even have a slack-like system for project management internally between lawyers. It may just be a matter of the firm not having done all that stuff.

One of the reasons I stopped working from home many years ago was because my home office got turned into a bedroom for a kid, and I didn't have a securely quiet place for work, conference calls, telephone hearings and the like. In anticipation of this, I rearranged my furniture in my bedroom and bought a desk so that I can keep people out when I need to. But if I wasn't able to do that, I'm not sure I could work from home. Clients and judges don't take kindly to kids yelling "Fuck you Max!" when you're on an important call that's costing clients lots of money.