The official number of Americans sick with coronavirus doubled over the weekend; markets are plunging. There’s a lot to talk about, so here’s a new open thread.
This tweet from Eric Trump really hasn’t aged very well.
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@ Nobody
Really?
There’s a hint of “all about meeeeee” in this… just fyi
I have taken my temperature multiple times, so I know I don’t have a fever, and that’s the strongest presumptive indicator. But I’m sick with something, and I think I’m going to have to self-quarantine simply so I don’t cause a panic.
@Anonymous Coward
I am glad to read that you’re okay and that your employer was reasonable about the self-quarantine.
Quoting @Violet here because this is a good point:
And maybe related: a Twitter connection was writing how she had (most likely) bacterial pneumonia but didn’t want to go to the hospital for fear of possibly spreading – or spreading fear of – COVID-19. At least she got her antibiotics delivered and is over the worst part.
On a lighter note, I have a cold and I had to go somewhere on the bus – I kept feeling like coughing and didn’t, in case people would think I had this virus.
Suppressing coughs makes my eyes water and it’s frustrating! But I don’t want to spread a cold either, although it’s near the end so it may not be contagious anymore.
Anyway, I just DIY’d (DIM’d for did it myself??) some herbal tea with bits of ginger and 3 drops of oregano oil, which smells medicinal at least 🙂
@[email protected] – I didn’t see your comment before I wrote about having a cold. But yes, take time to rest if you can, even if just for your own sake. I cancelled non-essential things because of my cough.
Also (this applies in general) it might be good to make a note of your health information phone line, just in case. I know Quebec’s Info-Sante – for health information outside of emergencies – is 811.
I’ve been coughing all day 🙁
I’ve also been sneezing, which isn’t a Covid-19 symptom. I also don’t really feel sick at all. So I think it might be allergies or a very mild cold.
Can’t feeling slight paranoia though! Like how whenever I get a cold in the summer, I start thinking about The Stand.
@WWTH
I feel you, it’s really hard not to get a little paranoid. And now hay fever season is about to start and I will be sneezing constantly for the next couple of weeks. Worst part will be the itching eyes, especially since we’re not supposed to touch our faces anymore.
I hope you feel better soon.
Nina,
Oh, yeah. Itchy eyes are a constant through the warm weather months for me.
The “don’t touch your face” advice has led me to realize that I touch my face every minute of every day. I live to touch my face. I think some part of me wishes I could grow an extra hand just so I could do more face touching.
I have been trying to be better, but it is so hard.
Just a semi common sense thought on allergies that’s worth putting out: take something for them if you have them. I get seasonal ones that I mostly can just deal with, but my eyes get somewhat itchy. I’ve been taking Claritin just to eliminate the temptation to keep itching my eyes and touching my face.
FWIW I believe that China has far more smokers and far more air pollution than the EU (not sure about the USA, but I think that’s in between). So a lot of COVID-19 sufferers had less-than-wonderful ungs to begin with and that would likely raise the mortality somewhat.
I’ve not seen any proper reseach into this – I doubt there’s been time – but it sounds very plausible to me .
I think we definitely need to be concerned and to wash our hands, but we don¡t need to panic. A extra week’s supply of toilet rolls is probably a good idea. 3 year’s worth is daft. I can’t imagine any scenario where you can’t buy toilet rolls for 3 years but there’s still running water to flush the toilet.
@NOBODY
It’s not easy to understand tone on the Internet, and I genuinely did explain what I meant badly (a better analogy might have been: if someone is stabbed 18 times and dies of a shock-induced heart attack, that death might very well end up in “heart attack” stats. This effect can paint a somewhat inaccurate statistical picture of cause of death, unless rigorously excluded. At the moment the stats we are seeing are changing every day, no-one’s had time to analyse them properly and exclude outliers, and they are almost certainly somewhat unreliable)
I’m always happy to explain what I mean, and I don’t mind being challenged because that’s how we learn. Also, if you’re going to accuse people of jumping to conclusions and saying things guaranteed to start an argument, perhaps don’t do the same thing yourself??
@Viscaria
Same here. I didn’t realize how much I did it until I was told not to.
Right now I have a sore throat and it seems I don’t have coronavirus (not coughing, no fever, can breathe normally) but I do feel extra paranoid even though it seems much more to resemble a seasonal cold.
Without allergy medication, I’d be a horrible slimy mess during pollen season. (Which started wildly early this year, because weather’s been totally wonky.)
My medication works great, but it might not help everyone. Aside from pollen allergy, I also have lifelong “baseline” cough and sneeze symptoms that medical science cannot explain. Hopefully, during this epidemic, people won’t judge me too harshly for daring to cough while existing in public. You can’t know everyone’s medical background!
(I don’t generally go out much, and hardly ever in crowded places. My lifestyle and living situation is already very much “socially distanced”, as they say. I’m really hopeless in the face-touching department, but I do wash my hands a lot, and I try to do it tactically in relation to touching popular public touching surfaces.)
@NOBODY:
I completely understand where WWTH is coming from. Not only have we had a few come on this site and actually say that COVID-19 killing older and immune compromised people would be a good thing for the economy, but people with disabilities (such as myself) deal with this “the world would be better off without you because money bla bla bla” attitude on a daily fucking basis!!!
We get treated like we don’t add anything to society so it’s ok for us to die.
This week, I work from home 4 days on 5.
Today I was on site, and in the commute at least three different people had an apparently dry cough.
It’s total bullshit to extrapolate that any of them was ill, and the simple fact I was attentive enough to try to distinguate the number of cougher on sound alone is a big indication I was way too anxious about the whole issue. I guess there’s a lot of people like me who use too much energy fretting about that.
The other problem is that the WE in two weeks and three weeks respectively I have congregations of ~50 persons from all over France. I am anxious about risking to contaminate them all, and while being ill is no fun, contaminating other is what I truly fear.
Meanwhile, the distrust over our government mean pretty much every decisions is criticized as being “too much” or “not enough”. Most have no credentials to evaluate that, a few are in the medical sector, and almost none seem to know or care about what happen to gig workers, or poor people that can’t risk using paid sick day. (we do have pay sick day in France, but the lower the wage, the more likely that it’s a gamble to take some ; while illegal, being fired over being sick is still a real threat)
(because of connections at work, I know there are decent odds that France will be in Italy-style lockdown about middle of next week. I suspect the correct time would be right fucking now)
The government here has said that they’ll pick up the sick pay tab for any employer (under 250 staff) who asks people to stay at home. All part of the ‘flattening the curve’ strategy.
I’ve had a talk postponed. The venue was a lawyers firm that does a lot of international work; so I suppose that makes sense. Although I have a meeting on Friday; at Heathrow Airport; so in for a penny…
Government has decided to close down schools for a month. The same will probably go for Universities and institutes.
Anyone coming in from China, Spain, France or Italy must self-quarantine for two weeks. Still only at 13 infected, but I’m not too optimistic about the capacity of government to stop the spread.
One of the infected had already been attending school when he was tested, so it might’ve spread already.
In Washington (state) Gov. Jay Inslee has banned large gatherings (250 people) in three counties, and several school districts will be closed for at least two weeks.
We really, really need mass testing.
US Govt suspends travel to US from Europe; although UK still allowed.
@Alan
Of course that’s just trump grandstanding. It’s not going to help much.
@ tovius
It would be interesting to see what sort of scientific justification they put forward. Especially as it’s still really easy to get to the UK from the continent and fly out from here anyway.
Ah, I see it’s time for swift, decisive acts of doing something.
I see on Twitter that “Europe” has been specified to mean Schengen countries. This is all very “afterthought is first thought” style.
A payroll tax cut will be no help at all to people who aren’t working because they’re in quarrantine.