Maybe I should disambiguate these post titles.
Maybe include the date and day of the week. I hear people are having trouble with that.
Still in NYC with Newt, still fine, Sally still in Santa Cruz, still fine. My parents still fine but Mom keeps on calling and telling me about all the long walks she's taking and shopping she's doing. Dad is staying home like a sensible octogenarian. My sister in NC, also still fine.
Nine days from my last plausible exposure to the virus, and we're all good!
We're fine. Life is slightly better with a mild schedule. Classes start for everyone in full on Monday. Still bummed that they shut down the river and parks.
I got a real job and stopped regular lurking in 2017, but I'm back now and wanted to make sure everyone's ok. I don't know if I can commit to catching up on three years of threads, but no time like the present. You all have been existing in my imagination while I've been away. Now I'm scared to find out what I missed. Just moved from Plain Jane's childhood neighbourhood to tiny town I was in before. I resume lurking now.
1 As someone who has a browser window dedicated to the blog with like 50+ comment tabs open I say yes, please do.
I reached out today to good friends in the neighborhood (via Whatsapp). They're a married couple who are super cool. Both of their mother's are there. His sister came down with symptoms a week ago and moved out as her mother has asthma. Not tested though.
I also heard about a vegan delivery service I'll place an order for tomorrow, price is very reasonable for 5 days worth of meals delivered daily, I'm getting sick of pasta. I'll put my anger in the other thread.
All still healthy here. Friend of mine has been having a rough time: wife just had second baby, parents in law visited to help (and see new grandson), then lockdown, so stuck with wife, 2 small boys, 2 aged Quebecois, and au pair in house; then wife, older boy and both parents in law came down simultaneously with (probably) COVID; now recovered/recovering, but my friend and the au pair are now both ill., au pair running a serious fever.
Still with the less-modified than-others-because-retired life in the 'burgh. Coll, calm and serene. Not angry one little bit.
Going to go have a non-anger fuled erg workout.
It did no good to wonder about it. Nothing at all did any good except to live as they must live. Must always, always live, if Anthony would let them.
Penny! I'm also recently returned years behind but just declared thread bankruptcy. The lurkers support me in this.
Hope everyone is ok. I am having one of the easiest isolation setups imaginable, so really can't complain. Hearing about things like 13 (locally, too) while sitting in 1000 ish square feet on my own feels a bit guilty.
Piping up to say all is as well as it can be in semi-rural southwestern Ohio, where we've been personally sheltering in place since 3/10, when the university closed. Two of us, no kids, 800ish square feet, and while we may at some point risk relocating to southern California, depending of course on how things develop, for now we're riding it out here, and are grateful to have a governor who's been surprisingly proactive about state-wide isolation. There's been some difficulty shopping for especially-in-demand food and supplies, and the local healthcare system can only stand so much strain, like everywhere else, but so far--mutatis mutandis, anyway--so good. Love and health to all.
My Ohio-dwelling sister-in-law thinks that the idea that he could ban abortion helped their governor make the call.
Our state covid tracking site now gives age and gender breakdowns. Here's Gallatin:
Cases By Gender & Age Group:
Range F | M | T
10-19 - 1 | 1 | 2
20-29 - 2 | 5 | 7
30-39 - 3 | 4 | 7
40-49 - 6 | 1 | 7
50-59 - 5 | 2 | 7
60-69 - 1 | 6 | 7
70-79 - 2 | 0 | 2
80-89 - 0 | 0 | 0
Note: Male in 60s is California resident, Male in 20s is New Hampshire resident.
I don't believe that only 2 of the 39 are tourists, but maybe so. We've had our first death, statewide, but there's no further info than that.
17.1 If that's true, it's massively fucked up, but the early action and focus on people over dollars will still save lives.
Still doing fine here. Telecommuting is going more smoothly now that the technical issues have been worked out.
I just heard one university system just had its IT go around and disconnect office desktops and instruct everyone to take those desktops home.
Yeah, that's what my office ended up doing (for everyone except the few who had already gotten the limited number of laptops they had in stock). I suspect a lot of places aren't really set up for the possibility of everyone telecommuting.
NW and I are fine, alternating between our houses every few days (unless the police start putting up checkpoints). We went for a long bike ride today; a lot of other people were doing the same, or walking with kids and/or dogs. The only people we saw who weren't observing careful distancing were a couple of builders repairing a church roof, heads together as they tutted over the state of the gable.
My next-door neighbour and two friends were chatting outside for 20 minutes or so, two of them sitting a couple of metres apart on a garden wall and the other standing across the road. Soon after they went in, she said, a policeman walked up and hung around for a while looking suspiciously at the wall. So either there's a snitch in the street, or police surveillance is a lot more thorough than I'd realized.
The Adventures of Visiting GP Clinic Yesterday
1. Arrive and park, car park usually rammed but half empty today.
2. Building locked up like a gaol, note on door says to knock on side window to alert reception.
3. Knock on side window, have shouted conversation through glass with receptionist as to why we're there.
4. Receptionist dons mask, comes round and unlocks door; opens door wearing plastic gloves; instructs us not to touch handle.
5. Receptionist orders us to wash hands in baby changing room before doing anything else; re-locks door and retreats to isolated position with view of side window.
6. Wash hands, re-enter waiting room; not a soul in sight (usually at least half a dozen people waiting).
7. Nurse to do blood test appears wearing mask.
WAIT! WTF is she even doing here? I happen to know she's 69 with type 1 diabetes and a dodgy pancreas. Also, she's meant to be on phased return to work after long term sickness.
8. Follow nurse into office. She's chatting away as though nothing unusual was happening. Test administered; result discussed. Agree not to come back till end of April, although I'd normally be back in two weeks. Mrs Y requests and gets B12 shot so she doesn't have to come again in 3 weeks.
9. Nurse lets us out the back door. Still nobody in sight. (Who owns the cars then? Car park still half full). Go home and re-isolate.
10. 8:00 pm. Join rest of street (and country) in mass applause for NHS workers.
Step-mother-in-law (in NYC) went into the hospital yesterday with high fever and pneumonia, and is now on a ventilator. Father-in-law is not showing any symptoms, thank God, since he's 79 with terrible lungs and all sorts of other health issues.
Fingers crossed for your in-laws, Tom.
Still doing okay here in Fresno, CA. Our city council is adding some ridiculous categories to the essential exceptions for Shelter in Place -- dry cleaners and sporting goods stores now make the cut for "essential". Had a big creative flare Wed/Thurs, so I'm excitedly stealing time to work on it when I can. It's been quite a while since I last got into a good creative groove, so I'm excited.
Yesterday was our anniversary, but my wife was down with a cold, so I had solo time in the evening to create. Today was a scheduled colonoscopy, called off to reduce Covid exposure risk... so I guess I can't say Covid never did me good?
oh tom scudder, thinking of you all. so terribly sorry for your family going through this.
things trudge on for me as before - lingering low-grade fever, cough, headache. kid started with whatever it is a couple of days ago, woke up this morning nauseous. :( :( :(
24: Oh no, how scary. Please keep us updated.
28: Hawaii is so excited to delay her 11 year old wellness check up because it comes with shots.
We are pretty sure my wife has the Rona now (probably from work), so that is how we are celebrating her birthday :( Mostly cough/chest tightness and general soreness, no fever. Last two weeks she though food didn't taste good, but we didn't think that was anything because food has always been difficult for her and we were trying to only eat at home (no restaurants, only occasional takeout, EEW grocery runs). I'm still fine but we're thinking i'm just 5 days behind or so. Trying to stay positive; we are probably early enough that we'd get life support if things go badly.
No major changes here. Home schooling isn't getting any easier, but you people have told me not to worry at Atossa's age, so I'm trying not to. I feel like I should be cooking better, but it's hard to shop for both culinary arts and survivalism at the same time.
re shopping for culinary arts and survivalism at the same time: so called "peasant" food. I'm leaning towards things that don't need much attention but take a long time. Made a ton of red beans & rice yesterday and handed out (at 2 m distance) to a bunch of people. Today I have pasta sauce going for about 7 hours while I work...
34 meant helpfully. I don't have any kids running around, but if I did this only needs a stir every hour or so.
I expected to hear from a teacher that my son wasn't keeping up with his online homework sooner or later, but did not expect it to be the gym teacher. Apparently he hasn't maintaining his daily log describing 20 minutes of exercise.
(Seriously, I'm glad the gym teachers are doing what they can to encourage daily exercise. Lockdown is not a healthy lifestyle.)
My son is mad at me because I make him go for a walk every day.
32: Sudden loss of taste is now considered a symptom by many.
37: Best way to get a kid to walk is to drive him a suitable distance from home, and tell him to get out of the car.
I had my last radiation session on the 13th. Breast cancer treatment is over! Hooray!
Then I spent last week recovering from radiation burns, which were debilitating to an unexpected (by me) degree. Meanwhile a weird thing on my ear (that I thought was just a sore spot caused by my hearing aid) got worse and weird, so I started a new round of biopsies culminating (for the moment) in a deep, general-anesthesia one this morning, because several of my dozens-strong stable of doctors think (a) it looks like it might be skin cancer and (b) it is generally weird and the results don't match anything they've seen before.
So I had a cough and a sore throat all last week from radiation on esophagus-adjacent lymph nodes, and now I have a cough and a sore throat from being intubated all morning. It seems clear that I will not be leaving the house for anything other than emergency medical issues for the foreseeable future.
(I'm assuming it's not skin cancer. There has to be some limit to the amount of shitty health-related luck I can have.)
Take care of yourself. Great news about finishing the radiation.
The hospital experience in Pandemia was pretty weird. There are still barely any cases here so it is LOCKED DOWN but also completely empty. I was the only one in the recovery ward/area, and I saw a total of 3 other patients the whole time I was there. Everyone has lots of face masks here, apparently, because we all had to wear them most of the time I was there. Which made the amount of arguing I had to do, to get an interpreter, even more irritating. They aren't letting anyone but patients into the building at all (drop off and pick up only, no friends or family waiting in the waiting room) and everyone kept telling me that interpreters were no longer allowed on site. (They were wrong. I won, after escalating to a bunch of "violation of federal and state law" talk and then just flat out refusing to come in unless they got an interpreter.)
E, just for curiosity (and as a data point for my friend fighting this battle for her upcoming delivery) were you north or south of the river?
All my cancer treatment was south; the biopsy this morning was north. My overall experiences have been much better at Community but I haven't actually been in the hospital there since early January, so who knows what has changed of late. (And if you aren't trying to get an interpreter, your calculus is probably very different overall than mine anyway).
Kids are pestering each other, as we belatedly realized they need time apart from each other, too. Shiv is ill with some sort of diverticulitis-like GI bug. He has something like this fifteen years ago, but he's in a lot of pain (left side, so "not where the important stuff is") and feeling awful. No fever. Three weeks ago, Pebbles had a bad GI thing that had her so much pain that the preschool called me to get her because she was screaming and in a cold sweat, but it spontaneously resolved when she passed out while I was on the phone with the pediatrician and slept for two hours. Wondering if she weaponized the kid crud.
Otherwise OK.
Thanks. She's not looking for an interpreter, but to have someone -- her husband for example, and/or a doula -- to communicate with the medical professionals as needed.
45: Not uncommon for pancreatitis pain to manifest on left side.
Best wishes, Scudder and yoyo and yaya and dairy royalty and Messily and Calas.
I would hope that the rules would be different for maternity wards (as far as company) but I'm not positive. My experience over the past 3 years is that CMC is a lot more flexible/friendly about accessibility than PSP but also they are both very up front about what they think should happen. So I'd just call and ask what the current policies are, respectively. (Amongst local friends who have given birth here, pre-pandemic, CMC was much preferred, but I don't remember exactly why. At least in one case because their NICU is/was higher level? But I think they also have/had more family friendly policies and/or more new age birthing pool type options)
They both seem to be making up the rules as they go, anyway. I've been to 4 different doctors/procedures, 2 at each hospital, in the last 2 weeks, and the stated policies were different each time (and not always matching the actual on-the-ground setup).
My insurance is only good at the north of the river facility. And when I was looking at switching during the recent open enrollment, the other carrier only had the facility south of the river. This is probably a common condition.
They are drifting to no extra people at all, we don't care what you want. This, I think, is why you had to argue with them. Anyway, my friend has a couple of months (inshallah) for everything to sort out.
Common side effects for my dad's cancer treatment include a cough and changes in tasting food, plus he and my mom were sick with flu-like symptoms, plus extra stuff for my dad in terms of muscle pain, from late February into March. So it's been somewhat stressful trying to figure out what to especially worry about, from what causes.
They seem ok now, with my dad at a baseline level of cough and taste as his treatments continue. We'd like to think they had mild Covid-19 and survived but that seems extraordinarily unlikely.
We are going back home Sunday. I need to go shopping on the way back. My worry is the people who live in the other unit in our house. They're pretty spacey and I have no idea if they're self isolating. They're both smokers so go outside a lot- I don't know how to keep shared doorknobs clean. We'll probably have to supervise whenever kids want to go in the yard.
Physically fine, mentally less so. My primary social contact cut off our walks together, and though I know they are following best practices it's hard not to take it personally. Really fucking hard.
Messily, congrats on the end of radiation, and I really hope there's nothing else awful in your path for a little while.
Good luck fa. Commiserations Eggplant. We could do a rocketry bookclub or something. If rocketry's your thing? So many imaginary people to track.
I think you're thinking of togolosh, but thanks.
I am on my fifth day of no fever and sang very comfortably yesterday. I think I probably had this thing and it went very easily for me. I'm back home for a variety of logistical reasons. I told my friend I didn't mind if she did her naked yoga class while I tried to take a quiz and attend class online, but when I realized I had to get home for some forgotten school materials, and she'd be away this weekend for one of her jobs, and her other job was ending so she'd be home all day and we'd be together in her studio, it seemed like it was best to get to a quiet, naked-yoga-free place to do my work and let that be the end of my sojourn there. And I'm getting my therapy clients back, it turns out, so I absolutely need a private place in my home to have a conversation. I'm a little worried about how I'll do. I'm looking for a temporary no-rent roommate, but it's a weird situation in that the end date is unknown. Another friend offered that if I needed she could try to move her operation to my house for a few days to keep me company. I took a long bike ride today to get to my first friend's house to walk her dog on her last day of work; that was positive.
My mom and my aunt remain healthy.
10. 8:00 pm. Join rest of street (and country) in mass applause for NHS workers.
This I like.
[Thank you|commiserations|congratulations|good luck], as appropriate and/or desired
I recovered from the fever and flu-like symptoms I had last week. Kid's Mom lost her sense of taste this week. Did we have it? Don't know. Neither teen has symptoms, the one who was expelled from school last fall and had to go to reform school for a month - we KNOW he can do his work on line because that's all they did at the reform school. The older kid seems depressed half the time, smokes probably too much weed, would rather be in school than at doing it at home even though he does not like school. They're teens so they don't need much attention from us.
For me, honestly, I am doing great. I'm not teaching this semester anyway, half my work is outside and half on a computer. I am getting stuff done and gardening and enjoying the slow pace and solitude and family. Feels slightly caddish saying that, but it's true. I have several students still helping with fieldwork but I don't allow proximity until this blows over.
Great that E. Messily is done with chemo, and I hope the skin thing is nothing. Scary for Tom Scudder's step-in-law. Best wishes to all the rest of you.
We're still fine. M/tch can't work because he's non-essential and can't work from home, but we'll be ok even if his sick leave doesn't get extended. I've been cooking and baking, which I rarely do otherwise, and it's been really nice having my niece here now that our exposure scare is over. I imagine there will be more scares to come, but we're adopting good disinfecting routines with groceries, etc. I'm trying to make up for my having such an easy time of things (enough space, no homeschooling, bills paid) by ordering more takeout than I ever did in the before times and donating to various emergency funds.
My 85 y.o. dad is fine as well. He's been grocery shopping (he has a neighbor who's offered to help but he doesn't like to ask when it's a full shopping trip instead of a couple of items). He wears gloves and is cognizant that they're only as protective as the behavior that goes with them. I'm slightly worried but I also feel like it's his risk to run and there's no chance I can control his behavior anyway. (This is the man who almost died in Argentina a couple of years ago but was revived by ajay's kidney joke.)
I got drunk enough that I could actually find my way through the miasma of emotions and communicate my emotions and we had a good talk and now I'm feeling better. Thanks, alcohol! Is there any problem you can't solve?
[reads thread]
Oh, I'm sorry Messily. You are often in my thoughts and I wish you the best.
If you emote into the miasma the miasma emotes also into you.
I have started having zoom meetings with a stupendously incompetent customer/editor and feel that they would be hugely improved if someone else at either end were practising their naked yoga during the call. Cats jumping onto the laptop are so last week.
Many good wishes, Messily. You'll go into the candle bank at the cathedral when it reopens.
52. I AM NOT A HEALTH PROFESSIONAL, but the best advice I've seen for dealing with suspect door handles is to wear rubber gloves and then sanitise the fuck out of them.
++++++++
EM, congratulations of end of chemo.
Best wishes Tom S, Messily, and everyone else.
I am WFH, my wife's workplace is shut down. Haven't been anywhere other than the environs of our neighborhood; walking, doing yard work, keeping distance from other walkers, etc. for over two weeks. At this point I'm more worried about my kids, who live in large cities, than I am about myself. What is creeping up is the question "When will it be safe to edge into normal life again?" I agonize over that a lot. When has "herd immunity" reached a safe level?" etc. I see zero sign of the pandemic slowing down in the US yet; the graphs linked 45 in "Data and News Services" make that pretty clear.
On a relative scale, we have it easy. There are so many people just on these two threads who have much bigger issues to confront than I do; my best wishes to all of you.
62: Alcohol works great, until it doesn't.
If Johnson is incapacitated/killed how does succession work? What might the consequences be?
If Johnson is incapacitated/killed how does succession work? The Deputy PM (Dominic Raab, who makes Johnson look like a political genius with the highest principles) takes over until the Tories elect a new leader; then, if that leader is not him, he passes the baton.
If Prince Charles died and Prince William died and Prince Harry would be in a position to assume the throne based on the "locking small boys in a tower" precedent.
That's the beauty and the difficulty of an unwritten constitution.
76. They change the rules so often I find it hard to keep up, but I think at the moment the Tory leader is elected by the MPs reducing the candidates to two through successive ballots where the lowest vote drops out, and then the membership at large gets to choose between the last two.
77. That only works if you're Duke of Gloucester.
That's just another way to spell "Sussex."
Homeschooling is a nightmare with 10 yo with adhd and ODD; siblings also fighting constantly; transition to online teaching is moving (bumpily) along; I have more work and get less done--no binge watching or leisurely reading here, plus we're all getting fat because my husband is baking a loaf of bread a day. Everyone is healthy so far though, so it's annoying and grating but I try to count my blessings
I was going to break out the bread machine, but I could not find any yeast in the store.
Yes, we have made soda bread. Or my wife has, but that has too many raisins in it to use for a sandwich.
Then make some more and leave the raisins out.
Anyway, no one with two hands needs a bread machine. It's extremely therapeutic to spend ten minutes applying enhanced interrogation techniques to a mixture of flour, water, salt and yeast until it forms a proper dough. Two hours later you beat it down, put it in tins, and switch the oven on. Another five minutes' work. In due course you put it into the oven; in due course you take it out. That's all.
And the results (see earlier post) are delicious.
Sourdough takes like a week to get going but otherwise you don't need anything but flour and water:
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/sourdough-starter-recipe
Every time I go to Ireland I eat soda bread more or less every day because it's the default there. And I've never seen it with raisins in yet. Just leave them out.
I've heard that bread recipes need to be followed exactly.
think i may have turned a corner! when i could hear gurgling from my own chest on breathing yesterday and difficulty sitting up etc 😳 decided to try the antibiotic my doc had sent to me a couple of days ago & am slowly getting a bit better rather than worse! kid also doing better this morning. so hopefully had bad cold/v mild plague followed by nasty bacterial lung infection. hoping child can skip latter. better half still hale & hearty god how i adore him.
take care of yourselves & your lovelies everyone!!!!!
I've found that bread recipes are almost infinitely forgiving, provided the dough ends up roughly the right consistency.
92: great news, dq! Hope you continue to improve!
That's wonderful, DQ. Hoping the rest of the family escapes the lurgy more or less completely.
Glad to hear about the healing. So far, nobody here is sick.
93: I could probably find a different recipe that doesn't require raisins. I'm guessing the one in using had too much sugar for a turkey sandwich.
thank you everyone & martha de lacey on instagram is running a remote sourdough bread course, it is super simple to get a starter going from scratch and she'll guide you on the true path. happy to answer questions of anyone here.
Today I'm going to try, for the first time ever, that thing where you sear a steak on the stove and then finish cooking in the oven.
100: do it the other way. Start in the oven and seaR at the end.
Sorry for the long link.
You can also google Helen Ronnie, steak in the oven as good as sous vide. It's a super forgiving method. You do need an instant read thermometer to do it.
My iPad typing is worse than on the phone. The name is Helen Rennie. Stupid auto correct.
I'm going to try it the regular way first, but maybe I'll do that next. I don't have an instant read thermometer.
Homemade raspberry sorbet: yea or nay on cornstarch? It wouldn't have occured to me to use it, but a fair number of recipes call for it and/or gelatin (which I'm definitely not using).
I'd use chocolate sauce if we're talking about something to pour over it.
I totally passed a social distancing quiz on Buzzfeed.
I'm getting better in KY. I was exhausted last evening and had definitely done too much during the day, so today I also did too much but less of it. I would really like to be able to fully inflate my lungs, but I know I'm getting enough oxygen. My appetite is not fantastic, but that's also just me. My stomach rumbles a lot but eating seems like too much work and I forget. I just got lentil soup delivered, which is how I learned that Lebanese lentil soup is not my favorite. But I'll eat it, and there's tabbouleh too. Blah, super boring. I did assemble Mara's drum kit today and surely I'll rest better with that at the bottom of the stairs and my room at the top, right?
I didn't do any homework help this week and I don't care. My parents keep offering to take the girls and give me a break and I don't know how to balance that I obviously need something like that with knowing you're supposed to leave people in their late 60s alone. Lee is being forced into social distancing because none of her friends will let the girls come over and play with their kids. She was mad at me for not reminding her that daycares have been closed for well over a week and she can't pick Selah up there like she tried to anyway. She keeps giving me more time with the girls and then saying I should let her know if I need her to take them. I don't and won't.
It's been said before, but it bears repeating: beans are overrated.
Take care though. Hope you get back to breathing well soon. Not a good time for having symptoms.
Our neighbors are having a small drunken gathering in their backyard - like maybe 1-2 friends over, plus their family, but they are totally drunk and revelrous and singing loudly around a campfire, and they have switched from Tejano music to Metallica, and it just cracks me up whenever anyone takes Metallica seriously. NEVER CARED FOR WHAT THEY DOOOOOO.... It actually reminds me of Michigan a lot.
The difference is that Trump will send a ventilator to Texas.
IF I CLOSE MY EYES FOREVER...WILL IT ALL REMAIN THE SAAAAAME?
Back to Tejano. It's faintly possible that this is a Tejano version of Unchained Melody.
In non-virus news, we live in an age of miracles because I just managed to wash slime out of my shirt that had been hidden for at least months by the child who spilled slime on it and now I'm delighted. I also don't think my bad bronchitis is unlike bad bronchitis I've had before. I'll get tested for antibodies when anyone can, but none of this is new to me. Just, as Moby says, not great timing.
The Righteous Brothers stole songs from Selena too.
Bronchitis doesn't sound good in regular times either. But easier on the nerves.
Glad to hear your news, DQ.
And I second what Chris Y says about the endlessly forgiving nature of bread recipes. I suppose bread learned it from Jesus, the two being so often commingled and all.
Non-peer-reviewed as yet, but interesting: there's a strong correlation between BCG vaccination rates and vulnerability to covid-19 at a national level.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042937v1.full.pdf
Haven't yet caught up on the thread but I will. All still fine here, albeit it's strange celebrating my husband's birthday in total quarantine! And it's also annoying to have to work when he doesn't. I'd much rather be cooking all day and playing Animal Crossing. (On the other hand, it's good to have at least one vaguely secure income source.)
My mother has had what she thinks is a cold (and there's really no reason to think otherwise - she's in relatively rural California, no fever, retired so not in contact with lots and lots of people) for two weeks, which turned into bronchitis on Wednesday. She made an appointment with the doctor for antibiotics for that, and they decided to test her for Covid-19. We should know soon! I don't think there is any real reason to worry and in fact it might be a good thing if she does have it and is nearly done with it, but that's ramped up the anxiety a tiny bit recently.
119 is interesting. I had BCG shots over 50 years ago. Does that count?
Thorn, I'm glad you're on the mend, and I hope you enjoy a long stretch of good health (probably too much to ask in the wish department, but let's go big). DQ, I'm glad you're improving too. Parenthetical, hope your mom doesn't have it and improves rapidly.
119: Whoa. Huge if true, but I feel like they could dig into that data a little more, like stratifying countries by age, eg if Spain dropped the requirement in 1981, how does their under-39 infection/mortality compare with one age cohort older? Or how does it compare to neighboring countries who maintained the requirement?
121: Sorry, looks like they looking into that:
Interestingly, there was no significant correlation (r=0.21, p=0.27) between the year that vaccination started and the total number of COVID-19 cases, suggesting that early vaccination of the elderly population was not a factor in reducing the number of cases.
-ing, +ed. I can read and science pretty well, but my writing and typing sucks.
thank you everyone & martha de lacey on instagram is running a remote sourdough bread course, it is super simple to get a starter going from scratch and she'll guide you on the true path. happy to answer questions of anyone here.
I've been doing sourdough for several years now and am signed up to do her in person course in July, if it is possible then?!? But have also signed up for this because I could always get better!
It sounds like a lot of people who typically get colds followed by bronchitis are suffering right now, and that's the exact pattern that my mom had and used to have all the time, so I think it's no biggies. Now that I've caught up with the thread, sending well wishes to Tom Scudder's mother in law, e. messily (hope the ear thing is indeed no big deal), DQ and Thorn - please keep healing up! Apologies if i missed anyone, I'm supposed to be making pancakes and I've managed to bugger them up (HOW?!) so am a little scatter brained.
I just feel like saying that my unsynagogue has been an energetic, functional, caring community during this time and several people have reached out to me individually to check in more than once. Go religion.
I suppose bread learned it from Jesus, the two being so often commingled and all.
If any one saith, that, in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denieth that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood-the species only of the bread and wine remaining-which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation; let him be anathema!
We're alive but not exactly thriving. My stepdaughter ended up stuck with us for the last three weeks, while her dad went to Iowa to visit his sick* mom, and then the mom got sicker and the trip got extended, and then the schools closed here, and then the sick mom (my stepdaughters's grandma) died. It's been...a lot.
*not COVID sick
Sorry to hear about that. My sympathies.
Oh, I am sorry, Stanley and family.
Thanks, all. She's a pretty resilient kiddo, and she's been truly great through it all. But I feel awful for her.
Much sympathy to all involved, Stanley.
oh stanley, much warm sympathy for your stepdaughter and the whole family.
Hello all,
So, as previously mentioned, I broke my damn fibula via slipping on some ice when I was coming back from taking the trash out. My foot bent in a way that foots are not supposed to bend. That was back on 2/16, so since then, I've had 4 drs' appts, 1 surgery and 2 quick trips to work to grab stuff. Other than that, I haven't been out of the house for 6 weeks. Percocet and mota kept most of the blues away, but now I am out of both, so the ennui and what not is really starting to get to me.
Nobody at my house has gotten sick with anything resembling the virus, which is good since I'm at slightly higher risk of serious illness given my heart condition. I'm sure my lungs are a lot happier now though.
We stocked up pretty well at the beginning, not least because of my injury, and we've had 1 instacart run so far. [Obvs. we are not going to order anything more until the strike wins or abates.] Doesn't seem like there's much of a percentage in ordering delivery right now.
I had hella problems getting my WFH set-up going -- I was ready to start working again last Tues, but I didn't actually get to take a call until Thurs. afternoon. Clients have been a little grumpy/freaked out, but that is made up for by the fact that the salesforce has all decided to become super nice for the time being, with many compliments and thanks for being at work. Executives are falling all over themselves with praise for those of us in the trenches as well, tho we'll see if that actually turns into any kind of material benefit. I'm not holding my breath, as it were.
I have lost a significant amount of weight, primarily because of switching to diet pop. But thanks to the generosity of partner & household, I've been eating much, much better than I usually do as well. Unfortch, all the bed rest also means atrophied muscles. This is going to be a hell of a thing to work through when my physical therapy starts.
My sister is actually doing pretty good, liver-and-kidney-wise. My mother is stuck out east caring for her (with lots of assistance from my sis's parishoners and family and friends) which is a drag, but at least my mom is getting to spend lots of time with my niece, so that's some compensation. My niece seems to be taking it all in stride. She's a relentlessly positive 7 year old anyway, and she's been choosing to view a lot of the disruption (her grandmother being there, getting to stay at a friend's house where they have, not only a puppy, and a fluffy orange cat, but also access to a really nice indoor-gym play space) as some kind of bonus/vacation. Honestly, with any other kid I'd be worried about long term emotional health effects, but I'm pretty sure she can get through this without too much of a problem, providing we can get my sister a successful liver transplant at some point.
A lot of friends and acquaintances have really stepped up with community responses to the virus -- free food deliveries, tracking down PPE for hospitals, providing diversions online, checking in on people -- so that's a positive too. The bummer is that a lot of my friends with chronic illnesses and not much money have really needed that help, and are pretty freaked out by the whole situation (plus not getting the ongoing medical help they should be.) But on the whole, I think the community has acquitted itself well.
That's about the size of it from where I stand. Sorry to hear about those of you with sick relatives or selves, this is an awful time, but maybe we'll see some of El Mundo Bueno on the other side.
***To LB: Is Sally a banana slug now? I just found out that UCSC is my niece's sister's mother's alma mater.***
Glad to hear your sister is doing better. Hope the PT works and isn't too delayed.
Update: Step-M-I-L is still on ventilator, but with less pressure, and her fever is down. Father-in-law still asymptomatic.
On the yeast/bread front, this technique seems to be a bit faster than the sourdough method I posted earlier:
https://twitter.com/shoelaces3/status/1244252079041974272?s=20
Turns out last time I bought a Costco-size bag of yeast I got two because I forgot to remove it from the shopping list. I now have about 10 cups of yeast. I seriously will mail some to people if they want. The no-knead bread I've been making every day uses 1/4 teaspoon per 1.5 pound loaf.
Thanks for the offer, but I'd feel bad about making you leave the house. Also, the soda bread is working better now that I realize there are many recipes.
Also, I have plums so I'm going to use most of the flour for cakes with plums on the top.
139: Tom Scudder, hope things get better.
Or rather, continue to get better, if indeed they are getting better.
119:
Whew, at first I thought you meant having had BCG vaccinations positively correlates with mortality. Either way, I shouldn't put too much stock in a study that hasn't been peer-reviewed yet.
I follow John Prine on Twitter and his account just provided an updated that he has been intubated due to COVID-19. I know he has had some other health problem. Looking it up I see part of the lung removed due to cancer (I knew about the throat nodules but not that) so none of that is good.
150: Shit. I'd heard he was in the hospital, but I didn't know about his other health problems.
Doesn't seem like there's much of a percentage in ordering delivery right now.
True over here as well. Grocery delivery services are giving delivery estimates along the lines of "ooh, May? Probably?"
137: do your friends and you have access to video visits? They've even been doing some physical therapy that way at my place.
144: This is just to say that you missed a chance to say that it was just to say about the plums.
Antecedents
what are they
so many
and so confusing
137.last: The proudest of banana slugs, and heavily involved in all the strike activity they've been having out there. My politics are largely all talk and no action, but she's been actually doing work. I'm very proud of her.
re: 152
Yeah. Food shopping is increasingly difficult here, although the local halal grocers and the traditional greengrocer and butcher are OK for stock. I haven't been in an actual supermarket for weeks. Huge queues outside. No stock inside. Home delivery is impossible.
There was an article in The NY Times about creating a WPA of restaurant workers to feed people by delivering meals. I found it via Hillary Clinton's twitter feed.
This isn't useful advice outside the NYC area (I think? I don't think they're nationwide?), and it may not be for anyone who wasn't already a customer. But FreshDirect has been great. You need to watch for a delivery slot about a week in advance, but you can edit what's in your order until the day before it arrives.
re: 156
We are fine for food. But, less social distancing, rather than more. Because the only way to get food is to go to multiple small places, not one big place.
Doug! Does the Hessian suicide mean anything?
159: Same here. The small shops have most stuff, though pasta, flour, and yeast seem to be sold out everywhere. You can forget about food delivery. Sainsbury's is supposed to be offering priority delivery slots to elderly and vulnerable customers but my mother has yet to get through on the line to register, a week after the scheme opened.
The yeast shortages surprised me. But my social-media feeds are full of people (maybe exclusively men?) making bread for the first time.
We're never short. We just resist the Man where we can.
Thanks to my Brexit stockpiling plus random purchases, between us we have enough flour and yeast for about six months, and NW bakes very good Swedish breads and crispbreads. I quite want to try getting a sourdough starter going, as discussed upthread - I already make my own yogurt and fancy extending my fermentation repertoire - but don't want to upset the domestic balance. Maybe I should start brewing or making miso instead.
In my own small way, I participated in the bread making frenzy. I made cornbread from a box mix.
The kind that box your ears for you.
145: The Devil's Oregano
153: yes, I have not been as diligent in setting up that kind of interaction. However, a friend started a D&D campaign via zoom so I am excited to participate in that.
Ah, thank you, Natty. I once went to a Jamaican restaurant under the Westway where they sprinkled the soup with the devil's oregano and a very fine condiment it made.
re: 164
Our Brexit stockpiling was very modest indeed. Some pulses and rice, mostly. Not huge quantities of either, but enough for some weeks of eating, albeit without much in the way of interesting stuff to flavour it. I ran out of some spices this week. Luckily, those are easy to source.
No yeast, though, although we do have enough flour for a few loaves, or some pancakes and/or suet dumplings. I can make scones, too, I guess.
Ocado has worked well for us, although getting a slot is hard. My wife found a slot with AmazonFresh for later this week so we'll see how that goes. Otherwise, going to the local mini supermarket or corner store has been stressful; the latter is well stocked, but it's cramped even when they're only letting two customers in at a time. I'm thinking I really should familiarize myself with the greengrocers, and try to get some flour/yeast to take up baking.
re: 173
As far as I can tell, Ocado is completely useless/dead. Online queues of half a million people, etc and now all queues are closed. I certainly haven't even come close to being able to make a delivery in the past month. I've seen vans coming into our street, but I assume some people have some kind of magic Ocado-dust, or are registered on some "vulnerable" list.
The Selkie and I have been OK for food - but then we have the flexibility to go out at odd times and scout around a bit. The nearby Marks & Spencer food hall was almost completely deserted (and well stocked) when we last went shopping. Aldi is doing its best to keep in stock, but is also very popular, so empties fast. We've also got fairly decent stockpiles, which I haven't had to dig into yet; I think we could manage for at least 3 weeks starting from right now before running out completely, though the last week would involve quite a lot of rice and porridge flavoured with not much else.
I think this is about the one thing we all got wrong in our discussion about six weeks ago, which I now can't find - lots of people pointing out that they wouldn't stockpile because they lived in cities with multiple grocery delivery services, which was true, but not considering how those services would cope when their customer base went from 5% of the population cooking half their meals at home, to 90% cooking 90% of their meals at home.
It can't be anything closer to that here. There aren't enough delivery vehicles going down the street.
I find cooking a chore unless I'm doing it for someone else and as I'm alone and have gotten a bit sick of pasta I signed up for a vegan delivery service here and have been quite delighted. Yesterday was a stir fry with tofu 'chicken' and a delicious soup, today is vegan sushi rolls and some kind of vegan burger (which I'll have in an hour). I haven't been out in over a week but friends here report no shortages and no crowds if you go out first thing in the morning on a weekday which is my preferred time anyway.
Is ear wax a potential vector? I need to know if I should clean this pen.
I am a bit concerned about what happens to agriculture over the next few months. The seasonal migrant workers who normally do the planting and picking just aren't here. It's possible we'll see an army of unemployed musicians and barristas heading into the fields, but will there be enough of them willing to work for long enough to keep the supply lines going? Or are we going to have shortages of fruit and vegetables come late summer/autumn?
re: 179
I wouldn't trust our current government to organise anything that is going to help with that, and are the agribusinesses themselves going to be able to recruit and house people coming in from elsewhere in the UK?
The housing for agricultural workers is a real problem. There is a large barrack about three miles upriver from here, run by a company which supplies all the big supermarkets with fresh veg, and with a car park which is normally full of LIthuanian and Romanian registered cars. I haven't been past, but I'm sure it's empty now. And the living arrangements are very clearly communal, with communal dining halls and so on. I don't see how you could adapt those places for social distancing.
175: I said that about my neighborhood, and actually the two times I've tried to order from Instacart (which I won't now if they're striking) I got a slot within two hours. It was weird -- the choices were right now/in five days. I guess the last time was about a week ago. I didn't get everything I ordered by a long shot, but they came right away. HelloFresh is delivering to me (they offered me another discount). All the restaurants are still serving takeout and my MealPal membership is chugging along. Yesterday I wanted a Popeye's chicken sandwich and walked two blocks to get one and stood in a politely distanced line at a takeout window. It remains a triviality for me to get food. All my stockpiles are just taking up space, except that they're a reason to be lazy in my depression and not cook the fresh food that I have that's in the process of spoiling. I guess I just didn't want particular groceries that badly, since I wasn't in the habit of trying to cook for a family to begin with, so I didn't think that anything would happen to make my food acquiring life hard. I guess that might yet happen eventually, and if I'd been really ill and had absolutely no one I could call on and had no supplies that would have been a problem, but so far I notice only the slightest of changes in what food acquisition and preparation is like
Don't you just hate when your blood sugar crashes mid-sentence?
The following is an observation that is only relevant to a narrow tranche of the population!
ISTM that there's a psychological impulse to cook for some people right now that doesn't totally make sense. My roommate, sick with probable Covid and holed up with her partner, mentioned how much work her partner was doing with all the cooking and cleaning when they still had a full time job. They both work for the same large tech company, and her partner makes an exorbitant salary that is even higher than her large salary! Before this happened, she almost never cooked! I ate all her delivery food that she wouldn't finish; it was sort of a running joke between us that I was going to start a cooking site called My Roommate's Leftovers with all the fun ways to repurpose half-eaten delivery. Why is her partner bothering with cooking right now?
I mean, the psychological reasons totally make sense, but it isn't exactly an efficient allocation of time or energy, and probably if you can afford to support the restaurants right now maybe do that and leave the grocery supplies for people who need them? I dunno.
"5% of the population cooking half their meals at home, to 90% cooking 90% of their meals at home."
You can feed all of the people some of the time, or some of the people all of the time...
182: huh. Interesting. Definitely different from the story round here. I wonder if you've got so many more services (you're in NYC, right?) that they were able to expand to take up the additional demand? And/or they use more gig workers so they can expand faster?
I don't think we have much competition here; all the services I'm aware of are run by the major supermarket chains (except one, Ocado) and so I think use salaried employees, which means probably less flexible.
There is no problem whatsoever with getting takeaway delivered, meanwhile. If anything it's a lot faster than before.
On 184: this observation is definitely relevant to the narrow tranche of the population currently living in my flat, which has been cooking and baking like maniacs for the last week. Cooking is fun and if you have a demanding job you aren't able to do it much; if you're working from home you can put stuff on the hob to cook while you're working.
I mean, the psychological reasons totally make sense, but it isn't exactly an efficient allocation of time or energy
My problem at present is not a shortage of time. Or energy.
It's hit or miss here. Between the co-op and the grocery store we can mostly find stuff, though maybe not the variety or brand we're used to, and fruit selection is limited. Fortunately, we can combine shopping lists with my sister, my brother, and my (ex-)SIL so whoever's going to the store can pick up something one of us needs if it happens to be in stock that day. Yeast was scarce for a while but M/tch managed to get some, so now I can join the breadmaking legions.
The farmstand where M/tch works once a week has tripled sales even without all the restaurants that usually shop there. (It's a small family farm so they're not facing worker shortages or housing issues.)
I wish I knew what percentage of the shortages are genuinely about people cooking more and how much is hoarding. It's just so nuts. Where's George Bailey when you need him?
187: Well, right. The way she was framing it was that her partner was burdened by cooking and cleaning and so I should deal with feeding her snake (which I will), but come to think of it that is just as likely some anxious way she has of seeing the issue.
Anyway, I heard people talking about not being able to get slots, so maybe the situation changed in the nine days or so since I last placed an order. Mostly what I was trying to express is confusion about why we were buying frozen ground turkey, etc., which I still basically feel. There's a lot of food easily accessible around me and I'm not that picky and only moderately price sensitive. I'm also not in a particularly vulnerable category and even if I haven't acquired immunity to this thing want to be leaving the house and interacting with people and am going to volunteer delivering food to other people starting Thursday.
We've been cooking a lot, which is partly because we can, and also partly because the majority of the food we can buy is just basic veg and other fresh produce that needs cooking.
I definitely do not have more free time, though. With wife and child at home all of the time, I am struggling to do all of my work, and have zero (literally zero) personal/free time.
I wish I knew what percentage of the shortages are genuinely about people cooking more and how much is hoarding.
A lot and very little, apparently, at least over here. AIMHMHB, under normal conditions 50% of food consumed in Britain is bought in retail food shops and the rest goes to the trade - institutions, schools, restaurants, cafes, sandwich shops, etc. Now that has shifted a lot and the retail supply chain is struggling. About 3% of the shortage is people actually hoarding - the supermarkets know this because they have a very good idea of what people normally buy, at an individual level, so they know who is going full-on manic hoarder and who is just buying a bit more food because she's eating all her meals at home now.
190.1: the snake can't eat the leftovers?
My wife just came back from taking my son to the park and reported some creepy weirdo in a mask following people around and coughing on them, until eventually two other people exercising in the park got into a standup fight with him. Fucksake.
I hope they grabbed a 2 meter branch from a tree to smack him around.
the snake can't eat the leftovers?
She's not here so there are no leftovers! I guess I could try to mold the ground turkey into the shape of a dead mouse and fool him.
184. ???? My perspective: Cooking is self-defense. I have a bunch of 30-min prep meals that I genuinely prefer eating to carryin, a few longer ones that are pretty easy when in the house for 187.last reasons. Dining out, where there are only moments separating restaurant kitchen and my table or the service window, is nice. Carryin food is usually much too salty and short on vegetables, suffers from the post cooking interval and delivery battering.
Cleanup and putting away after prep is a headache, and my kitchen is small with idiosyncratic organization (ie others keep out, I don't want you rearranging my unlabelled jars)
My perspective: Cooking is self-defense.
Because if you don't cook there won't be any leftovers and you're sharing your flat with a hungry snake.
200 I hear they keep them handy on Knifecrime Island.
It might depend on where you live, but around my way there are, for example, Ethiopian and Indian restaurants that make food that's vegetable forward, survives transit just fine, and is tastier than *I'd* be able to make in thirty minutes. I almost never choose to order in because it is expensive (it's why I'm always eating my roommate's leftovers). I used to subtly lobby her to order Ethiopian so I would get food that was healthier than some of her defaults. I'm just observing that people whose preferences were manifestly never to cook before, and who could trivially afford to get food another way, have totally optionally started cooking now for comfort or entertainment, and there is as yet no indication that all of this should mean I have multiple bags of frozen spinach in my freezer along with the dead mice.
Ugh I should really do some work.
(Oh, and there's also the whole bowlification concept at a lot of restaurants, and that usually is pretty healthy. Whole grain, vegetables, some leanish protein. Wait I'm really going to do work.)
I'd like some more social distance from the guy fixing a water tank in my roof at 1:30 in the goddamn morning.
I mean, the psychological reasons totally make sense, but it isn't exactly an efficient allocation of time or energy, and probably if you can afford to support the restaurants right now maybe do that and leave the grocery supplies for people who need them? I dunno.
I mean, time is not really the bottleneck resource is used to be.
We've baked cornbread, banana bread (with and without add-ins), white/oatmeal, and whole wheat. That's more than we usually do in a year. We also got a grocery delivery, since the stuff we bought pre-apocalypse was starting to run out. You get some interesting substitutions: one potato instead of half a dozen, tiny honey jar, variety of peanut butter I'd never heard of (same brand as my usual): flax seed as a mix-in. Who knew?
I'll slide this in before the next update but my bronchitis got upgraded to (presumed) bacterial rather than viral, so now I get five days of the same antibiotic and steroid that cleared Selah up on day two or something ridiculous, which seems promising. If my breathing stays painful, they'll do a chest x-ray Friday. My biggest worry is that when I take steroids I become an emotional nightmare and also can't sleep, which has already been a problem because of the whole breathing thing. I've already warned my girlfriend but I suspect telling them kids in advance would mean hearing a lot of complaints about how awful I am, which won't help. I just get paranoid and prickly and weepy, but it's pretty intense.
And I'm one of the people who bought yeast and hasn't used it yet. We're doing a lot of frozen/easy-prep foods and some delivery until I'm back to feeling healthy enough for real cooking. Even with that, the kitchen is always a disaster thanks to "helpers" and I never catch up on dishes.
SP, you can mail me some yeast if you're so inclined. I was thinking about baking, like everyone else, and they were sold out of yeast.
That story of Ttam's is crazy.
I have a soda bread recipe I can provide; the only sometimes-hard-to-find ingredient, besides flour which I assume people still thinking about this have, is yogurt.
So, it's official: we now have a case in the county that's a genuine community spread, not an identifiable contact with out-of-state travel or some identifiable positive contact. I guess we'll be seeing a bunch of cases now.
I'm just observing that people whose preferences were manifestly never to cook before, and who could trivially afford to get food another way, have totally optionally started cooking now for comfort or entertainment,
Is it because they are at home more? They felt they could not cook regularly because they weren't at home enough hours between time getting home and time to eat. Now they are at home more?
I dunno, my roommate's partner lives like twenty minutes from their office, if that. And actually they are two of the people I checked in with when I wanted to verify my perceptions in a long ago thread that NYC programmers don't tend to work that hard. They said engineers worked about a 35 hour week. My roommate's narrative was that all the cooking and cleaning was an imposition. But that is probably just my roommate's narrative. She probably feels a little guilty being the patient in studio while her partner works all day. And her partner probably likes fussing over her.
Cooking at home also seems to be lower risk. Our home cooking is using up ingredients procured in the Before Times as much as possible. Non-perishables from Amazon or similar, we wear gloves to bring inside, and leave boxed for a few days before opening. Frozen meat and veggies have been trickier since they have to go into the freezer, but we unpack wearing gloves, and the inside packaging was untouched for at least a day (they are shipped overmight on dry icce inside styrofoam containers). Somebody--usually several somebodies-- touches and breathes on the boxes holding takeout a few minutes before they get to the customer.
A friend of my wife's "scored" a pound of yeast, so we met her in the deserted parking lot of a local school to pick up our allotment. No pagers were involved.
A vent: I was supposed to get to work from home today. First day since things got weird. An associate was checking some critical equipment. It was broken. I had to come in ASAP and fix it. I have to be in tomorrow and briefly Wednesday for regular/essential duties but can theoretically work from home the rest of the week and all the following week. I wonder how often this will repeat, that I really just need to be in even on nominally WFH days. I suspect frequently. I'm very lucky to have a job (and I job I like?), but this is going to be a very frustrating few weeks.
Re: 212
Yeah, I couldn't work out from the details if it was: the kind of strange arsehole who gets off on frightening people (sadly I've met a few, so I know they exist); attempted mugging/extortion; mental illness*; or what.
* hard/trying times for people with mental health issues. I've fielded a few calls already from a relative who has long standing issues, and I worry how he'll cope if the CPN stops turning up with his depot injection.
219: thanks!
220: Ugh, I'm sorry.
It's Passover in a week. Presumably there's a bunch of extra yeast for a week or so.
17: I was so confused by how every age range had more trans people infected than male or female. Tourist makes much better sense!
I started baking again after about 40 years when I quit the paper, and have settled into a routine of making that hazelnut loaf I posted here once a week -- which it lasts one person for -- when I am on my own; more when with Ume; and one of the crispbread / knäcke recipes every few days because that gets eaten fast.
It is a psychological help that my mother's care home would accept bread I made to use for her sandwiches, which she liked for emotional as well as gustatory reasons. Haven't tried that since they went on lockdown last Sunday. Since she can't really manage the phone I have been dropping in with the Echo dot device I got her and she's now got the knack of speaking into thin air. Odd to reflect that talking to the radio was once considered a mark of lunacy.
225: Total makes no sense because it's a tiny chart.
