Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

That sucks Dan, sorry.

I'm sorry, Dan. Hoping the best for you and your family.

Sending well wishes to you and him, Dan

So sorry to hear that Dan.

<3 DJP and family

Best wishes DJP

Rough stuff Dan. Hang tough.

Best of all possible thoughts to people in the Daniverse.

Best to your uncle, Dan.

I'm going to read through the thread, but ...

Guess just want to ask, for those who may (also) have high school age children who have to learn from home, how are they weathering this nightmare emotionally and academically?

I have an 8th grader and it sux

My daughters, 18 and 14, were due to return to me yesterday. Both of them, and their mom, are sick, each w/ different symptoms—nausea, headache, cough, fatigue.

They've been tested at three different places the past two days and we're still awaiting results. That this still takes days to find out is maddening.

I don't have kids but a super-sweet couple moved next door to us from NYC and have a fifteen month-old. They say he is super-fascinated when he sees another young kid. Just imagining him not being able to hang out with other kids bums me out.

Raymond, my younger daugter has been managing but I see it taking its toll now—not academically but emotionally. It's a grind, sitting there all day w/ only short breaks and then for some reason way too much homework on top of that. She's been in therapy for several months and we are bracing for the winter months.

My older daughter has a different schedule, is taking several college-level courses. She's also applying to schools which I think is exciting for her and somewhat distracting. She seems to be managing better.

Trying to come to terms with the second-best scenario, that they are positive but come through, and I won't be able to see them for a couple of weeks...

Sorry to hear that Hadrian

xxxp 1-2 year olds for the most part are self-contained, they are focused on parents and they play alone for the most part. parents like to pair them with other 1-2 year olds and they may be momentarily fascinated, but for the most part it's "parallel play" and they don't interact directly that much.

didn't express that very well, but if I were to be a parent during this pandemic I would want to have a kid who was 1-2-3 years old, it seems like it would have the least negative impact on their life

I was just imagining socialization effects later from not having those experiences in formative years, but if that's not the case that is good.

i agree w dan. first four years of my life were spent in a house in the absolute middle of nowhere, tennessee. i can still remember visitors from then, it was so rare. (one woman gave me a stick of gum - unimaginably exotic). and look at me n--- oh shit

Hadrian and YMP, I feel that. Thanks for sharing.

This whole thing - which started in March - has not been great for my son on either level. Absolutely the worst way to start high school, among other things. This is hell on young people.

Best wishes, Dan.

Raymond C., I wish you and your peeps peace and strength.

We came into this with generally sweet, decently happy, reasonably well-adjusted children.

Eldest had been, at times, stressed by middle school - but mostly bearing up okay. Plenty of strong friends plus fulfilling, sustaining interests that included chorus, dance, and musical theater.

Adolescence can be rough under the best of circumstances (my own teendom was not exactly a picnic, despite buckets of privilege). My child has had to navigate much of this stuff during the weirdest year imaginable.

We've been on a bit of a roller-coaster with sexuality and gender happenings, plus all the other "normal" stressors, plus current events being a freaking shiteshow.

Navigating remote school is plenty tough, but it's like fifteenth on my list of concerns right now tbh.

Our 9 year old has mostly been handling things really well, though he still at times gets overwhelmed by all the Zoom lessons and lack of playing with his friends. Though he doesn't mention it outright, the biggest loss to him has been all the sports. He loves sports and has played soccer, basketball, flag football and baseball at various points since he was four. I was actually assistant coaching baseball and flag football too. So losing that has been really hard on him.

One thing that has been helpful is setting him up with Roblox and a private discord server with a handful of friends, so at least he an get some social time with friends so they talk to each other while they play. Obviously I'm not happy that this has necessarily meant a huge imbalance between physical activity and screen time, but as I'm sure we all feel at this point, sanity is the main thing. I've encouraged a lot of nature walks and easy hikes on the weekends to help make up for that, but I'm dreading winter smacking us full force and thus making it even harder to get outside.

Guess just want to ask, for those who may (also) have high school age children who have to learn from home, how are they weathering this nightmare emotionally and academically?

My high schooler, who just turned 16, seems to be doing really well. She has great teachers, has been challenged enough, took a PSAT prep class and the test, is looking into colleges. seems to use her downtime well, to study or do homework but also to work several jobs, from tutoring to working at a bakery to teaching a Sunday school class. She's got a really good close friend we're comfortable with, she has another small group of friends she sometimes sees in passing. Not getting a lot of exercise, though, so we suggested she start taking some streamed exercise classes.

The other kid, who is 13, her school is more hit or miss. The quality of teachers is lower, the level of challenge more erratic/frustrating, her own boredom an impediment (even though she is doing all of her work, and well). A couple of months ago we signed her up for a shared space pod, basically a kid version of We Work or whatever, where each kid has a safe little socially distanced cubicle, and their downtime between classes or after school they do various (relatively) safe activities. She has a couple of close friends she sees, but this pod has done wonders for her emotional health, as far as we can tell. Just seeing and interacting with other kids, friends or no. She's also taking outdoor field hockey lessons from a high schooler we know, which is helper her stay active.

Winter could be rough, but winter is always rough. Been a mild fall so far, so that's something.

(I should also say, getting the 13-year old out of the house has been great for the other three of us.)

I cannot imagine having a school-aged kid right now. Many props to all of you.

Batteries are an easy replacement on even recent MacBooks and are

didn't express that very well, but if I were to be a parent during this pandemic I would want to have a kid who was 1-2-3 years old, it seems like it would have the least negative impact on their life

We had friends over (outside, distanced) a week ago, and the general feeling was one of resignation and a realization that at this accelerating rate we're all going to get covid. Everyone that hasn't had it already, I guess. My friends (almost) to the one I would consider reasonable, responsible, cautious, and yet they've all had close brushes lately that have required some degree of quarantine. A friend of their kid's, a co-worker, a family member, etc. At the same time I keep reading accounts of people testing positive despite being even *more* cautious, and have no idea where they got it from, or local businesses that have tried being careful yet keep shutting down for deep cleanings and time off because someone still got it. My takeaway is that reasonable, responsible, cautious behavior, at least as most people understand it/execute it (which is to say, short of strict, full lockdown and total isolation) might not be enough as it proliferates here, and even reasonable, responsible, cautious people have their limits when it comes to balancing health and happiness. Like, masks, religious hand washing and distance (some) people can handle, but not much more than that, and even so those three things might not be enough at this point to stop the spread.

The saddest stories I've seen a lot of lately are from nurses in places that are being hammered, like South Dakota, where they keep getting sick patients who still think it's fake, a hoax, and that their illness is something other than covid, who keep complaining and spinning conspiracy theories right up until the moment they are intubated. I feel for the psychic toll it's taking on health care workers. I believe they call it "compassion fatigue."

It is possible everyone will get it, no matter how hard individually we try. The fact that half of us don't try at all is definitely making it worse, and as someone mentioned, will even decrease the efficacy of the vaccines that eventually come out.

But - even if everyone gets it, we're trying to avoid everyone getting it all at once so we don't have more corpse truck situations, where people having every other disease also end up not getting treatment/getting poorer treatment/straight up dying because our hospital systems are overloaded, which is what happened in Italy, Spain, New York and other places this spring.

Like you mentioned, it must be endless hell for those workers to watch this day in and day out, let alone be at heavy risk of contracting the disease.

i'm not sure how we got through summer and it's suddenly really awful again

other than "it's too cold to hang outside anymore and ppl are taking their chances indoors"

It's that plus "how long do you REALLY expect me to modify my behavior, this is America"

Ontario/QC not faring much better tbh

yeah a lot of ppl are banging on about how bad america is (which, true, have you seen the way we've set up our health care and sick leave) but it seems pretty devastating all over

I think it's quarantine fatigue, the inherent selfishness of many Americans, the fact that the federal government has failed from day one, Republican governors refusing to take even the most basic precautions and, now, some people who are taking the promising news about a vaccine as a free pass to do whatever the fuck they want and not what it should be, a reminder to hunker down for the next chunk.

It's sobering to see Cook County is now in the top 10, worldwide for COVID mortality rate.

North Dakota is waaaayyy beyond just merely “hit hard”. It ranks as the #1 hotspot for #COVID19 mortality rate ***in entire world***. South Dakota, Cook County (Chicago), Wisconsin and Montana not far behind. (HT @greg_travis and @VanGennepD) https://t.co/1dSpAQIz75 pic.twitter.com/X3VZ6sYKC5

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) November 16, 2020

yeah here in France it's a similar story of people being idiots

Yes, don't worry guys, the USA is not the only country with idiots, people are going stir crazy the world over.

And I'm loath to call a lot of them idiots for that reason.

There's a different between going stir crazy and literally lining up at packed indoor bars and restaurants because you might be bored. Sorry Tom, I've just seen so much selfish bullshit around me that I am completely comfortable calling people who refuse to wear a mask or being socially distanced idiots.

Can confirm, covidiots are burgeoning everywhere. The US merely *seems* more moronic because of the assclown in the White House aka the virus enabler in chief.

Yeah, that drives me nuts. I've had this argument with my wife that a lot of what people complain about (the closing of bars/restaurants, gyms, etc.) are things that are just so easily sacrificed short term for long term gain, but we (as a people) can't even handle that. Like, having to cancel weddings, funerals, even stuff like Thanksgiving, I get why people bristle. But going to bars or going to the gym? It's just such a selfish, short-sighted decision, and those are the predictably precise places where spread seems to be highest, not afaict necessities like schools or supermarkets.

It's been raised here and elsewhere, but the class dynamics here in the US are also really stark. There's no safety net for anyone, and there are people who've lost their jobs and whose unemployment has run out, and our government won't do anything about it.

Like it's one thing to be stir crazy, and it's another to be stir crazy and starving.

I've definitely been seeing people I know who, after being fairly cautious over the last six months, are now taking an "if I get it I get it" approach.

Something that's been troubling me is the idea of losing respect for friends due to their unsafe decisions during this time. I'm not going to stop being friends with people over it, but it bums me out to know that I'll never really think the same way about my punk friend who just had a gig in his basement, my friend who just bought a house and had a big help-us-tear-down-the-wallpaper party, etc. It doesnt feel good to find myself being that judgmental but at the same time I cant ignore the fact that my relationship with some people is going to be tainted on some level in the coming years by the knowledge that they did dumb stuff during the pandemic.

My wife is more exposed to covidiocy than I am through her side of the family and she says that the ‘they would have died anyway’ argument is increasingly more ubiquitous these days. Even the olds are doing it (‘*I* wouldn’t get sick, because I take care of myself by never going to the dr, unlike those other folks who’ve been made ill by all the drugs they’ve been taking’).

Netherlands was bad for a short while but numbers have roughly halved the last week/ten days. Belgium's a different story though.

Saw footage of hospitals in Lombardy not being able to take in more patients. Staff took vents and extra oxygen outside to treat people still in their cars :-/

Good luck world.

:(

I don’t know if this is still the case but for a while there Belgium had the worst mortality rate per capita, or am I making this up?

You mean it isn't the Uk?

To my knowledge the UK is up there with the worst offenders, but not quite *the* worst. This also depends on your yardstick, of course.