Covid-19 Discussion

I thought I'd open a thread on this subject as it is of worldwide interest currently. Our membership here in Club Read, while not entirely global, is broad, and it make for interesting discussion.

So, what's going on where you are? How are you being effected so far? What interesting articles or news sources have you found on the subject? What's on your mind?

Here in the Gers one of the most sparsely populated areas of France until now life has been going on as normal. However President Macron's speech last night may change all that. Schools, universities and nurseries are being closed and people are being encouraged to stay at home wherever possible.

Personally we sat outside our favourite restaurant in town in glorious spring sunshine on Wednesday thinking that it would probably be the last time we would be doing this for a while. We have now cancelled most social engagements especially where we know people have children and are preparing to stay at home as much as possible.

The good new of course is that reading can easily be a solitary pastime, just make sure you wash your hands after handling second hand books.

I'm in Virginia, the Washington D.C. suburbs. Our main drama has been the school system - we're in Fairfax County, a huge school district (190,000 students). Many districts around us have completely closed for the next week or two. Ours has been waffling. They changed Monday to a teacher work day to prepare for "distance learning". Then yesterday they had a press conference at 5 pm where they said they would only close schools on a case by case base (not district-wide closures). And then at midnight last night they canceled school for today, Friday. My husband and I both work and are not sure yet if we'll have any options for staying home so these last minute changes are frustrating in terms of finding safe childcare options with such short notice.

That being said, I'm all for the schools closing for a few weeks to contain the spread of coronavirus. We live in an area where the disease is definitely spreading. I'm frustrated that we still have so little access to tests. I know several people who have gone into local ERs or doctor offices with fever and cough and no COVID-19 tests are being given unless you have symptoms PLUS international travel or known exposure.

Thanks for opening up a separate thread for this, Lois. It will be nice to be able to share our experiences away from our reading threads. And also this way people who are stressed from the overload of information can take a break from the discussion more easily.

Let's see, here in NH we currently have 6 confirmed cases (out of a potential 1.3 million). I'm sure the appropriate actions are being taken state-wide (more confident about the state than the federal government right now). One family member is already working at home and we've been told that we'll be seeing our local grandchild by video for the foreseeable future (that was a bit of a surprise). The other family members are, I'm sure, taking sensible precautions; I think they all are able to work from home as necessary. Both grandchildren are still currently in daycare.

We are over 60 (he is more over 60 than I am), so we are paying attention and taking sensible precautions. We are both introverts, so generally don't seek out many large gatherings (although earlier this week we actually went to a 12:20 pm movie—less than 20 people in the theater). We have met with contractors all week (roofing, arborist, landscapers) and don't feel imperiled. I went shopping yesterday to touch up our stock (I'm kind of a stock-piler by nature) and have picked up some paints to do some outdoor painting when the temperatures are high enough (he went looking for furnace filters). We've got plenty (!) of books, and other entertainments. I've contacted the library where I am starting a genealogy interest group and gave them my plan for a private FaceBook group in lieu of any public meetings. And I will wait to hear about April hours at a museum I volunteer for. Not sure about hubby's plans re the SF book club at the bookstore...I've been checking in with friends to see how they are. And on it goes....

Everyone seems to be talking about it, but from the conversations I've had with others, there doesn't seem to be a panic (yet) but things are happening (I'm off to the hair salon in a bit, I'm sure that's where I'll get ALL the news, LOL). If we need to self-quarantine at any time, we will not suffer as some (I'm pretty sure my two extroverted daughters would suffer if they had to), and we do have spaces on either ends of the house we can retreat to, as needed :-)

>3 japaul22: One daughter & family are in Reston, VA are you nearby?

Happily I don’t know anyone who’s been personally affected as yet, but here in the Netherlands, there are currently about 800 confirmed cases (roughly 1 in 20 000). No Friday prayers today, all concerts and theatre performances cancelled until the end of March, most museums shut, official advice to work from home if possible. I had tickets for two concerts this week, a couple more later this month.

When I placed my regular grocery order yesterday, the first available delivery slot was Monday - usually it’s within 24 hours. And I was told that the delivery staff have been given instructions to put the groceries down on the doorstep then retire to a safe distance while the recipient scoops them up, instead of carrying them into your kitchen as they normally do. Same procedure in reverse for the empties.

Otherwise, my elderly parents have postponed a couple of holidays they were planning, including coming here, and a trip to Germany I was planning with my cousins to visit elderly relatives there has had to be postponed as well (although as it turned out, there was another reason to cancel that, it wasn’t just the virus).

All quite sensible, if perhaps disproportionate to the real risk, but only minor irritations up to now. My main restriction really has been self-imposed, through a concern about public transport, which I normally use a lot. But even there it’s no great loss to limit myself to local walks for a while.

Let’s hope it really does turn out to be a lot of fuss about nothing!

>1 avaland: you missed a trick with the subject line. Or did you decide “Questions for the COVID reader” would be in bad taste...?

Rural Michigan here. Over 60 with chronic cancer and oral chemo. Taking a fatalistic attitude--I am following recommended precautions, but something's going to get me in the next 5 years, and coronavirus might not be the worst way to go. However, I don't want to infect others should I get sick.

I have told my husband and put in writing that I do not want them wasting a hospital bed or respirator on me.

Quite angry by the unnecessary toilet paper hoarding. It's a respiratory disease, not dysentery.

People being urged to stock up on meds will lead to shortages. That means rationing and taking less than optimal doses.

Stupidity, conflicting info, and lack of extensive testing seem to be bigger problems than the disease to me.

Am re-reading Albert Camus's The Plague. Any takers for a group read?

There’s a sensible-sounding article by Rupert Beale in the current (“19 March”) LRB, explaining how coronaviruses differ from the usual sort and why that matters.

>8 nohrt4me2: Some alternatives here: https://www.librarything.com/tag/epidemic,+fiction

There seems to be plenty of choice, from The andromeda strain to Jane Eyre and Tom Brown’s schooldays and any number of AIDS novels. The one in the tagmash that’s also on my TBR is Le hussard sur le toit, but that’s cholera, which isn’t quite the same thing.

>10 thorold: Wow, a lot of stories there.

Here in Western France, it was business as usual this week. We went to a concert last Tuesday and it was packed, ordered some groceries that were delivered today and stocks were not unusually low. However, things are changing right now. Schools will be closed from Monday. This is going to be a nightmare for parents. Most of my neighbours are pensioners. I'm expecting a lot of noise in the building in the next few weeks as they are put to contribution looking after their grandchildren. I hope that doesn't put them in danger...
The library has announced on its website that it will be closing tonight until further notice. I sent my partner to get the books on hold for me at the library before it's too late.
My daughter has told me that the pasta aisle and the hand-sanitiser shelf are empty where she lives. She was supposed to move to another city for a 4-month internship. Thank Goodness it hasn't been cancelled. She'll be working from home until further notice. It's not ideal when you're starting a new job, but the silver lining is she (we) won't have to pay rent.

>6 thorold: Now why didn't I think of that?! :-)

I'm going to chase down one of the Aussies who used to be in Club Read and see if I can coax them back to report....

NYC is an odd place to be right now. I work in the entertainment industry, so with Broadway and most cultural institutions shutting down -- on very short notice -- it has caused quite a bit of concern. My non-profit performing arts organization has cancelled all performances through the end of March and as admin staff I am to start working from home next week. I am paid through the end of March, but after that is anyone's guess.

I haven't stocked up specifically, but I generally have a random assortment of rices/grains on hand and could go a couple of weeks without groceries. I am hoping people will stop panic-buying by mid-next week so I can get vegetables without spending over an hour standing on line:
https://gothamist.com/news/park-slope...

And, of course, if the electricity or water goes I am ~expletive deleted~.

Luckily, I had been saving for a down-payment. So when the stock market was doing really well in January I started selling things off to have cash on hand. Now I have enough savings to last several months.

But it is an unsettling time to be living alone and self-isolating in a huge city.

ETA: I keep thinking about some of the early sections of Station Eleven and have such a hankering to read Severance.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/05/publishers-report-sales-boom-in-no...

We’re not alone, apparently!

...and https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/12/amazon-flooded-with-self-published...

The retailing giant has already been removing “tens of thousands” of listings from “bad actors” attempting to artificially raise prices on items such as face masks and hand sanitiser. Now it is fighting a losing battle against the writers rushing out self-published books to profit from coronavirus fears

>3 japaul22: Yes, I'm in Springfield, VA.

My office (in the US) usually allows people to work from home only 1 day per week. As of this coming Monday, everyone is allowed to work from home 5 days per week. International travel got banned last week; domestic is restricted to the cases where there are no other options. For the last week, the company had been trying to get people back home from various international trips -- last I heard, there is only one coworker left stuck somewhere in Asia. Just to give you a scale - in a regular week, at least 10% of the company personnel will be traveling at least once - with a lot of those being international. So it had been an interesting adjustment.

Other from that, Arizona is one of the lucky states so far so nothing is really happening. I am not much of a social person anyway so did not have plans that involved too many people so nothing to cancel (besides work related stuff). Plus I just came out from a bout of pneumonia so it almost feels like life as usual for me - stay away from people and so on. :)

>15 ELiz_M: But it is an unsettling time to be living alone and self-isolating in a huge city.'

Hear, hear...

Feels a little crazy here in outer Houston. We’re on Spring Break, my wife is in DC. Schools are closed next week and we suspect they won’t open again this year. I’m missing sports, and trying to be smart with what I buy. My grocery store is busy, but not crazy packed. However - no meat, no rice, no dried beans, no paper towels, no tp, no bottled water, no eggs, no pasta sauce, not much pasta either. My office is making plans for people to work from home, but they haven’t activated them yet. It will be a big problem for me and my team if they do. (Also Russia’s attack on the oil industry last weekend did not help us at work.)

In Toronto and Ontario-public schools will be closed for two weeks after the coming 1 week March break- Museums, community centres, libraries and universities have closed.Many gatherings of over 250 people have been cancelled ( conferences, garden shows- Canada Blooms-) A lot of online learning will take place. There are procedures for reporting any symptoms of the virus and testing centres have been opened at a number of hospital sites. Many federal and city agencies as well as businesses are asking people to work at home. One major synagogue will stream their sabbath service. I recently travelled to the US for 24 hours. The advice given to any one who has travelled outside of Canada- self isolate for14 days- so I will get in a lot of reading. And yes there has been some weird hoarding- toilet paper!

I am in Seattle, the current US epicenter of the virus. Both my husband and I are over 65, and he is immuno-suppressed due to the bone marrow transplant and due to various immuno-suppressive drugs he is taking for graft vs host disease. Fortunately because of his condition, (and he’s had pneumonia since December), we don’t get out of the house much, so I feel we are pretty safe and have had limited exposure. We live right downtown, across the street from “Amazonville” in fact, and I can look down at deserted streets, with maybe one person per block, during what would normally be a busy lunch hour.
Our main personal concern is how this will affect our move. Our lease is up 4/15. Movers come 4/13. We have plane tickets to Houston on 4/15, where we planned to visit our daughter, drive up to Austen to visit my mom, then plane tickets to fly to Tampa on 4/27. Our kids have been urging us to delay the flights, but we really have nowhere to go, unless we stay in a hotel, and how long would that be for? We talked to my husband’s infectious disease specialist (for the pneumonia) earlier this week, and as of then, he felt we could fly, with precautions. We are considering changing the tickets to fly straight through to Tampa with no TX stop, though. A big move is disconcerting enough, and this is kind of putting me over the top.
Also, our youngest son is getting married in NYC (in Central Park) in June, so we want to be able to go to that, not to mention he wants family and friends at the wedding.

The state of Virginia had some big changes yesterday. Our governor declared a state of emergency and cancelled schools state wide for the next two weeks. Our county school system cancelled for another week on top of that. That will lead in to our spring break scheduled from April 6-13. So my kids will not be back to school until April 14. Hopefully things will be under control by then.

My work did decide yesterday to postpone several projects we had going so I will still need to go in some days but not very often or for very long. My husband will work from home some days, go in some days, and just be off some days. His office is reducing to a "skeleton crew". Neither of us has jobs that can be done at home through telework. This work change is a huge relief for us, obviously because we want to support the idea of "flattening the curve" of community spread, but also because we will need to supplement learning for our 10 and 7 year old boys and provide some structure to their days. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by that prospect. The schools cancelled so quickly that I'm not sure we'll get any "distance learning" instruction from the schools. I've ordered some workbooks.

The aspect of limiting social interaction will be very hard for my kids especially. Right now we feel like they can play outside with their neighborhood friends, but we're limiting visiting houses. I feel like if they took the drastic step of cancelling schools, we need to support that by not negating it with a lot of community contact. Our church has also suspended services. We will go for lots of hikes. Luckily we have beautiful outdoor spaces nearby to explore. And luckily the weather has been good.

Hi I'm Australian and have been lured back by Lois (avaland). I live in Sydney.

Some Australians' first reaction to the corona virus, starting about 10 days ago, was the hoarding of vast amounts of toilet paper. Nothing else at first, just toilet paper. I found it bizarre that some people's priority during a pandemic was to have a clean bottom.
Pretty soon other products followed so that you cannot buy them unless you arrive at the supermarket just as a shipment comes in.(Different times each day.) I can't buy: toilet paper, tissues, paper towels, paper serviettes, hand sanitiser, canned peeled tomatoes, pasta or rice. And other supplies are dwindling.

Some schools have been closed where a student has been exposed to the virus. Friends and family who work in offices are preparing to work from home, if necessary, talking their computers home every day. There have been instances of office workers being quarantined for 14 days if someone has been in contact with someone else who knows someone who has the virus.

The biggest change here was made on Friday, with the banning of large gatherings of people, 500 or more. This will start on Monday because our PM is a Hillsong member and Hillsong is having a huge conference over the weekend. (Hillsong is an evangelical Christian church.). From next week there will be no spectators at sporting events. We have 2 major football competitions and the games will be televised. Our beloved Royal Easter Show ( a ginormous annual fair) has been cancelled!!!!
I haven't heard yet, but I'm guessing that the opera, the ballet and all concerts will be cancelled.

Meanwhile, life in inner Sydney goes on. I live about 10 minutes from the CBD and people are walking around my suburb without face masks. They are eating in cafes without using hand sanitiser. Most of the people I know don't care about the virus at all, although we have to report if we contract it. I am hoping, of course, that vulnerable people will be self-isolating.

After 3 months of devastating bushfires, followed by one week of flooding, the corona virus is the new annoyance or concern. We wonder will life ever be normal again.

Amanda XX

Metro Boston. A bit spooky here: I take the bus to/from my Cambridge job, and they've been pretty ... let's just say uncrowded. Traffic seems much lighter.

Everyone in my department signed tele-work agreements on Friday, but nothing has come down from on high about whether or not we should stay home until further notice. Work requires processing some mixed signals, too. I work at the Center for Astrophysics, which is a strange melding of Harvard University and the Smithsonian. I'm on the Smithsonian 'side' in terms of where my paychecks come from, but ... well, it's an odd place that way.

Personally, I pretty much stay home reading much of the time anyway.

As Amanda mentioned a ban on events over 500 people in Australia is supposed to start on Monday (rolls eyes) but some organisations haven't waited, e.g. NBL final on Friday night went ahead without spectators and AFLW matches are also going ahead "behind closed doors". It will be interesting to see if/when the games themselves are cancelled/postponed.

I'm from Perth which currently has 17 confirmed cases (pop just under 2M) however the testing is restricted to those who've travelled or had contact with a confirmed case so who knows what the "actual" number of cases are. There seems to have been a bit of panic buying going on - my partner went to the supermarket this morning to do a small (normal) shop and said it was extremely busy.

My company has instituted working-from-home for all non-operational employees (which means me). I work from home about 50% of the week anyway so it's not a big adjustment for me (I actually prefer working from home). There's supposedly been restrictions on non-essential travel but I was in Melbourne this week and Sydney last week for requirements gathering workshops so I do not think it means what they think it means.

We've had, I think, ten cases here in New Mexico now, and the governor has just ordered all the public schools closed. As of Monday, the observatory I work for is reducing to a skeleton crew, of which I am one. They're expecting us to keep things running more or less as usual, with support from people working at home and on-call people we can bring in if something needs to be worked on. We'll see how it goes. They're paying me time and a half for working through this thing, so I guess I'm making a profit out of the situation. Which feels weird, but I'm hardly going to turn my nose up at it.

On the other hand, my sister is out a chunk of money for some nonrefundable costs from an upcoming trip to Peru she's had to cancel. Which she's kind of heartbroken about. The trip, not the money. She also sent me some pictures from where she is, near Portland, Oregon, of a supermarket near her with entire racks of shelves completely empty. It's not nearly that bad here, or at least wasn't when I was last at the store, on Thursday night, but there were definitely some holes, especially in the canned goods sections.

My mother, in California, works in a military commissary out there, and she says that usually they have almost no customers, but right now they're having trouble keeping a lot of stuff in stock. They ran out of toilet paper, and people started buying up all the paper towels. (I just really, really hope they don't start trying to flush those!) She says it's going to be hard to keep supplies coming in. Everybody is having to order so much more stuff than normal that everything is slow because it takes longer to unload the trucks, and they might not be able to fit everything onto the trucks they usually use for all the delivery stops they usually make. She's in her 70s, and I'm a little worried about her continuing to work in a busy grocery store, in a state with a lot of cases, but she insists on being fatalistic about it. At least from what she says, it sounds like the people she works with are looking out for her, and she's promised to keep washing her hands.

There are reports of empty shelves here in southern New Hampshire, but we haven't been out to see for ourselves.

Keeping things a bit light:

What's the difference between Covid-19 and Romeo & Juliet?

Answer: One is a Corona Virus and the other is a Verona crisis.

@JulianLeeComedy (on Twitter by way of my husband)

>29 avaland:: for shame. ;) I laughed.

I just emailed work to say I'd be telecommuting ... on a Sunday. I'm less worried about COVID-19 than I am about early-onset Alzheimer's.

I'll settle for "freaked out and not thinking clearly" however.

Thanks for setting up this thread, Lois.

I'm in NYC, which had more than 600 confirmed cases as of yesterday and two deaths. But we live in the North Bronx, in a big drafty house with a large back yard and a car (OK, two cars), which is helping make this a pretty light lift for us at the moment. We're doing the social distancing thing—as of the middle of last week both my husband and I are working from home, but we're fortunate in that both of our jobs lend themselves to remote work. My challenge is more about not letting work sink its tendrils into what would ordinarily be off hours, since a) there's no real delineation anymore and b) I'm a journalist and covering COVID-19 related library topics (of which there are a lot), so there's a sense of urgency and the rapid news cycle doesn't help that.

But I'm trying to be somewhat disciplined about that. A few friends and I have a group accountability text chat going, to make sure we each get out of the house every day (or do something semi-active indoors if the weather is bad). I've been either walking or doing yard work, raking up all the old leaves and sticks that have been there all winter. At this rate my yard will be ready for planting at the right time, for once, and I'd really like to make it nice this year. (Plus with the inevitable recession, it might be in our best interest to grow some food.) I'm hoping the garden center will be open in April so I can get some plants and really use the space well.

There's been a real run on groceries, paper goods, and medical supplies in the metro area. We're kind of food over-buyers on a regular basis, and I'm one of those people who needs to have two dozen rolls of toilet paper and four cases of cat food on hand at any given time, so we have plenty of stuff to last a while. (Case in point: about 1/3 of a one-gallon container of antibacterial soap that I bought at Costco in oh, 2007? I don't think it goes bad, so I'm in luck.)

I'm two weeks out from a bunch of travel, including going through three major airports (LaGuardia four times!) and attending a large conference, none the worse for wear. I was riding the NYC subways until Wednesday, though, so we'll see—but I don't expect to get significantly ill. I mean, if I do get sick, I do, and I have all the right supplies on hand: Tylenol and Advil, Nyquil, lots of Kleenex. But I'm way to one end of the spectrum when it comes to not getting sick, so even though I'm in my mid-late 50s I'm hopeful. My husband ditto—he's a couple of years out from chemo/radiation, which puts him a little more at risk, but I don't think that much at this point. I have a few single friends I've promised to check in on/walk dogs/bring soup if they get sick and I don't.

My kid's school on the island of Grenada is sending all students home, so he's out of there today. I won't see him, though—he's renting a car from the airport and driving up to Binghamton, where his girlfriend lives, and I don't blame him. The school is transitioning everyone to online and there isn't supposed to be any kind of break in his work, so that's probably the least possible disruption. I'm glad he's getting out, though... a potential outbreak on a small island that's not well equipped to handle such things doesn't sound very good.

And I have a LOT of good stuff to read, so no worries there. It's definitely a challenging time in the universe, though. I feel really lucky—lots of privilege on my end at this moment in time. Hang in there, folks.

>15 ELiz_M: I know there are a few organizations providing aid to artists and people in the entertainment industry who will be losing work in NY. I don't know if you qualify as a small business, but there's this: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/sbs/businesses/covid19-business-outreach.page. And hopefully more.

>29 avaland: ho ho

The Washington Post has a cool article showing simulations of how various lockdown/social distancing strategies affect the rate of disease spread. The simulations are simplified, not meant to be accurate as to actual spread of the COVID-19 outbreak. Be an unmoving dot, so far as possible.

I'm very frustrated with the lack of testing available. I know two families in our neighborhood who have children presenting exact symptoms of COVID-19. They were triaged over the phone and asked to come in (separate doctor's offices). But because they haven't travel to one of the "hotbed" countries they are still being refused testing. Luckily both of these families are taking personal responsibility to self-quarantine the entire family, but there is no requirement for them to do so and they weren't even advised to by their doctors.

Here in Northern Ireland (which is obviously part of the UK) things seem to have moved at a pace over the past few days. As Ireland has closed it's schools, there is big political pressure on our local leaders to cut adrift from the current UK policy and to close our schools as we share a landmass. That's becoming an annoying political divide issue (Sinn Fein want to link arms with Ireland on this, the DUP want to remain following UK government advice). The latest yesterday was that it's not happening yet but is expected to happen very soon, and when it does happen it will be for 16 weeks +.

The other big recent news is that the UK government has advised that 'soon' the over 70s will be required to self-isolate for their own protection.

In NI we have 45 cases to date, but there is confirmation of cases very close to me in a nearby village. This is worrying, as there is a lot of mixing of folks between both towns, and my father has stage 4 cancer so it's weighing heavily on my mind. I think my parents will hugely struggle with being forced to self-isolate as they're very active people, and I do worry about the impact that a long isolation could have on their mental health. I can't even see my Mum sticking to it, as the grandkids are such a big part of her life.

I believe they're stopping testing now locally unless you are hospitalised, so I'm wondering how they're keeping a tally of who definitely has it.

Although my husband and I can work from home, it's far from ideal. He works in manufacturing, and I work in a small tech company that's had it's first big contract, so the timing couldn't be worse in many ways. My youngest child is in a very important school year that determines the type of secondary school she'll get into, and it seems like we're going to have to figure out how to juggle home schooling and our own work.

In terms of provisions, people are acting very selfishly. Local large supermarkets are running out of everything from bread to potatoes to rice to pasta to toilet roll to nappies to paracetamol. The selfish actions of the few are forcing many other normally sensible people to also grab a few extras of things when they see them, not because of fear they'll be unable to leave their homes, but because of fear of not being able to buy the food cupboard staples when you run out as normal. On the positive, a Dunkirk spirit is emerging, with local Facebook groups springing up all over the place as people offer to help the vulnerable and those self-isolating to get their regular provisions.

It's going to be a strange year. If the kids are off until September, it feels like we're just writing off this year in terms of doing any of the usual things we'd planned. It could feel very suffocating for a while.

Empty book shelves hehehe

Fellow members will have noticed that I haven't started up my thread this year. This year connectivity is good, but the outbreak in late January pushed me completely into apathy and inability to get anything done.

I was also in China during the SARS outbreak in 2002 / 2003, so a lot of the practical knowledge and experience with various measures are already very familiar for me.

Just last July, I left Guangzhou and now I live and work in Nanning, the capital of Guangxi Province. Nanning is 200 km to the north of Hanoi, 600 km to the west of Hong Kong and 600 km to the south-west of Wuhan, where the pathogen was first detected.

Sometime in early January, more than two weeks before the Chinese government officially declared the epidemic, I had seen suspicious messages on Chinese social media accounts where people talked about a SARS-like illness which they dubbed "Wuhan pneumonia". Just four days before the government announced the epidemic, a young friend of mine had travelled from Wuhan to visit me, and I spent three days in his company.

The Chinese government announced the epidemic on January 20, and put Wuhan on lockdown three days later, with the advise to everyone to stay indoors and go out as little as possible. As usually all shops and restaurants are closed for about 12 days round the Chinese New Year, I had stocked up on food and self-isolated from January 24 till February 7. On that day, I bought some groceries at the local Walmart which are not available in local convenience stores, such as coffee. On February 11, I received an express parcel with surgical masks which I had asked my colleague to help me buy, and then stayed indoors without ever setting foot outside for a whole month from February 11 till March 10.

Those six weeks, from January 24 till March 10 were extremely stressfull. In the beginning nobody knew what it was, how it spread, how lethal it was, etc. It soon became clear that it was much, much more contagious than SARS. There were shocking images of people who dropped dead on the streets of Wuhan. After the first week, the number of infections increased with thousands per day, and after about three weeks the number of deaths ran into about a hundred per day. During the first three weeks there were no reported recoveries, just every day more cases and more deaths. I read quite a number of books, but actually spend most of my time reading news and social media on the epidemic. I think I had a panic attack one night, while I still wasn't sure whether my friend who visited from Wuhan had infected me or not. After about three weeks I forced myself to read less media reports, and stopped looking at the counter when it reached 50,000+ infections.

While cases were popping up all over China, the number of cases in this province throughout the whole period stayed just over 260. There have been only two deaths, and as I am writing there are still 7 patients in hospital. 242 patients have recovered. The statistics in China show that the prognosis is very good as long as there is a small number of cases. When the number of cases is low, the hospitals can handle the situation very well, then the mortality is something like 0.1%, but when hospitals are overwhelmed and there is a shortage of ventilators mortality climbs to about 5% (hence the WHO put it at an average of 3.4%).

As with SARS in 2003, many of the measures ordered by the Chinese government are either symbolic or of little use. However, the function of the so-called symbolic measures is to give the populace the feeling that the government is doing everything in its might to curb the spread. At the same time, while some measures may only have a small positive effect, many small contributions together add up to tipping the balance toward success.

In the fight against the disease, it is clear that governments much choose betweem saving as many lives as possible OR protecting the economy. It is obvious that the Chinese have opted for saving as many lives as possible. Not at any stage have they written off elderly people; they have saved many lives, and prevented illness in hundreds of thousands more.

The epidemic is not over in China, but in most provinces except Hubei (the epicenter) there have been ZERO new infection for several weeks. Where I live, there haven't been any new infections for 17 days consecutively. However, all safety measures remain in place.

Interesting perspectives here!

I live in the metro-Atlanta area of Georgia and work in a public library. We have over 100 cases of COVID-19 in Georgia right now. Early voting for our Presidential primary was in progress, but has been postponed.

I had planned to attend a music event this weekend, which was canceled, to my disappointment, but also understandably.

Our school systems are closing and attempting to do online learning, which for secondary schools is difficult because many famillies don't have access to the technology they need to get online. And I imagine this will be difficult for parents who need childcare.

Saturday was the last day our library was open to the public, though staff are still reporting to work so far and our online services will be available.

Our governor has declared a state of emergency, which I am nervous about because it is so easy to abuse power, but it may be helpful.

Our grocery situation is like others here - people hoarding supplies. I will be fine for a couple of weeks, but it may be tricky if things go longer. I've reached out to someone in my neighborhood to ask if we have any plans to use our neighborhood watch to coordinate assistance if we have households who can't get out due to age or illness.

Since I am single with only a canine roomate, I am a bit concerned about isolation. I am an introvert, but 3 or more days of no human contact isn't good for me. Of course, phone calls can help, but don't take the place of face-to-face contact..

Thank you for setting up this place to talk about what's going on in our locale.

>36 edwinbcn: Amazing story. Sounds like China is doing a good job.

What a difference a few days makes. I just traded a box of phonics cards for an onion! Daughter needed the cards as she now has to homeschool while trying to work from home, I needed the onion for the stew currently in the slow cooker. I was only joking, but she brought me several onion and a random bag of yams (I didn't ask why the yams) We made the exchange in the driveway and then discussed the dilemma of people who can not easily work from home or the out-of-work daycare workers....etc. She thought she might create a GoFundMe page for the daycare workers.

i've called and checked on various friends who all seem to understand the situation on one level or another. Had an impromptu meeting in the middle of the road with our two nearest neighbors yesterday as several were out walking their dogs. I'd like to say we solved all the world's problems, but we didn't. While there, one of them received a text from their son who works at a trading post in Maine and said the sales of guns & ammunition were up there (good grief. And we thought a run on toilet paper was bad).

Oh, my daughter said the Girl Scouts were selling cookies outside the supermarket!

>39 avaland: That's excellent. I just traded two rolls of toilet paper for a dozen eggs—neighbor friends were braving the grocery stores and asked if we needed anything, and though we're pretty well stocked, as vegetarians we've been going through our eggs (plus extra means I can bake). While making the handoff, he mentioned they hadn't been able to find toilet paper, and since I had ten rolls for the two of us (not hoarding! left over from our usual excessive bulk shopping a few weeks ago) and they're four people, two of them little kids, that was an easy call.

The barter economy is apparently up and running, eh? I'm good with that.

Brava on the trading front! Great idea! Don't be one of the mean people today.

Here are quarantined Neopolitans singing together from their balconies to keep up their spirits. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7NySV_U_voc

I live in Destin, Florida, which is in the panhandle of Florida on the Gulf. This town is a big spring break destination for families from Texas, Alabama, Georgia, etc. It is surreal seeing families having a lovely time at the beach and at the pool, given the Coronavirus situation. Most tourists drove in from areas which are not much affected (yet) by Coronavirus, and it's not really crowded like some spring break locations, so there is some social distancing. But it's definitely not as quarantine-y as it should be. The grocery stores are crowded with tourists buying food for their week-long rental houses, but the only thing besides toilet paper and hand sanitizer that my grocery store was out of today was limes. I bought a lot of groceries, so we are going to settle in for a staycation. My sons are out of school for the next 2 weeks, at least. I am calling the library first thing tomorrow to see if it's open, and I'll take my sons to load up on books immediately if it is. I'm sure it will close down sometime this week.

I work as a pediatric therapist and contract independently with a local practice, which means I don't get paid if I'm not doing therapy. I'm assuming it will be a good while before I can see kids for therapy again. Many therapists around the country are in the same situation. There is a lot of talk on the FB groups about switching to teletherapy so that at least some therapy (and income) can still happen. But most or all of the insurances that my company bills don't allow teletherapy, so that is probably a no-go for me. My husband works at the local military hospital. All non-emergent clinic visits and surgeries have been canceled there. He hasn't been back to work yet since that decision was made, so I'm not sure how the various hospital employees will be affected.

I also live alone. If we have lockdown I'm taking a coffee to the park every day just to be outside.

Good luck to you. I hope you don't lose too much income. It's very worrying.

My suburb in Sydney is a big cafe/restaurant area and I'm concerned about small business owners going bust and their employees having no jobs.

I discovered online grocery shopping from my niece- and am able to stock up on fresh fruit and vegetables after 5 days in isolation.
I am doing a lot of spring cleaning as well

Apparently there were 85% fewer passengers than normal on public transport here this morning, and (almost) no jams on the highways. But the phone networks were struggling. Can’t help wondering how many people will switch to home-working for good after all this is over. Maybe we’ve seen the last of the old-style morning rush-hours!

After a panicky cabinet meeting yesterday, schools were closed “except for children of essential workers”, which sounds like a classic pointless compromise. And they also shut down cafés, restaurants, coffee-shops and sex-clubs as from six o’clock yesterday afternoon. The paper had photos of long queues outside the coffee-shops stocking up on soft-drugs before it was too late, but I didn’t see any photos of lines outside sex-clubs! I came past the MacDonald’s drive-through on my bike-ride and wondered why there were suddenly so many people who wanted to eat hamburgers at three in the afternoon.

There’s talk of a government fund to help small businesses, but I wonder how much money there will be for that after they’ve rescued KLM.

My grocery order came as promised, the only thing they ran out of in the meantime was pasta, but I’ve probably got enough to survive for a couple of weeks. Maybe I’ll have to start eating home-produced instead of de Cecco. Fortunately I got a big hunk of parmigiano reggiano just before all this started (as if that were important compared to what else is going on...).

Arizona was still at 12 cases last night but schools closed as of this morning and gathering over 50 people are cancelled. A few more cases were added to the totals this morning though. My county has the most of the state's counties but we also have the international airport and the biggest city so that was kinda expected.

Saturday was... interesting. I am not entirely sure why everyone needs that many paper products but oh well. And grocery deliveries (which I get usually monthly) were either suspended or so overwhelmed that there were zero open slots for them.

I will really hate it when I am told I cannot work from the office anymore - for now it is somewhere between "take precautions" and "recommended to work from home" but it is unclear for how long and when it will shift towards the later and then into "mandatory work from home" (already happened in all out European and Asian offices".

Michigan schools, dine-in restaurants, and bars are closed by state order. Instruction at all colleges is via computer. It is not quite warm enough to sit outdoors (about 45 degrees F), but I live in a rural area, so taking a walk is OK.

Our local library is closed, but plenty in the TBR pile. A couple of area knitting stores are offering delivery service.

My husband continues to work in the shop, but benches are 20 feet apart and fewer than six guys working at a time.

My kid manages a couple of coffee shops and they, like the restaurants, are take-out only.

On a daily basis, life hasn't changed much. This may change as food and toilet paper run low and the illness becomes more widespread.

I am learning to ration news, focusing more on the local area and less on the national reports.

Thanks for starting this thread. Great to get real, human perspectives from all over the map like this. I live in a very rural section of California, in Mendocino County a bit more than 100 miles north of San Francisco, or just north of Sonoma County if that means anything to you. Our section of Mendocino County is called Anderson Valley, it's about an 85-mile stretch from highway 101 to the Pacific Ocean with about 3,000 people living in it, all told. So, we're pretty well spread out except in our little towns of Boonville and Philo. (We live in Boonville, about 1,000 people.) So far there are zero known cases in our county, which is actually a bit larger than the state of Rhode Island, square-mile-wise. Nevertheless, accent on "known." The 2-lane road that runs through the valley is essentially the only route that people can take when they're traveling from San Francisco to the Mendocino Coast, which has (had) a vibrant tourist industry. Despite the lack of cases and the relatively spread out community, people here are taking the virus outbreak very seriously. Because is (when) the virus gets into our community, our local resources are going to be quickly overwhelmed.

We have an excellent Valley health clinic, but it has no hospital beds. When people need an ambulance to the hospital, here, they travel by helicopter to nearby Ukiah, and by "nearby," I mean over a mountain pass on a 2-lane, very winding, 17-mile-long road. My wife and I are very lucky, in that we are retired and live in a comfortable home. Our local markets are relatively small, so shopping can occur relatively safely. But few people are going out, almost all events have been cancelled (even the poker game I've been looking forward to for weeks). Some of our restaurants are still open, and we try to support them via take-out and gift certificate purchases.

We know that folks are coming up here from San Francisco in order to get away from the claustrophobia of living in a big city with lots of Covid cases. Well, thanks a lot, you selfish so and so's! That's most likely how the virus is going to get into our community.

So far I have canceled a planned trip to Las Vegas to see my family at the end of March, and my wife and I have canceled a drive down to San Francisco to help my buddy celebrate his birthday with dinner and a jazz show for mid-April. My wife's niece's college graduation in Pennsylvania is probably going to be the next to fall. I have more books and LPs in my house than I can possibly read/listen to in my lifetime, even with this virus keeping me home. Plus, we live on a beautiful country lane and can go out for walks as often as I care for. Plus, my wife is excellent company. But, at 64, I am in the danger zone, so it's hunker down time for us.

I'm in West Virginia, which still doesn't have any confirmed cases. Obviously this is because we're very clean and careful and not because we're super poor (an uninsured) and frequently distrustful of doctors. It does feel like we've somehow 'won' though. That said, I imagine it's best to stay far away from doctor's offices with this unless you have severe symptoms. When things spiral, it won't be good. Like most of the US we have such a shortage of doctors, and anyone without insurance will have to go through the ER. Plus the general nursing shortages. It's a worry.

People did do that strange run on toilet paper, but at my smallish grocery store everything else seemed very normal. I had coffee with a friend yesterday, and the coffee shop was only a tiny bit less busy than usual. My book club will meet tonight, and then I'll stick to home. My chronic illnesses don't need any help making me feel miserable.

I basically live alone. I'm not able to work, and I can't really get out that much generally, so my home life isn't particularly effected yet. However, my friend was supposed to visit from the UK, which he can't do now. The timing was so frustrating and unfortunate, especially since this visit had already been postponed before.

On the plus side, people I know may finally be forced to watch the TV shows I've been recommending!

>44 amandameale: Amanda, are the fires all out in Oz or are you still dealing with that and also Covid-19?

>50 mabith: And most of us have stockpiles of books!

>46 thorold: Hurrah for parmigiano reggiano!

NY state has closed all restaurants/bars for sit-down service, but has agreed that alcoholic beverages can be ordered to go. WTH?

>52 avaland: I feel like people laughed at me for book-hoarding, and now is my turn to laugh. (Or would be, if any of this seemed particularly laughable.) I've got about a six-year supply of unread books, so if this thing lasts long enough for me to run out, we've all got problems. :)

>54 ELiz_M: I see the Dutch government did a backtrack today and has allowed restaurants to offer takeaways after all, infuriating one or two restauranteurs who'd just made the best of a bad job by giving away all their unused fresh ingredients to the deserving. Also applies to coffee-shops, but presumably not to saunas and sex-clubs...

I suppose that means some unemployed waiters will be forced to take even worse-paid jobs with Deliveroo and the like.

>52 avaland: That's the main thing. (And cheese, of course)

First day of combining working from home, dealing with over-subscribed video conference channels and 1 of the kids at home (not doing their schoolwork). I can cope with many supply shortages, but if they run out of wine any time soon it'll be a whole different story.... :)

>57 AlisonY: were your kids given school work? Ours shut down without making a single thing available. They said they’ll reassess in 2 weeks so I guess the teachers might be told to put something together going forward from there. But I’m not expecting any materials til after Easter. Very frustrating. I bought some workbooks and they’ll do a lot of reading. But I don’t know their curriculum and they don’t use textbooks anymore so we can’t just work ahead. Luckily they are only 10 and 7 and are bright kids so I know they’ll be ahead of the curve no matter what. We have many, many ESL (English second language) kids at our school and a contingent of kids who don’t have computers and internet access at home. I really feel for the schools having to manage this.

>58 japaul22: Our schools haven't shut yet. My eldest was off on a planned school development day tied in with tomorrow's closure for St. Patrick's Day, but my mum is sick, so I had my youngest coming home with homework in the middle of trying to deal with issues at work. I guess this is the new norm and I have to just suck it up and get on with it.

My youngest is at primary school and they have already sent a pack of work home which we're only to start working through if and when they close. This is her most important school year at primary stage - I'm not sure if they've done that for all age groups. My eldest is at secondary school and many of his subjects are already regularly taught on iPads, so they plan to continue to use e-learning to set and mark homework. How it'll work out in practice remains to be seen. He had regular homework to do today, but with me distracted on my own work managed to evade doing it until dinner time...

My youngest sobbed in bed for two hours tonight at the thought of not being allowed to hug her grandparents for 2 months. it was hard to find the right words to make it all better. Challenging times.

Lois, as far as I know, the big rains put out all of the fires. Then people had to deal with flooding! Some sections of Sydney had no power for a week. I just read a post on Facebook, something like: I dont want to finish my free 90-day trial of 2020. How do I get out of it.

Australia: Most schools still open. Cafes and restaurants still open.

Barely any grocery items on shelves. (Some people seem to have stocked up for 6 months.)
Opera closed, ballet closed. As mentioned previously, sporting events available via television only.

I fear lockdown will come any day, but I understand why it's necessary.

*SIGH*

I'm having a hard time reading right now. Either I'm reading every little thing online about this crisis or escaping with a movie.

Anyone else having trouble focusing? suggestions on coping?

>60 amandameale: Welcome back, Amanda. Careful, we might lure you back into creating a thread again and telling us what you are reading on a regular basis!

>62 kac522: Yes, there is the temptation to want to read everything, isn't there. Much of it is redundant though. And it's hard to get away from it as it's what's on everyone's mind. Perhaps choosing a few select sources to read daily (for example, I'm reading the Washington Post and New Hampshire Public Radio online updates). And perhaps for your recreational reading you try reading some different from your usual, maybe lighter, or a different genre, or short books or short stories? I'm a big fan of dystopias and have been for a long, long time, but I think I might lay off them for a while.

And, I do not think it callous to say, that humor is very good for de-stressing. There is nothing wrong with escaping with a movie (or 3 or 4) nor is there any shame in taking a break from books. Can you take a walk?

I’ve been trying to stop and do something useful instead whenever I catch myself just clicking around for the next update on news sites — go out for a bike ride, clean the windows, do some paperwork.

And since yesterday evening I’m trying the experiment of distracting myself by reading a novel in a language I barely understand (Afrikaans). Seems to be working so far...

>62 kac522: I'm also having trouble focusing on reading. My kids are home now so I get very few breaks during the day, where when I'm going in to work I have some down time to read. And at night we've been watching family movies or playing games. When I do get a few minutes during the day, I'm checking in on the news which I can read quickly and get back to what I was doing. It's ok though. I'm actually really enjoying our family time. I do wish my husband wasn't having to go to work every day though. We would have a much better flow of activity at home if he could be involved.

I HAVE to focus—I'm working from home but if anything the degree of activity and need for attention have ramped up exponentially (I'm a journalist/editor writing about libraries). In a way it's a good practice: I have to concentrate on the news for work but then put my head down and write, so I'm not spending a ton of time clicking around online because I know I'll get the important news and the rest feels like noise to me. I do find myself spending more time on social interactions like this, and all the little correspondences that have started up with friends checking in on each other. That seems important. But I'm also a good compartmentalizer. I'm doing everything I can to take care of myself, limit contact with others, etc., and that's all I can do.

And reading non-news is such a good escape for me, no matter what the topic. I'm reading Wolf Hall right now, which is absolutely magnificent. Although I just hit a part where someone important dies of plague, which gave me pause for a minute... but she writes so well it's almost weirdly cathartic.

I was not affected that much for reading, I read quite a large number of books, several of which real door stoppers which I had hoped to finish reading for a long time, but I couldn't get round to writing reviews for them on Club Read.

The outbreak started during our winter holiday, and I was alone at home. At that time, the outbreak was only in China. Every morning, I dreaded to read the new number of increase of new infections and deaths. For the first three to four weeks, I would keep up reading many articles on international web sites, information channels on my mobile phone and social media posts. I started noticing that it affected my mood, and basically stopped ignoring the rising tally after it hit 50,000 infections in China. The excessive reading also disturbed my sleeping / waking rhythm: I would go on reading news till late at night, then not be able to get up early in the morning and also spend a lot of time in bed during the day time.

It is all much better now, but I still spend relatively much time reading online news every day.

Something that cheered me up just now: I got a mail saying that payments to the monthly subscription scheme for art-house cinemas would not be collected until they start letting people in again, but that subscribers could opt-in to carry on paying to support the cinemas and film-makers during the closure. A nice way of doing it!

>67 edwinbcn: Sounds bad. Attention hygiene might be as important as hand hygiene. Glad things are better, at least.

Another finding it hard to read and concentrate and release from stress. Checking for updates that aren’t important and leave an unpleasant impact on my mental state has a bigger draw than books, so I have to fight that. I’m at work yesterday and today and that has helped.

I can use two library systems in the valley. The bigger one closed yesterday; the smaller one (which I prefer) had suspended all its programming but is still open. Let's see for how long... Not that I do not have books to read but if it closes, it will break the routine I had been having for the last few years. I guess it starts to sink in that things are serious.

And my office shifted to "strongly recommended to work from home" :(

And as of this morning, there is a confirmed case in my hometown - which does not sound as much but I worry about my Mom...

Let's hope that all these measures work.

I just read that NJ has its first pediatric case. A five year old. Both parents have tested positive. There have been 3 deaths. I’m not sure how many confirmed cases there have been. On Saturday, my hubby and I went to breakfast at a little cafe/bakery near us. We figured it would be fairly safe. They put clean white paper on the tables after each customer leaves. It also allowed me to pick up a few things for the week. There were very few customers. On Sunday we went to do our usual grocery shopping, but decided to go at 7:30 to avoid any crowding. The store was pretty empty except for the employees stocking shelves. The shelves were pretty empty too. Not one roll of toilet paper, paper towels, or box of tissues. The meat counters were empty, but were being restocked, so we were able to pick up what we needed to get through at least one week. The need to hoard toilet paper boggles the mind. We are in the age category where we really do need to take care. With my hubby’s ALS diagnosis, I feel that I need to be extra careful. My kids have made me promise not to go anywhere unnecessarily. Restaurants are offering pick up service, where they will actually walk your order out to you.

We’ve been having work done on our house so that we can get it on the market. We have been shooting for April 1st, but now wonder how this will effect the market. We’ve had workmen here every day for the past two weeks. After they leave, I’ve been cleaning the bathroom they’ve been using, and wiping all of the door handles they may have touched. We don’t really have close contact with them.

Hi NanaCC
Hope you and your husband are staying well at home. Good for you getting out and supporting your local cafe. It's hard being inside and away from others.
Take care and thanks for posting!
Clamato

Hi
I am in Ottawa, Ontario Canada and home since Monday. Our library system shut down till the end of the month but do have online resources which is great. Buring through all my pvr'd tv shows. My kitty is happy to have me home that's for sure! Here in Ottawa we have just over a dozen confirmed cases.
Was in all day yesterday but today will go out for a walk. It is crisp and cool here today and the sun is shining! Upside of all this, is that polution is down in many places in the world. It is lovely to see people reaching out to others in their community or neighbourhoods.
Keep taking care of each other!
Clamato

Great thread. I am a bit distressed by this virus and am glad to catch up with what's happening all over the world.

Like Thorold I am living in the Netherlands. Our government has chosen a different approach from most European countries. Instead of a complete lockdown, our strategy is to create massive immunity among people to protect the elderly and especiallyu vulnerable persons. This means that we can go outside and shops are still open (schools and cafes and venues are closed, restaurants are open for take-away as are the coffee shops for buying soft drugs - we are still the Netherlands....).
People work home mostly but it is not obliged. This way many people will get infected but it is the way to gain this immunity for the future. Elder and vulnerable people stay at home and are not to be visited.
I do think the strategy sounds plausible (getting ill is not so bad it seems, 80% of all people hardly notices itm 10% will be ill for a few days, 10% really gets hospitalized) until hospitals get overly busy which so far isn't the case (if so we will definitely have this lockdown too).
My government is afraid that a total lockdown now will help get rid of the virus for now, but won't protect us when it comes around again. I am curious to hear what you think of this strategy.

For now I walk the street of empty Amsterdam every day for as much as possible. It feels weird without the tourists. Only locals now, who greet eachother (which we normally don't when we don't know one another). But it feels good to be outside and have the fresh air. Spring is on its way, that may help too.

Work is slowing down fast however, I can imagine everyone's fear for the future. The prime minister saidt they will compensate all entrepeneurs and freelancers for 90% of the income they lose right now. Let's hope they'll be able to.

>75 Simone2: Interesting approach.

How are elderly and high risk individuals getting food and supplies in the Netherlands?

I wonder if your approach will prevent the shortages of goods and services we experience in the States. We have not seen any toilet paper anywhere for a week. The state just issued a warning against using Kleenex, paper towels, paper dinner napkins, baby wipes, and coffee filters as alternatives because of sewer main clogs.

I expect toilet flush warnings will be widely ignored. So things are about to get even more interesting as sanitary sewers plug up and spring rain taxes storm drains.

>75 Simone2: Do you have enough hospital beds and resources in the Netherlands if everybody who's going to catch it gets sick at once? I know the US absolutely doesn't, which is why all our efforts are aimed at slowing the spread so there are fewer people needing care all at the same time. If 10% of our population needs to be hospitalized at once, we are screwed. It really highlights how unprepared we are for this sort of emergency. It would be heartening to know if someone is in a better state to deal with this sort of thing, but even so, if your government really is saying it's OK with people getting infected to render them immune later, I'm not too sure about that as a strategy. Surely increasing the spread in one place raises the risk everywhere else, too? And of course makes it more likely that the really vulnerable will get it and die, since no efforts to isolate them is going to be 100% perfect.

In any case, waiting until the hospitals are already overwhelmed to put extra measures in place seems like a recipe for disaster. Even if you started quarantining everybody at the exact moment you start to run out of hospital beds, you're already going to have even more people who have been recently infected but aren't showing symptoms yet coming in with nowhere to put them.

Although, that having been said, honestly, it sounds like you're already doing more than we are in my state! Restaurants are still open here for the moment, although they're supposed to not let too many people in and make sure everyone is seated six feet apart. We still only have about twenty known cases here, though. So far.

By the way, while I'm thinking about it, for those who are interested I found a couple of good videos about the coronavirus and the mathematics of disease spread. Exponential curves are scary, guys!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCa0JXEwDEk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg&t=2s

My library finally closed this morning as well although we had had drive-throughs for the last few years (to pick up holds basically) and returning books is outside anyway so they are still exploring if they can keep these still open during at least some hours.

It is not about the books - it is just... I've lived through empty stores and lines for everything (Eastern Europe in the 90s was not a happy place). But I've never seen libraries closed - having only old books or almost no books was normal but they stayed open. So this is what really convinces my brain that this is different.

Meanwhile, the city of Phoenix (I live on the border between Phoenix and Scottsdale) had ordered all restaurants to be carry out/delivery only as of today. I expect Scottsdale to follow in a couple of days if not faster. It is weird... And in the meantime, my hometown back in Bulgaria reported its first case and I am even more worried about Mom.

>75 Simone2:

I hope it works. Although it relies on people knowing when they are in the risk groups and a lot of people have their own ideas on it. :)

>76 nohrt4me2: Oh, lord. And, as I understand it, our toilet paper supply wasn't actually in any danger, anyway! The only reason for shortages is because people are panic-buying the stuff.

>75 Simone2: that is interesting. We are doing what our area suggests and staying home as much as possible, but I'm not terribly worried about my family getting it. We are all healthy and in the age brackets that don't seem to be experiencing terribly negative effects of the virus (42, 40, 10, 7 ages). I'm assuming that they are working on a vaccine, like the seasonal flu shot, and hoping that it will be out in the next year. So I wasn't really thinking about developing immunity. If a vaccine isn't able to be developed, then the immunity strategy of your country seems to make more sense.

It had occurred to me that it's really the elderly and those with preconditions (for instance diabetics seem to be hit very hard by this) that really need to quarantine. The rest of us are trying to make it safer for them when they must go out (like for groceries or pharmacy visits). I'm happy to oblige with staying home to keep everyone safe, unfortunately my husband has to go to work every day and I am required to go in when needed as well (we are both active duty Marines). So I'm not sure how effective keeping our kids quarantined when we are still required to go out really is.

By the way, is anybody but me getting that deeply surreal feeling that we're living in a sci-fi novel (and not necessarily even a very good one)? I've been having that in a low-key kind of way for years now, but it's suddenly kicked way into overdrive.

>81 bragan:

It is a very bad one... :)

Re toilet paper shortage: Please not flush anything but toilet paper. You are risking backing up your municipal sewer systems, and being on lockdown with a backed up toilet does not sound fun.

A plumber explains the problem: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dj6I56fn8gk

Throw away alternate wipes in a covered container next to the toilet. You can also use a hand held shower as a bidet or get a bidet extension to install on an existing toilet (Amazon has them for $30-70.)

If you are one of the a-holes who hoarded paper and created this mess, how about leaving a roll or two on your neighbors' porches in dead of night? Yeah, I know you won't, but had to ask.

>81 bragan:, >82 AnnieMod: too funny.

>83 nohrt4me2: Don't forget the ordinary squirt bottle ;-) Seems the use of the term "a-holes" was in keeping with the topic....

-------

Personally, I like how most, now being told to stay 6 ft apart (or more) are, in other ways, in spirit coming together.

>77 bragan: Apparently the theory is that the measures already taken to reduce social contacts will slow the growth down enough so that hospitals can cope. For the moment there seems to be plenty of reserve capacity, in part because the cases are still mostly in the south and west. But there has been some criticism of the policy. Predictably, Wilders and Baudet have fallen in love with the word “lockdown” and are taking every possible opportunity to be filmed using it.

Summary of the hospital capacity planning (in Dutch): https://nos.nl/artikel/2327537-171-coronapatienten-op-de-intensive-care-ziekenhu...

My parents (in the UK) just told me that the Parish Council has set up a street-volunteer network in the village, so that there is someone who will go shopping and do other errands for elderly residents while they isolate themselves. Only trouble is that it all has to be non-contact, so they will have to pay by bank transfer. Being over eighty and allergic to online banking they can’t do that without a trip to the bank in town... Fortunately, my sister does do online banking, but it just goes to show how things that sound straightforward can suddenly turn out astonishingly complicated.

>82 AnnieMod: (>81 bragan: ) I knew there was a reason I never got into Scifi

>87 dchaikin:

Well, this is the bad variety - I don't blame you not being impressed by it. Good SF is a different story :)

>78 AnnieMod: I've been covering the push for libraries to close—it's a big, big thing, balancing the need for the things libraries can provide in their communities with the safety of the people who work there—and patrons, too, since they treat it like a safe space but it's no safer than a grocery store or bar, really. Library workers are feeling really jeopardized by libraries electing to stay open, and a lot of them are part-time people, or don't have health plans, or are caring for children or older folks, so it's a complex situation. It'll be interesting to see if more people start checking out ebooks, or libraries will improve their e-collections because of this.

>81 bragan: Very like William Gibson's The Peripheral and Agency, where Earth in 2136 is quite prosperous, but the population has dropped by 4/5 since our day, due to a series of catastrophes Gibson doesn't describe, but notes are perfectly foreseeable from where we are now (or, where we were a couple of months ago).

I think the shortages of paper goods and food and such will ease as people begin doing their shopping in cycles, rather than all at once in a big panic. I think out of everything, that's probably going to be the least of our worries.

The NYC mayor and NY governor are at odds about instituting a shelter-in-place rule here. I think it's not a bad idea—if San Francisco is an example, the rules of what you can and cannot do are relatively mellow—but I think instituting it in a city like New York would be a nightmare. What are they going to do to people violating curfew—hand out tickets? Tase them? My husband and I took our afternoon walk yesterday through a local park and were watching about ten teenagers playing a very aggressive game of basketball, clearly blowing off a lot of steam, and I thought, Good luck with that.

Shopping in cycles? Who's doing that? Good idea, but here in rural Michigan, panic begets panic. Now that the hoarders have created real shortages, it's a morning free for all to get into the grocery store before everything is cleaned out by panic buyers.

Still plenty of sardines, ring baloney, crackers, and cans of sauerkraut. No fresh fruits, veg, or meats, bread runs out quick. We are buying canned milk.

And keeping six feet apart? Good luck. People are elbowing in to get stuff. A woman cut I'm front of me to grab the roast I was looking at. When I said, wait a minute, she told me there was probably more in the back and kept going.

I cannot stand to see this stuff, so am gladly staying home.

>89 lisapeet:

I knew they need to close and I agree that they had to - as important as they are, leaving them open would have been irresponsible. I was just sharing that this is what hit me the most - on an emotional and "ok, that IS serious" level. We are lucky - almost no cases here yet so we do not have the urgency of the badly inflicted areas. Yet. Which made it harder to process in some ways.

It is interesting how the two library systems here reacted though.

The big one (Phoenix Public Library) closed on Monday morning, suspending new hold requests, keeping all holds as they are until the reopening and extending the borrowing period and waiving all due dates until further notice.

The smaller one (Scottsdale Public Library) held on until last night and is still looking at what they can do so they do not disrupt as much (the drive through windows had been there in all branches unlike the big system so that may work out). It is symptomatic to the whole process though - the city of Scottsdale seems to be doing things that the big neighbor does on a delay of 2 days :)

Oh well... we will survive all that.

On a bright note, we actually have a pretty good ebook collection (a few of them actually via different services) so we will see how the statistics look like.

>92 nohrt4me2: Hey, shhh! don't tell them about sardines (or mackerel) or everyone will be looking for them.

I suspect it isn't all hoarding & pano-buying. Hundreds of thousands of parents are having to feed their school age children/teens lunch now. And families are home all day needing TP for 8 hours more:-)

I went on Tuesday morning and got everything on my list except carrots. The produce area had been restocked and looked pretty good. A bit low in the potato area. I only had a short list. I was a bit flummoxed by the empty flour shelves, but started laughing out loud when I turned around and noticed ALL the chocolate chips were also gone from their shelf (butterscotch & vanilla were available).

We have checked in with friends and family (near and far), and neighbors. I think that's important to do.

The libraries have mostly closed and gone to "take-out" only. My genealogy group start was of course postponed until April (optimistically).

Here in France we are in lockdown mode. If I leave the house I have to carry a piece of paper saying why I am outside. Food shopping, employment in what are considered essential services, health reasons or assistance to people who are vulnerable and also in aid of pet animals (dog walking) are allowable.
The lockdown period is for a couple of weeks but everyone realises it will be much longer than that. My own interpretation from reading the reports of scientific modelling plans is that it is likely to be for an initial five month period. I fully support the policy and wish it had been introduced a couple of weeks earlier as this virus spreads so rapidly.

In my opinion those countries who have not imposed strict lockdown procedures are behaving irresponsibly (Mr Johnson, Mr Trump etc) As Edwin said above it seems to be a choice between saving the people or saving the economy.

I don't buy this herd immunity idea, because how many people will need to die before the "herd immunity" kicks in if at all. WE do not know the extent of the virus, there is no cure, there is no vaccine, we don't know if people do become immune after a mild infection meanwhile they could be carrying the virus and effectively killing off people more vulnerable than themselves. I really hope we are not entering into a survival of the fittest scenario (aka the survival of those with most money)

>93 AnnieMod: Oh and I'm in total agreement with you—libraries closing IS serious business. I always thought of them as the last bastion of pretty much everything, even before I got involved with writing about them.

I'm not gonna endlessly post LJ stuff, but if anyone's interested in a bigger picture of how COVID is affecting libraries, we have a dedicated webpage with a lot of info: https://www.libraryjournal.com/?subpage=COVID19

I like dukedom_enough's phrase attention hygiene. I'm listening to NPR on the car on the way to & from work, and checking local newstation or newspaper to keep up on the local situation. But trying to limit myself on the amount of time to an hour total of news.

Once I get sent home (I'm sure it will happen, but don't know when). I hope to combine some physical activity (yard work, exercise, housework) with sedentary activity ( books, movies, drawing, etc.)

Yes, >81 bragan: it does feel surreal. And I'm trying not to borrow trouble, but keep thinking of ways this will impact us & our communities long term. And the uncertainty! Makes me anxious.

I dread sheltering in place. I have no human roommates. Although I'm an introvert, my idea of hell is a place with no other people around. Although if I'm in a large crowd it becomes my idea of heaven.

>89 lisapeet:
Saturday the 14th was the last day my library was open to the public. Sunday I pulled up all the ebooks in English available for checkout at my library and there were all of 20. But tonight it was back up above 5000. Curious. I'll have to ask what happened tomorrow.

>91 lisapeet: Thanks for the link. Makes it easier for me to checkout what's going on other systems

Isn't it sad that we live in a world where people are unable to stay at home for a few weeks, and choose for a quiet lifestyle, spending less money.

The advise in China was to go out as little as possible, preferably have a young, healthy person in the household do the shopping.

They also advised to ventilate the home at least three times a day for half an hour, and wash hands very often.

It is really advisable to keep up moderate exercise for at least half an hour a day. A friend of mine too daily walks of up to 20,000 steps by walking in the parking house in the basement of his building. There was a Chinese man who ran a marathon around two tables in his living room.

I was feeling a bit more anxious this afternoon as we (Western Australia) had 17 new cases detected today (total is 52) including 12 whose source of transmission is currently unknown.

Australia's borders are now closed to non-citizens/non-residents. There's a limit of 100 people for non-essential indoor gatherings and 500 for outdoor. Schools are not yet closed and (weirdly) our major sports (AFL and NRL) are going ahead though playing without spectators. There are shortages at the supermarket because people are idiots.

I'm continuing to working from home though my partner is not. A number of events I was planning to go to have been cancelled, and others that haven't yet cancelled (e.g. bookclub) I don't intend to attend. A close friend's daughter is getting married in Tasmania in early May (for which we have flights and accommodation booked) however Tasmania today instituted 14 day quarantine for any interstate visitors so we will be cancelling that too.

Easter is a big holiday for our family and friends (last year we celebrated 50 years of gatherings). We have our planning session this Sunday and I think we will absolutely have to cancel but I am expecting some resistance from the older generation.

I'm consoling myself with books and (like everyone here) have plenty on the TBR pile to keep me going.

>98 edwinbcn: There was a Chinese man who ran a marathon around two tables in his living room.

I am not sure that the neighbours on the floor under me will appreciate that... :)

On a more serious note though - the problem is more psychological than physical. We are used to being able to go out and a usual day is structured in a way that makes it almost unnatural not to. I have weekends where I literally do not open my front door so you would think I will be fine not leaving the house much... and even I feel cooped up. Technically I can go out, the restrictions here are not as severe as in some other places -- but I am trying to stay home as much as possible - just in general principle.

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>101 avaland:

They show up as free on the site regardless if you are logged in or not so I think sharing the link is ok.

This morning, the military channel of Chinese state television claims to have developed a safe vaccine for COVID-19.

>103 edwinbcn: Interesting. Seems a bit fast...

China has more resources and the government throws masive support and incentives at research. China knows when to move "red tape" as no other.

The other day, I saw an interview with an American pharmaceutical company. They claimed to have a vaccine in the freezer, but it would still take clinical trials and the whole procedure of 12-18 months at a minimum to get it approved.

The Chinese have previously said they would deploy a vaccine if the benefits would outweigh the cost. I think that wouldn't fly in the US.

>105 edwinbcn: I also saw on the American news last night that they have a vaccine that they are beginning to use in clinical trials, but that process takes 18 months, even on an accelerated schedule.

>105 edwinbcn: There’s an overview of vaccine technology here: sadly, it looks as though there aren’t any obvious shortcuts, even for China. The only advantage they might have is to be able to take more risks when they are scaling up to bigger test groups. But they still have to know the vaccine doesn’t do more harm than the virus before they deploy it.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/20/when-will-a-coronavirus-vaccine-be...

>105 edwinbcn: I think some of them are hoping vaccines from other coronaviruses might be useful. I saw a clip of two volunteers being injected with something that might make them immune.

Here in Northern Ireland we've now been in home schooling mode for 3 days and it's been utterly exhausting. Both kids have been terrific and independent beyond their years trying to keep going with school work, but it's very hard. I had a massive tender (COVID-19 related) to get in today for work, and for the past 2 days I just had to leave them to it - there weren't enough hours to do both.

My youngest's school teacher has posted loads of stuff online which is appreciated, but I feel completely bamboozled by it. I'm not a qualified teacher, and it's hard to know where to start. The kids are very tired as it's a lot of concentrated work compared to normal school life. I'm very frustrated that there somehow seems to be an assumption made by the powers that be that it's perfectly workable to suddenly be full-time teachers on top of your day job. I really hope that sense prevails when we come out the back of this, and they realise that this period cannot count as being equivalent to normal learning.

My husband has been required to keep going to work this week as he works in manufacturing, but I'm hoping he can home work from next week. I'm really missing having normal contact with my parents, who are both in the vulnerable category. My mum had to be taken by ambulance to hospital last weekend as she was very unwell, and now we've been told she's not getting the scan she needs as pretty much all normal hospital work is on hold. It's very worrying not knowing what's going on with her health.

Tomorrow I'm giving myself a shake and trying to get exercise back on track. This week has been very sedentary, and it's not good.

Bulgaria just went into lockdown - all parks are now closed and people are not allowed there, travel between cities, villages and towns is banned, schools and business except for the essentials had been closed since the beginning of the week.

Meanwhile, Arizona is mostly as before - restaurants and bars are closed for sit-in service and a lot of people (including my company) work from home, my apartment complex closed all amenities and only does maintenance jobs for emergencies but other from that, it is still almost normal. Which is... surreal.

On a somewhat positive personal note - my Mom was supposed to retire at the end of April. But due to operational issues (all her licenses were expiring in March and most of them are yearly only), she decided that Feb 29 will be her last working day. So now she is home, safe (~ish). We owned a grocery store - if she had not closed before this madness, she would have been there, in the store, every day. I am worried as it is but...

In Indiana USA, people are pretty much on lockdown. Schools are closed until May, universities out until end of semester and going to online learning.

Bars, wineries, and restaurants are take out only. Some small businesses seem to be open, but the streets are empty for the most part.

All music and theater events are cancelled, which takes out our forms of entertainment. We are both retired from full time work, although I teach online, and my next teaching assignment takes up in April. We have been listening to music on SiriusXM and reading a lot. My cleaning lady quit, so we did a darn good job of cleaning the entire house ourselves. We have stayed in touch with our family and friends by texting and phone calls.

Church services are cancelled,sadly, as we all need the uplift of our faith community now.

We avoid the large supermarkets and have been shopping at the small local stores (which are more expensive), which have not been crowded. Some empty shelves, mainly all paper goods, low on dairy products and frozen veggies.

Government offices are skeleton staffed. Pharmacies and medical offices are open on a limited basis. My husband had to get new eye glasses and they are being mailed to him, thankfully.

I live in a small town mainly rural area, and we have had no local cases, although Indiana had 56 cases so far out of 6 million total population.

On top of the virus scare, we had torrential rain last night and local flash flooding.

>101 avaland:: Wow, some amazing stuff there! Thank you for posting this.

Edwin, it's good to know that you're well.

It's been 10 days since we started this thread, how is everyone doing?

Here in New Hampshire in the US, it is much like the rest of the country. Schools and most (if not all) daycares are closed. Restaurants are restricted to take out only. Some stores still open (we are heading for the hardware store this morning). Many people are working from home, and there have been some mass lay-offs of the workforce. But not everything has come to a standstill; for example, we have roofers coming on Wednesday. As of yesterday we have 78 confirmed cases of the virus in a state of 1.3 million people (to give you some perspective there, that's less people than the city of Philadelphia but more than the city of Boston). Yesterday I heard we are prohibited from using reusable grocery bags. The mail still comes, the internet and phone still work and so on.

My daughter and family here in NH seem to be maintaining their sanity (barely) while trying to work from home and homeschool a very active nearly five year old. My son is still expected to go to work. When I asked why, he texted something like 'integrated software goes in hardware." My other daughter and family in Virginia are also all home, she just announced she is pregnant again. For the two of us, though, there has been far less disruption (introverts that we are). We wash our hands a lot more, run errands less. But it is as Annie said up in #100 "the problem is more psychological than physical" in that we are used to popping out for this or that, going out to breakfast or lunch once or twice a week. I think the thing we miss the most is being able to play with our grandson (the one who is local) and get those hugs, and wish we could help out (and we appreciate the mention somewhere above that their children were missing their grandparents, can't find the post now:-).

I have called and checked up on various friends, and have running conversations with some of them via email or text. Many are in different situations and need support.

But we read, watch some television (we are getting most of our news online, so what we watch is usually something more diverting), do projects inside or work outside now that spring is trying to arrive (have already found one tick munching on me...and a bear took our finch feeder the other day - but we found it the next day after the snow melted) I've been asked to sew surgical masks needed by one of the local hospitals so I'm setting up for that.

I did my first Covid-19 book binge, though. 4 used books, 1 new, off Amazon. Not like we don't have a huge stash of unread books here.

I am preparing for the long haul. It has been ten days now that we have not been face to face with anyone. In our area of France most shops have closed and of course all restaurants, cafe's and social events. The fine if you are stopped outside your house without a written reason to be outside is 135 euros (spot fine). My dentist appointment tomorrow has been cancelled (it was root canal work and so I am not too disappointed). We intend to self isolate for the foreseeable future only going out every ten days or so for a drive in food collection. We will be ordering and collecting food for our elderly (even older than us) neighbours who do not use the internet.

Over the last three years I had let my vegetable garden to largely go to grass. This year I am digging it all over again as I can see that there will be no local produce in the markets (there probably won't be any markets) and so I am back into full scale vegetable production. Everybody I know around here is treating the virus very seriously, I don't expect to see any of them over the next few months.

I hope we are equipped to deal with the isolation as well as anybody, we both have hobbies and interests and we get along just fine. It will be an opportunity to do those things that we usually do not have time to do, because our social life was quite busy. Long term good news is that Covid 19 may well lessen the impact of human beings on climate change. Even longer term good news is that the financial/economic crash that is just around the corner may lead to a fairer more equitable society for those that survive.

I should of course be saying that I will have more reading time, but digging the vegetable garden seems to be taking most of my time at the moment.

>115 avaland: Yes, I think the not "popping out" thing is one of the most difficult parts. Most important things here still seem to be functioning as normal, but you start to miss the unimportant ones!

And it's been beautiful weather for the last few days, which makes it worse being trapped indoors a lot of the time. I'm still going out for an hour or so a day to walk or cycle in the neighbourhood, but I try to pick times when there won't be many others around (early in the morning when it's still frosty!). It's frustrating to see empty trams and buses going past and not get on them and go somewhere, but the advice is only to use public transport for essential travel, which seems sensible.

The TV here was reporting that several beach places and national parks were busy enough to prejudice social distancing over the weekend: in a country where we all live so close together it just doesn't work if too many people decide to get away from it all at the same moment, and of course there are all those families who normally spend their weekends taking the children to sports clubs who were suddenly at a loose end.

The grocery delivery service I use has run out of available slots for the next week, but the supermarkets mostly seem to have filled their shelves again.

I've got a few books on order (from before this all started), and I got a message to say they would be delayed because some of them are coming from the US, and of course there aren't many flights.

Otherwise we're all waiting to see whether the curves start flattening out before the hospitals are full. Germany has reported that the rate of new infections is already slowing down, but that's not expected in the Netherlands for a few more days yet.

My niece says that the great thing about working from home is that you can play music loud and dance a bit in between working. I don’t know what her neighbours think about that...

I showed up today for the annual physical with my GP to find the office shuttered. I called, and they have stopped seeing patients until this is all over. If anything comes up, they said, go to the ER. If I feel the symptoms of COVID-19, go to the same ER. This seems unwise.

Currently, there are few tests for the virus here in SC and they take up to ten days to process, so our numbers are artificially low right now.

My son's high school and my daughter's university are now on-line. My husband's work has finally decided that they should send people home and have scheduled that for the first week of April. This also seems unwise, but corporations move very slowly unless forced to do otherwise and our fearless Governor is leaving all decisions up to individuals and companies.

We had our usual Sunday night dinner with my 81-year-old father, he attended via FaceTime.

We are fortunate that the nearest house to us is about 250 feet (76 meters) away, so we can be in our yard without worry.

I just watched a live press conference of Maryland Governor Larry Hogan. My state had 288 cases test positive and three deaths as of today in Maryland. Of those positive cases, most were in my county (Montgomery County). We had 93 people test positive. The number is going to continue to rise as more people are being tested incrementally.

It was comforting to listen to a leader, politics aside, who is truthful, transparent, and competent in handling this emergency situation. Loans are being made to individuals who face job loss and to small businesses which are unable to meet payroll. The police department is deploying police officers in cars with loudspeakers to disperse groups of people. There will be activities to increase production of PPE (personal protection equipment). It was comforting to listen to a leader who has a few brain cells!

I’m less anxious today as I’m beginning to accustom myself to this new normal. I am going to try as long as I can to not have anything delivered to our house. My husband wanted eggs for breakfast, but I want to ration those for baking so he’s eating leftovers from last night’s dinner. That’s better as we have to eat up our leftovers first!

How is everyone here feeling about our “new normal”? Are you getting used to it or not?

Do you find the leadership in your own state or country helpful or frustrating?

P.S. These are not TIOLI questions of the month! :D

It's been an anxious time here in the county where I live. The first cases popped up in Coachella Valley around the end of last week (my goodness, has it been a week?). Everything was about same old, same old on the 12th, and then on the 13th they closed the schools (2 districts in my area; I work in 1). That's when the pandemonium set in here. Everybody went nuts and went to the store and wiped out everything. I refused to go (we didn't need anything, really). I did go to the store on Tuesday and bought enough to get us through a week or more. At the moment, we have everything we need.

My ex husband (thank God for him!) went and picked up my college kid from his on campus apartment on the 14th; they had already stopped in-person classes (and, thankfully, my kiddo decided that this was the quarter he would not go to class and flunk out. LOL. That would make most parents angry but now I think the kid may have just saved our lives by ditching all his classes. HA!) We were worried he'd be stuck there; so grateful we got him in time. They closed campus on Monday; although I am sure we'd still be allowed to go finish moving him out. He left so abruptly he still has stuff there that we need to go get. We have until the 29th.

I had to work at my part time job at our county library Saturday and Monday. So, with schools being closed, every mother and her kids came to our little library to stock up on books. It was two very unusually busy days. The libraries closed to the public last Monday (the announcement was made late Monday night). They closed some of our "joint use" branches Saturday (in other words, county library branches located in school buildings). But our stand alone branch was open to the public Monday; that was the end of it. All the libraries were closed to the public starting Tuesday, the 17th. It needed to be done; there's no sense in closing the schools to keep people away from each other if they simply congregate somewhere else! Both my school job and library job are still paying their employees at this moment. So I am thankful that the powers that be closed both places (although I do think it should have been done sooner!) and that both places are still trying to pay us. I was scheduled to go into our library Wednesday (even though it was closed to the public) and clean/weed out our collection, but I woke up Wednesday morning with a very mild sore throat and thought it was wiser to stay home, even if I'd only be working with a few people and not the public at large. (Since the order on Thursday, of course, everyone stays home.) My symptoms never (thankfully!) went anywhere beyond that, and under any other circumstances, I'd probably have just ignored it. But I feel like we have to be extra vigilant about every tiny thing now. That's upsetting.

The governor came out last Thursday and issued a stay-at-home order for everyone in our state (California). I think that was a wise move. California is a highly populated and highly mobile state. Of course, we are allowed to go out and get essentials. And grocery store workers/restaurant workers are still working (albeit delivery and drive through for restaurants). The school districts are finding ways to make sure the school kids are fed by handing out meals in a few locations during certain hours of the day.

I am getting a little more used to the "new normal". For me, keeping track of time feels strange now that my schedule has gone from really tight to grinding halt! I think the governor here and our city leaders, etc. did the right thing (finally). It is strange to have everybody here and I have grounded my 75-year-old mother who lives with us. She misses her trips to the grocery store, Walmart and her office job working for a family business where she's worked for the last few decades. (Fortunately, she's not around people in her job.) I started online classes in October; the silver lining here for me is that now I have time to study without having a panic attack!

So, I'm just trying to find the bright side in all of this. :)

We've had a few more cases here in New Mexico. Not too many, still, compared to a lot of other places, but they say we've started to see community spread, so there is probably going to end up being a big iceberg under that tip. On the one hand, we've got a smaller population that's pretty spread out, especially outside our three main, modest-sized cities. On the other hand, all these small towns and rural areas have lots of vulnerable elderly and low-income folks, with small, very easily overwhelmed hospitals serving very large areas.

As in other places, in addition to school closings, they've also closed restaurants for anything but takeout here. Businesses struggle in my small town at the best of times, and most restaurants have trouble lasting. They've got to be hurting right now. I know a guy who said he did a job for a local steakhouse last week -- regular insect spraying, I think -- and they asked him if he'd take a gift certificate in lieu of the $75 they owed him. (He took it.)

For me personally, though, it's practically business as usual. I'm still on the skeleton crew, and still going into work. The building is definitely emptier, since everyone who can is working from home, but most of the people I regularly deal with are there for at least part of the day, so I don't even think I'm interacting with many fewer people than normal. And I'm a giant introvert and seldom go out, anyway. My Wednesday night Dungeons & Dragons game is canceled, and I had to skip a dinner I would have had with a friend this weekend, but otherwise I'm basically just living my regular homebody life, which in itself feels deeply surreal right now.

Hell, in a way, I don't even miss eating out at my favorite diner once or twice a week, because right before all this blew up in the US, I got told I had to go onto a low-sodium diet and eat less meat. Meaning I wouldn't have been able to keep eating there, anyway, as it's the kind of place that basically serves salt with a side of meat for every meal. So in a weird way, it's almost good timing for me with that. Although less so when it comes to trying to shop for groceries for a whole new diet. I can't even tell if my local supermarket has low sodium options for stuff, because they can't keep food on the shelves!

Speaking of keeping food on the shelves, though, I did get very, very worried about my mother for a bit. As I may have mentioned, she's over 70, lives in California, and smokes so much that she's short of breath at the best of times. She also works in a grocery (technically, a military commissary), and for a few days there she was flat-out refusing to stay home from work, even though she could do so, solely because she was bored and wanted to get out of the house. She was finally convinced, though, by a combination of the California governor's stay-home order (even though she could have claimed exemption to it, being a grocery worker) and the fact that the work stocking shelves suddenly got about ten times more grueling and it was tiring her out. I am deeply relieved (even if still slightly worried about the possibility she might have infected herself already), but I swear I am still suffering residual adrenaline from all the worst-case scenarios going through my mind last week. Many of which involved me having to somehow go to California to take care of her if she gets sick, because she doesn't really have anyone there. Even apart from all my worry about her, if I get stuck in quarantine, I want to do it in my own home where all my books are, not at my mother's. Not if she has the power to prevent it!

We remain fine here—very privileged to be so lightly affected. New York is now an epicenter, unsurprisingly, and just implemented PAUSE measures. ("Policies Assure Uniform Safety for Everyone"... can't you just picture the room full of policy makers up in Albany batting around different acronyms until they came up with that one and everyone just went YESSSS! It makes me think of menopause, though, to be honest.) All non-essential businesses need to shut down, no gatherings, etc. etc. Pretty much what we've been doing for the past week and a half anyway, so it doesn't feel particularly challenging. We've visited the grocery and drugstore, but that's about it—we're both well set up for working from home so it's not a big deal, and we get out every day (except maybe not this rainy sleety one) for a walk around the local reservoir or just to putter in the yard.

I'm not experiencing this downtime everyone's talking about, though—there's a LOT of news, and I think what we're providing is helpful to library folks Last week, along with that, we were closing our first-ever print issue with everyone working remotely. So there were a bunch of 12-hour days involved—I'm hoping this week will be a little less frantic. Still, I like being involved in my corner of the news cycle, and it keeps me from going all sorts of other places in my head.

For example... I'm not stressing a lot—stress isn't my go-to emotion—but I am PISSED OFF at the administration for allowing this to happen, and worried about the coming recession. There is going to be some French Revolution-style shit coming, I believe. So many people will be damaged by this, and it will largely divide across class lines... It will be a big mess.

So in the meantime, I will work and read and prep my garden so that I can grow food when I have no money to buy it.

I am supposed to be one of the lucky ones - my job can be done remotely 100%, most of my team is working remotely anyway so this should not have changed anything work-wise. Except that it had -- I can recognize all my coworkers' dogs and kids voices these days... :) And my anxiety levels had hit the stratosphere - I love staying home usually but being told I have to stay home makes me restless.

Other from that - Arizona is still in the lower part of the list of states with active cases but the local press is saying that almost noone is getting tested yet and that may be explaining that. The Safeway I am shopping at bounced back to almost normal (no paper products, most canned foods and the bulk bags of rice, beans and so on and limited water but most of the rest is available) - early last week was much much worse.

The smaller library system in the valley closed its buildings but 3 of the 5 (soon to be 4 -- one is changing to a school library later in the year due to its location and metrics) have drive thrus and they decided to keep these open so you can still request books (and return the old ones). Will see how long that lasts but it almost feels like normal life.

Not so much back home in Bulgaria -- they are getting under stricter and stricter restrictions. Partially because most of the people ignored the milder measures... Mom is home though, my sister got stuck there with her when the in-country travel restrictions were added (she can travel because of where her office is but she is staying put (and bouncing off the walls apparently)), she has enough provisions and medicines for a few months (she just closed our grocery store at the beginning of the month so she ended up with a lot of food and so on) so I am not THAT worried. But she is also over 60 so I do worry.

So I had been staying home, working (probably more than usual...), nipping to the store and the library on Saturdays and reading crime novels mainly -- books where the bad guy is a person and can be defeated (even in the ones where the bad guy wins, it still is a fair game) and staying away from most of the post-apocalyptic novels and their ilk. It is calming to know that the evil and the bad is something that is defeat-able and human.

I'm in Pennsylvania. The governor has ordered a shutdown of non life sustaining businesses... precise definition of which has been taken up by lawyers. Local schools closed last week for an indefinite period, but continue to provide food for pickup by students and their families. My brother works for local (small city) government and has been on 12-hour shifts as they sort through the logistics of keeping essential services in operation. My other brother is a business consultant who in normal times works at home one or two days per week and travels frequently; he is now at home for the duration advising and supporting clients who have abruptly switched from office-centric to home-centric. I have worked at home for a decade, and many of my company's (software for medical devices) customers are in China which is beginning to emerge, so I'm about as cushioned as anyone can be from immediate financial anxiety. A concern is our parents, who have refused all offers of grocery shopping and pharmacy pickup (we all live within a few miles), and won't provide enough information for us to go ahead and do it for them regardless. The neighborhood community garden is proceeding forth as usual for the sake of sanity; spring has barely begun here so for now it's sparsely scattered prep with no more than a few people simultaneously at far more than the recommended social distance apart, but if restrictions are still in place 6-8 weeks from now when crops have to be planted, we'll have to adjust.

We had been “socially isolating” for a year because of my husband’s transplant, so nothing new for us. However, we always had doctor’s appts (at least once a week), and since January I’ve been having PT 2x a week for my knee replacement. We also would eat at our favorite burger drive-in for lunch sometimes, and, as my caregiver duties wound down, (and my knee allowed me), I usually met with friends once a week or so. No more.
Currently, my husband has eye GVHD as well as an infection in one eye, and he had an appt with the ophthalmologist Thursday, which they confirmed by phone Wednesday. Howvever when he went to the appointment Thursday, they had shut the office with no notice to us.
We have been wavering about whether to postpone the 4/15 move. Postponing would be a huge hassle and greatly increase expenses. On the one hand, I trust our government and health system here in Seattle, much more than Florida’s, although that may be just a question of familiarity. And most of our kids want us to stay here til it’s over. But, we want to be near family, and don’t see this as ending anytime soon. So I just want to get there as soon as possible, the sooner to be settled. Today, at this hour, the move is on. Could change at any time, though. And next week we have a week’s worth of daily doctor’s appts at the Hutch to check out my husband’s status one year post-transplant.
All our kids seem to be doing ok. I worry most about my younger daughter in Manhattan, since she is the only one who lives alone and she also seems to be having some difficulty getting food etc. (Not that she’s going hungry, just unable to get some of her ordinary staples, like chicken). Our younger son and his fiancée in Queens have had to postpone their June wedding, which was going to be held in Central Park. My son and daughter-in-law in Brooklyn, live adjacent to where there is a major outbreak in the Hasidic community, and they have to keep a toddler amused while confined, and try to “work from home.” At least everybody still has jobs though. My daughter and son-in-law in Houston are doctors, so they have to work. My daughter is a developmental pediatrician at Texas Children’s Hospital. The hospital will not do any new patient intakes (this is for their Autism Clinic), and she will do her follow up patient visits via telehealth, so she expects to work mostly from home (as well as supervising the schooling of her 2 kids). My son-in-law is an anesthesiologist so he has to go to the hospital.
I hope everyone is staying well, and maintaining their sanity!

The county I live in declared a state of emergency at noon today, so I am officially at home from work, but still getting paid at this point, thankfully. (I work for a public library which is funded primarily by the county.)

We have the new normal essential businesses open, including restaurants for takeout, and a voluntary curfew from 9 pm to 6 am.

I'm in Georgia. We have over 700 cases reported (out of a population of 10.5 million), and 25 deaths at this point in time. My county, population 750 K, has 75 of those cases. This is based on a total of just over 5000 tests, so I expect it will change when testing actually gets ramped up.

My first three days at home were sunny, so I spent some time doing yardwork each day. Today is rainy, so I am staying inside. I've had one round of exercise (an hour's recording of a chair class I attend) and think I'll need to do some short bursts to help keep my anxiety level down. Also plan to stream yoga classes. Other than that, cooking, reading, singing, housework & contacting family and friends via phone. Will be meeting with some friends via Zoom Thursday night.

I've talked with my sisters, dad & brother and two cousins over the last week; most of us are home or working from home, one cousin (a water engineer) is still reporting to his one-person office, and my sister-in-law is managing the dry cleaning/laundry business they own, and I haven't checked in with my adult niece and nephew yet.

So far, all are healthy.

I'm in Virginia and our governor just closed schools through the end of the year (June 12 was supposed to be our last day). They have zero plan for distance learning yet. My kids are 10 and 7 so when my husband and I have to go to work (we are both active duty military) I guess I'll have to pay for a babysitter. We often have my mom babysit, but don't want to expose her in this situation.

He also closed all non-essential business for 30 days. Restaurants can do take out only.

It's all very upsetting and confusing, but my hope is that it will work. If everyone takes it seriously, hopefully we won't have to do this for too long.

I also deeply hope that our government is learning a lesson from all of this. This disease is dangerous and deadly, but I could easily envision one that is worse and I very much hope they can deal with something similar more quickly and effectively next time than this debacle.

I’m in New Jersey, and the governor has declared a stay-at-home order. No gatherings, and ordered all nonessential retail businesses to close. Grocery stores, pharmacies and a few other businesses are allowed to remain open. He said the number of people allowed to gather was now zero because too many people were ignoring the previous number of five. There have been 2,844 confirmed cases and 27 deaths. That’s up from 1,327 cases and 16 deaths as of Saturday. I am guessing that as more people are tested, those numbers will continue to increase.

As for us personally, we have been staying inside. We did venture to the grocery store during senior hours on Saturday morning. The local grocery has instituted senior hours from 6am to 7:30 am every morning. Still no paper products on the shelves. I was able to get one roll of store brand paper towels. They had a limit of one per customer. Many of the shelves were empty, but we were mostly able to get the things we needed. I was surprised to see the egg counter completely empty. My son and granddaughter had to leave this morning to go back to her dorm at Cleveland Institute of Art to pick up all of her things. The school had sent the students home on March 11th for spring break and a couple of weeks online classes. However, they decided the other day to close the dorms for the remainder of the semester. The students have until Wednesday to clear everything out. My son wasn’t happy about another 7 hour trip each way, although he’s happy to have her home and safe. All schools are closed and doing online classes. Proms and graduations have been cancelled. Many of the high school seniors are asking for postponement rather than cancellations but I have a feeling they won’t get their wish. Not being able to see our grandchildren is disappointing right now, but we have been keeping in touch with email or FaceTime.

I had an email on Friday from the contractor doing work on our townhouse. He was letting me know that the painters would be here this morning at 7:30, and that they hoped to have all of the work completed by Friday. In a way, I was afraid they might not come, and also afraid they would. We’ve been distancing ourselves from them, but it is still stressful. I heard the boss telling them to wash their hands regularly.

Another disappointment was that Margaret (auntmarge64) and I were going to meet for lunch last week, but we’ve had to put that off for the time being. We found out a short while ago that we don’t live far from one another.

It is a scary time for all of us. But as with everything else going on in our lives right now, we are taking it one day at a time.

And now the governor of New Mexico has issued a stay-at-home order. I, apparently, am not staying at home, as the observatory I work for is insisting we qualify as "essential," trying to get official recognition of that qualification, and not sending people home until it does. Or such is my understanding of the e-mail I got this afternoon, anyway. Who knows what the situation will be tomorrow, or an hour from now.

I have no idea how they're justifying this, other than on the basis that we're "federally funded." I mean, I believe in the importance of astronomy as much as the next giant nerd, but I am in no way prepared to argue that images of galactic jets are essential to life or infrastructure. Maybe they're going to try to justify it based on the fact that we take some observations for the navy, including measurements of changes in the rotation of the Earth that probably get used in calibrating GPS signals or something.

We have just a couple of days ago gotten our first confirmed case here in Mendocino County, CA. At any rate, my wife and I, both in our 60s, are taking the shelter in place concept very seriously. We're both retired and have no kids, so the impact on us is not as great as many others here. I do a jazz radio show every other week on our local public radio station and had to figure out how to assemble the show at home. I wanted to be able to email some sort of file to the station to run, but ended up having to just burn everything on a couple of CDs and drive the CDs to the studio. Not that big a deal, as I just dropped the envelope off and went home. Not anywhere as much fun as sitting in a radio studio and hosting a program live and unscripted, but a pretty small inconvenience all told. Most people in our area, but not all, are taking the virus abatement measures seriously.

>131 bragan:

If New Mexico got the order, I suspect ours here in Arizona won't wait long either especially with the ramping up of cases in the last 2 days (they started testing more and now they see more cases - what a surprise....)...

We are now on the same stay-at-home order in the UK, as too many people were not taking it seriously and were treating all the extra time off work as a holiday.

My stress levels are sky high - my mum took sick the weekend before last and had to be brought by ambulance to hospital. They discharged her hours later none the wiser on the promise that they'd scan her in the week, which then got cancelled. She took very unwell again in the early hours of Monday morning - same routine of a hospital dash, worse outcome of even less interest in diagnosing or treating her, and she was sent home again with the message "phone your GP if you can get bad again", who is currently closed to all patients and keeps referring her to the A&E. She was desperately upset yesterday as she is in extreme pain and feels like she's just left to get on with it until she either gets better or dies. Her diagnoses have ranged from kidney stones (although too high up) to now a "virus that's causing you lot's of pain".

This new stay-at-home order since last night is adding to the stress and difficulty in managing the situation. My 81 year old father is left to manage the situation, and he has stage 4 blood cancer and is supposed to be socially isolating. It's very difficult to know whether to get in the middle of things with them, or if we're bringing them a death sentence by doing so, as up to now they've been self-isolating. Of course, these dashes to the hospitals are the last place they need to be in current circumstances. All in all, there's probably never been a worse time for her to get sick.

The headmaster of my youngest child's school made my blood boil last night as he posted a "comedy" video of himself learning the guitar whilst on an exercise bike on Facebook, with the message of "while I've got all this free time I'm learning something new". Given that he has directed my daughter's teacher to send us home literally stacks of work to homeschool her with (this is a key year that determines whether she goes to grammar or secondary school at the end of next year), his "comedy" totally hit the wrong spot with me. It's been utterly exhausting trying to juggle work and homeschooling, and I'm doing neither of them well as a result. Perhaps rather than learning the guitar he could learn how to set his teachers up with video links so they could support with the teaching they're being paid to do.

All in all, difficult times at the moment.

In Japan life goes on as usual.

I go to work as usual, the supermarket as usual, and see my friends as usual. The only thing in my actual life that got affected was my orchestra where rehearsals were canceled for a month and this past Sunday we were just informed that our April concert is officially canceled. I'm actually secretly relieved not due to the virus but due to the fact that we were playing Strauss' Don Juan which we are not at a level that can play that without it being a total disaster so this cancellation saved us a lot of embarrassment.

Cherry blossom season is upon us and while the government is prohibiting gathering and picnic-ing under the trees there is no stopping everyone from casually strolling by.

For foreigners like myself we are in a strange spot. Being aware of what's happening in our home countries we all feel this guilt that we should also be enclosed in our apartments but we're all feeling this guilt while happily soaking up the spring sun and taking pictures of the trees.

Olympics has officially been postponed though so that was a big deal.

>134 AlisonY: Alison, I'm so sorry to hear about your situation. That is all incredibly stressful. This is a big fear of mine lately - someone in my family getting sick with something other than COVID-19 and not being able to get medical care at overwhelmed hospitals. I'm sorry it's happening to you.

>135 lilisin: I'm curious why Japan hasn't needed social isolation to contain the spread of COVID-19? Were your hospitals better equipped to handle the wave of illness or did it not spread the same way there?

>135 lilisin: One of my saving graces (here in Indiana USA) is playing clarinet in the community band; I miss it terribly right now. Our rehearsal space is now off limits, so our May 2 concert might be cancelled as we have not rehearsed since earlier in March. If we do go on with it, our director will need to change the music selections, since several are beyond our capabilities without the rehearsals. We will have to fall back on pieces we played in the past and also Big Band and Swing tunes, which we can play quite well. Since we are quite small (25 people on a good day), some sections might also be affected if the musicians do not show up.

>136 japaul22: thanks Jennifer. I can't believe it, as my Mum is normally strong as an ox. Of all the times...

>134 AlisonY:

I am so sorry to hear about your family :( It sounds like a very stressful time even without all this mess and that does not help. Hugs (virtual and from 6 feet and all that) from here...

Today, the SC Governor announced that schools would remain closed through the end of April. Glad that he's not taking Trump's advice to get everything going again. Everyone, please do not attend Easter church services in person, no matter what the President says.

Picked up groceries today, dropping off my Dad's groceries in his garage on the way home. It's rough not being able to just spend time with him. My son added his robotics notebook and I included a few books. He claims he's adjusting to this new normal and that having a trail running through the woods that he can walk is a saving grace.

Michigan here. We now have fifth highest number of positive cases in the nation. Just two weeks ago, we were at two cases.

What I see first-hand in the way of panic buying, conspiracy theories, gun and ammo sales, and hoarding is more depressing than the virus. I wish those state officials who keep saying this is bringing out the best in people would send me some of what they're smoking.

Meantime, this looks like an intelligent list of books for a pandemic:

https://www.vulture.com/article/best-pandemic-books.html

I live in northwest Florida, on the panhandle. Our beaches are closed, which needed to happen to keep the tourists from coming in every week. My husband is a surgeon at the local military hospital, so it has been a high learning curve for him, figuring out how best to increase medical precautions, screen which patients really need to be seen vs. being canceled, set in place procedures for certain possible scenarios, etc. He has found closed Facebook groups for his medical specialty to be very helpful, as information can be quickly disseminated that is unique to their field. Yesterday, I began doing pediatric speech therapy via teletherapy instead of in person at my office. Last week I didn't work because of spring break vacation. Again, it is a high learning curve, but overall it is going well. Some of the other therapy offices in the area are still seeing kids in person, which boggles my mind. My sons don't start on-line school until next week, so they are enjoying the extended break. The weather has been nice, so the kids have been able to play outside. The school district here is offering one laptop per family to those who need it. This is not a very internet savvy area, so we'll see how things go. One of my son's teachers sent out an email today asking if anyone had contact info for two of her students, since the information on file was apparently out of date. I'm not daunted by the on-line schooling, but I also wonder how much I should push my sons to learn the content, since it will doubtless be taught at the beginning of the next school year, and then they will just be bored. Of course I'll still have them do the work, but it does make me question how necessary it truly is...

You know we probably should start another thread for resources- I know that in my area-Toronto, Ontario- there are many arts groups who have put good teaching and learning resources online- both museums and our documentary festival- Hot Docs have done so. As well, there is a new website that showcases online presentations by arts groups that have had their performances cancelled- for those interested
www.socialdistancingfestival.com

Just read everyone’s updates. Wow. Alison - wish your parents well.

Harris Country, which includes Houston, shuts down at midnight (in ~30 minutes). I’ll start working from home tomorrow, it will be inefficient, but hopefully ok enough. My wife is a high school art teacher and she and our two kids have been home 2 plus weeks now and schools are unlikely to open. They started a kind of distance learning this week - with little planning. Tomorrow should be interesting as three of us have video group chats scheduled. I might add, there’s still a chance I will go back into work. Energy workers are supposedly not ordered to stay at home... I’m really far upstream, so it would be pushing it if my office was included. Could happen though.

Numbers were low in the area yesterday, around 100 cases, but it seems there is the symptom delay and there has been very little testing. As for my psyche, I’m hiding from the news. Every time I catch an update, maybe I over-react, but I find it very upsetting and worrisome. I don’t have a good sense of how the area population is responding. Interesting the county executive officer is a “judge“ and the long-term popular judge lost the last election in a local democratic sweep. So we have a young, really intelligent, but mostly unknown Columbian-born woman in the position. I hope she shines.

>136 japaul22:

We're not quite sure to be honest. Maybe it's just that because of the cruise ship the media around Japan was huge and everyone thought Japan would be a hot spot for contamination after that. But since that was contained to the ship itself and other contaminated people were easily identified, there just hasn't been any massive spreads.

There have only been 52 deaths so far which seems very low although no idea on the rate of contaminated people as people suspect the government has been holding back on that data so as to keep the Olympics going on schedule.

The government wants to avoid a lockdown but it's also allowing schools to go back into session soon so mixed messages there. I'm thinking I should go buy a 5kg bag of rice just in case.

I am in the Netherlands and we're doing okay corona-wise. Our hospitals can still deal with the patients, there is no panic although they are very busy. We still are not in a complete lock-down, even though too many people went to the parks and the beaches last weekend. After that new regulations were issued but we can still go outside as long as we keep a distance of 1.5 meter. Shops are open, all public places are closed. Our government hangs on to this strategy of creating group immunity by letting the virus run its course within limits - the limits being the hospital capacity.

It seems to work - at least today they mentioned the situation is stabilizing. It's too early to be sure of course and especially in the region where I live (Amsterdam), the number of infected is still increasing fast.

My kids are at home from school and uni and we are actually having a good time with the four of us. Work is something I'd rather not think about. I have a communication agency and I work mainly for cultural institures like musea, orchestras and theaters. They have all my work postponed or cancelled. This situation gets worse each day.

The consequence of the national policy is that our elder and vulnerable people stay inside and to themselves. This is a very sad situation, no one can come and visit. My parents are in good health but haven't seen anyone for weeks. Last week we drove to them to deliver some meals and chat through a window. So sad about that.

And that doesnt' come close to what you must feel >134 AlisonY: Allison, I feel for you and hope the situation will improve rapidly so you and your family can be with your father.

Take care all of you, stay inside as much as possible and stay safe!

>139 AnnieMod:, >144 dchaikin:, >146 Simone2: thanks for the well wishes for my mum. She's still not well at all, and I'm glad that her GP is still planning to see her tomorrow. I've only been able to see her on video calls which is frustrating as she and my dad want to continue to self-isolate as advised. It's a difficult situation, but we're not the only ones dealing with this kind of issue.

I'm glad everyone here is doing OK. It's really interesting getting the different global perspectives.

>127 arubabookwoman: Maybe you could check in with JaneJones on the Florida status?

>134 AlisonY: Thinking of you and your family, Alison.

>134 AlisonY: I hope your mum is soon on the mend, Alison. The situation right now is so stressful, and to have your mother caught up in the chaos must be frightening.

I'm joining in late; thanks for setting up this superb thread, Lois!

First, a few comments on past messages:

>9 thorold: Dr Rupert Beale, the author of the article Wash Your Hands that appeared in The London Review of Books earlier this month, is a friend of mine, as he is the husband of Rachael Beale (FlossieT), the first LTer I met in person back in 2009, in London. She is on the staff of the LRB, and Rupert, who is a physician researcher at Cambridge and the prestigious Francis Crick Institute, has written online and print articles for the LRB about the NHS, and the stresses that junior doctors in the system face. On a personal note he is very down to earth, warm and quite personable, a dedicated husband and father of three, and a fantastic cook, as I've had at least three amazing Sunday roasts in their home in Cambridge with our mutual friend, Fliss (flissp). I think I'm a pretty good cook, but Rupert is in a different league!

>33 japaul22: I share your frustration about the extreme limitations and restrictions in testing for SARS-CoV-2, Jennifer. The reason is that the test kits are made in relatively limited supply in the US. These kits are used to perform PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, a method of amplying genetic material, either DNA or RNA, from a bodily fluid (nasal secretions or stool, most typically) or a body surface (e.g., skin, eyes or mouth to test for herpes simplex virus (HSV)). It takes days or weeks to grow viruses in culture media, but PCR amplification can be done in minutes to hours. You or your family members may have had rapid tests for influenza or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in your physicians' offices, a clinic, emergency department or hospital, and those tests also use PCR amplification technology to provide rapid results. Thousands if not millions of these kits were used late last year and earlier this year to test for influenza, RSV and other respiratory viral pathogens, when influenza activity in the US was high. Production of these kits is based on demand, which peaks from October or November through March or April, the peak of respiratory virus season in the Northern Hemisphere, and the increased need for these test kits came at a time when supplies were at their lowest, which I understand was exacerbated due to a worse than usual season for both influenza and RSV. In addition, most health care facilities, including the very large chlldren's hospital system in Atlanta that I work for, were unable to perform specific testing for SARS-CoV-2. The routine respiratory viral panel, a PCR based test which looks for 12-15+ common viral pathogens, can detect influenza A and B, RSV, and three common strains of coronavirus, but not SARS-CoV-2. We have to send our specimens to the Georgia Department of Health, which is limited in the number of tests it can perform at any one time, although hopefully the DPH is or soon will increase its ability to perform these tests. As a pediatric hospitalist if I want to order the test on a patient I have to get approval from a member of the Coronavirus Response Team, which consists of our leading infectious disease experts, along with the physician leadership at Children's. The specimen is then sent to the DPH, which can refuse to perform the test if it feels that criteria for doing so is not sufficiently met. As of last weekend we had one patient who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, a 12 year old girl who was in our PICU on a ventilator (I'm not violating HIPAA by mentioning this, as there was an article about her from her family on the front page of Sunday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution), and we sent off roughly a dozen specimens to the Georgia DPH as of last week, which rejected roughly half of them. Testing of front line health care workers with known SARS-CoV-2 exposure or symptoms suggestive of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is being prioritized, but there are undoubtedly thousands of people in Georgia, and hundreds of thousands of Americans who are infected with the virus, especially healthy children and adults with minimal symptoms. We are supposed to have the capability to perform in house SARS-CoV-2 testing within the next few weeks, which will help, but we also need many more test kits to be able to know which kids are infected.

I turned 59 this week and because I have asthma and had planned to visit my elderly parents in Philadelphia again this week, so my partner who makes the group schedule assigned me to a floor that has few if any patients with respiratory illnesses, and none with suspected or proven COVID-19 infection are being cared for. Unfortunately someone above me decided that the pediatric and family medicine residents on the teaching service should be taken off of the floor housing those patients, to help preserve our limited supply of personal protective equipment (PPE), and assign them to me, starting on Tuesday. At that point none of them were sick, and we didn't have any patients who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. As it turned out one of the residents admitted the 12 yo girl I mentioned previously, saw her on Monday, worked with me on Tuesday and Wednesday, and developed fever, cough and respiratory distress Wednesday night. The girl tested positive on Thursday or Friday, and the resident was placed under quarantine for two weeks. Another resident, who worked with me on Thursday, had been sick with respiratory symptoms since the Friday before, had such a bad cough the previous day that the attending physician in residents' clinic asked her to wear a mask, but still denied that she was sick when I asked her Thursday morning if she was having any respiratory symptoms. She started coughing badly that afternoon after rounds, worsened significantly that night, and was tested for SARS-CoV-2 the following afternoon. I found out about these two exposures on Saturday morning, and immediately cancelled my trip to Philadelphia. Fortunately the second resident tested negative, and both residents are on the mend. Other than a couple of trips to the supermarket and other essential tasks (which included a visit to a local spirits store for bourbon and vodka, which several of my female friends with children on Facebook considered to be essential items in the face of social isolation) I have stayed inside since last Friday, away from everyone, especially since the incubation period for SARS-CoV-2 is 3-14 days, so I won't be completely in the clear from those exposures until next Thursday. Fortunately I feel completely well, but I'm on clinical service the next three weeks, so the risk of me becoming infected is significant.

I had intended to visit my parents next month, but Children's has asked its medical staff to refrain from any non-emergent domestic or international air travel for the foreseeable future, unless permission is granted by one of the two chief physicians of the system.

We are limiting visitors to only one at a time as of this week, and as of yesterday afternoon everyone entering the hospital, including employees, will be screened daily and have their temperatures taken before they are allowed to enter the building.

>37 markon: Did you see that Georgia will provide absentee ballots to all residents for the presidential primary? I was glad to read that in the online edition of the AJC earlier this week.

Rush hour traffic from Sandy Springs to Midtown Atlanta this past week was the lightest I've ever seen it on non-holiday weekdays in the nearly 20 years I've been working at Scottish Rite. It was akin to driving on a non-holiday Sunday afternoon, or a Thanksgiving or Christmas afternoon, as my usual 45-60+ minute commute home was only taking 20-25 minutes on local roads (I avoid Georgia 400 and the Downtown Connector like the plague, unless I'm driving home at 1-2 am after swing shifts). I read that MARTA ridership is down 67% on the metro and 55% on the buses. I can and often do take the metro to and from work, but I'll drive for the foreseeable future and minimize my risk.

There was a reassuring opinion piece in yesterday's Washington Post written by a professor of public health at Harvard, which stated that the public's risk of acquring SARS-CoV-2 in a supermarket or from picking up food from a delivery service or packages received in the mail is "small and manageable":

Don’t panic about shopping, getting delivery or accepting packages

>152 kidzdoc: public's risk of acquring SARS-CoV-2 in a supermarket

Until your fellow shopper lean on you to get to something and sneezes/coughs of course... Some people just.... don't care :(

>153 AnnieMod: Yes. Sadly, you're absolutely right. You can't depend on your fellow shoppers to practice routine hygiene. I normally go to the supermarket first thing in the morning on weekends, when the fewest number of people are there and the store is as clean and well stocked as possible.

>151 kidzdoc: I really appreciate your info and perspective! I take oral chemo and am using a shopper service at the grocery store.

I sanitized a $5 bill as a tip for the shopper (can't leave one thru online ordering), then realized I should have sanitized it and put it in a clean envelope.

Then I realized that I should have left it in the trunk, because in giving it to her, I violated the six-foot rule.

She has no mask or gloves.

I want to give her some next time I use the service because workers doing jobs for immune compromised people and the elderly outside of hospital settings seem to be going without.

But finding these things is hard!

>149 avaland:, >150 NanaCC: thanks Lois and Colleen. I hope your families are doing OK in this difficult time we're in. My mum is in a lot less pain now (indeed, I got very cross with her today after I discovered she'd ignored her self-isolation to unnecessarily pick up a prescription and fill up her car with diesel).

Life in Maine is much like everywhere else these days, although perhaps a bit behind the ball as COVID-19 is only now beginning to make itself felt here. An eighty year old Mainer who previously tested positive for COVID died today, the state's first death. My family lives in a village on the outskirts of nowhere and like many rural areas, it may be longer before COVID gets here, but when it does, it may be particularly devastating because there are so few medical facilities or resources. A nurse friend of mine told me that already hospital bed space is limited, not due to the virus directly, but because elderly patients who get well often have nowhere to go, as nursing homes, assisted living facilities, etc are refusing to accept new patients. So they remain in the hospital.

In moving here, I had hoped to be able to assist my parents, but instead find myself in self-isolation with them worrying about me. I have had a slight fever and cough since Saturday night, and although I believe it to be no more than a seasonal cold, every symptom big or small is scrutinized and feared these days. Not wishing to infect anyone with even a cold, especially my four-week-old niece, I have been closeted at the family's lake house, with meals being dropped off on the porch. It's a strange feeling, to be physically co-located with my family for the first time in thirty years, but completely isolated from them.

I wish I could say that I am using the time to read dozens of books and write stellar reviews, but I find it difficult to concentrate for long. More often, I find the book lying open on my lap while I skim the news and email friends, particularly those back in Seattle, where I lived until two years ago. The Life Care Center in Kirkland, Washington, which was the early epicenter of cases in the US, is only about ten miles from my former home.

Thank you, Lois, for creating this thread. Many Club Readers have tried to keep the virus out of their book threads, and I respect that, but it's also nice to hear how everyone in our little community is doing.

>151 kidzdoc: thanks for the info on how the testing works.

>152 kidzdoc: I admit, I had been panicking. This was informative for me.

>157 labfs39: sorry you’re alone and stressed. Not a fun combo. : (

>151 kidzdoc: Yes, requesting an absentee ballot & filling out my census questionarie are on my list today.

>157 labfs39: Good to see you here Lisa. Sorry things aren't working out as you hoped. Hope you have internet access at least?

>158 dchaikin:, >159 markon: Things aren't nearly as bad as my message may have made them seem. I have a cold, and like many others am self-isolating, but I've got yummy food, correspondence, and a dog to keep me company at a house overlooking a pretty lake. In any other circumstance, this would be heaven. Although I may not be reading as quickly, I am surrounded by books, and I have as much news of the outside world as I want via the Internet. Since rest and tea are the best treatments for a cold, I am partaking of both in quantity. :-) Many of you are dealing with problems of a much larger magnitude. My heart goes out to those of you worried about elderly parents and immunocompromised friends and family members, and to those on the front lines, such as Darryl.

Question: are any of you making masks or otherwise volunteering? Although the Maine CDC is recommending against the use of homemade masks, shortages may change their minds soon. Although I don't sew, and I'm currently self-isolating, I would like to help in some way, if I can. Ideas?

>160 labfs39: A local medical network is redirecting local efforts to sew masks by providing instructions and materials for people who inquire via email. Alas there's no link to the instructions, and materials are picked up at a location that has been established as a drop-off center for requested medical supplies, so this is of no direct use to you. Just a cautionary FYI that here, the effort was appreciated but the result was doubted.

>160 labfs39: I just finished 25 masks, but have now run out of elastic (which can't be bought anywhere these days). I will attempt to make some with straps. Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, NH was asking for the masks, as is Lowell General Hospital in Lowell, MA. I do this out of my own copious fabric stash.

And as of 5 pm on Tuesday, March 31, Arizona is officially on "stay-at-home" orders until April 30 - with a "We do not want people to feel trapped or isolated in their homes. The weather is beautiful right now. Find ways to get out and enjoy it — with physical distancing" note by the governor...

Which probably will mean that the almost calm situation in stores of last weekend will get hairy again for awhile...

Virginia just got put under a "stay at home" order too, effective until June 10! We were already doing this, so it isn't a big deal for us, but I hope it makes people think about the gatherings they are having and the frequency of trips to the store. I am sort of shocked to think that this is going to go on into June, though. It's highly unlikely that my work will let me stay home for that long so I don't know what I'll do for childcare when/if that happens. But I'll try not to worry until it's a problem . . .

Yeah, I had been staying and working from home for the last 2 weeks so no much of a change for me -- but still... Thankfully, my work can be done 100% from home (if my internet survives) so that I do not need to worry about at least. It will be one very long spring... hopefully not turning into a very long summer. On the other hand, once summer starts, my part of Arizona (the valley) stays at home anyway sooo... :)

Perhaps sharing my experience from China can provide a positive note an some optimism....

Like some of the sentiment above of expecting a lockdown to last long, in China we were out of it almost as abruptly as we went into it. No nationwide lockdown was enforced. The city of Wuhan was placed in lockdown quite suddenly, and in the following days 12 other cities all in the same province were added to that, effectively sealing off the whole province. Immediately, the national scare for outsiders kicked in, so rural communities started to isolate themselves, and this was gradually copied by urban areas, where gated communities started isolating themselves, and regulating entry & exit of residents, at first with paper missives, later electronically with mobile phone apps.

Since original reporting referred to a kind of novel SARS, everyone in China immediately knew what to do and fall back on measures taken then, such as wearing masks and measuring temperature. It soon became apparent that this new coronavirus was much more contagious, and initial photos of people dropping dead on the streets of Wuhan created a major scare. At that time nobody knew what was coming at us. In this context, I must also say that I think much of the criticism on China is unjustified, because they first had to detect it and then try to contain it, while nothing was known about the pathogen and testkits didn't even exist. Likewise, as that time nobody knew anything about asymptomatic cases, so recent criticism that China underreported, i.e. only reports test-verified cases (the 1.4K spike added a backlog through CT scan confirmation). In fact, unlike other countries, China has always reported suspected cases; these were people who had been in contact with confirmed cases and were seen as potential infections. It is likely that a large proportion of those suspected cases were in fact asymptomatic cases.

The lockdown occurred at the beginning of the Spring Festival period, which essentially a 10 to 12 day holiday when everybody stays at home (unless they went on holiday). During this period, traditionally most shops and businesses are closed, and people would already stay at home. Most people would be pretty well stocked up for two weeks. Simply by adjusting my lifestyle and eating a bit less than usual, my provisions lasted me for nearly four weeks, without a need to go outdoors.

As I mentioned before, with exception of Hubei Province, there was no nationwide lockdown and no stay-at-home orders. Initially only Hubei and Guangdong Province made a legal requirement that outdoors everyone must wear a mask, and this type of legislation was then rolled out nationwide. I don't know exactly what the legislation specified exactly other than that everyone must cooperate in the efforts to contain the epidemic, one of which is to wear a mask outdoors.

Between January 22 and March 11, I only went outdoors twice, once to do some shopping for items not available in the neighborhood (coffee / tea) and once to receive an express letter. My boyfriend came back from his hometown around February 15, and he did the daily shopping. Every evening he would go out for a long walk, as usual. He encouraged me to go out, which I did not.

I went back to work teaching one student from March 11, daily for two weeks. The university I work for says classes are expected to start from the end of April. In the meantime, I mostly do editing work from home.

When the epidemic started, I had expected that the lockdown / stay at home period would be for at least 5 or 6 months, well into the summer. However, restrictions were lifted much earlier. For the epicenter, the city of Wuhan, the lockdown lasted from January 23 till March 28, that is just about two months. For most other places lockdown was more or less self-imposed, with increasing numbers of people coming out onto the streets from the second week of March. For my city, the "lockdown" lasted from February 1 till March 5, so just about 5 or 6 weeks.

Although life is going back to normal, all epidemic control measures remain in place.

In Japan we are still waiting to see if any sort of lockdown will get declared.

Last Wednesday the governor of Tokyo requested that we stay in over the weekend as they were mostly trying to avoid crowds gathering for picnics under the cherry trees which they cordoned off. People were pretty good about staying in but the random snow on Sunday (as in I was in a tshirt and sandals on Saturday and suddenly it was snowing on Sunday) also helped quite a bit.

Still, asking us to stay in over the weekend while we are all still going to work rather normally during the week doesn't seem like it'll do anything but yesterday (Monday) there were only 13 new cases compared to 58 and 59 previously so maybe that helped a bit. Last night the governor came out again with another emergency meeting but didn't really say anything new but instead asked people to stop going out to eat and drink and karaoke at night and to stop going to clubs.

I'm getting quite tired of this are we are we not going to lockdown lag and I wish we could just declare something in one way or another. I wouldn't mind a two week lockdown to just take a mental break but as a chemist at a research company I might be considered an essential work if the company I work for decides we are going to do research on the coronavirus. Although we probably should I selfishly hope we don't.

We had our first book-club meeting by video on Sunday evening: it seemed to work well, and we’ve decided to try to hold a weekly meeting (to discuss a couple of short stories) as long as this goes on. The other members of the club are all people who used to be in my department at work, so we’re all well-used to video meetings.

I haven’t been anywhere outside my immediate suburban neighbourhood for three weeks now (I went for a walk on the beach on 11 March, and haven’t used public transport since). Super frustrating, since the weather has been superb for most of that time, but as long as that’s my biggest problem I have no right to complain!

The Dutch government is expected to announce a new end-date for the special measures today, most likely the end of April.

My daughter called me last night to report that one of the daycare workers where our grandson goes has tested positive for the virus. Apparently, this set a lot of things in motion: she had to call his pediatrician and her primary care doctor. Her husband had to call his. As of today, though, they have been home for two weeks, so they are waiting to hear whether that two qualifies as their 14 days of quarantine, or if officially they need 14 more now (his father has actually been home for three weeks, as the tiny software co. he works for went to work from home status a week ahead of most). Both Oliver and his father have allergies/asthma. He has a low grade fever but nothing usual, she says.

They came over a few days ago for a short time so he could ride his Big Wheel around our driveway. We kept our distance and watched. We let him take the bike home for a while.

We had roofers here last Friday and Saturday. We have a lot of roof and it was interesting to see them all spread out on their own piece roof, personal distancing. They will finish this week if the weather is dry.

>160 labfs39: It's not Covid-related, but I am going to be doing training/text banking with Vote Riders, a nonpartisan nonprofit founded in 2012 that is working to make sure voters have the proper ID to vote. My understanding is that Maine doesn't have a voter ID requirement, but you might be able to do something via internet this way.

There's a recent podcast that you can hear their founder discuss the issue and what they do here.

Last couple of weeks I have been ill with much of the symptoms of COVID-19, so I've been in isolation for bit now. Self-imposed as soon as my temperature became elevated. Due to lack of tests Indiana and me being in the low risk tier for serious complications (young, no respiratory illnesses, or major underlining illnesses, etc.) I went untested. I was finally tested late last week and can now definitely say that I tested positive for the virus. Granted I'm mostly recovered now and am back at least working from home. There were a couple days there that this kicked my ass. So yeah I'm statistic in Indiana now, which is kind of weird. The good news this virus caused an unrelated loss of voice which has concerned enough doctors to get a team together one this is all done to figure out what is causing the dysphonia. So yay! Sickness can be helpful, even if by help means more probing. Until then more quarantine for me. (Not that anyone can hear me in any social situation)

Glad you are feeling better, stretch. Any guesses where you caught it from?

>172 avaland: No, no idea. Given the dorimant period I think it was when the virus was just making news in Washington, and there were only a couple of confirmed cases in Indiana. I suspect my office building, there is another confirmed case (that we know about) from a logistics office that hires dozens of temps every few months. I take lunch on their floor to read because of the comfy chairs in a common lobby/break area. But the Westside of Indianapolis were I live has been hit pretty hard as well, the spread of the virus has been very uneven throughout the city with some communities having only a handful of cases and its neighbor community being hammered. This just might be a bias in the testing.

>171 stretch: Glad you are feeling better!

>171 stretch: Good to hear it wasn't worse.

>171 stretch: So glad to hear you got through this ok! What is the current advice from your doctor about how long you need to quarantine once your symptoms are gone? Hope your place of work is being supportive of the time off you need.

>176 japaul22: The doctors are sticking with 2 weeks here for quarantine. My company has us all working remotely no matter our status, certain clients won't even let us work on their site so they have no choice in the matter, except for the truly hazardous stuff then we can get all the greenlight's in the world.

>171 stretch: Yow, I'm glad you're on the mend. One of the things that's so scary about this one is that even once you know (or strongly suspect) you have it, you still don't know what kind of a ride you're in for. I've been doing some grocery shopping for a couple I know who both came out the other end, but so exhausted they couldn't really make it up and down from their fifth-floor walkup—and I suspect that with the loss of her freelance income, might not be able to afford some of the higher end (which is to say, better-stocked) delivery services. They said it lasted close to three weeks of feeling awful.

>171 stretch: I'm glad you are feeling better. I'm curious why they finally decided to test you. Did something change, or simply more tests became available? I'm asking because I finally broke down and called my doctor this morning. I've had a low-grade fever for 12 days now and yesterday my cough got significantly worse. I highly suspect bronchitis, as I've had that many times, although the fever is a little odd for me. She advised me to go to the walk-in clinic to (most likely) get an inhaler, which I've had before. I'm not keen to be exposed to something worse at a clinic, however. Although I have the symptoms of covid, I too am not in a high risk category, so they aren't going to test me. I'm curious what changed with you that had your doctor change her mind.

Kevin - wow! Glad you’re feeling ok now. Maybe you can donate some plasma at some point.

>179 labfs39: Lisa - hoping you feel better.

>166 edwinbcn: Thank you for sharing how things went for you in China. It is reassuring that things will eventually get back to normal and two months sounds doable. Which control measures are remaining?

>178 lisapeet: Yeah, feel so lucky not to have goten much worse, it's so unperdictable how it'll it hit us.

>179 labfs39: Really the only reason I got tested was that more tests had become available. Nothing else had changed, just a new lab for testing got approved and the numbers have slowly gone up although these aren't the rapid turn around tests. Hope you get to feeling better.

>180 dchaikin: I didn't know the Plasma was a thing. I'll absoultely look into it once my 14 days are up. Thanks for the heads up.

>182 stretch: I'm glad you're on the mend, but that's really frightening.

>182 stretch: plasma from recovered patients has the antibodies. So giving that plasma to infected patients may help their own bodies fight it off (you probably knew that). I think it’s still in testing, but it has worked for other viral infections. And I know there is a call for plasma from recovered Covid patients. Google plasma and covid...

>184 dchaikin: Yeah I just filled out the donation card this afternoon for the Red Cross so once my quarantine is up I'll be heading their way, hopfully it can do some good.

>185 stretch: goodness, Kevin, quick action. Glad you're doing that, and thank you.

>185 stretch: Glad you're on the mend! And thanks for signing up to donate.

>179 labfs39: Lisa, So sorry you're feeling worse. Can your doctor call in a prescription for an inhaler & someone from your family pick it up? (I know from experience how painful & exhausting a cough can be.)

So, Club Read members, as a small but nearly worldwide, sample, has had one confirmed case (stretch), and one possible case in self-quarantine (labsf39). Both in the US. Any others wish to report in?

Just a wee note to say that I'm thinking about all my Club Read chums regularly in the midst of this Coronavirus nightmare. The numbers are leaping in the UK this week and the news stories are getting ever more tragic. I'm glad to hear that Kevin has recovered, and hope that everyone else stays safe.

Lisa - hope you're feeling better soon.

On some positive news, my Mum finally got a scan (two, in fact), and they discovered severe inflammation on one side. They said she must have been in a lot of pain (um, yeah - that's why she needed a scan 3 weeks ago...), and put her on a drip with new antibiotics for a couple of days (they didn't keep her in overnight though for COVID-19 reasons). I do feel nervous that she has been near the hospital and out of isolation, but I'm glad she's starting to feel better.

>189 AlisonY: Oh good news, Alison. I can only imagine your worry.

No illness to report here, other than a little cabin fever.

Thankfully, no illness here at our home, just boredom.

An elderly couple who had been our neighbors until last year when they moved to an assisted living facility, both came down with the virus. He passed away this morning. They were both very frail when they moved, and in their early 90’s. I’ve heard more and more about issues in nursing homes and assisted living places.

A friend in CT has also tested positive, but she is feeling much better.

We ventured out to the grocery store at 6 am yesterday wearing masks and gloves. The store was fairly empty and the floor was marked with red tape every 6 feet to give people a visual “space”. The cashier was behind a plexiglass screen. Even so, I really wasn’t happy that we had to shop.

Be well everyone.

>171 stretch: Wow. I'm sorry to hear that you contracted COVID-19, Kevin, but I'm glad that you've nearly recovered. What were your initial symptoms? When did your fever start? Did you have cough, difficulty breathing, or chest pain? Did you develop anosmia, the inability to smell, which is supposedly an early sign of COVID-19? If so, has your ability to smell returned?

>179 labfs39: That doesn't sound good, Lisa. Can you get a CXR (chest X-ray)? Are you feeling any better?

>189 AlisonY: I'm glad that your mother is feeling better, Alison.

Yes, be well and stay safe, everyone!

>193 kidzdoc: What were your initial symptoms? When did your fever start? I Initially started by getting chills, thought I was just cold since the AC never goes off in my cubicle area. Then I noticed a slight sore throat and slightly elevated temperature, that night my voice went (not a COVID-19 symptom just something that happens as I get sick, some form of dysphonia). I didn't really develop a cough for a couple of days.

When did your fever start? Did you have cough, difficulty breathing, or chest pain? I had bit of a cough, not too bad of one, but it lingered, I would get winded with moderate activity like climbing stairs, or longer walks. Even now those activities end in a bit of a winded state. There were a couple of days when the aches and pains caused some difficultly breathing just in general. But no chest pain that I could speak of.

Did you develop anosmia, the inability to smell, which is supposedly an early sign of COVID-19? If so, has your ability to smell returned? Unfortunately for me this time of year is hell on my allergies and I take an over the counter nasal spray that ruins my sense of smell. Unless it is really strong I won't be able to smell much of anything until after everything blooms and I can back of the allergy medicine.

>194 stretch: Thanks for your replies to my questions, Kevin. I haven't taken care of any patients or encountered anyone who developed COVID-19, so I was curious to learn how your case presented and developed. I've been paying very close attention to myself, and am checking my ability to smell things multiple times per day.

The only people keeping me sane are 1) our governor of Illinois, who has been very proactive, and gives us a daily update and 2) watching the daily videos of Dr John Campbell in the UK. Dr John is a nursing professor and former Emergency room nurse, and gives a global update every day. Today's update had good news and sobering news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB0U9Fbh0tM

Pretty shocked to hear our PM Boris is in intensive care. Get well soon, BoJo - we need you.

Things are mostly under control here in St. Louis, Missouri. It is a big hospital town, with a zillion docs, too. The first person to die in our large, populous, county (from the new virus) was a nurse friend of mine who had some lung damage from Desert Storm. We were not really close, but worked together for more than 15 years, and I will miss her. That was already a few weeks ago.

My kids went into self-isolation early on, about the time the schools closed. I was so sad, because it meant we didn't get to see our grandchildren, and children, and we have a newish grandchild we have seen only three times. We did drive to one house and stand in the yard to wish one granddaughter a Happy 4th Birthday. Presents were delivered courtesy of Amazon.

I am very moved to volunteer somewhere, and the place I had worked for more than 30 years was a tertiary center, rather well known for fine practice and lots of research. It is the hospital associated with Washington University in St. Louis, which is involved in some public planning and robust research. There is another hospital system of near-equal caliber, too. I had wanted to go back to school and do a Master's in Epidemiology. But I am too disabled by chronic pain and chronic fatigue to do so. I also, recently, really wanted to volunteer, as I had planned to do when I retired. But of course, I am now unable, being disabled.

We have lots of books, thank goodness, and my husband is an IT guy, both of us retired. He can keep us up and online. Unfortunately, both he and my youngest son, who lives with us, with his lovely girlfriend, have anxiety disorders, and that is a little enervating.

My husband does the shopping, and he reports great shortages in toilet paper, personal wipes, disinfectants and hand sanitizer, yeast and flour. We have always cooked and baked from scratch a lot. That part is not a stressor, and we have the midwestern plains all around the city, with scads of farms. We also have many corporate headquarters, so I hope these will last and re-employ more people in time. Schools closed some time ago, and most businesses are work-from-home, now. One of my daughters-in-law is a high school teacher; she is teaching from home online. Her husband, my oldest son, is teaching a college class from home as well.

I have seven sisters and brothers, and we are all encouraging each other. I worry about my youngest sister, whose husband is in the final stages of cancer, and who has used almost all of the possible therapies. We have important cancer centers here, of course.

Wishing you all healthy and low stress times at home, and the same for your families and friends.

My daughter tells me that the daycare where my grandson attended is opening again on the 15th (!) My grandson will not be returning (this is the same daycare that, soon after closing in March, had an unnamed employee test positive). And then my daughter asked me if I'd make a mask for his former teacher, who is a cancer survivor (I've been a bit of a mask factory over the last few weeks).

And where my son works (defense contractor and of course deemed "essential"), someone has tested positive. Now, it seems they are paying attention, but everyone is still going into work (I have been worrying about him because of this)

Our town closed its hiking trails (and we have a lot), and the nonprofit nature center in town has closed another 35 miles of trails (apparently, it's been flooded by hikers from Massachusetts). Closures are because EMS doesn't want to be distracted by calls in out of the way locations during this time. However, I did see that people are still hiking Mt Monadnock west of here. Reportedly, hikers are stepping off the trails to let others by and waiting their "turn" at the summit to maintain social distancing. But there are signs at the beginning of the trials cautioning hikers not to do anything risky as EMS response is likely to be delayed. Some reports suggest the mountain will be closed soon as spring brings more hikers. Looks like much of the White Mountain trails are also closed for the same reason.

>199 avaland: As disappointing as the closures are, Lois, I think they are probably necessary. These nice days have brought out more people, and that is only going to increase as the weather gets warmer. It will be nice just to sit out on the deck and read once it warms up a bit more. At least I won’t need to worry about other people there.

>200 NanaCC: I am also fortunate to have a large deck outside and an enclosed porch with screened windows. My husband is the only other person here, so we can get outside and enjoy nice weather while staying away from others. Our biggest difficulty now is coping with no church services for Easter.

>200 NanaCC: Very true, and we were out on the deck yesterday for a time. I'm sad, but not mourning the closures personally as I am suffering from a case of plantar fasciitis currently (!). One of my favorite pond side trails is resplendent in lady slippers and mountain laurel in the spring.

>201 LadyoftheLodge:, >202 avaland: I am worried about the inactivity. We live in a townhouse, so our mail is in a group mailbox that we need to walk to. It takes all of five minutes. Not much activity there. I try to use the stairs in our house as much as possible, but it still isn’t the amount of walking that I should be doing. I keep reading stories of people who have run a marathon in their living room, or on their deck, or their driveway. I can’t even imagine. I try to walk back and forth from the front of the house to the back, but those tight turns are hard on the hips and knees. I think I’ll be a physical mess by the time this is over.

Here in Western Australia our state borders are closed (there are a few exemptions) and there are restrictions on travel between regions within the state. This probably sounds more horrible than it is - my state's area is 2.5M square kilometres (a bit over 976K square miles). What's weird about this is that there are police checkpoints - it's mindblowing to think how quickly we got to this point.

In Australia non-essential gatherings (both indoor and outdoor) are restricted to two people with exceptions (but still limits) for weddings and funerals.

I am thankful that my family and friends are all safe and well. People are struggling (to various degrees) to come to terms with how much and how suddenly our lives have changed.

I am still going for my morning walk but other than that I'm not leaving the house as I'm lucky enough to have a job I can work from home (which I mostly did prior anyway). My partner works in a pharmacy (essential service) and since he's out in the world anyway it makes sense for him to do any shopping we need.

>204 rhian_of_oz: Interesting about the checkpoints. Are they at the borders of your state or just randomly placed. I think it must be very difficult dealing with this in the cities and I appreciate hearing from people who are dealing with this.

>203 NanaCC: I am also concerned with the inactivity. We are usually very active, out and about a lot. I have been using the indoor exercise bike and treadmill, but they are not like walking outdoors. My deck is large and wraps around the outside back of our house, but it is not conducive to walking laps.

>205 avaland: Checkpoints are on the state border as well at the regional "borders". We're large in area but relatively sparse in population (approx 2.6M) so there aren't lots of major roads to monitor.

Most of our confirmed cases have been in the metropolitan area and the travel restrictions are to try and keep "the rona" away from the less-resourced regions. Plus our remote indigenous communities are especially vulnerable as they have (shamefully) significantly worse health outcomes generally than the non-indigenous.

While the metropolitan area has a greater proportion of the population (approx 2M) it's spread over 6.5K square kilometres (2.5K square miles) which means we're not on top of each other. To illustrate, on my 30 min morning walk around my neighbourhood I'd see maybe 2 or 3 people. Plus most people have either backyards or courtyards which means we're not continually cooped up inside. I think this space means it's maybe not so hard on us compared to other more densely populated cities.

>207 rhian_of_oz: Most of the cases in Indiana are clustered in large metropolitan areas too and the nearest one is a 90 minute drive from here. I live in a wooded area, and there are 6 houses on our road. I cannot even see my neighbor's house. If we go out for a walk along the road, we probably would not run into anyone else, except for cars driving by. We try to avoid the road though, since there are no sidewalks and people sometimes drive too fast on the curves. If I had to "bail out" because a car got too close to me, I would be jumping into the woods or ditch, or down a steep ridge. There is a walking trail in our small town, very enjoyable under normal circumstances and as long as it does not get muddy after a rain. YMCA is also closed, so activity choices are limited. Our local state park has been overrun with people from other counties, so that is not really a good place for social distancing!

Well, on day 19 of cough and fever for me. After a phone conference with my pcp, I finally went to the walk-in clinic on Tuesday. Surprisingly it was completely devoid of patients and replete with PPE. I was given a mask and asked to sit on the "respiratory symptoms" side of the empty waiting area. The nurse who took my vitals had a mask and gown on, but I heard her talking to the doctor outside my room, and when the doctor came in, she was completely gowned, masked, googled, gloved, even her hair was covered. It was a bit of a surreal feeling, like I was in some alien movie.

Given my symptoms, she said she was virtually certain I had covid. Because I am otherwise healthy, however, I was not eligible for a test. Unless you work in the medical field, or are in a group living situation, tests in this part of Maine are only being given to patients serious enough to be admitted. She was very good about answering my questions. She likened current guidelines regarding symptoms, testing, etc as constantly shifting sand. The only treatment for patients with a milder case, however, remains isolate and hydrate. She did give me a prescription for a cough suppressant, but it took the pharmacy 24 hrs to fill, as they are overwhelmed.

I was relieved that she felt I had not infected my family, despite being with them up until the day I had symptoms (which came on suddenly), as they would have shown symptoms by now. I had been worried about my, then, four-week-old niece. Even though infants are not particularly at risk, I didn't want to give her even a cold. Unfortunately, the doctor assumes that my 16-year-old daughter has it since she lives with me. She remains asymptomatic, but I still felt bad.

The worst part for me is the fatigue. I can manage my cough with my inhaler and the cough suppressant, although it does get worse at night. The fever remains low-grade (below 100.4) but it is persistent (19 days).

I hope I'm not sharing too much. I've been curious to hear from people who had it (like Kevin), and maybe you are too.

On a frightening note, a dear friend of mine in Florida is starting to experience covid symptoms. She is at high risk being immunocompromised, a cancer-survivor, and having numerous other challenges with her health. Her daughter, who lives in the midwest and who also has lupus, etc, tested positive, as has her niece. Her son is being treated for cancer, but remains symptom-free of covid at the moment. It's terrifying to think of what the impact of this virus could have on their family.

>209 labfs39: Because I am otherwise healthy, however, I was not eligible for a test

That's .... mind-boggling. How can they even try to understand how badly contagious that thing is if they refuse to test symptomatic people? I understand shortages and so on but that is... mind-boggling (not sure if Arizona is not the same way but still...)

Feel better soon! The fatigue always messes up with you with respiratory infections :(

>209 labfs39: I'm glad you are doing ok, but 19 days of a fever, even a low grade one, doesn't sound mild to me! I hope your symptoms remain under control and you feel better very soon.

It is so maddening that there are still so few tests available. It may not change your medical treatment, I'm no expert there, but it seems that politicians are basing choices on stay at home orders and business closures based on testing numbers that can't be accurate if people still aren't being tested.

>209 labfs39: Sorry to hear you come down with it and sorry to hear about the freightening news about your friends family. Hopefully they won't experience the worst of it.

I agree the worst part for me as well was the fatigue, everything else was manageable. They only prescribed me some Tylenol for the fever and the headaches, not Ibuprofen. Didn't have much of cough at the time, so they weren't overly concerned. My family was up in arms when I told them that the doctors only real treatment was rest, isolation, and hydration. Not everyone is cool with the shrugs doctors give you, when people are so use to them having the answer here in modern and industrial country. I get the feeling that a lot of people still regard this as the flu with medicines that readily lessen symptoms. That only people with the worst case scenarios are going to have long-term illness. I didn't drop below 100 for something like 15 days, not sure of the exact date since I wasn't tracking temperature those couple days of chills.

What is kind of funny is how different the protocols seem to be. I wear a lot of PPE for my job, so I don't tend to notice it as much as others, sometimes we forget that our full face respirators don't fill people with confidence. But I don't recall the doctor or nurses wearing much beyond a mask and some nitriles.

I can't wait for my quarantine isolation to be up. All I want are some apples and the one thing I can't get delivered is produce that isn't prepackaged.

>210 AnnieMod: and >211 japaul22: I view the numbers as more like statistical measurements. I only got tested because the day I went in for my follow-up consultation happened to be a day when the clinic had a few extra at the end of the day. I feel like they should have gone to someone far sicker than me, especially since I was nearing the end of my illness, it really didn't make sense to be testing me since I would just be a number. Maybe that was the intent, add more confirmed cases to get additional support. I don't really understand what the thinking was behind it, but I can't imagine testing has gotten much better.

>212 stretch:

But numbers do matter - because the whole point of all these "stay at home" is to flatten the curve and slow the speed of infection. How can you know that this works and/or when you need to change something if you do not know where the curve is?

And decisions are being made based on these numbers.

>212 stretch: Oh no, I'm with you. The numbers matter, just from what i can gather it fills more like a statistical sampling rather than an accurate count. It would be nice for the officals to disclose how they are treating the numbers. I'm comfortable with statistical sampling if the ones making these decisions know that it is a statistical sampling and not seeing a sudden drop in positive tests as an end goal, and that suddenly we can back off all the stay at home orders.

>209 labfs39: Thank you for sharing. It does slightly blow my mind that with your symptoms you're deemed "otherwise healthy". I hope you get some respite soon. I also hope for the best for your friend and her family.

>214 stretch: Our testing criteria has expanded in the last few days but early on it was very narrow. I was less concerned about how the government were using them (I think we locked things down as quickly as the general populace would accept) but more about how the average person would view them. I saw some comments online (yes I should've known better) where people were arguing against restrictions because the numbers weren't that bad.

>209 labfs39: Hope you get better soon, and thanks for sharing your experience - it's very useful.

There was an excellent video shared by a consultant this week in the UK in which he spoke of some key breathing exercises to do to help your lungs prevent COVID-19 settling in at the base of them and developing into pneumonia. Posting it here for info. for all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwLzAdriec0

>209 labfs39: Oh, sorry to hear. That's the most debilitating thing folks I know who've had it have talked about—the unending deep exhaustion, and also the phenomenon of feeling better for a day or two and then sliding back into feeling sick, over and over, with each time just a little bit of an improvement. Someone described it as a spiral rather than a slope. I hope you keep spiraling upward steadily, and my heart goes out to your friend and her family.

>212 stretch: Another good thing about having been tested, Stretch, is that if they put out a call for antibody testing and you want to take part, you'll have a record to that effect. But the whole testing availability situation is really lousy.

>216 AlisonY: Thanks for the breathing video, Alison. I saw something similar, briefly, in an interview with Chris Cuomo, our governor's brother, who's got it. How are your folks doing?

Nothing much to report here. Still very quiet, with even fewer people around on our walks around the reservoir. We're still allowed out to walk as far as I know—at least no one has stopped us, and we go right by a parking lot testing station with lots of camo-wearing officers, so I guess someone would if there was a mandate I didn't know about. The number of cars pulling up to get tested is increasing—you need an appointment but not a doctor's referral anymore. And of course the place itself is so weird, looking like a circus from far away—big white tents, flashing lights—and up close like something from a dystopian novel, with folks in camo and lots of PPE.

They've closed all the city's dog runs, which makes me worry (disproportionately, I know) about what New Yorkers will do with their high energy dogs. It's illegal to have a dog off leash in the city, for good reason, and while you could presumably take a dog who's good off leash and let it run around in a park, a lot of city dogs don't have those manners. I'm guessing an influx of dogs in the shelters that get given up because they bark constantly, or chew up furniture, because they can't run off their energy.

And yeah, thinking about dogs is a luxury. We're healthy, our few friends who are sick are managing OK, and I have a lot of work to keep my mind off the hamster wheel.

>209 labfs39: Get well soon!

>217 lisapeet: Glad to hear all is OK with you in NY, Lisa. My mum is feeling much better, thanks - we've much to be thankful for.

>209 labfs39: Sorry, to hear that, Lisa. Better to know than not, right? I'm glad it's not bad but 19 days of fatigue and fever seems like a punishment itself. I hope the lake view is therapeutic! Is your daughter in the cabin there with you now?

Has anyone else sent masks in? Just wondering how you decided where to send them?? There's a sparse national list searchable database on the Deaconess hospital website: https://www.deaconess.com/How-to-make-a-Face-Mask/Mask-Donations (beside to search your state by both its full title and by the two letter abbrev.). This doesn't include most of the bigger hospitals. I checked the major hospitals in my state and they all are taking masks of one kind or another, so check individual websites also. The need is so large, it's hard to choose where to send them.

I've made 108 now, 35 fitted with filter pocket (until I ran out of elastic) the rest were pleated. 32 two weeks ago went to the first hospital here in NH that I heard was taking them. Today I dropped 30 off the hospital we use most of the time, and 20 are going to a women's shelter in Brooklyn. We don't have it too badly here in NH so I thought it good to share. The rest of the masks went to family and friends. However, my production has ceased as my machine doth protest too much (and I can't find the problem).

>209 labfs39: The lack of testing is troubling, not just for you personally so you'd know for sure, but also because any viable route back to normal involves testing and tracking. I'm sorry you're going through this; it sounds worrying and draining.

Here too any testing starts with a phone or video pre-screening for serious symptoms. We have two major testing sites. One is at a suburban health center and accessible only by car. The other is in the city and accessible on foot (though I'd think anyone who is sick enough to be sent in for testing would be too sick to walk far) and is a cooperative effort of the two main hospital networks which under normal circumstances don't communicate much. The city is preparing to set up a health board for testing and tracking but has no legal authority beyond its borders. The county does not have a health board despite years of pressure to create one, and is still resisting the idea. So even if there is a mandate for testing and tracking at the state or national level, the infrastructure for accomplishing it is a question.

>209 labfs39: sorry about what going through. Thinking about you and hoping you feel better soon.

>209 labfs39: So sorry to hear this Lisa. Hang in there. I hate it when rest and force fluids is about all you can do. Glad you have your inhaler and some cough supressant.

Keeping you and your friends in my thoughts and prayers.

>216 AlisonY: Thanks for the link Alison. Sounds like a good exercise.

>221 qebo: Yes, the lack of testing is disheartening. I too wonder how we can have reliable statistics about how widespread this is and how many people have recovered, in order to know whether it is safe to return to work.

Milo & I got outside for a walk this morning. It is raining now, so I'm glad we got out at least once.

Will be streaming some exercise videos to keep myself active today, and I have a zoom call with my sisters this afternoon. So far our family, including my 92-year-old father, are staying healthy.

I did have a brief scare last week when I woke up in the middle of the night with an incredibly sore throat. I drank some juice and managed to get back to sleep. Was tired and achy the next day, then fine for two days, then tired and achy again. Don't know what it was, but I have been symptom free for a week now.

I, alas, do not have confidence in the handling of this crisis by the state of Georgia. Our governor's stay at home order cancelled county and city orders that were more restrictive than his, and he refused to tell churches/synagogues/mosques that they could not hold worship services, even though one of the worst hotspots in Georgia came from attendess at a large church funeral.

I tried to wach a town hall meeting my county held virtually the other night, and was disappointed that the public health official hadn't heard about antibody testing. Unfortunately, my computer froze up, and I heard about 30 minutes out of two hours.

I've been watching Andrew Cuomo's press conferences occasionally, and like how I see him talking about next steps and preparing people for the long haul.

Not much change here (Maine). I'm coughing less, but out of breath at the least exertion. Still have the low-grade fever and fatigue. Three weeks today

>212 stretch: Yes, my family is quite upset that I haven't been tested, even though I know it wouldn't change treatment. They think that if I test positive that somehow the drs will then be able to help me get better. One family member strongly thinks that if they would only prescribe antibiotics, I would recover. As you say, people are used to going to the doctors and getting "fixed." In my mind, the only advantages to having a positive test are for more accurate numbers and the possibility of being able to donate plasma afterwards. Although I do think there might be some piece of mind in knowing.

>220 avaland: Yes, my daughter is holed up with me at the lake. But I think it's her service dog that is having the hardest time with the quarantine. He is used to being active in social situations and "working." He keeps leading her to his work vest. He's also a three year old German Shepherd and has lots of energy.

_____

Kevin, I was wondering if you had heard about a bad batch of covid tests in Richmond, IN? My friend's daughter initially tested negative, but so did everyone in the area, even those on ventilators. Evidently there was a bad batch of tests. She went back for another test and was positive.
_____

A question for those of you in the medical profession: are over-the-counter pulse oximeters helpful? I'm concerned that they are so inaccurate as to be useless or misleading. On the other hand, my lips were slightly blue after a walk around the yard. I definitely want to keep an eye on that.

>224 labfs39: Exactly! It a wait and see diease and I don't think people want to feel helpless which I can understand.

When I was talking to the Red Cross volunteer she said they are still taking donations of people who have experienced COVID-19 symptoms, even without the positive test results (in Indiana). Though a test result is better than no test result. It may take longer for the plasma to be used depending on their ability to test it for anti-bodies. It's also location dependent of course and whether they think we'll get to the point where screening is possible at scale, which she was not optimistic about.

Yeah, I did hear about the Richmond, IN tests being bad didn't realize it was so widespread. They realized a couple of the first responders that were under quarantine that had the symptoms, based on negative tests results now one of them is in medically induced coma. It's crazy though I haven't seen a single news report of the bad batch here locally. This all came from the hazmat monthly calls we are a part of, and they think the swaps were contaminated due to inadequate training, so they got a number of false negatives. This is pure speculation from secondhand county EMS folks. There isn't much reporting that I can find or official statements, but a few of the EMS crews had to be retested and are now under quarantine.

>225 stretch: Thanks for the information about Red Cross plasma collection. I will look into local options once I have recovered.

As for the bad tests in Richmond, my information is second-hand and anecdotal, so it may not have been as widespread as she made it seem. Interesting that it didn't even make the local news.

Our nearly five year old grandson is giving his parents a headache as they both try to work at home. While they are on calls, he has made himself a blackberry and ketchup sandwich (a step up? from the "ice cream cake" he made with an ice cream cup, a yogurt and 1/3 bottle of maple syrup three weeks ago); he's painted his bedroom wall using Tang liquid concentrate (he thought it was paint, he said), found his mother's craft paints yesterday while both adults were on business calls and painted the downstairs couch, and this morning he put a Lego up his nose and got it stuck. He is nothing if not creative and enterprising! (says the grandparents).

btw, the daycare reopened yesterday, but they are keeping him home while they are working from home.

>227 avaland: Headache indeed. I think it’s boy’s. They can be very creative. Although, I do know some girls who gave their parents a few early grey hairs. As they say, this too shall pass.

This on FB cracked me up—I don't know the poster but she is now near and dear to my heart:

>227 avaland: That's hilarious (but not for the parents). I thank my lucky stars that at 10 and 12 my two can now just about coexist with home working. I have no clue how working parents with kids under 7 or 8 are managing at all.

>229 lisapeet: That is just wonderful.

In my Southern state (South Carolina), mask usage is going down. Back when it was first suggested, about a third of shoppers wore them. Today, almost no-one besides myself was. I'm in the SC county with the worst compliance as far as staying home and not traveling goes, and we have a higher number of cases than the much more populated Charleston area.

On the topic of how they test in different places - Bulgaria is split into regions (each region has multiple counties inside). The region I come from has a population of around 122,000 people.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there had been 36 (I am not missing zeros) tests being administered - 13 of them to patients with symptoms and contact history(all negative) and 23 to medical workers (where there was a contact with a positively tested patient (test was performed in another region)). The hospitals in the region had treated 1 infection (the one that got imported and required the 23 medical workers tests).

Excuse my disbelief of the very low numbers coming from my country...

>227 avaland: oh my. Glad mine are past that stage.
>229 lisapeet: and this is brilliant
>232 AnnieMod: your home region testing might even be worse than Texas, per capita.

>228 NanaCC: I was one of those girls! I swallowed a screw when I was about Oliver's age. It went to some optical illusion game/kit that one of my brothers had. The screw was short & flat-ended not sharp. It's one of my earliest memories. I also climbed the tall bureau that was at the end of my bed, because I wanted to sit on the top and color on the ceiling.

>229 lisapeet: As Dan says, that is brilliant! Thanks.

>230 AlisonY: On a good note, he ran back in the room and told them everything was alright: he sneezed the Lego out.

>233 dchaikin: Ah, but there are many more stages to come....

>227 avaland: I am thankful to have no children, although my husband and I often think sympathetic thoughts for those who do and are trying to work from home. I used to teach middle school, and also served as an elementary principal, so I can definitely feel for them.

>229 lisapeet: That is hysterical! I read it out loud to my husband and we both laughed! Brilliantly done.

My kids go to one of the largest and wealthiest school districts in the country, Fairfax County in Virginia, and their "distance learning" has been a huge debacle. Their last day of school was March 12 and they have yet to get anything up and running. 5 weeks. This past week was supposed to be week 1 and the online system they were intending to use crashed and was hacked. Apparently they didn't do proper updates and hadn't thought to have any sort of identifying login - with 4 weeks to prepare.

My 10 and 7 year are rolling with it pretty well, but they miss their friends and I'm am a poor substitute for their excellent teachers, though I'm trying my best. My husband and I are also still working from home, though my hours are significantly reduced. We are lucky that though we live in a solidly suburban neighborhood, we also have a large creek and extensive woods/trails that back up to our neighborhood. So there is plenty of space to roam and never see another person.

>236 japaul22: That's not great. I've been impressed with my son's school district, which is very large and serves communities that vary from the excessively wealthy, to low income and very rural. Internet classes started a week after they were sent home and the district also has managed to combine meal delivery with providing wifi for those students who don't have it by using the school buses. I'm sure that there are kids falling through the cracks, but that they have prioritized the low income students has impressed me as has the availability of his teachers when he has a question (ok, that's when I have a question. I'll ask him and he'll come back downstairs a few minutes later with the answer).

>236 japaul22: My 10 year old’s online schooling takes him less than an hour per day. To make it more challenging, he just started doing free online Spanish lessons through Rosetta Stone and free coding lessons through code.org. It’s only been a few days, but he’s been liking them.

We're still on lockdown in N. Ireland, but there are rumours circulating that restrictions could be slightly eased in 3 weeks to help the economy. Schools could possibly also go back before the end of the school year (end of June) which wasn't anticipated a few weeks ago. It's expected social distancing will still largely be in force, but that businesses can start to reopen.

I feel nervous about that step forward given that the virus hasn't gone anywhere. I travel by bus to work, but expect I'll drive and pay the extra for parking and suffer the longer commute without bus lanes. Our buses are pretty airless and busy, and it feels too much of a risk.

Also, and I never thought I'd say this - I'm kind of getting into lockdown! We have so much more quality time. No commute has meant a lot more family meals together and generally seeing more of the kids which has been great. Usually in the week if I'm not working I'm running around like crazy ferrying them to and from clubs, and that stopping has been glorious too. I feel more energised than I have in a long time.

Anyway, it all feels a little nerve-wracking the thought of going back to mixing more. We have a family holiday booked to Majorca in July that we no longer want to go on, but don't know if we'll get our money back if flights to Spain are back on by then. Also a family wedding in England in August.

I think when we all transition out if lockdown it may well become the most anxiety inducing stage of all.

>240 AlisonY:. Oh, I agree with you, Alison. We just did our grocery shopping at 6 this morning with masks and gloves, and it still makes me nervous. I saw pictures of Florida beaches this morning that showed lots of people not adhering to social distancing. Yes the beaches are back open, but use some common sense. It would be nice to get back to nirmal, but I think we will have some sort of new normal.

>240 AlisonY: I'm kind of getting into lockdown

Yes, I catch myself thinking that occasionally too! It’s astonishing how quickly you adapt to this strange way of life. I find it quite relaxing never having to think seriously about what I’m planning for the day, apart from checking off the bulkier items on the TBR shelf at last. The crazy urge to check the news every ten minutes and plot graphs of numbers of cases seems to have faded too. And it’s nice waking up to a woodpecker rather than the hum of traffic. On my morning walk on Sunday I even saw the deer that live in the fenced-off woodlands near here (the grounds of a research lab) — normally they don’t go anywhere near the perimeter fence in daytime, but the quiet has obviously made them bolder.

Our “loose lockdown” in the Netherlands has now been extended to 20 May, with some slackening of the rules for kids (phased reopening of schools, sports training allowed under certain conditions), and all events are off until the end of August. A week ago there was a lot of talk about magic smartphone apps that would track the virus and allow us to end lockdown, but the government has been rapped on the fingers by both the data protection people and the security services: something that potentially gives access to that vast amount of sensitive personal data can’t be rushed through in a one week design competition. But my elderly parents (in the UK) are already bracing themselves for the challenge of exchanging their trusty old Nokia phones for some monstrosity designed to be operated only by teenage thumbs...

I'm disappointed to report that the governor of Georgia thinks it's time to start reopening the state for business. This won't directly affect me, as my employer isn't calling us in to work at this point, but it does frighten me as I think we'll see an increase in cases in a few weeks.

Also, I'm wondering if anyone else noticed an oped in the NYTimes yesterday by an an emergency medicine physician. He talks about how pneumonia develops differently in patients with COVID-19 and is often well-developed before patients experience diffuculty breathing. This may be part of the explanation of why people deterioate rapidly after they experience shortness of breath.

After Japan declared its state of emergency (this does not mean a lockdown), my company closed down for a week and three days to allow for the 80% decrease in commuters and contact between people that the government was requesting. After a nice (but strange) what felt like a vacation to me, today I am back to work. As the majority of our company are lab scientists we can't do our jobs at home at all so we are doing three day work weeks until May 6th, the end date of the emergency. After that we'll go back to our regular 5 days a week unless the government decides to extend the end date. It will wait until Golden Week (a sort of Japanese spring break that this year is from May 2nd till May 6th) to make that decision which will be determined by whether people break the requested isolation orders (remember, not a lockdown) and travel to the countryside to go back to their hometowns like what usually happens during Golden Week.

>243 markon: My front line physician colleagues and I here in Atlanta are nearly all livid after Governor Kemp announced that he would allow tattoo and massage parlors, bowling alleys, gyms, hair salons and barbershops to reopen starting on Friday, and permit restaurants to offer dine-in service beginning on Monday. Many of us have posted our thoughts and concerns on Facebook and other social media; one of the best came from my partner and office mate, Dr LaToya Oglesby:

As a physician I feel it is my responsibility to again comment on the importance of continuing to stay at home. This is not as simple as “stay at home if you don’t feel comfortable”, it is a public health issue and disregard for human life.

If you look at how Governor Kemp has handled this situation, you should realize he is not the best person to take cues from. His first big order was for people already sheltering in place to shelter in place, the vulnerable population. Then he finally orders the rest of us to shelter in place, while stating he didn’t know asymptomatic people could spread the virus. Yet he claimed he was following the data and listening to medical professionals. People all over the country were aware of this, but he lives in the same city as the CDC and didn’t know? Oh, but it didn’t stop there, then he opens the beaches after ordering us to shelter in place. Do you see the pattern yet? Do you see the incompetence? No, well, allow me to continue. His original shelter in place order was for a whopping 10 days. Now what data was this based on? What medical professional said 10 days is all you need to make a difference? Let me keep going. He then extended it to April 30th and the state of emergency until May 13th. So now, here we are in the midst of our current shelter in place order and he gives the green light for some businesses to open on April 24th. Yet another decision that doesn’t make sense. Now, look at the types of businesses - salons, barbershops, massage parlors, gyms, bowling alleys. Not only is he opening businesses, but this fool picked the most risky ones to open, places that require human contact and are non essential during a pandemic. He isn’t even doing it in phases that make sense. The barber is going to fade you up from 6 feet away? You’re going to get your hair cut and dyed from 6 feet away? I’d love to see that mani/pedi done from 6 feet away. Let’s talk about the gyms. It’s no secret I love OTF. Here is my concern. It’s unlikely a symptomatic person would show up to workout, but ASYMPTOMATIC PEOPLE CAN SPREAD THE VIRUS! In a gym, people are out of breath, panting, releasing respiratory droplets. The fans on the treadmill and on the ceiling blow the hell out of those droplets. You can wipe down your tread, weights, rower, mats, all you want, that will not prevent those droplets from landing on you. All it takes is one asymptomatic person in a class or gym to spread it to others who then take it home to family members, expose coworkers, etc... Not to mention, what type of wipes are provided by gyms? How effective are they at combating germs? Now, let’s talk about bowling alleys. A place where you borrow shoes and put your finger in nasty little holes in the bowling balls other people have used. Enough said on that. How’s that massage from 6 feet away? Then, he acknowledges the cases will increase, but claims “we” are prepared. Interesting, I work in a children’s hospital where we don’t see anywhere near the number of adult cases, yet we are being very cautious with PPE. Oh that’s right, he’s not on the frontline, so he doesn’t know what it means to be prepared. We haven’t run out of resources because the measures are working, that’s the point. If we don’t overwhelm our health care system, it’s because we are doing the right thing, not because we are overreacting.

Now, if you venture out to one of these high risk businesses and get the virus as an additional treat with your fresh do, nails, or workout, even if you don’t get sick or you get sick and recover, you are still facilitating the spread of the virus which is the problem. That’s more people getting sick, more people in our hospitals, more people dying. I imagine if you’re all fired up to get out come Friday, you haven’t lost anyone to this virus. 774 souls have been lost in Georgia, and those people matter. You shouldn’t have to lose someone close to you to do the right thing. It’s mostly brown lives being lost, you shouldn’t have to be brown for those lives to matter and do the right thing. In fact, the reason there have been protests about opening back up is because it’s a lot of brown lives being lost. Yes, I went there. If there wasn’t a disparity in lives lost, those same people would be sitting at home like everyone else.

There are epidemiologists and scientists who have given projections throughout this pandemic. Projections based on data. These projections suggest it would be appropriate to relax social distancing in Georgia after June 15. I have clearly outlined how our state leadership has been ineffective during this pandemic, is this really who want to trust? Do you really think he is capable of making sound decisions? He hasn’t yet. I urge you to continue to stay at home. I don’t care what party you belong to. I don’t care if you voted for him and don’t want to admit you f’ed up so you want to justify his actions and support him. I don’t give a damn. Stay at home please and thank you, it’s the only way to save us.

If you’re itching to get out on Friday and my post is pissing you off, making you feel guilty, or ideally making you change your mind, I’ve done my job.

LaToya has allowed her Facebook friends to share her commentary on their threads, so I think I'm okay doing so here.

I posted my own commentary in reply to hers on my Facebook timeline this morning:

More wisdom from one of my work partners and fellow hospitalist, who spoke truth far better than I ever could have. Well said, my friend.

Some additional thoughts:

Since (Not My) Governor Kemp's announcement that tattoo parlors, massage parlors, bowling alleys, nail salons and other businesses in Georgia will be allowed to open on Friday, followed by restaurants for dine-in service on Monday, we have learned that he did so without informing members of his own coronavirus task force in advance, or the mayor of the city of Atlanta. Numerous restaurateurs in metro Atlanta have wisely stated that this decision is premature and dangerous, and, fearing for the health of their customers and staff, they do not plan to commence dine-in service next week.

I honestly believe that the main reason that Kemp chose Friday as the day to lift restrictions is that it happens to be the same day of the scheduled ReOpen Georgia protest in front of the state capitol, which is supposed to be similar to ones held in Colorado, Michigan and other states led by extreme right wing groups. Kemp, like trump, is clearly more interested in appeasing his base than in the health and safety of all Georgians, especially the front line health care workers who will likely be faced with a surge of COVID-19 cases starting in early May, some of whom will fall ill and die as a result of Kemp's crass political stunt.

If there is one small silver lining it is that the vast majority of sensible and intelligent Americans, including 85% of Democrats and 70% of Republicans, agree with maintaining shelter-in-place restrictions and social distancing at the present time, and they presumably will not change their commendable behavior because of the reckless decision of one spineless governor to forego common sense and basic public health measures in order to avoid having to face the wrath of a tiny number of radicals.

In times of crisis this country needs political leaders who speak honestly and truthfully, and make tough decisions that may anger some and hurt others, but will prove beneficial to those most at risk, and to the majority as a whole. If these politicians cannot lead, then they must be replaced.

ETA: I did not see that Op-Ed article in the NYT. Thanks for mentioning it!

That NYT op-ed was very good. My husband, who can be utterly blind to phenomenon like cat puke in the middle of the living room or the fact that recycling has been going out on Monday nights for the entire 15 years we've been living together, has this very savant-like attention to detail (probably why he's a coder), and he ordered us a pulse oxymeter back at the beginning of March, as well as a digital thermometer. I'm still hoping not to use it, but I feel a bit better knowing it's in the medicine cabinet.

Darryl, I can't imagine how frustrating and scary Kemp's proclamation is. I know there are all sorts of unseen pressures to kick the economy back into being—I just saw a columnist pointing to a 30% unemployment number, which is way past Depression rates—but that just seems so deeply misguided. As are the people protesting because they want haircuts. Your hair keeps growing after you're dead, stupid. (I know that's probably a myth, but it's satisfying to say.)

>245 kidzdoc: I understand your frustration as my Governor, Henry McMaster, is following Kemp's lead. Fortunately, he has stated that individual municipalities are allowed to make more restrictive rules and Charleston is wisely keeping its beaches closed. But I saw signs that a nearby restaurant was preparing to open its dining room here in Greenville. We'll continue to shelter-in-place. And my local bookstore has decided not to reopen, but is continuing to offer free next day no-contact delivery and curbside service instead.

I do understand wanting a pedicure (I really want a pedicure) or a haircut (my husband's attempt to cut his own hair led to unfortunate results and he's been wearing a cap ever since), but I do hope that people will pause to consider that it's not worth endangering the lives of the people who will be providing these services.

Reopening businesses will reduce the unemployment - if you do not go to work or prove that you seek work, now it is a choice and they don’t owe you anything. For some reason, I suspect that this is part of the equation in all the “let’s reopen” governors and what’s not. Money before people - it’s as bad as ideology and/or race before people. And yet, some people find one of them to be ok and the other one to be genocide.

>246 lisapeet:

In one of the crime novels I read lately they were explaining that hair and nails do not grow after death but the tissue they are in shrinks and pulls back so it looks like they are growing. I’ve never thought about that and that sounds plausible actually.

>248 AnnieMod: " . . . hair and nails do not grow after death but the tissue they are in shrinks and pulls back so it looks like they are growing. I’ve never thought about that and that sounds plausible actually."

I remember reading this same thing many years ago. I have no memory of where I read it, but it has always made perfect sense to me.

>246 lisapeet: >248 AnnieMod: >249 rocketjk: For your entertainment

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20130526-do-your-nails-grow-after-death

>245 kidzdoc: Excellent takes, there. As many have noted, these politicians are acting as though they expect never to be held to account.

>250 dchaikin: I knew there was good science behind that! I still think it's a good retort, though, because anyone protesting because she wants a haircut isn't exactly the most sciencey of souls.

>253 lisapeet: insane...beyond insane. I guess it makes the news for shock value.

>254 dchaikin: Too much of news seems like shock value lately, unfortunately. I used to teach journalism (in another life) and it was so different. I worked hard with my students on telling the truth, not resorting to sensationalizing, not publishing things that could hurt others, using headlines that accurately portray the storyline. Wow, guess we have come a long way from those days.

>250 dchaikin:

Apparently one can learn something even from crime novels ;)

>255 LadyoftheLodge:

That's one of those topics that always gets me. I was born in a system where propaganda and journalism were synonyms. Then things changed - or so we believed. Now? I am not sure if we slid back where it started or if we are even worse (and under we, I do not mean just back home - the world seems to be moving in that direction).

One result of the month-long (so far) shelter in place for my wife and I is that we are off today to, we fervently hope, pick up a new dog from the folks who have been fostering her. We were devastated in early November when our beloved yellow lab mix, Yossarian, died just short of his 12th birthday. On the other hand, I am now mid-60s and my wife is a few years younger, and we had always planned that when Yossarian left us, we would refrain from bringing a new dog into the house for a while and use the added freedom from responsibility to travel, at least for a while. Cue the pandemic. So much for freedom to travel! So, we have picked out a 4-year-old German Shepherd. My wife and I are finding the time together in our house, which luckily for us is a comfortable one, to be mostly a fine experience in togetherness (although I'm getting tired of being so regularly trounced during our gin rummy games). So I'm expressing nothing negative about our relationship when I say that we are looking forward now to having the additional energy of a new friend in the house. We have a fair bit of fenced yard for a dog to roam in, and as we are living in a very rural area in northern California, we go for walks two or three times a day, anyway. We figure getting a dog out of a foster care situation and into a more permanent setting is the least we can do!

>257 rocketjk: My sister got a new dog just as all this was starting, and found that the vet was only taking emergency cases, so she was saddled with an unvaccinated puppy for several weeks and had to avoid both other people and places where other dogs might have been. But the vet has apparently found a way to work safely now and given the jabs, so she's back to just avoiding people...

>258 thorold: That sounds like a hassle, but our new dog is four and has been living in shelter/foster home situations, so will have all necessary shots, thank goodness.

>257 rocketjk: Congratulations! This is an excellent time to help a new pet adjust to life with you and I wish you happiness with her. At the end of March, a feral kitten showed up in our yard. My son caught him as he was attempting to shelter in our grill one rainy night and we expected to quickly take him to the shelter for shots and that operation and then to return him to the outdoors, but as the local Humane Society was closed, it took a few days to find a shelter in another city able to fit him in. And by then my son was invested in seeing if he could be tamed and the short answer was 'eventually yes'. There's no doubt that the time we all had to spend on this project was the key. You are, of course, not adopting a feral dog, but the principle stands. Here is Ollie enjoying the screen porch.

I've missed 199 posts (!) so probably won't have much to contribute.

Just checking in from Australia to say that we have flattened the curve. Most people are working from home, no more than 2 people can be together in public unless they are a family who live together, schooling has gone online. People aren't visiting their families, nursing homes have been in lockdown.
As soon as the news came through about the curve, some people starting suggesting that we get back to normal. Of course that will only put us back where we were a month ago. There is talk of schools reopening on the premise that children appear to be less affected by the virus. It seems that might go ahead.
I think it's a matter of how long the economy can survive these social distancing measures. the government is doing its best to support small businesses, and businesses with a revenue loss of more than 30%. They are also trying to support workers who have lost their jobs but there are some glitches with that.
Amanda XX

We are still fine and healthy in Wa. Before he had his one year post transplant checkup the first week of April my husband got a covid test which unsurprisingly was negative (no symptoms and he’s basically been sheltering in place for a year). At that time, we decided that we liked the way our Governor Jay “ the Snake” Inslee (nickname courtesy of tRump-he didn’t mean it in a good way but we take it as an honorific) is handling the pandemic a lot better than how Florida’s governor is handling it. So, all our stuff headed for Florida 4/13, but we cancelled our plane tickets. We are now sheltering in place in a Residence Inn in Wa until we think things have settled enough in Florida.
I’m thankful all of our kids have kept their jobs and are able to work from home, even though 3 of them have to contend with toddlers and/or homeschooling between virtual meetings. My youngest son has had to postpone his June wedding (which was scheduled for the conservatory garden in Central Park), and it looks like they may have lost the substantial deposit they put down for the reception, as the venue is not responding to emails or phone calls and in all likelihood is out of business. But overall, we’ve been fortunate.

>261 amandameale: Thanks for the Sydney update, Amanda.

>262 arubabookwoman: Sounds like a smart move to stay in WA until FL settles down. I have watched some of the news from down there. We have a Republican governor but he's a moderate and I've been mostly okay with the way he has handled things (but I'm keeping my eye on him). We have not peaked yet.

-----

Turns out my daughter in Virginia likely had Covid in February, her docs said. I remember talking with her on video chat and her telling me about the bad cold she had, that she thought she had bronchitis, too. At one point she thought she was hearing double in one ear. She's pregnant, so they told her they would test for the antibodies next month where she is 20 weeks. They live in the DC suburbs, about 6 or 7 miles from Dulles airport, so it's believed she got it just from "community spread." (her not-quite two year old likely had it, but not sure about the hubby because he showed no symptoms)

Otherwise, we have now taken on the supervision of our 5 year old grandson here in New Hampshire for three weekdays, after his parents had two extremely stressful weeks and were not handling it as well as they had been on the earlier weeks. The risk is low. The grandson ran up ragged yesterday, but he was certainly happy with the attention.

I too, have just re-read "The Plague", and found it to be prescient., especially in his descriptions of how people react---somewhat similar to stages of grief in some ways. The book mentions attempts at vaccines, at quarantines, how people shop, and key character(s) that deal with the situation in various ways.

Here in US Pacific NW, we've been going through a "stay-at-home" policy for about nearly over a month now. As you've probably already heard, some of the large-scale events happened at the city of Kirkland, at a group home, which is approx. 15 minutes drive from where I live.

It's become the "new normal"...wearing masks, social distancing, the hoarding of a few items that people deem essential, & perhaps a growing weariness-----as we know this might be something we've got to deal with for not only the next few months, but perhaps years.

As we say, "the virus gets a vote"....

As some of you mentioned, it's a great time to read up, to watch great movies indoors, take the dog for walks, etc., etc.

Some of us go into work, I've been doing so as "essential staff" at a hospital. I'll spare you the gallows humor I'm seeing at work. Many people do manage to work from home, but those are the lucky folks!

Let me know what you all are reading. My boss who recently retired recommended that I read "Station Eleven", by Emily St. John Mandel, but I've not read that book. Anyone know about it?

Best of health to you all.

Here in SC, I made my weekly grocery run and noticed that traffic is back up almost to normal, now that our Governor has okayed reopening beaches and stores. Some municipalities are keeping things closed. Greenville, SC is not one of those places.

But more people were wearing masks in the grocery store, including all the employees. Those not wearing masks or obeying the arrows on the floor indicating which direction you should go down an aisle now stand out. They no longer look like people who just weren't paying attention. These are purposeful offenders. Luckily they are in the minority.

My husband is back at work today, trying to figure out how to find and put up dividers so people can be at work without spreading COVID. The plant reopens on Monday.

It's a little frustrating to be living in the South right now. A coworker of my husband's has already explained to my husband that the virus was lab-grown in China. A friend of my father's thinks this is all part of a plan to bring in a One World Government. The weirdness down here would be fine were it not prone to harm people and were it not so widespread. South Carolina: too small to be a country, too large to be an insane asylum.

>265 RidgewayGirl: you remind me I should be careful not to ask my neighbors their thoughts on all this.

>263 avaland: hope your daughter is well now.

>265 RidgewayGirl:

At least they believe there is a virus... A few scientists(!) back home had apparently been on TV explaining how there is no pandemic virus, these deaths are from anything but this (they just count random deaths I guess) and this is all a plot to ensure that EU does not disintegrate after Brexit. And nope - it was neither a fringe TV channel, nor fringe scientists.

>265 RidgewayGirl: The weirdness down here
I have a neighbor (Pennsylvania) who believes the cause is 5G networks. Not someone I know; I happened to pass by her house when she was out in the yard a couple weeks ago, and normally I'd just nod hello, but these days people pause to inquire how things are going. I'm not sure which of the variants she believes (5G causes the symptoms and the virus is a hoax, the virus exists but 5G weakens the immune system, the virus exists and is spread by 5G radio waves, ...) or whether her mental model has a coherent structure or is just a linkage of scary things. 5G was accompanied by other comments that seemed a little loopy, so I responded mildly in support of science, then extricated.

>264 benbrainard8:
Station Eleven was a very popular read when it came out and deservedly so. Definitely recommended.

>265 RidgewayGirl:, >268 qebo:

Although I know you should refrain from getting into arguments with these people as there is no convincing them otherwise but I definitely wouldn't be able to refrain from saying "That is the stupidest thing I've heard. Learn some science", and then walking away. Some people just need to be knocked off their high horse of stupidity.

>269 lilisin: Neighbor. Segued into religion. My lunch break. Where to begin? Polite statement to indicate disagreement. Continue onward. If I ever talk to her again, I'll be forewarned.

>266 dchaikin: Oh yes, fine now, Dan, thanks. She had it February.

>269 lilisin: That response might make you feel better, but seldom effects the intended target.

>271 avaland:

Yes, which is why I said that "I know you should refrain" but it's gotten to a point where I'm a bit tired of having to refrain all the time. In any case, fortunately for myself I don't have those type of people around me so that's one level of stress I don't have to deal with.

Very nice video from my old college this morning, with the choristers singing madrigals from home rather than from the top of the tower: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEBsmxAfGiY

Could have done without the slightly smug accompanying email pointing out how many times the college had survived plague epidemics in the last 562 years, though...

There's something to be said for not talking to the neighbors, I guess. I've barely seen any of mine. I think the general understanding in NYC is to abide by the stay home/mask rule, but I haven't talked to enough people (other than my friends, who are like-minded) to get a sense of what's going on. I will say it's VERY deserted up where we live—we're still doing our morning walk around the local reservoir and hardly see anyone, other than the college parking lot testing station and the rows of cars waiting to pull in. Supermarkets and drugstores are all limiting how many people can be inside at once, so there are waits to get in everywhere, but it's easier if you go early on a weekday.

My husband and I are working solid days, often of the ten-hour variety... what a strange time to be in the media. But I'm glad we both have jobs. Other than that I'm reading, writing, gardening. It's still pretty cold and rainy, so I only have lettuce, spinach, and oregano planted, but I've started tomato and eggplant seedlings indoors.

It feels almost strange to have such a light lift when folks are having such a hard go of it, but then again we came into all this pre-brokenhearted. I've been thinking of how relieved I am that my mom died before this—that she's not sitting in the nursing home wondering where I am—and feel deeply fortunate that we were all able to be with her to hold her hand and say goodbye, something that wouldn't be possible now. I miss the dog painfully, though. It feels wrong being home without her.

Really, though, life isn't radically different and there is a certain degree of acceptance of this new normal. I miss seeing my friends in person, though we talk on the phone and email often, but don't miss my commute. I've been writing in longhand a lot, keeping a journal better than I have in years and writing cards and letters to everyone I know—there's something soothing about it for me, and I imagine it must be cheerful to get mail other than junk while stuck at home. And reading a lot—this hasn't messed with my concentration, another thing I feel fortunate for. I'm moderating a virtual author panel with four great authors of cultural/topical nonfiction, so I've got a lot to read between now and then. Currently in the middle of Jill Lepore's upcoming If Then: How Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future , which is fascinating—the birth of advertising and political algorithm commodification.

It feels like lockdown in the UK is unravelling to a degree, with many people deciding for themselves that they've stayed at home for quite long enough. For the rest of us, who'd like to do the right thing so we can get past this whole Corona thing as soon as possible, it's very frustrating.

There seems to be an economic rather than scientific argument for us all to start getting back to work soon, and there are lots of media headlines about us being past the peak, but we're now just a few hundred deaths behind Italy, and I expect by the end of today or tomorrow we'll have passed them to become the country with the highest deaths in Europe. In Northern Ireland we've got much lower rates, but still - the thought of returning back to the office is frightening.

Today marks the sixth week that I have been ill with Covid. I am finally starting to feel better though, and I was fever-free two days this week. Hopefully I will be over it soon.

People here in Maine are starting to get antsy about sheltering-in-place. Mainers are very independent, in a way that is very different from the South, and the tradition of strong, self-sufficient individuals has deep historical roots. Think Pilgrims, Puritans. Boston Tea Party. With 55 deaths in the state and almost all in their 70s and 80s, some of whom would have sadly passed anyway, I think it's hard for many to see the benefits versus the consequences. In addition, small businesses and self-employment make up the vast majority of employers in the state and many of them are related to the tourist industry. If the shelter-in-place rules remain in place, people will begin dying for economic reasons, especially in rural areas. Oxford Economics ranks Maine as #1 in the US in economic vulnerability due to coronavirus.

I'm not trying to say other places are not suffering as well, and I am a staunch shelter-in-placer myself, but the mood here is getting desperate.

Our governor has a very methodical plan for re-opening our state between now and July 4, with loosening restrictions. Libraries should be open next week! But we all still need to do the social distancing thing and be vigilant. Senior citizens are still supposed to stay home as much as possible though.

I live in a small town, and all our businesses here are small and family or individually owned, just Subway and McDonalds as large corps. Same here, people will be dying for economic reasons, although our county received a grant from the state to support small businesses and keep people employed. Our community relies on tourism (we are primarily an artist colony) for most of our income, with things ramping up at this time of the year is common. Our tourist season runs from April through October for the most part.

>276 labfs39: I'm glad that you're apparently on the road to recovery, Lisa!

We are still in " stay at home" mode in Ontario. Gardening centres and some outdoor maintenance will be allowed- Gardening centres can do pick up- how that will work I don't know- gardeners like to pick their own plants!
Some new construction for specific public projects will also be allowed.
I am doing more cooking and will attempt to bake a cake receipt from a World War 1 cookbook- methods and ingredients revised by the " volunteer historical cooks" from Fort York National Historic Site. The title is very appropriate -Canadian War Cake

Now that the shelter-in-place restrictions have been lifted in Georgia, many of the state's residents seemingly think that social distancing and use of cloth and other protective masks are no longer required, which is NOT what the governor or local public health officials have indicated. I won't post any of the photos that a few of my nurse friends posted on Facebook yesterday, but the crowds in Atlanta's Piedmont Park, which is 1-1/2 blocks from where I live, were similar to those in this photo of the Atlanta Beltline in Midtown that was posted online yesterday:



If this nonsense keeps up it will be a busy — and deadly — summer here.

Is it time for a new thread?

>280 kidzdoc: Oh my gosh. That's frightening.

I like this quote from the Atlantic comparing Georgians to canaries in coal mines:

"Georgia’s brash reopening puts much of the state’s working class in an impossible bind: risk death at work, or risk ruining yourself financially at home. In the grips of a pandemic, the approach is a morbid experiment in just how far states can push their people. Georgians are now the largely unwilling canaries in an invisible coal mine, sent to find out just how many individuals need to lose their job or their life for a state to work through a plague."

That's upsetting. All the work we've done to flatten the curve looks like it might be negated.

I also get very upset at the argument that "people who want to continue to self-isolate are free to do so" which I'm hearing a lot. It's just not true. If your employer is open most people are forced to go in and work or face being let go. And won't be able to get unemployment, I presume.

Here in Virginia, our Governor has been issuing pretty strict stay at home guidance and it seems to have worked. In Northern Virginia, I think most people have followed the stay at home rules and taken it seriously. I haven't heard anything about our hospitals being overwhelmed. We have a pretty big political divide between the area around Washington, D.C. (fairly liberal) and the rest of the state (fairy conservative). Our Governor is opening back up hospitals and dental offices for non-essential services starting next week. That seems like a good first step.

That's really worrisome. I think the fact that it's starting to warm up in a lot of the northern states is going to make the concept of staying in more of a stretch for people—even with a mild winter like the one we just had, there's still a sense of having been largely indoors for the past six months and wanting to bust out. Amplified, of course, by having been VERY indoors for the past two months. Kids were playing out on my street yesterday, tossing a football, and I'm seeing more people out walking—no idea if they're gathering unsafely, since our little local park is closed, but I wouldn't doubt it.

>276 labfs39: Glad you're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I'm sorry you had to go through it—that's a long time to be sick.

>279 torontoc: gardeners like to pick their own plants!

Here in NS you can make an appointment to go into the garden centre and pick your own plants, or use curbside pick up if you prefer. The garden centres are quite large; my favourite is over 5 acres, so with only two or three customers selecting platns at one time, social distancing is not a problem. I will see how it works this week, seeing as it is prime planting time here.

>275 AlisonY: It feels like lockdown in the UK is unravelling to a degree

That was the impression I had from the news. Sad to have it confirmed.

>279 torontoc: - Cyrel, this is my concern, too. I tried to order plants on Sheridan's website but couldn't even find a way to choose the colour of the plants I wanted so I never placed the order. I will phone them tomorrow and see what exactly is allowed. Today was a gorgeous 20C and I spent several hours in my back garden, getting it ready. I am wiped out but in truth, the forecast looks to be taking a dive tomorrow and for the rest of the week so I guess there is no rush. We still have a few weeks till our May 24 planting weekend!

>284 SassyLassy: - This is what I am hoping our garden centres will do. The one I frequent is not big and almost always packed so they will have to really control numbers. Parking is also at a real premium. They should do it by appointment.

I guess this thread is getting rather long....

NEW THREAD has been started (thanks, Darryl, for the reminder)