All things COVID-19

[Tahlvin]

One article I read earlier indicated the risk factors that appeared to correlate with more serious cases of COVID-19, besides age, are high blood pressure and diabetes. As it just so happens, my elderly parents have diabetes and high blood pressure. Great.

I'm also seeing that Trump told the governors on a call this morning that they should not count on the federal government to help provide respirators or ventilators, but that they should track them down on their own.

What a shit show.

[DMDarcs]

First verified case of it appearing in our county, in an elderly woman with many other underlying health issues. School closed until April 13, though I still have to log in 4 hours of instructional time and 2.5 hours of planning time each day.

[Eliahad]

[Phoebe]

Husband has VPN for office but apparently some types of coordination with other people on staff are very difficult to do from home. I guess they feel they're spread out enough and isolated enough that it's not an issue, but I think if they have to be meeting in the same rooms and talking to each other and sharing bathrooms, then they're all sharing! They are not all particularly obsessed with antivirus cleanliness. I'm trying to keep it in perspective because many things the kids or I have had to do over the last two weeks could have exposed me without knowing it. But it seems like every day that we get into exponential spread, the odds go up that someone in the office will carry it to you even if up to this point you had been safe. I want to be able to completely isolate the rest of us for two weeks so that I can be available to my parents.

You know how social media has all those memes about checking on your strong friend or checking on your depressed friend or whatever? Well, the OCD people are probably "fine" in the sense that they have been ready to stay alone in the house until June ever since January, but they are maybe not so fine in the mind. But nobody should check on them because that just reassures them that their fever pitch anxiety is completely justified.

[DMDarcs]

[DMDarcs]

Day 1: Completed my required 6.5 hours of performing teaching duties, and completed my log sheet to be turned into administration at the end of the week as "required by the state retirement system". Found out a neighboring district doesn't have instructional duties for another 3 days, and then are only required 30 minutes per prep time, and not required to log hours in. In fact, of four other districts contacted in a relatively close area, none are requiring the work that we are - which leads to some questions about whether its actually a state requirement or a district requirement. My BS meter is starting to wiggle, not sure if it's a false reading.

[WillyGilligan]

I'm lucky that my job is still open and I'm still working. That both insulates me financially as long as supply chains hold, and emotionally as I have other stuff to occupy my mind.

- A small, guilty part of me wishes I wasn't working.

Just Saturday I took my daughter to her semi-monthly immunosuppressant therapy. If she dies from this virus because we were treating her Crohn's, I really don't know how I'd process that.

In 2016 I remember the Left saying that Trump would manufacture a crisis to override the 2020 elections. The Right has been saying that the Left would tank the economy to manipulate the elections since at least the midterms. Seems like everyone's getting what they wished for, in the worst way possible.

[Phoebe]

Oh, it must be hard to have that kind of stress about your daughter at a time like this! One of our (adult) relatives is on similar medicine for similar reasons and it's very stressful not being able to easily avoid contact with people and work online.
All these unexpected vulnerabilities are suddenly revealed by the situation. I feel like all the older and immune-compromised people are Rapunzel in the tower and we are now the witches sending up the weekly cabbages. Please keep that hair all the way up, all the time!

It's interesting what an enormous privilege it is, economically and otherwise, to be able to seal yourself off from the world. Even if doing that brings its own kind of unpleasantness, it's so much better than the suffering people are going through because sealing off means terrible economic harm, or being stuck in a bad life situation. I feel like we ought to be able to mostly seal off, but are not doing it for reasons that I can't control. Maybe we will get to the point where that does happen, who knows. I feel very lucky not to be facing the very stressful choices about work and childcare that so many people are facing. Having older kids is so much easier than babies, toddlers, etc., on top of the stress of caring for a much more vulnerable little person, which might be very high even under normal situations. It certainly was for me; I used to spend so much time just listening to breathing and feeling that weird existential angst of not being able to make the world ideal enough for all these innocent kids to live in. I imagine this will become something big they remember for the rest of their lives, even if all we do is sit here at home. Sadly the better we do at protecting our society, the more it seems like we put it economically at risk and then cause other kinds of harm. But I'm heartened by the zeal with which people have focused on those who are going without or whose livelihoods are going to suffer with small businesses, and are trying to be a supportive as possible.

[Phoebe]

Saying it here so that I do not alienate even more of my friends than I already have managed to do:
No. The odds are extremely low that you had Covid 19 back in January or February. Unless you had cut yourself off from human society since that time, the fact that you were running around with a readily contagious virus and not taking extreme precautions to prevent its spread means that you would have spread it to so many people by now, so many! We would be seeing a cluster of cases right where you live, right now! So shut up because you - and by this I mean the dozen of my friends who are just so damn sure they have had the virus already! - you're driving me crazy! And it's making you irrationally think that you might not even be susceptible to it now that you have the supposed antibodies. No! You do not have these antibodies!
And that also applies to the blog posts and medium articles you are sharing from people who had [the worst sore throat of their life/ a terrible headache/ a sudden unexplained fever/ four weeks of coughing/ and are sooo damn sure that it was Covid.

[DMDarcs]

Day 2: Malls are now closed indefinitely. I have logged my 6.5 hours in again. I find that I am rationing out things very slowly so I have work to do in the following days. Other districts nearby seem to be operating under a completely different set of rules as to work that needs to be accomplished from home. Had MrsDarcs get us breakfast at the local coffee shop - they need support. My plan for tomorrow is to drop the kids off with the sitter (hey, it's fine, only 6 other kids there) because I'm not allowed to bring them into my school and have them do stuff in my room (where there are no other kids - but I suppose they could theoretically serve as a transmission vector to all the other people who won't be in my room). Anxiety is rising again, because I think I'm actually honestly scared not about COVID, but about human reactions to COVID and the complete destruction of economy. I am very worried about people not being to take in income. Too much speculation about what the government will or will not do, and none of it seems to be based in fact. I literally just want to retreat into my normal comfort routine which is eating way too much food, but I'm scared about eating too much food because of the hoarding that's gone on, which makes me want to eat more, etc. Wondering if enacting the Redeker plan is something that some asshole politician will independently come up with, thinking it's a good idea - and then scaring myself thinking that it is.

[Phoebe]

It is an anxious time. I don't want to reassure either of us because that doesn't help, but in this way there is legitimate reassurance: SO MANY people we know are hard at work trying to help their neighbors, support local business, take precautions seriously, and so on. So who knows what level of badness will happen, there is little certainty about this. Regardless, some human beings are really good. That's still important.

[Phoebe]

When people keep babbling about how their bad cold in January was coronavirus, this is why it irritates so much.
Imagine you're spending every day thinking that, say, a giant angry bat is about to swoop down and bite when you enter a room. If you try to ignore the bat, since it's not really there, that makes it worse. If you dwell on thinking about the bat and how it's not there/or there, that makes it worse. You can't stay in one room and not move; the bat will just come in there too.

You have to nod and smile and tip your hat at the snarling bat, and go on about your daily business ignoring the many physiological symptoms that arise from falsely supposing a bat is about to attack you at any moment. Maybe a bat is there, maybe not; who knows, you can't be sure because perfect certainty doesn't happen, so keep on going through your life regardless. This is your day, all day, every day. Sometimes it's a bat, or a charging hippopotamus, or the prospect of other terrible things happening, or most of all, existential dread that can't even be articulated in a way anybody could understand. If you do a really good job of sitting gently with your bats, letting yourself be afraid and accepting this fear as a livable uncertainty, sometimes you'll forget about the bat for long periods. But if not, that's okay; you can live with your bat phobia just fine. Irrational fears come and go like the tides; the ocean is still beneath.

Then your friend comes along and is like, I had one of those bats in my house too! It was totalllly real! Of course you should be afraid of bats because they're everywhere. One even bit me! There is almost zero meaningful evidence for this, but I'm certain the bad thing was real and present! Be very afraid! Hidden bats are lurking and about to kill your loved ones!

No. You did not have a bat, and it did not bite you. Thank God neither of us have ever seen one. Maybe we will tomorrow, because we are trying to prevent a new bat infestation, but your fantasy from yesterday is irrelevant to today and it literally makes my head hurt, physically hurt, because I'm already dealing with fear bats. You don't see me running around screaming about bats, do you? You don't see me dropping my load of existential dread on people and pretending it's rational and real. It's like door-to-door proselytizing, same thing really. I am not interested in the bats you have to offer me, friend, nor do I inflict mine upon you.

[Tahlvin]

I had a bat get into my apartment in college. Ended up trapping it in one of the dormers, got it to hang onto a blanket, then tossed it out the window. Nice analogy.

[Eliahad]

The snow has started falling in earnest. Don't know how long it's going to last, but down here we usually get on the higher end of the range, so we'll probably have 9 inches by the end of the day. Less actual accumulation because of the ground being so warm.

Taught my first lesson via Skype yesterday. It went alright, I think. It's a much more difficult way to teach, in my opinion. The energy is different, and I like to make slight adjustments to the bow angle and contact point by actually holding the bow and adjusting it. That's not going to happen for a bit. I have another couple lessons scheduled via Skype tomorrow, plus a couple of face to face lessons at the studio I work at. Though, with the new Governor's order I'm not sure if that will be allowed as there may be more than 10 people at the studio at a time. I should talk to the folks who run it. I may go over there to have remote lessons just because that would be somewhere I could go.

So, no work until...well, the next gig I have scheduled is in June. Feeling a little embarrassed about how much I forgot that everyone in my circle out here doesn't have work. It's not that I forgot, I was just too anxious about my own issues to extend a little empathy. Waking up to my own shortsightedness is good. None of the musicians out here are working, and won't be for some time. Nor the actors, or the production crews at the theaters or...well, anyone.

So! Working on some arrangements, watching the snow get heavy and thinking about at least trying to share some art with folks. I'll get there!

Stay safe everyone.

[Phoebe]

Enjoy the arranging! I totally agree about the experiment with online music lessons. Maybe it works better for advanced pupils that don't need as much adjustment of that sort, but for younger ones there's a lot of hands on or demonstration that suddenly became tricky. I'm lucky I'm here and have some vague clue how to help, but it is tricky.

[Ronster]

What about this?

[Tahlvin]

Sounds like some politicians are about to get slammed with some insider trading charges...

[Tahlvin]

Just found out a bus driver in our school district tested positive for Coronavirus, and started showing symptoms in the past day or two. So he was probably infected when he drove his route the last couple days before spring break started. The bus company has a shared working environment, so pretty much all of the other bus drivers may have been exposed, and all of the kids in their buses, and all of the kids at the schools the kids go to, and all of those kids’ families. So that’s great to know. Guess we’ll find out in another week or so how bad our town is really hit.

[Phoebe]

Oh Lord. Hoping he shared it as little as possible!

[FlameBlade]

I will be blunt here.

It will be fucking tragic in the next month. There will be many stories all over USA where hospitals ran out of ventilators. Leaving many people choking for air. Many will die.

It will be one of the worst stories, and one of the darkest moments in USA history.

People still can do things to prevent it from becoming worse. Extreme social distancing, near-total shutdown for 2 weeks. Money and food to all citizens. Help everyone who is not essential stay home.