slinkimalinki posted:

So no one told you life was gonna be this way *clap clap clap clap*

Siljmonster posted:

Lol I said this 5 days ago

https://twitter.com/BideoJamesing/status/1247353458828513280?s=19

BARONS CYBER SKULL posted:

Rah! posted:

https://twitter.com/mohammedzismail/status/1249169981293633539

Fellatio del Toro posted:

what the gently caress is this GMT poo poo this is america

Admiral Ray posted:

yeah i've had days like that too

Vox Nihili posted:

Being ventilated with a respiratory illness sounds like the most terrifying thing imaginable

https://slate.com/technology/2020/04/coronavirus-icu-delirium-ptsd-psychological-effects.html

We tend to make sense of sickness by ascribing levels to it, like medals in Olympic boxing: There’s featherweight “I’m under the weather,” a welterweight “ghastly ill.” And then there’s the super heavyweight, an opponent that actually scares you. Few people have to face off with this kind of illness. I have. Which may be why, as I scan through the daily news about the coronavirus, I tend to skip the stats on how many have died, the ventilators we don’t have, the politics, the quarantines, the jobs lost, even the bread-baking. Instead, I find myself drifting into the minds of those souls strapped to gurneys in the hallway, encased in a macramé of tubes and wires, fighting for each breath. These are the ones facing the super heavyweight. Some of them will die. But the ones I think about are the ones who will survive. Because I’ve been there. I know that getting off the ventilator won’t be the end of the story. And I know that not being sick doesn’t mean you’re well.

My illness started in a way that now sounds too familiar, though for me it happened early in the summer of 2013. A dry, coughing tightness in my lungs began to feel unnatural, followed by a 103-degree fever immune to ibuprofen or acetaminophen. By the third day, I woke up cloaked in an eerie dread that early man must have felt when he knew he had wandered too far from water.

By the time my wife, Tessa, drove me to the hospital, each breath felt like inhaling a propane blowtorch. Upon arrival, I was rushed to an intensive care unit bed. The next day, my chest X-ray was worse, and by day 4, I’d lost 75 percent of my lung capacity. I was attached to eight electrocardiogram wires and an IV dangling with 11 antibiotics and four antivirals. The finger oximeter showed my O2 levels plunge to 85 percent.

I should note that O2 levels are pass-fail—85 percent is not a B; it is a “You shouldn’t be alive,” because anything under 90 is a failing grade. They hooked me up to a rebreathing bag and put nasal cannulae up my nose that pumped in pure oxygen. The nurses said I was way too young to have pneumonia like this.

I was tested for SARS, MERS, Valley fever. My wife and 8-year-old daughter could only see me for a few minutes each day, and I began to stop making sense. In a haze, I remember one of the doctors tending my bedside and saying, “In medicine we are taught, ‘If you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.’ ” Meaning that 99 percent of illnesses are something ordinary, not exotic.

But they were running out of horses, and I began dreaming of zebras.

The head of the infectious disease department took my wife aside and said I was hours away from a possible intubation. That’s usually the last stop before the end, so he asked about contacting my parents and, further, making sure our affairs were in order.

That was life outside my body. Inside was a very different place. I’d begun a descent—or ascent, depending on your opinion of me—to the veil between life and death. Each day, I could feel more layers of self-definition drop away like old clothes. My feelings became more primitive, less complicated, more like a kid.

I sensed being reduced, losing years. In toddler English, I’d tell myself: “Breathe five minute, then take break, OK?” I was experiencing Corinthians in reverse: I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, and I put away adult things. I promised myself I’d get a break after five minutes of breathing, you know, like getting dessert if you finished your meal.

Except you can’t take a break from breathing. So I’d restart, and restart, and I was getting tired, like a drowning victim you yell at to keep awake.

Chris Cuomo is right: The beast comes at night. Tessa would be in my hospital room until visiting hours ended at 10 p.m. She’d massage my legs the way we’d done to our kid when she was an infant. I was unable to speak, but my wife was seeking neither permission nor confirmation. It was one of the few moments of humanity I got.

But she’d have to go back home to our girl because she, too, couldn’t take a break; she would always be a mother. So she’d tuck me into my little hospital bed, which in my mind had turned into a dinghy, a tiny canoe. She would pull the curtains closed and leave the room, launching my little dinghy into the cold, dark ocean. My destination was morning, eight awful hours beyond the horizon, and there was no guarantee I’d still be afloat.

There was a night when I could no longer shoulder the unbearable heaviness of being. You have no idea how many things you do every moment to keep up the appearance of being a human, until you let it go. Being a husband left me. Then being a father. Finally, my sense of self began dispersing like powder. You’d think it’d be replaced by a sort of Buddhist calm, but that would be too easy. Devolving comes at a price. I began to suspect my doctors were trying to make me sicker. Through the rebreathing bag, I saw nurses talking to each other, and I knew they could only be plotting how to make me suffer.

I had visions of nightmarish sea creatures swimming around my bed, as the ICU waters began to rise. I would bolt awake because I thought a giant squid had attached its suckers to my face and was sluicing the life out of me. I ripped it off, only to find it was my rebreathing bag and nasal cannulae. I wanted real air, but real air meant death.

I kept giving up. But I also kept breathing. And the curious thing about breathing is that if you keep doing it, you stay alive! Stay alive long enough, and the tubes start coming out. Two weeks later, I limped home with my arm around my wife and my daughter holding my belt loop. Doctors did antibody tests and came up with nothing. Fifty percent of all pneumonia cases have no known origin.

I had recovered. But in some ways, the real illness was an emotional one. While in the hospital, I had suffered from “ICU delirium,” a condition marked by paranoia and hallucinations. Even as my body recovered, my own philosophies took a hit. Some things came back in a single breath: loving daughter and wife, my family, close friends. But I had been blanched clean of so many of my previous notions—everything else was suddenly optional. Many acts were simply a force of will, a joyless transaction.

This can be an amazing revolution. It can wipe clean all the detritus from your past life and allow you to rewrite all the rules. But sadly, recovering from trauma usually means you’re far too exhausted to do anything except binge Netflix (which is good, because everyone else is several seasons ahead of you).

In the months after I left the ICU, a numb post-traumatic stress disorder set in, punctuated only by bouts of crying when I’d see hospitals on TV or someone swimming underwater. I quit writing jobs because I no longer felt I had a point of view. It took six weeks before I could walk up a staircase without getting winded, but six months to start pitching projects again. It was another year before the nightmares went away. Even now, as I drive past the hospital to take my daughter to school, I look for the third-floor corner window, as though some tiny part of me is still there.

And now, during this pandemic, I can’t stop thinking of the desperate clutch of Americans clawing their way back to the shore like I had to. Many are in the throes of ICU delirium. When they get better, they need to know that their delusions are a thing known to science—they weren’t crazy after all. I recently spoke with one of my attending physicians (who asked to remain nameless given her proximity to coronavirus treatment and messaging) about what I went through and what some of the people she’s treated might expect to go through too. As clinical professor of infectious diseases at a huge university, she has seen the delusions up close.

“The patients are on so many meds. And there’s oxygen loss. They don’t know where they are, and they talk to people who aren’t there,” she said.

In order to help the person hooked up to the machine figure out what is happening, my doctor explained, “we use ‘alert and oriented times three,’ which is: Who are you? Where are you? And when are you?” The when question is usually “Who is the president of the United States?” For me, it had been Barack Obama, which acted as an analgesic. But now? “We still ask,” she laughed. “You get a very quick view of someone’s politics.” Assuming they know when they are, anyway.

When I went through my ordeal, I knew almost nobody who had been in the throes of where I was. In a few months, there might be a million. They will need to find each other, Alcoholics Anonymous–style. They may have to reintroduce themselves to a life they had to give up to survive. Visions of near-death, some awful, some gorgeous, all different, will seep into the public consciousness. They need to know their PTSD is well earned, and that it’s OK to lie fallow for a while. After that, they will need help jump-starting their passions.

The good news? I can only speak for myself, but death no longer has near the power it once had over me. Because it was demystified. Because I had a little more rope than I thought. Because I loving survived.

BARONS CYBER SKULL posted:

America has the worst cases and most deaths, and also don't use metric.

Makes u think

SKULL.GIF posted:

5123 deaths so far today with 2.5 hours to go in the day (GMT), we had 6095 yesterday

coke posted:

this is just the story from one person, imagine hundreds of thousands of people having gone through similar hardship and their lives will never be the same


but lol yeah instead of shutting down everything for a month lets just drag this poo poo out and hand trillions of dollars to the rich while let people get infected and die

SKULL.GIF posted:

Bowing my head in silent recognition of the hundreds of trillions of new COVID-19 viral particles born today on most blessed day of the year ready to go forth and multiply

BARONS CYBER SKULL posted:

facetoucher cat posted:

facetoucher cat posted:

Because of this moving nonsense I've been going through my crap and thankfully I never buy anything so I don't have a lot but I'm not sure how I actually have hair because mine is everywhere. I found a carcharodon megalodon tooth I found on a beach in Venice FLA in '82 after a freak hurricane. I never knew what it was called so I looked into it, only the best name ever, Subtropical Storm One. I remember being in a beach house with my family on vacation and my mother dragging me across a chest deep looded parking lot to another location because the roof was ripped off then a dead shark in the pool the next day. Good stuff.

I hope there's no tornadoes tonight here because tornadoes and coronavirus doesn't seem like a lot of fun, lmao



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Florida_subtropical_storm

C-Euro posted:

Do Americans clap when planes land now? I was on a US domestic flight a couple of years ago sitting next to a Brit, and they asked if we did that. I had never heard of that tradition before then.

seattle plague rat posted:

that looks like a nug & you should try smoking it

Chris James 2 posted:

C-Euro posted:

Do Americans clap when planes land now? I was on a US domestic flight a couple of years ago sitting next to a Brit, and they asked if we did that. I had never heard of that tradition before then.

Homeless Friend posted:

moist turtleneck posted:

Don't worry guys, anti-vaxxers will game the system and make sure covid never goes away

poty posted:

https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1249413905153171457

(reminder that investment banks dont have access to more info than anyone else. they are just paid to make guesses based on the available info)

poty posted:

https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1249413905153171457

(reminder that investment banks dont have access to more info than anyone else. they are just paid to make guesses based on the available info)

BARONS CYBER SKULL posted:

America has the worst cases and most deaths, and also don't use metric.

Makes u think

quote:

Earlier in the week he thought that supply chain had stopped because of the lockdown rules.

"You could give it away but that would be against the lockdown rules."

But on Wednesday, Kerr was excited to report he was able to offer some of his harvest-ready lettuce to Kaivolution.

Its manager, Jo Wrigley, said the lettuce and a range dairy products will go to the Western Community Centre in Hamilton, to be included in community food parcels that will be distributed from there.

"Many organisations such as churches, clubs and community groups that previously provided food in communities have been unable to continue in level 4," Wrigley said.

"We are working with Hamilton City Council, Community Waikato and Wise Group to co-ordinate a food network as an emergency response to Covid-19."

Kaivolution was supporting efforts to redistribute food from Cambridge, Huntly and Hamilton.

poty posted:

https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1249413905153171457

(reminder that investment banks dont have access to more info than anyone else. they are just paid to make guesses based on the available info)

Vox Nihili posted:

Being ventilated with a respiratory illness sounds like the most terrifying thing imaginable

https://slate.com/technology/2020/04/coronavirus-icu-delirium-ptsd-psychological-effects.html

We tend to make sense of sickness by ascribing levels to it, like medals in Olympic boxing: There’s featherweight “I’m under the weather,” a welterweight “ghastly ill.” And then there’s the super heavyweight, an opponent that actually scares you. Few people have to face off with this kind of illness. I have. Which may be why, as I scan through the daily news about the coronavirus, I tend to skip the stats on how many have died, the ventilators we don’t have, the politics, the quarantines, the jobs lost, even the bread-baking. Instead, I find myself drifting into the minds of those souls strapped to gurneys in the hallway, encased in a macramé of tubes and wires, fighting for each breath. These are the ones facing the super heavyweight. Some of them will die. But the ones I think about are the ones who will survive. Because I’ve been there. I know that getting off the ventilator won’t be the end of the story. And I know that not being sick doesn’t mean you’re well.

My illness started in a way that now sounds too familiar, though for me it happened early in the summer of 2013. A dry, coughing tightness in my lungs began to feel unnatural, followed by a 103-degree fever immune to ibuprofen or acetaminophen. By the third day, I woke up cloaked in an eerie dread that early man must have felt when he knew he had wandered too far from water.

By the time my wife, Tessa, drove me to the hospital, each breath felt like inhaling a propane blowtorch. Upon arrival, I was rushed to an intensive care unit bed. The next day, my chest X-ray was worse, and by day 4, I’d lost 75 percent of my lung capacity. I was attached to eight electrocardiogram wires and an IV dangling with 11 antibiotics and four antivirals. The finger oximeter showed my O2 levels plunge to 85 percent.

I should note that O2 levels are pass-fail—85 percent is not a B; it is a “You shouldn’t be alive,” because anything under 90 is a failing grade. They hooked me up to a rebreathing bag and put nasal cannulae up my nose that pumped in pure oxygen. The nurses said I was way too young to have pneumonia like this.

I was tested for SARS, MERS, Valley fever. My wife and 8-year-old daughter could only see me for a few minutes each day, and I began to stop making sense. In a haze, I remember one of the doctors tending my bedside and saying, “In medicine we are taught, ‘If you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.’ ” Meaning that 99 percent of illnesses are something ordinary, not exotic.

But they were running out of horses, and I began dreaming of zebras.

The head of the infectious disease department took my wife aside and said I was hours away from a possible intubation. That’s usually the last stop before the end, so he asked about contacting my parents and, further, making sure our affairs were in order.

That was life outside my body. Inside was a very different place. I’d begun a descent—or ascent, depending on your opinion of me—to the veil between life and death. Each day, I could feel more layers of self-definition drop away like old clothes. My feelings became more primitive, less complicated, more like a kid.

I sensed being reduced, losing years. In toddler English, I’d tell myself: “Breathe five minute, then take break, OK?” I was experiencing Corinthians in reverse: I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, and I put away adult things. I promised myself I’d get a break after five minutes of breathing, you know, like getting dessert if you finished your meal.

Except you can’t take a break from breathing. So I’d restart, and restart, and I was getting tired, like a drowning victim you yell at to keep awake.

Chris Cuomo is right: The beast comes at night. Tessa would be in my hospital room until visiting hours ended at 10 p.m. She’d massage my legs the way we’d done to our kid when she was an infant. I was unable to speak, but my wife was seeking neither permission nor confirmation. It was one of the few moments of humanity I got.

But she’d have to go back home to our girl because she, too, couldn’t take a break; she would always be a mother. So she’d tuck me into my little hospital bed, which in my mind had turned into a dinghy, a tiny canoe. She would pull the curtains closed and leave the room, launching my little dinghy into the cold, dark ocean. My destination was morning, eight awful hours beyond the horizon, and there was no guarantee I’d still be afloat.

There was a night when I could no longer shoulder the unbearable heaviness of being. You have no idea how many things you do every moment to keep up the appearance of being a human, until you let it go. Being a husband left me. Then being a father. Finally, my sense of self began dispersing like powder. You’d think it’d be replaced by a sort of Buddhist calm, but that would be too easy. Devolving comes at a price. I began to suspect my doctors were trying to make me sicker. Through the rebreathing bag, I saw nurses talking to each other, and I knew they could only be plotting how to make me suffer.

I had visions of nightmarish sea creatures swimming around my bed, as the ICU waters began to rise. I would bolt awake because I thought a giant squid had attached its suckers to my face and was sluicing the life out of me. I ripped it off, only to find it was my rebreathing bag and nasal cannulae. I wanted real air, but real air meant death.

I kept giving up. But I also kept breathing. And the curious thing about breathing is that if you keep doing it, you stay alive! Stay alive long enough, and the tubes start coming out. Two weeks later, I limped home with my arm around my wife and my daughter holding my belt loop. Doctors did antibody tests and came up with nothing. Fifty percent of all pneumonia cases have no known origin.

I had recovered. But in some ways, the real illness was an emotional one. While in the hospital, I had suffered from “ICU delirium,” a condition marked by paranoia and hallucinations. Even as my body recovered, my own philosophies took a hit. Some things came back in a single breath: loving daughter and wife, my family, close friends. But I had been blanched clean of so many of my previous notions—everything else was suddenly optional. Many acts were simply a force of will, a joyless transaction.

This can be an amazing revolution. It can wipe clean all the detritus from your past life and allow you to rewrite all the rules. But sadly, recovering from trauma usually means you’re far too exhausted to do anything except binge Netflix (which is good, because everyone else is several seasons ahead of you).

In the months after I left the ICU, a numb post-traumatic stress disorder set in, punctuated only by bouts of crying when I’d see hospitals on TV or someone swimming underwater. I quit writing jobs because I no longer felt I had a point of view. It took six weeks before I could walk up a staircase without getting winded, but six months to start pitching projects again. It was another year before the nightmares went away. Even now, as I drive past the hospital to take my daughter to school, I look for the third-floor corner window, as though some tiny part of me is still there.

And now, during this pandemic, I can’t stop thinking of the desperate clutch of Americans clawing their way back to the shore like I had to. Many are in the throes of ICU delirium. When they get better, they need to know that their delusions are a thing known to science—they weren’t crazy after all. I recently spoke with one of my attending physicians (who asked to remain nameless given her proximity to coronavirus treatment and messaging) about what I went through and what some of the people she’s treated might expect to go through too. As clinical professor of infectious diseases at a huge university, she has seen the delusions up close.

“The patients are on so many meds. And there’s oxygen loss. They don’t know where they are, and they talk to people who aren’t there,” she said.

In order to help the person hooked up to the machine figure out what is happening, my doctor explained, “we use ‘alert and oriented times three,’ which is: Who are you? Where are you? And when are you?” The when question is usually “Who is the president of the United States?” For me, it had been Barack Obama, which acted as an analgesic. But now? “We still ask,” she laughed. “You get a very quick view of someone’s politics.” Assuming they know when they are, anyway.

When I went through my ordeal, I knew almost nobody who had been in the throes of where I was. In a few months, there might be a million. They will need to find each other, Alcoholics Anonymous–style. They may have to reintroduce themselves to a life they had to give up to survive. Visions of near-death, some awful, some gorgeous, all different, will seep into the public consciousness. They need to know their PTSD is well earned, and that it’s OK to lie fallow for a while. After that, they will need help jump-starting their passions.

The good news? I can only speak for myself, but death no longer has near the power it once had over me. Because it was demystified. Because I had a little more rope than I thought. Because I loving survived.

moist turtleneck posted:

Don't worry guys, anti-vaxxers will game the system and make sure covid never goes away

coke posted:

lol nz seems to be the only non-insane country for some reason


https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/fa...ovid19-lockdown


seems infinitely better than dumping milk and breaking those eggs

poty posted:

https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1249413905153171457

(reminder that investment banks dont have access to more info than anyone else. they are just paid to make guesses based on the available info)