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Goons come from all over and so I thought it'd be interesting to hear about how Corona has been and is being dealt with locally by anyone feeling like sharing. I don't expect anyone to write about all of the following or feel limited to it, but thought I'd write some more specific questions that it would imo be interesting to hear of, in case people feel like sharing; Ways in which the pandemic may have affected you personally in daily life, socially and work-wise. As many examples you feel like giving of small stuff implemented as anti-measures in your specific place of work, and your local public transit, if you've made use of it, and locally implemented anti-measures in grocery stores and other public settings. Like, is free hand-sanitizer and masks a thing in some of your local venues, or not at all? Are/were people good at observing social distancing, and did/do people of all ages or only few in your local area wear masks? Any examples of local charity work doing stuff like volunteer grocery-shopping for persons in high-risk or similar?
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Jun 18, 2020 07:20
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| # ? May 5, 2024 03:58 |
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Danish goon here. Our government moved quickly to enact a ton of restrictions, recommendations, compensation packages etc. Since the middle of april, when our amount of new cases started to fall, our politicians have worked towards gradually loosening the restrictions. For convenience, I'm going over things when they were at their most restricted, as well as adding an end date in parenthesis. I'm leaning heavily on the publications of the Danish Health Authority (DHA), Sundhedsstyrelsen. They have conveniently assembled information about the reopening of our country, and by inference the restrictions until then. This has enabled me to write this long post. I hope it doesn't scare anyone off. I just felt like getting it all out "on paper", as it were. For most of the crisis thus far, the DHA has not recommended the use of masks by healthy people. Accordingly, most people here in Denmark haven't used them. Update 9th July: the DHA has now specified that masks are a good idea while on the way to be tested. For all other situations where someone may have symptoms or suspect they have symptoms, they discourage venturing out at all, mask or no mask. With the exception of footage from hospitals, I've seen precisely one mask since the outbreak became a pandemic. The DHA's reasoning is that a) it is unclear whether masks help reduce the spread of the virus b) Incorrect use of masks may lead to spread of virus from the mouth to the hands c) Wearing a mask may lead to a false sense of security, which can mislead people into slackening their use of other precautions The exception being people who are in an at-risk group, and who cannot avoid exposure, such as if they need to use public transport. Update 15. August: the use of face masks on public transport will be mandatory starting Saturday the 22. of August. The week-long notice is to make sure everyone has time to acquire face masks. This includes not only on public transport proper, but also at the stations, bus, train or metro. Prohibitions and restrictions 1) Prohibiting all businesses where there was close contact between customer and employees* (until 20. April), including 1a) Shuttering all malls (until 11. May) 1b) Closing down all nightclubs, discos, bars, hookah places etc. (Until 18. May, except Nightclubs and Discos which will remain closed until the middle of August) 1c) Suspending all indoor public cultural activities, including libraries, all religious activities (until 18. May) 1d) Closing down indoor sports and leisure activities, including theaters, both live action and movie ones (Until 7. June 3) Shutting down almost all education requiring students to stay at home** (first 6 years of primary school [0.-5. grade] reopened from 15. April, remaining part [6.-10. grade] from 18. May. I could expand on this in a separate post) 4) Shutting down all forms of daycare (began opening up again from 15. April) 5) Sending home all public employees not deemed essential to the country. Essential including among others health workers, the police, and parts of the justice sector. 6) Banning all gatherings of 10 people or more (until 8. June From then on gatherings of up to 50 people has been allowed, with plans to relax this further from the 31. of August) 7) Closing the borders (still in place, with exceptions for our neighbors Norway and Germany, but notably not Sweden) 8) Mandatory quarantine for people who had been to regions most affected by the virus, Italy for example. 9) Public transport was downscaled to accomodate 2 m distance between passengers, i.e. people sitting several seats apart. 10) Still-open (or re-opened) businesses and other organization required to take measures to limit the spread, including placing markes to indicate sufficient distance between customers etc. * I can provide a list in a separate post if there's interest in the specifics. ** Later allowing for education from home - via Teams, Zoom or what-have-you Recommendations - from the government and/or the Danish Health Authority (DHA) The DHA has a number of general recommendations, most of which are good hygiene practice in general. 1) The government has urged all businesses to send all non-essential (see point 3) personnel home. To work from home where possible, and on paid leave if not. See also compensation packages, point 1. 1a) All meetings ought to be held at a distance, except where absolutely necessary 2) Keep a distance of at least 2 meters to other people (from 10. May the minimum was lowered to 1 meter) 3) Wash your hands frequently, taking at least 15 seconds each time. 3a) You can substitute hand rubbing alcohol, if you're in a location which lacks running water, such as a shop or on the road. 4) If you need to sneeze, sneeze into your elbow, not your hand 5) Keep your distance, and make sure to ask others to keep their distance to you Compensation packages We've had a whole bunch of these, so I'm only going to list some of them. The pandemic has led politicians from across our political spectrum to discover their inner Keynesian. 1) Compensation for employee wages, if the business commits to avoid firing people. This one is a three-way agreement between the government, the unions and the employers organizations. 2) Compensation for fixed expenses 3) Increased public purchases, to support the private sector 4) Increased availability of student loans etc. 5) Increased availability of unemployment and illness insurance (dagpenge and sygedagpenge, respectively) 6) Suspension of the limitations for public investments in municipalities, and in the regions* 7) Deadlines for municipalities payment for goods and services have been moved forward 8) Sector-specific packages. Examples include our local movie industry and the public transport sector *(read: hospitals etc.) My daily life As soon as the government recommended working from home, my employer began planning to send people home. I've been working from home since around mid-March. That saves me around 3 hours of transport total each day. My boss immediately arranged for our unit to have daily meetings via Teams to keep in touch and talk about our work plans for the day. We've also had optional after-work meetings, first every day and then decreasing to Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Most of my socializing is normally done online, but the little socializing I did do in person has been put on hold. Since my normal amount of socializing was so low, the meetings with my coworkers actually increased my total amount of socializing. I've also been calling my folks fairly frequently. Before the virus, I used to buy groceries about 3 times a week. My local store is within easy walking distance, so it was easy for me to get a bit of stuff on the way home from work. Now I buy groceries once a week. Anti-spread measures at work I work for a large organization, which already has plans in place for organizing a crisis unit if necessary. During the pandemic, this crisis unit has met daily until around the end of May, and has made all of the high-level decisions in my organization. This included sending out a daily newsletter via email. From around the end of May the crisis unit has been meeting less frequently, and the newsletter has gone from daily to after every meeting. At the time of writing, the crisis unit generally meets once a week. If there’s information that can’t wait until next week, they send out a special issue of the newsletter. As mentioned, as many people as possible were sent home almost immediately. The organization already provided us all with work laptops and has a VPN to enable people to work from home. With the pandemic, we’ve had to upscale the server to allow for suddenly having 1,000+ people working from home. Our IT department got that done in less than a week. That said, our core business is not office work, nor was it one of the businesses to be closed down by the government. We’ve had a number of initiatives specific to their part of the business, but I don’t feel comfortable going over them in detail. The one thing I can say is that our frontline personnel have had hand rubbing alcohol made available as soon as possible. With the country slowly opening up again, it has become possible for us to gradually return to our offices. Our CEO and the rest of the management has set a maximum of 50% of people in the office on any given day. They have also made it up to the individual boss to determine if and how people should return. My boss is of the opinion that we should only work from the office if it benefits us compared to working from home. I and most of my colleagues in the unit haven’t had much to gain, so we’ve mostly kept working from home. There are exceptions. For example, this Tuesday my private internet provider had warned that access might be cut off from 07:30 to 17:30. For that reason I worked from the office for the first time in months. At our main offices, we’ve gotten a “keep right” rule when navigating the corridors, complete with markers on the floor. We’ve been instructed to stay as our workplace as much as possible, and to continue meeting via Teams instead of physically. Our tables are rubbed down with alcohol every day we’ve worked at the office. The way this works is the cleaning personnel leave a bit of paper on the table when they’ve cleaned it, which we then bin when we arrive to use our workstation. [Edit: this has since been changed to a piece of paper which we turn face-down rather than bin, to save on paper. In the few days in March before we were sent home, our cantina changed from a buffet to pre-packaged sandwiches, to reduce the risk of spreading the virus. These days the cantina has reintroduced hot meals, but they are individual servings rather than a buffet. Every other chair goes unused, so we don’t sit right next to or in front of one another. We eat in teams, which our bosses divide us into so the entire unit doesn’t visit the cantina at once. Each team has 30 minutes to eat in, then the cantina personnel have 15 minutes to clean the cantina for the next wave of hungry employees. The teams can go eat from anywhere between 11:00 to around 13:00. If you’re on a late team but get hungry early, you’re allowed to bring your meal to your workstation. Provided you make sure to return the plate etc. before the cantina closes at 14:00. Social Distancing My experience has been that people have generally been good at social distancing while the pandemic was at its worst here in Denmark. As the restrictions have been loosened, people have also slackened their efforts to reduce spread, IME. I’ve generally been comfortable with the level of social distancing and standards of hygiene going on. The exception is when I buy groceries. My local store has a supply of one-use plastic gloves. Using them is not required, and most people don’t use them at all. I find that somewhat worrying, but there’s not much I can do except use them myself. Caustic Soda fucked around with this message at 10:58 on Aug 15, 2020 |
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Jun 18, 2020 14:34
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I don't have any questions off-hand, but I thought your post was really interesting! Thanks for taking the time to write such an in-depth reply 
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Jun 19, 2020 10:00
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Thank you. We've had so many different ways that our gov't has taken action that I kind of wanted to lay a lot of it out. I hadn't planned on it being a multi-page essay, but I count it time well spent.
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Jun 19, 2020 10:28
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Caustic Soda posted:Danish goon here. Same, so I'll skip a few steps  Work stuff: I work in the office of a small construction company which carried on business as usual throughout. We're only two at the office most of the days, so the chance of infection have been minimal. The only change I felt was the crazy amount of salespeople that called early on, trying to peddle hand sanitizer. Social distancing: I live in an area with next to no infections, but people have been pretty diligent in keeping distance and sanitizing their hands in stores. Ironically, the people with the worst disciple have been the elderly. Personally I'm the most introverted gooniest of goons, so the cancelled social gatherings have been absolutely amazing. The two tabletop groups I'm in moved to online solutions which was a bit of a bummer though. We began meeting in person in one of the groups around the start of this month.
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Jun 19, 2020 13:12
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Home is pretty good general lockdown limited cases and now we slowly reopening. I work abroad on a ship though and it's been tough. Still flying around to join the vessel but no longer allow us to come ashore at any ports. Visitors are forbidden as well and only emergency repairs going down. Alot of the crew are stuck depending on their home countries rules so it makes for some glum fellows especially if their regions are being hit hard. With a bunch of countries saying gently caress it (like America) I can't see international shipping getting back to normal any time soon.
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Jun 20, 2020 20:00
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Suddenly full of Danish Goons in here I feel like you hear that about older people a lot. Like, above 60 is considered a high-risk group most places, I think, but that there's still a sort of general impression of the elderly seeming to stand out a bit as a demographic that isn't very careful! I have the same impression but I wonder if part of the impression might be because they stand out by visibly belonging to a high-risk group, so we notice more than when a random 20 year old skips the hand-sanitizer.flashman posted:Home is pretty good general lockdown limited cases and now we slowly reopening. That sounds like a uniquely frustrating situation & drat yeah, that's a real long time not being able to go home by now.
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Jun 21, 2020 11:56
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South Carolina: We only stay home for mandatory evacuations
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Jun 21, 2020 15:59
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North Carolina, USA: The bars, coffee shops, and restaurants are back in action. The mayor enacted a law a few days ago declaring everyone shall wear masks when in public, but it's not enforced. Workplaces and apartment buildings have varying policies. My building opened the pool and outdoor common area, with some restrictions. Gym's open, with every other machine blocked off. Trader Joes limits the number of people in store, doesn't let you use reusable bags, and has acrylic between cashiers and customers. All employees of these establishments wear masks. Dominoes fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Jun 24, 2020 |
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Jun 24, 2020 03:32
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In SC all employees of these establishments wear masks pulled below their chins. For the love of god, build the wall, save yourselves.
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Jun 24, 2020 03:46
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NE FL goon here, from the blood-reddest part of the state, voted for Romney like 70+%. Schools never came back after spring break (March 12), but as far as the general populace taking it seriously there was like a 2-3 week period after the NBA's announcement when maybe 75% of people were kind-of half-assing doing something and a lot of stores were closed. That ended about the middle of April and the Grim Reaper now rides the night sky over the swamps laughing. We're having like 3k+ new cases a day, every day, the entire state government is engaged in a genuinely massive cover-up (I literally know a person who died of COVID-19 back at the beginning of April but their death certificate says "organ failure") to try and hide just how unbelievably hosed we are, and my school district just announced that practices for summer sports are a go as long as only groups of ten children at a time touch common equipment like footballs and only groups of twenty children at a time run together in a pack. We'll also be going back into the classroom in August but no mask requirements because parents have the right to decide if their children wear a mask. Florida is hosed. hosed. hosed. hosed. Stay far away.
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Jun 24, 2020 04:40
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JonathonSpectre posted:NE FL goon here, from the blood-reddest part of the state, voted for Romney like 70+%. Sup kinda neighbor I'm in Southeast Georgia -- land of mudbillies, pine plantations, and Trump-flags. The county I live in has like 50ish reported cases and no deaths, which means that no one wears masks and the parking lot at the bbq buffet down the road is literally packed. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop (and it might have just.. I think case numbers doubled in the last couple days). I just don't think it's "real" here for most people yet, despite all evidence from elsewhere. Last I heard, local schools in neighboring counties were trying to figure out how many families in the district had access to internet capable of sustaining online learning options, but thats all I've heard about long-term planning. I don't know if Kemp has done anything useful in the last few weeks and no one I've chatted with thinks anything useful is forthcoming. Short Version: If you're going to avoid Florida, you should probably also avoid Georgia... More personally, I work in the woods and so initially thought that my day-to-day wouldn't be deeply changed by social distancing, but I was generally pleased that (despite the trends in the area) the org I work for gave all the permanent staff basically total "work from home" freedom for everything where that made sense. Seasonal staff was still on site, but they live on site (again, deep woods) so most of them actually considered that a perk. Its only been in the last few weeks that I've been venturing back towards a more standard work schedule and so far the alterations made for safety seem to be reasonably effective and easy enough to maintain. Mostly it boils down to "Stay away from other people as much as possible" and thats really not that big of an ask -- I moved my computer to an unused conference room, don't drive in the same truck as my boss, and have just generally been cleaning a whole lot more. Its... working?
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Jun 26, 2020 18:59
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Chicago, Illinois here. We recently entered entered phase four of the state reopening plan due to our declining Corona cases, but with heavy caveats that we will shut down again if the numbers trend back upwards. Pretty much everything is allowed to be open so long as it operates at either 25% or 50% capacity (depending on the type of business). Social distancing should be observed at all times and masks are still required for customer and employees of indoor shops. Parks and trails are open to the public. This is all great news, but I think it has lead to a perception that it's "over" in a lot of communities here; especially in my neighborhood. Now that the weather has gotten nicer, everyone is eager to get outside and do things they normally did. Totally understandable, but almost no one is following the social distancing guidelines or wearing masks in my neighborhood because of it. Restaurants are trying to pack in as many customers as they think they can get away with and there also seems to be this dumb oversight in the restaurant spacing table rules. Tables need to be six feet apart, but apparently no thought was given to how far the chairs/patrons should be from people at other tables, so this leads to people sitting at separate tables within inches of each other. If there is a rule against this, it's at least not being enforced in my neighborhood. It all makes me so sad. In terms of daily life: My wife and I share a small studio apartment and both of us work from home exclusively. The companies we work for aren't expecting to have people go back in to their respective office spaces for the rest of the year, and my company is seriously considering breaking it's lease to save some money. Working from home is a godsend for me because my office had so little in-person communication that you could hear a pin drop from all the way on the other side of the room. It was really depressing to commute all the way to work only to sit in silence for eight hours. Now we both have the freedom to play records and take a break to read a book/pet the cat/do household chores. My wife misses the socialization of her workplace, but she quickly adjusted to hanging out with her work friends via Zoom and Google Hangouts. We try to go out as little as possible, do our shopping online when we can, and wear masks at all times when going out. My parents are both immune compromised, so it's really important to us to keep ourselves healthy and away from possible infections.
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Jun 27, 2020 22:15
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I think my city reported 12 cases yesterday. Mask wearing is encouraged but not enough people are doing it, IMHO. Overall I'm sort of pissed off at the feckless response we've had, both on governmental and individual levels, but oh my god we're doing so much better than most of the US and some of the rest of Canada.
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Jun 28, 2020 05:08
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Switzerland here. We had a soft lockdown for two and a half months--schools closed, non-essential shops closed, bars and nightclubs closed, restaurants take-away only, business strongly encouraged to let people work from home, parks needed to be closed because people were congregating there--but nothing like France, Italy or Spain where police would actually stop you if you were outside. I rode my bike a ton and it was pretty nice. Now we're also opening up again, restaurants can now have people inside (outside was allowed first), hairdressers are back open with masks (and recently allowed back to 75% capacity I think), the mountain trains are running again (this is a big deal here, a lot of hiking areas are only easily accessible with cog/funicular trains, but they are small and crowded). I've been out to eat a couple of times and the places had installed clear plexiglass dividers between the tables. Two of the places didn't give out menus, there was a QR code on the table that would take you to a digital menu. The placesetting arrived after we sat down. That was basically the only difference. Contactless payments are being encouraged everywhere. Most medium to large stores have sanitizer at the entrance, and until recently the large stores usually had someone sitting at the entrance counting people going in and out. I think the stores left it up to employees whether they wanted to wear a mask, I don't think they wore them in the grocery store, even at the beginning, but other stores that I visited more recently had everyone wearing them and once an employee saw my wife and I wearing our masks and said it seemed like a good idea and went and put one on. Grocery delivery times got completely backed up to the point we were being offered a time 6 weeks from the day we were ordering, which is why one of us went to the store each week. I'm a professor at a trade school and they've taken it really seriously since the federal govt declared an emergency. We finished the semester at home even though schools were allowed to re-open with restrictions, and the management has given us regular updates about what's allowed in the school. All of the doors are open all the time now, there's sanitizer on every floor with a foot pump, only one person is allowed in the lift at a time (there are only 5 floors), each office door has a sign on it that says how many people are allowed in it, and in shared offices the people have to figure out a schedule that works for them. They've introduced more flexible WFH policies for all the administrative staff. Some of the doors have to be locked (like the teachers room), and on these doors, they installed these cool things so you don't have to touch the handle: https://i.imgur.com/XwtTRLe.mp4 Nobody knows what the fall semester will be like, so I'm doing my best not to plan anything at all until we have at least a suggestion of attendance policies (distance learning wasn't hugely popular). The trains are still about half full when I've had to use them and there are plenty of people in the main station and on the train wearing masks. There are signs up everywhere in the stations and around town reminding people to mask up if you can't be 2 meters apart. Our health minister gave a press conference yesterday where he announced that the federal govt was going to give control of the pandemic response back to the cantons (Switzerland is a federal state and the cantons (kind of like US states) usually make all of the decisions, but an emergency was declared to enable federal control (and money)). A journalist asked if this would mean that people on the train would have to wear masks in some parts of their ride and not in others (we have dumb journos too) and he said that wasn't really a problem at the moment because rider numbers are still quite low because of no tourism. The real problem he said was people not masking up on the buses and trams in town which, anecdotally, I can confirm. I think enabling more local responses is necessary (currently we have a couple of potential hotspots, one from an elementary school and two from nightclubs) because IMO people are ignoring the restrictions because they feel like they don't apply to them because the outbreak is on the other side of the country. And, on the other hand, when there is a flare-up somewhere, it shouldn't have to get to the point where it is noticable at a national level before action is taken. Implementation/execution is the concern but the response from people who are actually in power have been pretty OK so far.
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Jun 30, 2020 11:53
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I live in northeast Los Angeles, California. Until a couple weeks ago most people were pretty good about wearing masks and keep social distancing around here. However like in much of the rest of the country there has been pressure to reopen resulting in restaurants and bars opening back up last week, and ever since then when I go to a more commercial area I see crowds of people milling around on the street close together with no masks on. However people still tend to be good when they go into a grocery store. Personally my life has been affected a lot because I am a touring musician by profession. So, that's gone. I was on tour when all this poo poo went down and flying back home from NYC to LA at the height of the panic and confusion was super fun. I performed in one of the last public events to be held anywhere New England so thats something I guess. Thankfully I still have production work I can do at home to keep me almost-afloat and I've just been writing a poo poo ton of music and releasing something every week. The bigger theatre/podcast group I tour with plays large music halls and has professional bookers and promoters involved etc. and their shows have all been rescheduled for next year; my folk band that plays cafes and bars and wineries and whatnot also had a tour scheduled this fall and actually some of those shows were never technically cancelled per se - we are used to playing in unusual environments to very small audiences so I am optimistic with that group that we are going to figure out a way to make it work before the big stuff comes back - course that group barely makes any money, but gently caress I just miss playing live music a LOT.
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Jun 30, 2020 18:11
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I’m near Dallas, Texas. Idiots abound and we have the most new cases of probably everywhere. Stores sanitize carts and have wipes and sanitizer for the most part. Restaurants, stores, etc. are reopening at limited capacity. As bad as Texas is, Oklahoma is scary and I’m surprised more cases aren’t showing up. Maybe it’s because they have a higher population of pigs than people. At the height of everything, I went into a Walgreens and they didn’t sanitize any carts, had no hand sanitizer, and no wipes. Staff wasn’t wearing gloves or masks. This is a loving pharmacy! As soon as restrictions started lifting, the casino reopened and was packed. Stores all packed. It’s crazy. I started a new relationship shortly before this started. Things have moved much more quickly than they likely would have before this, but he’s my soul mate and we are happy. I had been exposed early on and had been with him, so we decided to quarantine together and we haven’t been apart since. mombot fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Jul 29, 2020 |
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Jul 2, 2020 08:19
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mombot posted:I’m near Dallas, Texas. Idiots abound and we have the most new cases of probably everywhere. Stores sanitize carts and have wipes and sanitizer for the most part. Restaurants, stores, etc. are reopening at limited capacity. I can talk about other parts of Texas I spent the early part of quarantine in Austin and moved to Houston in the middle. staff wear masks 100% at major chains (MAJOR chains). Some places don’t care (stopped going to one laundromat because the woman who worked there didn’t wear a mask), others (some restaurants but almost all local coffee shops) transitioned completely to take out only/patio only only saw ~100% mask compliance at the grocery store beginning this week
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Jul 5, 2020 03:59
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I'm from Kansas United States. The biggest change to my life was the company I work for being very proactive about us working from home. They started allowing us to work from home on a voluntary basis first week of March, and by the 2nd week of March they had us working from home full time. They just told us to expect to work from home for the rest of the year (originally they were going to start having us come back next month). I think the thing I miss most is swimming. My child is 18 months old and we moved into an apartment with a pool. My Son LOVES water and I was looking forward to taking him swimming a few times a week, but we haven't done poo poo and won't do poo poo for awhile. It's very depressing.
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Jul 7, 2020 06:40
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SalTheBard posted:I think the thing I miss most is swimming. My child is 18 months old and we moved into an apartment with a pool. My Son LOVES water and I was looking forward to taking him swimming a few times a week, but we haven't done poo poo and won't do poo poo for awhile. It's very depressing. shouldnt swimming be safe as long as there is no one else in the pool at the time and the pool is properly cleaned and chlorinated? i thought most residential pools were treated specifically to combat contagious diseases. or did your complex close the pool to everyone
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Jul 7, 2020 17:05
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Earwicker posted:shouldnt swimming be safe as long as there is no one else in the pool at the time and the pool is properly cleaned and chlorinated? i thought most residential pools were treated specifically to combat contagious diseases. or did your complex close the pool to everyone I actually agree with you that pools are probably decently safe as long as they aren't packed with people. Thankfully my best friend lives in a neighborhood that has a neighborhood pool that is open and let me Son and I come swim there yesterday. It was just us 3 for the entire time I was there which was great. I'm overly paranoid about Corona virus right now so anything I can do to protect me and my family I'm willing to do, but I also want to loving SWIM!!!
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Jul 7, 2020 17:34
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Just south of SF here, in a smallish city. People have been really good about staying away from each other, using masks, etc. Restaurants have been following guidelines to the letter--outdoors only, removing tables to 1/2 capacity, limiting the bar to what can be easily made without handling condiments directly. My county managed to avoid the re-shutdown from last week, while nearby counties had to temporarily close again (I think they are starting to open back up, and the re-shutdown was to avoid a spiking catastrophe over the holiday weekend). I went to Reno for the holiday and people were surprisingly cautious, even in the casinos and restaurants. Even the pens used to sign our credit card receipts were individually sterilized. Half the chairs were removed, mask requirements totally enforced, and people took great efforts to stay away from each other. Our hotel had no cleaning services except in between guests, and the communal areas were all closed off, except for the barbecue pits, which didn't matter because the place was totally deserted. Even so, we are isolating for two weeks simply because we put ourselves at risk for infection, even with our precautions. It felt nice to get out of town for a bit and feel a little smidge of normalcy, but we're trying to mitigate the damage.
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Jul 8, 2020 17:11
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Boston here. We had some of the first cases recorded in the US back in January, but we only entered full shutdown in mid-March like most other (blue) states. Boston neighbors like Cambridge and Brookline had mandatory mask laws before we did, but Massachusetts made them compulsory statewide in May. It's not heavily enforced as far as I can tell, but anecdotally it seems like people are pretty good about wearing them when they're out and about. Most big stores have a person at the entrance checking for masks and sometimes temperature, so if you wanted to go maskless it'd be hard to do anything of consequence. Personally if I'm out and about I'll have mine dangling around my neck until I'm about to pass someone, and I'll put it on and turn my head until we're six feet apart again. Seems like a pretty common practice, from what I've seen. All public transit has mandatory masks, but it's not super well-enforced because the drivers don't care too much. Surface-level trains and busses are effectively free now, because you're not allowed to enter in the door closest to the driver where the card reader is. You'll still have to pay at underground turnstiles though. That said, it seems like we're one of only a few states, along with Rhode Island, that is actually meeting CDC guidelines for case reductions necessary to reopen. You're allowed to eat inside restaurants now so long as tables are spaced far enough apart, and guests can go maskless as long as they're at their table. Gyms and bars I think are still closed, as are most offices. My own office is toying with the idea of running at half-capacity with masks on, but I'd much rather work at home if the alternative is wearing a mask all day. Went to the beach for the first time yesterday, and people were doing a pretty good job of spacing out (although the beach is somewhere you'd really want to space out even in normal times). There were definitely a few groups there of 10+ people who clearly weren't in the same household and shouldn't have been clustered together so much, but lifeguards weren't enforcing it or anything. It seems like being outside is an order of magnitude safer than being inside though, so at least they aren't at a house party or something.
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Jul 12, 2020 23:56
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Iceland: Mid march we had a soft lockdown, which was gradually lifted in may. No gatherings at all of over 20 people, workplaces included. Smaller gatherings permitted only with 2 meters between people. I work as a software developer, and my work already had a policy that people could work remotely no questions asked pre covid, so we just transferred to working home overnight. Government instituted a compensation scheme for people who lost their jobs, though I'm unsure what the details are. Kindergartens and schools never closed, but pupils were split in two for two months, with each group having every other day off. Universities went remote as possible, but otherwise closed. I met nobody except my parents, wife and kid for two months. It was wild. Right now we have basically no cases, and everything is back to normal - which kind of terrifies me, since that makes us ripe for a second wave.
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Jul 14, 2020 18:33
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Thanks to everyone for posting out such in-depths posts! Never having been to the US, it is easy to forget how massive a country it is and how different stuff can be from state to state. US stuff sounds wild. Switzerland and Iceland sounding like anti-measures have been very on-point. I feel like I'd be especially interesting to hear from Goons in high risk groups also, in case any are reading along, and if anyone feels like sharing their quarantine experience from that angle, or for anyone else, too, to touch on how high-risk friends and family might have gotten through it, like, whether their jobs, unions, the NHS or whatever provides good services, or people helping with grocery shopping or w/e; basically how the self-quarantines are managed and supported, in case people are up for touching on the topic of high-risk groups. That really sucks. Thanks for taking the time to share about that bs; that's crazy. mombot posted:I started a new relationship shortly before this started. Things have moved much more quickly than they likely would have before this, but he’s my soul mate and we are happy. I had been exposed early on and had been with him, so we decided to quarantine together and we haven’t been apart since. How nice & grats!
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Jul 18, 2020 12:07
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Grandmother of Five posted:Thanks to everyone for posting out such in-depths posts! Never having been to the US, it is easy to forget how massive a country it is and how different stuff can be from state to state. US stuff sounds wild. Switzerland and Iceland sounding like anti-measures have been very on-point. Thank you. It’s been amazing and a dream come true. I hope everyone gets an epic love like this at least once in their life. Otherwise, I am very high risk, as I have organ-involved systemic lupus.
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Jul 29, 2020 00:26
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I'm a operating room nurse in the North West of England. I've obviously been working through out all of this, and I've just had my first two weeks off in over 6 months. All leave was cancelled and for 3 months we were working 12 hour days- 5 on then 2 off while rotating to nights and days. It could have been called enforced overtime, but nobody refused or questioned it. People who were vulnerable were either redeployed or shielded. Part time staff still did their bit. We just did the shifts. Unions hardly came into it. I used to be a trade union rep and I can quite comfortably say that nurses never needed them. It may have been different in other parts of the country but we had enough PPE. Sure it was running out on some days but more always turned up. Getting frequently fit tested for different FP3 masks was a thing, and not every mask fitted everybody but we got by. At the start it was quite terrifying to be honest. This was in late March. I worked a night shift when we intubated 4 patients for Covid. Nobody knew that much about it. Working in full PPE is difficult. Communication is difficult- the masks muffle your voice and you almost have to shout. You sweat and your visor will probably fog up and you can't see much either. The work of breathing is harder, you feel like you can't draw a breath. It was not nice. The scariest part of it was not knowing when it would stop. How many more patients would we have to ventilate? Would we run out of places to put them? You dreaded going to work, but you had to. Thankfully the seriously ill Covid patients needing ventilation started to taper off. We had no more Covid patients being ventilated in theatre / OR. Then we were grossly overstaffed, especially on night shifts. We began to get bored, and that was the time of board games, quizzes, knitting, watching films and bringing in your best baked food from home. I read a lot of books. We still worked- we did the odd C Section and emergency but people were scared of going to hospital so we did very little with lots of people. The clap for the NHS thing started around our time of doing no work. I felt like a fraud. Yeah, I'd intubated quite a few Covid patients and spent quite a lot of time in full PPE working in ITU but I wasn't doing it now. The free food was even worse and it really began to piss me off. I was earning more money with overtime than I normally did. I had a secure job. Yet firms kept sending us free poo poo. Easter Eggs, toiletries, ready meals, all sorts of poo poo. That pissed me off. Especially the free take away food deliveries. People were loosing their jobs and struggling yet they were giving food to the people who need it least. I understand the need to show appreciation and solidarity but it rubbed me up the wrong way. I refused to eat free take away food. I refused to eat the free food that turned up every shift. You have to have standards in life. I only snaffled the non perishable gifts. I used to tape them to the top of my wheely bin for the dust men. I created quite a pile some weeks. Dogatron fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Aug 11, 2020 |
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Aug 11, 2020 21:27
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Ausgoon here. I'm unfortunately in Victoria which is the state known for having the highest cases in Australia. Probably still low compared to other countries, but still, it sucks. We're in stage 4 restrictions here. In practice that means: - we have a curfew and can't go out between 8pm and 6am - we can only leave the house one hour a day for exercise, and once a day for shopping - masks are mandatory when outside of the house - working from home is pretty much mandatory, unless you work in an 'essential' job. Lots of non essential retail has closed for the six weeks of state 4 lockdown, meaning people are out of work. Some of those people are on "jobkeeper" - a payment from the Australian government so that your job will hopefully be there once restrictions are lifted and people can leave the house again! I work from home, and while I know I'm lucky it also kind of sucks cos I live and work in the same room. I also have a job made infinitely more stressful cos of this stuff so winding down is not easy for me. But hey, I can just qq more. People are dying, Kim! Relevant links: covid-19 in Victoria Karen from Brighton
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Aug 12, 2020 13:47
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I'd like to hear some more of what people are experiencing. It seems like there's more cases everywhere as countries try to open up?
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Sep 27, 2020 11:27
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in my part of LA restaurants are open but only outside, so in lots of areas on the main commercial strip they are putting tables and chairs out into the street. it actually looks kind of nice, more european in a way, but personally i still don't like the idea of eating at a restaurant even outside. same thing is happening with gyms, most are still closed but there is an outdoor gym opening up near me, im thinking about signing up for it. bars and theatres are still closed. masks are required in all businesses and in general people are good about wearing them. cases have gone up the last couple days but the situation is still much better than it was in august i havent personally seen anyone freak out in a store or cause trouble over masks and distancing requirements. every once in a while i have seen a car or truck covered in all kinds of antimask conspiracy theory bullshit slogans, these people are all over the country but the ones in my neighborhood are far outnumbered so they just drive around with their idiotmobiles and for the most part don't cause poo poo Earwicker fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Sep 27, 2020 |
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Sep 27, 2020 20:46
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I hesitate to say this because I know I'm in a position to be very lucky. I loving hate working from home. I loving hate it. I can't loving stand another loving day of it. I loving hate not being able to talk to my co-workers face to face. I loving miss having just random conversations with people because you bump into them on your way to lunch. I loving hate feeling like I spend 16 hours a day in front of my computer. I loving hate the fact that I've only worn basketball shorts since loving March 13th. It's just loving insane to me that things aren't better. It loving just drives me goddamn nuts all the rude loving idiot assholes who are like our loving idiot President. loving hell I'm ready to be over with this goddamn feeling that my whole life consists of driving my son to daycare and then sitting in front of my computer. EDIT: On the plus side I've always wanted long hair and now I have it so that is pretty rad.
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Sep 28, 2020 05:25
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SalTheBard posted:I hesitate to say this because I know I'm in a position to be very lucky. I loving hate working from home. I loving hate it. I can't loving stand another loving day of it. I loving hate not being able to talk to my co-workers face to face. I loving miss having just random conversations with people because you bump into them on your way to lunch. I loving hate feeling like I spend 16 hours a day in front of my computer. I loving hate the fact that I've only worn basketball shorts since loving March 13th. It's just loving insane to me that things aren't better. It loving just drives me goddamn nuts all the rude loving idiot assholes who are like our loving idiot President. loving hell I'm ready to be over with this goddamn feeling that my whole life consists of driving my son to daycare and then sitting in front of my computer. Yeah, I have two jobs, one of which I always worked from home anyway, and honestly it loving sucks. Now I'm doing the WFH thing for that job just like I was, except everything else also loving sucks and I can't go have a meal in a restaurant when I'm burned out on it all, or have a casual pint with my friends at the pub*. Like I guess if you have a dysfunctional work environment to begin with, WFH could be a huge improvement to the point you don't even notice the awful parts, but I see the pandemic-related changes as almost exclusively bad. * Relative to the thread topic, I'm not actually legally forbidden from going to a restaurant or pub, but I think it's a poo poo idea given the state of things, so I don't do it.
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Sep 28, 2020 06:03
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Thanks for your replies. Sal, I can only offer my sympathies  My WFH setup was using a kitchen stool which sucked but thankfully that only lasted about a month and a half. Earwicker, are your in Louisiana or Los Angeles?Are there any states that have had an effective response? I have a pretty good idea which ones aren't but I don't hear much about a lot of the rest.
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Sep 28, 2020 06:42
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I'm in Ontario, Canada. We were quite low in daily case count for a while (hovering around 100/day for a long time), now it's shot back up to 400-500 per day.
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Sep 28, 2020 11:14
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I'm in North Carolina. Both my husband and I are professors at different schools. We're both teaching online now. We also have an older son in elementary school who's currently online. Teaching fully remote is exhausting. I really hate the connotations that we're getting it easy or how we shouldn't be paid as much since we're not in a physical classroom. I work more hours now than I did when I was teaching on campus. I'm teaching an intro to programming class to first year students fresh out of high school. Its a challenging class to teach in the best of times. Most of my students are not tech savvy. Issues that would take 5 seconds to diagnose and give a solution to in the classroom sometimes take 10 - 15 minutes now. That starts to compound really fast. We've had to spend money to upgrade our home internet so that I can stream a live class, my husband can stream a live class, and my son can attend his live class at the same time. I'm not getting a raise for the second year in a row and asking for work to help compensate equipment so I can work at home is laughable. I did loudly complained enough that I was able to take a work computer home at the start of this semester to do work on. My personal computer is close to the end of its life and working on it for 12 hours a day 5 days a week would probably kill it. I really hope that internet gets labeled as a necessary utility after all this is done. I had to fill out a survey about my kid returning to in person classes. Reading between the lines, he'd need to bring a computer to school with him every day to do his work. He's in second grade! That seems nuts to me. I think the technological implementation is going to be here to stay. Alterian fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Sep 28, 2020 |
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Sep 28, 2020 13:26
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Sorry I was a little  last night and probably shouldn't have been committing PWI.I think if I had an office it would be more tolerable but due to space limits I'm working out of my kitchen. I also don't feel like I have an privacy. When my Wife gets home with our son, or on Saturday when I'm working all day and feel bad that I can't help out with or child more, even though logically I'm working and she knows I can't help. I just feel like she's fronting the burden of child care more and that bothers me, even though logically I know that's not true.
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Sep 28, 2020 14:01
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Jaguars! posted:Earwicker, are your in Louisiana or Los Angeles? Los Angeles. i should mention that my post is pretty specific to my area, which is the northeast bit of LA proper and the Pasadena area. on the few occasions when I have gone to other parts of LA county like Glendale or to some of the beach towns, Ive noticed that a lot fewer people wear masks in public Earwicker fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Sep 28, 2020 |
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Sep 28, 2020 17:28
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SalTheBard posted:Sorry I was a little Honestly it'd be weird to not let the situation get to you every now and again. I've been working from home since March; I went back to the office for like a month this summer, when we got a bit of a Covid break around here, but otherwise, it has all been from home. I definitely wasn't feeling great about it, but I've gotten better. I've found that exercise and a routine are the most important things by far while working from home like this. Exercise is always good for your mental health, but these days we need to earn our mental health a little more than usual, so it is extremely important. When working from home it is extremely easy to just fall into a continuous state of blergh. Try to establish some kind of routine and structure your day and punctuate them with little rituals. Routine is given to us by our environment normally; We wake up, we need to make ourselves presentable because we're going to work, so we take care of our hygiene, we go to the workplace, and then we go back. Our work and home are clearly delineated. And for god's sake make sure that whatever routine you make involves leaving the house at least once per day. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, which wrecks your mental state more than not leaving the house and staying in your pajamas for days. I always get dressed, take a shower, and brush my teeth before starting to work. I pull out my work laptop, starting my workday. I always take a short 30 minute walk at lunch. When I'm done working, I pack away my work poo poo meticulously, thus ending my workday. I make sure that at some point after work I get about 30 minutes of exercise in. Geisladisk fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Sep 29, 2020 |
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Sep 29, 2020 00:10
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That is great advice. I've been wearing it as a badge of pride that I haven't work pants since March, but maybe dressing up for work will help me get into a work mindset
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Sep 29, 2020 00:26
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I've downloaded the official track and trace app. It's an odd feeling that such technology is capable of existing and that it is actually being used. It feels sci-fi, and more along the lines of dystopia than utopia. (The app is always on and uses Bluetooth to keep a record of everyone you get within coughing range. If there is an outbreak, it can alert everyone who has been potentially exposed.)
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Sep 29, 2020 00:34
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