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[Greiger]

I was afraid to go to work every single day, I was afraid that I would bring it home to my mother an ex smoker over the age of 70 who has had lung cancer.  I'm afraid of giving her a goddamn cold let alone this.  Eventually I decided to leave my job, I made every attempt I could to leave only as a temporary measure or work in a way that would result in less contact with customers, but my boss would have none of it.

I was planning on attempting to go back to work at the end of the month.  But with all this stuff about reopening makes me worry about doing that, there's still a half dozen or so new cases every day in my county, that's if you believe that everything is being done to test people, which I sure as hell don't.  I'm absolutely sure that number is at least double that, probably closer to 10 times that.  and I don't want to get my mother sick, nor do I myself want to get it.

1 man I have known personally since I was a kid has died from coronavirus.  An ex coworker of mine that I keep up with through Steam was hospitalized and has felt weaker and more tired ever since (and he's about my age).  I don't have a huge pool of friends.  But 2 people I know well enough to have had some kind of communication with at least once a week have had this virus.  I don't like my chances having io interact with hundreds of people a day.

Damn right I'm terrified, and if you are not afraid to go back to interact with even a few people, every day that you have no idea what precautions they are taking, if any, you might have a problem.

EDIT: In case it was not known I worked at Dollar General.  And I was in a low management position, enough to see daily sales numbers and data like that.  The store averaged 190 people per day, closer to 300 during the first bits of corona panic when everyone was buying TP and hand sanitizer.  I know because its one of the numbers I had to log at the end of the day, every day.  My county according to the most official data I can get Here says 4% of those tested have it.  There were 2 shifts per day at my store, which puts me at interacting with half that 190.  Which points me at interacting with 3 people per day rounding down that have coronavirus.  Yea I'm terrified of returning to work.

Oh and when I say people per day that's actually transactions per day, and I'm assuming 1 person per transaction.  If multiple people are doing one transaction they can probably be counted as one person, as they are likely all in the same household.  It also helps balance out the occasional person who does two transactions because they forgot to buy something too.

[Reelya]

There was something I read a while ago, they did some research, they found that giving anti-germ messages like hand-washing reminders caused a spike in xenophobic attitudes on follow-up questions, so reminders about pathogens reinforce anti-foreigner / nationalist sentiments. Kinda ironic that the same conservatives are now the "cough in people's faces, nothing to fear" brigade.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6824207/
https://psmag.com/news/why-are-conservatives-grossed-out-by-germs

One possible interpretation of this is that conservative populists are fully aware of this germs/outsiders thing (which is suspected to be evolutionary behavior: being wary of outsider groups during a plague is a good survival instinct) and they're hoping the plague spreads because they can cash-in on the anti-foreigner thing. Somehow it doesn't trigger cognitive dissonance for them that they want to close international borders to stop the spread of the pathogen, but if it's state borders they'll protest to keep them open, as if the "local" version of the virus is less bad or something.

[martinuzz]

Interesting article about the virus' effects on the body.
I am not feeling like translating a lenghty article today, I hope google translate can handle the dutch for you.
The basic gist: Covid-19 does not just effect the lungs.

Or rather, people suffocating is not caused directly by the virus, but rather by the virus damaging blood veins, causing blood clots, and flooding the lungs with your own blood plasma.
What doctors thought to be ARDS caused by our immune system going in overdrive is actually blood plasma leaking into the still reasonably healthy lungs and flooding them, long before the immune system goes haywire.
The virus' entry gate to the body, the Ace2 receptor, is shown to be deregulated after the virus uses it to enter the cell, disrupting chemical balance that normally prevents blood vessels from leaking.

This also causes organ failures, neurological symptoms, aneurisms and more.

Also, there's some reports now that Covid-19 has been found in sperm. It might be sexually transmittable too.
https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/de-slooptocht-van-het-coronavirus-in-het-lichaam-bijna-geen-orgaan-blijft-onberoerd~b1914afa/

[Starver]

(Prior to this latter revelation, purely COVID-safe sex that still allowed for conception-and-the-rest was always going to be a strange and possibly kinky affair. Still, I was certain I could find pictures of how to do it if I ever bothered to disable my mobile ISP's default block on such things.  )

[TamerVirus]

The big new discussion point with Covid19 is now the emergence of complications in children.
About a hundred or so kids in New York have developed something similar to Kawasaki disease (blood vessel inflammation) after testing positive for Covid19/had the antibodies.
This disease has all sorts of curveballs.

[Starver]

There's been significant cries of "Children can't catch this, get the schools open again" over here (at least one said "nobody under 10 can catch it", in a phone-in, straight after a news item about a young child having died of/with it). Forgetting that teachers would be vulnerable if there's still (at least) contact-transmission via socially-undistancable kids.

It's been theorised that children of hospital keyworkers mixing with children of nursing-home keyworkers has been one vector (as well as 'farming out' asymptomatic patients in the first rush to clear wards of potential bed-blockers) that got the virus into the carehomes so much as it did, once the schools closed to all but keyworker-kids/otherwise vulnerable ones.

I am not overly concerned about children, over and above my concerns about post-adolescents, but I'm certainly frustrated by those that continue to dismiss the risks to them (and by them) as negligable. Whether this specific threat is new (and not just a replacement for some other tragedy they'd succumb to if it weren't COVID that was doing the rounds, while being buried in the normal rates of other diseases) is a concern, but if we're even getting a rate of non-fatal/no-symptom transmission in these agegroups we're obviously failing to live up to the precautionary measures we aspire to.

(I've heard calls for 'normality' to resume, but super-isolate the elderly and other specifically vulnerable more, on the basis we can't and couldn't stop it being endemic anyway, and they aren't as economically 'important'. This sounds more like an end result (ending lockdown) in search of a solution than a well-considered approach looking at all repercussions.)

[misko27]

They're calling it "multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children", which admittedly doesn't quite roll off the tongue. I like to call it MISC: Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children. MISC! In any case, since the link to coronavirus was unknown until recently (and only very recently confirmed by studies in Italy), it's underreported. I worry about what other things are underreported.

It doesn't seem to be particularly common, at present, but it does belie the argument that "oh yeah children are totally fine send them into the breach, they're immune!" Well until they aren't and go into Shock.

[Max™]

Who exactly is hurt by people not heading off to perform some sort of function as a cog in a long geartrain that scoops up cash from a big pile and funnels it into a few pockets?

Most of the work we do is busywork because we have this fucked up idea that there is no purpose to a life which doesn't produce a profit for someone else, and those collecting said profits then dole out a pittance to the workers who made it so they can pass them on to the next big funnel so someone else can collect it.

People ARE needed for certain tasks otherwise civilization may damn well crumble, and everyone has various needs to be met and niceties they probably want to enjoy, but the only reason to force this framework of "you have to scrape and earn every fucking cent you're spending on that ramen, peon" on so many people is so they can be the losers while a few others get to be the winners.

Why the fuck would anyone in their right mind wish to go back to an unfulling and tedious grind so they can devote huge portions of their life to making a few assholes a tiny bit richer?

I mean, somebody might suggest loyalty or team spirit or vague promises of improved standing at some workplace at some unspecified time in the future is reason enough to listen when bitchy fucks notice their stock ticker isn't going up so fast or at all and they want you to go back to making the stock machine go brrrrrrrrr.

The important thing there isn't your health, your happiness, the risks to you or those around you, and this isn't some new development. The game was rigged against you long ago, it's just really hard to act like it's fun to keep playing when you realize you're only being told to play again because they're trying to boost their high score, and god damn you for breathing if it isn't helping do just that.

[Teneb]

Who exactly is hurt by people not heading off to perform some sort of function as a cog in a long geartrain that scoops up cash from a big pile and funnels it into a few pockets?

Most of the work we do is busywork because we have this fucked up idea that there is no purpose to a life which doesn't produce a profit for someone else, and those collecting said profits then dole out a pittance to the workers who made it so they can pass them on to the next big funnel so someone else can collect it.

People ARE needed for certain tasks otherwise civilization may damn well crumble, and everyone has various needs to be met and niceties they probably want to enjoy, but the only reason to force this framework of "you have to scrape and earn every fucking cent you're spending on that ramen, peon" on so many people is so they can be the losers while a few others get to be the winners.

Why the fuck would anyone in their right mind wish to go back to an unfulling and tedious grind so they can devote huge portions of their life to making a few assholes a tiny bit richer?

I mean, somebody might suggest loyalty or team spirit or vague promises of improved standing at some workplace at some unspecified time in the future is reason enough to listen when bitchy fucks notice their stock ticker isn't going up so fast or at all and they want you to go back to making the stock machine go brrrrrrrrr.

The important thing there isn't your health, your happiness, the risks to you or those around you, and this isn't some new development. The game was rigged against you long ago, it's just really hard to act like it's fun to keep playing when you realize you're only being told to play again because they're trying to boost their high score, and god damn you for breathing if it isn't helping do just that.

But muh STONKS!

[martinuzz]

You mean these ones?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stocks

[McTraveller]

Why the fuck would anyone in their right mind wish to go back to an unfulling and tedious grind so they can devote huge portions of their life to making a few assholes a tiny bit richer?

This is such a generational difference in world view.  How about seeing the unfulfilling and tedious grind as a way to enable yourself to do something less tedious and more fulfilling, despite the fact your employer may profit?  That's the worldview I was brought up with...  yeah maybe you make your employer some profit, but you give yourself enough profit to quit that job and do what you want, or if the job is what you like, then enjoy it!

And I find the argument that "it just costs too much, you can never save enough to get out" to be hollow.  There are always ways to pool expenses - live at home, get roommates.  These options are part of the "unfulfilling and tedious" I know.  You don't have to sacrifice that many meals to afford a $40 bus ticket after all.  I bet you can probably find a religious organization in any area that is willing to give you a bus ticket out of dodge.

Ultimately the only reason oppressive regimes remain is because people end up being more comfortable with the status quo and complaining about it than ultimately risking their own well being (yes, even up to the point of death) to change it.

If you are wanting a "leader" or "law enforcement" or someone else to change society without you participating at all - then you are asking those people to, in some way, risk their own well being to bring about the change.  This feels inconsistent to me.

Put another way: it's fine to risk your own well-being for some cause.  But any time you are asking (or even forcing) someone else to risk their well-being for your cause instead of you... that just doesn't sit well with me.

[Bumber]

Face masks with drinking straws:

[Starver]

Remind me not to look up stills from The Fly.

[Bumber]

Remind me not to look up stills from The Fly.

How about Mansquito instead?

[Iduno]

https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1260949102617075712