COVID-19 Check-in Thread

[Dragonflight]

I got lucky with toilet paper. One of my friends works in a grocery store. Honestly, they're your best bet. If you know anyone who works in a store, ask them to snag something you need before it goes out onto the shelves.

[Kilroy]

I'm still well, getting to the end of my fourth week of working from home. My team released one of our product updates earlier this week.
The parking lot my company normally uses for workers has been taken over by a drive-through COVID-19 testing facility.

[aku]

Another week gone. Still all normal.

[Labster]

Everyone's still here at Chez Labster.

My current theory is that my family has already had the novel coronavirus, back in the last week of December through early January.  My evidence for this:

• New signs suggest coronavirus was in California far earlier than anyone knew -- community transmission was occurring back in December in Northern California
  
• I hang out with some politicians, who are the sort of people to shake lots of hands and travel to Sacramento to work
  
• Everyone in my family got a severe respiratory infection at about the same time.  I was two or three days earlier, and my efforts to avoid the rest of the family were not successful, consistent with easy airborne spread and long incubation period.
  
• My parents both went to the emergency room, and were put on a nebulizer immediately.  Everyone got to recover at home, though.
  
• Both parents tested negative for influenza
  
• I didn't get it as bad, but did have a high fever.  Oh, and coughing, lots of coughing.
  
• We have lots of asthma meds in our house so we were able to keep it under control early.
  
• Lasted about two weeks, with full recovery taking about a month
  
• I spent my whole damn week and a half of Christmas vacation very sick
  
• Christmas dinner: can of soup
  

It's too bad there's no way to test this theory out, because it would definitely put me at ease a little more.  I mean, there's definitely a way to test the theory, an antibody test, but I wouldn't expect that to be available to people showing no symptoms for six months, maybe a year.  The federal government is scaling back on its testing program already.

So I can rate it no better than a coin flip: 50% odds we're immune, 50% odds something even worse than what we already had is out there ready to kill my mom.

[Dartz]

What the hell is it with the US and jacks rolls?

They're plentiful here.

[DHBirr]

• I hang out with some politicians
  

Ewwwww!

[ECSNorway]

What the hell is it with the US and jacks rolls?

They're plentiful here.

What I'm hearing is a) there's some hoarding because people see shelves empty and grab as much as they can in a panic when they're not, and b) all of the non-home uses (office, restaurant, etc) are going unused and people are using their home toilets more. Home paper and commercial paper are made by different factories and have different supply chains, and are generally not interchangeable.

So we have a massive stock of commercial bogroll in the warehouses while home rolls are flying off the shelves because people are actually using it more.

[Wolff]

Still here, and on a mini-vacation! I so need this four day weekend.

[robkelk]

Still here, and on a mini-vacation!  I so need this four day weekend.

Seconded! I have been directly ordered to not touch the office laptop until Tuesday, since I'm not on call this weekend.

[Dartz]

I can't escape it. It lives in my kitchen.

I had work that it was explained to me would be really good to be done by 'The long Weekend' and I had no time Thursday so I sat down Friday to try do it and it should've taken an afternoon to do it but my ability to work just disintegrated - like, six houirs to do 10 excel statements shit. Friday was a mandatory holiday. That was after I delivered spare parts early in the morning.

[Matrix Dragon]

Lockdown would have ended Monday, has been extended by a month. The bosses will figure out what that means for work on Thursday.

[Inquisitive Raven]

Still here. Had a scare when my housemate thought she had a fever. It looks like the issue might have been a bad job of converting Celsius to Fahrenheit because the brand new thermometer we just got only gives temperatures in Celsius. Me, I just use 37° as my reference and assume that anything a significant fraction of a degree higher is febrile and anything more than a couple of degrees lower could be construed as hypothermia.

[hazard]

Anything above 38C is considered a fever. Determining hypothermia is harder because different parts of the body show different temperatures compared to core body temperature.

[Dragonflight]

Still here. Watching the worldometer coronavirus tracker every day. Looks like we've had a dip in daily infections for three days now. Hoping this trend continues...

[Niteflier]

Blarg. Had a scare at work when a couple of new arrivals at the hotel were supposed to be quarantined walked up to the front desk. Lovely.

[NifT]

Still here, still bored, luckily not sick

[Cobalt Greywalker]

OK, it's been over a week.  Still OK, still bored, still going into the office.

[Dragonflight]

I've noticed lately that whenever I plan a trip to the grocery store, I'm approaching it like I'm considering visiting a toxic waste landfill. I'm second-guessing if I really need to do this or not. I hate this toxic atmosphere of fear that permeates everything, now.

[Norgarth]

[DHBirr]

Venturing out for groceries (which I'm going to do today, for the first time in nearly three weeks) reminds me of the caption from one of Bill Mauldin’s World War II cartoons: “I feel like a fugitive from the law of averages,” says the soldier slouched low in his foxhole as bullets streak overhead.  

The resemblance in terms of risk has been explored by at least one political cartoonist, who depicted a soldierly-looking silhouette on a mission into "enemy territory" – then revealed this to be a housewife shopping for essentials.

-----
Considering that one dictionary definition of "carry on" is to "behave or speak in a foolish, excited, or improper manner," the designers of that famous poster, "Keep Calm and Carry On," need to make up their flippin' minds!

[Pyeknu]

Update for me: They're initiating social distancing within the residence now, so we'll have staggered meals (probably in our bedrooms), which doesn't bother me too much since I'm ex-military and used to stressed situations. As for others where I live...!

[LynnInDenver]

Still banging around here... my husband had a phone interview today, has a phone interview tomorrow, and an in-person interview with today's interview people on Thursday. Him getting a job - even if it's working from home for the foreseeable future - would do wonders for stress levels and reestablishing a routine. We haven't been able to have a solid weekly routine with my floating schedule that started when this stuff starting falling around here. Except maybe the one tabletop RPG that we've been handling with Skype on Saturdays (and changed it to weekly instead of once a month or two).

[Dragonflight]

Shopping for groceries yesterday was an experience. The Walmart near where I live felt more like inspection in a prison yard. Everyone starts by lining up along the outer wall, around the corner, and down the wall toward the back of the rear parking lot. Two feet apart every step of the way. Patrolled by guards with walkie talkies. People go in when others go out, and never more than a dozen in the store at a time. Any given cash can only have one person at it, and the self-serve banks (15 of them,) can only have four people, spaced maximum distance from each other. If you aren't using plastic bags, you put everything back in the cart and leave the store before you bag anything. Arrows on the floors, directing flow, and more people with walkie talkies monitoring activity at all times.

If anything, the aura of fear and judgement is worse than I thought before I went on that trip.

[robkelk]

That description makes me glad that (a) I don't shop at Walmart as a matter of course, and (b) I support local businesses that assume you're a grownup and don't pull that crap. Sure, shields are up at all the cash registers in the city, but the sane stores don't stop you from avoiding plastic bags that might have been touched by somebody with the virus.

[Kilroy]

Still okay and working from home. My employer announced this past weekend the world-wide closure of all offices to everyone except essential workers.


Kilroy