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Bunkering in.
So, I've been WFH since Monday 3/9.
We did our monthly grocery run 3/7 & 3/8. TP was flying off the shelves, as in gone. which was irritating because it was on our regular list. We did our final pharmacy run, that I had to do in person, that I could only do every ten days. Fuck the PATRIOT Act anyway. Found some more hamburger, too. Two freexers full, a 36 count of eggs, plus an extra pound of coffee.
Our highest risk person is off for a colitis flare for four weeks, which is good since she works part time at a big grocery store. One roomie still is mega restless and likes to go out, ride transit, and shop. She's the one who will be going to get the fresh shit if we need it, and we get to try to decontaminate her when she gets back.
I made my own hand sanitizer out of 91% rubbing alcohol, glycerin and aloe. I got the proportions of glycerin and aloe backwards, I think. The right recipe is
* 11 oz 91% rubbing alcohol
* 3 os Aloe Vera juice
* 2 ox glycerin
* a few drops of rose absolute
Consonance has been postponed. It would have been next weekend.
Baycon meetings have gone online. We are undecided as to whether we need to postpone or not - the con is in May, and the peak may be over by then. We'll see.
My teammates at work, some of whom are my age, are NOT WFH. I keep wondering which one we are going to lose.
Most of the people I know are over 50 or are in a high risk group due to health. If you figure that's at least 50 people, one or more will die. That's not a fun thought.
My guess is that we will be at hospital overload, military triage by March 31. The *known* cases in the SF Bay Area are seeming to double daily. I estimate the actual/known ratio to be 5/1 to 10/1.
Coronavirus is Schrodingers illness. You don't know if someone has it for sure until they show symptoms, but anyone could have it, not yet show symptoms, but be infectious as hell. It can easily be three or more days that a person is contagious before they even know they have it!!. That's why the two week self quarantine if you think you might have been exposed.
Wear a fucking mask!
It doesn't need to be a professional n95 mask. Those are in short supply. Wear a washable cloth mask when you are out - even a bandanna will do:
a) It will keep you from touching your nose and mouth
b) Actual studies show that even a simple cloth mask reduces the viral spread
c) Cloth masks can be made in multiples, so you have one to wash, one to wear
d) You are protecting others from you as much as you are protecting yourself from others
Wear gloves if you handle money. Money spreads a lot of germs. Coronavirus can live on money, especially hard surfaces like coins for more than 12 hours. Cotton cloves aren't as sweaty and are washable.
As with any PPE, be careful not to touch the outer surfaces when removing them. I use a reusable woven bag to take the stuff I've used to the laundry. After I'm done removing it, I wash my hands anyway.
For most people alive today, being in a pandemic is a very new situation. The thing that worries me is how very badly our government has bungled/is actively bungling the response to it, including giving taxpayer money to Wall Street but not letting states use Medicaid to fund response. With the gutting of the ADA and the individual mandate, people re still uninsured. The fact that the courts and Congress didn't require states to take the Medicaid expansion makes it worse.
Yes, the hardest hit areas are currently cities, mostly in blue, urban states. But President Asshole is still holding his awful hate rallies, and those are recipes for disease spread among people who still think it's a "Democrat Hoax" Trump himself has been exposed, and he's not isolating himself more than usual. Insane.
Be safe, wash your damn hands, cover your cough, wear a mask, stay home as much as possible.
Don't be a fucking statistic, please.
So, I've been WFH since Monday 3/9.
We did our monthly grocery run 3/7 & 3/8. TP was flying off the shelves, as in gone. which was irritating because it was on our regular list. We did our final pharmacy run, that I had to do in person, that I could only do every ten days. Fuck the PATRIOT Act anyway. Found some more hamburger, too. Two freexers full, a 36 count of eggs, plus an extra pound of coffee.
Our highest risk person is off for a colitis flare for four weeks, which is good since she works part time at a big grocery store. One roomie still is mega restless and likes to go out, ride transit, and shop. She's the one who will be going to get the fresh shit if we need it, and we get to try to decontaminate her when she gets back.
I made my own hand sanitizer out of 91% rubbing alcohol, glycerin and aloe. I got the proportions of glycerin and aloe backwards, I think. The right recipe is
* 11 oz 91% rubbing alcohol
* 3 os Aloe Vera juice
* 2 ox glycerin
* a few drops of rose absolute
Consonance has been postponed. It would have been next weekend.
Baycon meetings have gone online. We are undecided as to whether we need to postpone or not - the con is in May, and the peak may be over by then. We'll see.
My teammates at work, some of whom are my age, are NOT WFH. I keep wondering which one we are going to lose.
Most of the people I know are over 50 or are in a high risk group due to health. If you figure that's at least 50 people, one or more will die. That's not a fun thought.
My guess is that we will be at hospital overload, military triage by March 31. The *known* cases in the SF Bay Area are seeming to double daily. I estimate the actual/known ratio to be 5/1 to 10/1.
Coronavirus is Schrodingers illness. You don't know if someone has it for sure until they show symptoms, but anyone could have it, not yet show symptoms, but be infectious as hell. It can easily be three or more days that a person is contagious before they even know they have it!!. That's why the two week self quarantine if you think you might have been exposed.
Wear a fucking mask!
It doesn't need to be a professional n95 mask. Those are in short supply. Wear a washable cloth mask when you are out - even a bandanna will do:
a) It will keep you from touching your nose and mouth
b) Actual studies show that even a simple cloth mask reduces the viral spread
c) Cloth masks can be made in multiples, so you have one to wash, one to wear
d) You are protecting others from you as much as you are protecting yourself from others
Wear gloves if you handle money. Money spreads a lot of germs. Coronavirus can live on money, especially hard surfaces like coins for more than 12 hours. Cotton cloves aren't as sweaty and are washable.
As with any PPE, be careful not to touch the outer surfaces when removing them. I use a reusable woven bag to take the stuff I've used to the laundry. After I'm done removing it, I wash my hands anyway.
For most people alive today, being in a pandemic is a very new situation. The thing that worries me is how very badly our government has bungled/is actively bungling the response to it, including giving taxpayer money to Wall Street but not letting states use Medicaid to fund response. With the gutting of the ADA and the individual mandate, people re still uninsured. The fact that the courts and Congress didn't require states to take the Medicaid expansion makes it worse.
Yes, the hardest hit areas are currently cities, mostly in blue, urban states. But President Asshole is still holding his awful hate rallies, and those are recipes for disease spread among people who still think it's a "Democrat Hoax" Trump himself has been exposed, and he's not isolating himself more than usual. Insane.
Be safe, wash your damn hands, cover your cough, wear a mask, stay home as much as possible.
Don't be a fucking statistic, please.
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He's basically not worried at all - yeah shit happens, and might happen to him or his husband, or to people they know, but the risk just doesn't seem very high to him. And he's not innumerate - it's just, he's been through an epidemic that makes this one look trivial.
Personally, I seem to be split in two. My conscious mind isn't very worried. My unconscious mind is producing psychosomatic anxiety symptoms.
Meanwhile, my housemate is more willing than I am to be out and about, and is not in a position where she can WFH. She's higher risk than I am, if she catches it, due to prexisting issues. I'm WFH, and washing hands a lot, but reminding myself that even if the CDC's failures mean that only 1 in 1000 people in the county who have it actually get tested, there's still an awful lot of people in the county, and not all that many known to have covid 19.
Reporting has mostly been intended for the innumerate, unfortunately. I like the graph here. It puts the "numbers known" vs "possible actual cases" in partial perspective - except AFAIK, China didn't screw up their testing the way the US did, except presumably in the beginning when no one knew what was going on. I'd love to see the same graph breaking the cases into mild/hospitalization required/ventilation required/died, from soemwhere that hasn't had its hospital system swamped.
Note that while the authors of that article urge acting now,, and basically doing what you are doing - the total cases reported seem very low. If the US (or at least California) manages a reasonable lockdown, your odds are pretty good of missing it. And if you do get it, even at our age, your odds of survival are much better than your odds of dying - though less so if the medical system collapses under the load.
And yes, by the way, I believe the Chinese statistics. It's the American ones I don't trust, given our lack of testing.
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I guess part of me is fearing that this will be as lethal as the AIDs epidemic, which was my coming of age years.
The less I and mine add risk to others, I'll feel we are doing our part.