The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

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WestwayKid
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

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Dr. Medulla wrote:
26 May 2020, 4:38pm
101Walterton wrote:
26 May 2020, 4:26pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
26 May 2020, 4:13pm
WestwayKid wrote:
26 May 2020, 3:50pm
There is a popular tourist area just across the Wisconsin border from Illinois called Lake Geneva. By all accounts it was packed this past weekend: restaurants, beaches, shops. It's hard to get a read on how people will react now that things are opening back up. My neighbors are a couple in their late 70's and talking to the wife on Friday morning she was very excited to be able to go out to their favorite bar that night. I feel like in states/areas that were hard hit the response time might be slower, but in a place like Wisconsin it might move quicker.
More curious to me is how people respond when the next wave hits. Do people shrug their shoulders and say dem's da breaks, or does it make people think, "Oh yeah, that's why we quarantined"?
What concerns me is that any future wave or new pandemic (highly likely) will never get the same compliance even this one got. It worked here because people were compliant but they are over it and I don’t think in a year, 2 years or whenever you will get the same response. It will be remembered as OTT.
If the other option is widespread death, you think people will just throw up their hands and say, "Oh well, guess I'll die"? Maybe that will happen, but I hope we're not that fatalistic/suicidal. Human beings are hardwired to be really adaptable. I guess the question is whether we learn to adapt to restrictions or to the possibility of contracting a fatal virus by being in a crowd.
I feel like society is grasping with what is an acceptable level of risk with this virus. I might be oversimplifying, but I'll compare it to the speed limit. The majority of drivers routinely drive over the limit - 15, 20 miles over. It's against the law and there is a level of risk with going faster than the posted limit - not just for the driver, but for other drivers and pedestrians. We (society) have judged that to be an acceptable risk and part of this is based on the idea that we trust our fellow drivers to be careful. It's like there is an unsaid handshake deal that while we'll drive above the limit, we won't drive reckless and we will call out those who really push the limits.

It feels like there is something similar happening with this virus. Society is trying to figure out how much risk we're able (and willing) to accept and how much we trust one another to be careful (wear masks, wash hands, stay inside when not feeling well).

I agree with 101 that the next wave will not get the same level of compliance. It seems like this opinion will be strong: we locked down, but we won't do it again. We will find the level of risk we feel okay with and get on with our lives.
"They don't think it be like it is, but it do." - Oscar Gamble

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Re: The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

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The problem is when the level of safety/compliance is dictated by your employment circumstances, not your own sense of well being. I'm lucky enough to be able to work from home anyways, but my wife and I are waiting for the call for her to come back to the office and she absolutely doesn't feel like it's safe, but there's also no real recourse for us to find alternative employment at the moment (and we're trying) given the state of everything.

That's not the individual finding the right safety balance for themselves, that's being forced to sacrifice your health for the economy.

We (from a distance) dropped off a care package to a friend who has the 'rona and chatted with her for a couple minutes. She's very healthy, low risk by any metric, and has what's considered a "mild" coronavirus case. She's had it for 2 months and says every day she's so physically exhausted from the illness she usually can't even get out of bed (we saw her at what she's says is about he best she can feel). Symptoms seem to dissipate for a bit and then surge back and there's no gradual wind down of symptoms that she can detect. Again, this is after 2 months and she's considered a mild case since she never had to be hospitalized. She's physically incapable of working, caring for her child, cooking meals, et cetera.

I personally am not super excited about increasing my risk of coming down with an illness like that, but people aren't islands unto themselves and the chances are at some point the reopening of society is going to force me into higher risk situations than I'm comfortable with whether I like it or not, mostly related to being forced back into enclosed office spaces or having close contact with people who are back at the office themselves.
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Dr. Medulla
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

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WestwayKid wrote:
27 May 2020, 1:14pm
I feel like society is grasping with what is an acceptable level of risk with this virus. I might be oversimplifying, but I'll compare it to the speed limit. The majority of drivers routinely drive over the limit - 15, 20 miles over. It's against the law and there is a level of risk with going faster than the posted limit - not just for the driver, but for other drivers and pedestrians. We (society) have judged that to be an acceptable risk and part of this is based on the idea that we trust our fellow drivers to be careful. It's like there is an unsaid handshake deal that while we'll drive above the limit, we won't drive reckless and we will call out those who really push the limits.
You're describing spontaneous order. Which is to say that, far from chaos, the absence of external authority will still generate standards of behaviour. There was a story of a dangerous intersection in the Netherlands. Authorities tried rumble strips, more signs, etc etc, but nothing seemed to work. Until they removed all the signs. Essentially telling drivers to govern themselves. And the number of accidents started to fall. Without expecting other people to obey the posted rules, which drivers decided was an opportunity to cheat, they had to modify their behaviour to assume all the other drivers were going to be aggressive, so they drove more conservatively. Fascinating as hell.
It feels like there is something similar happening with this virus. Society is trying to figure out how much risk we're able (and willing) to accept and how much we trust one another to be careful (wear masks, wash hands, stay inside when not feeling well).
Much of the problem, I think, is that we can't just think about being a victim but also being a perpetrator. If you think only as being a victim, you might look at the statistics and figure, well, I'm young and in good health, odds are I'll be fine if I catch it. And by that calculus, sure, the odds say yes. But it's that other part—infecting others—that is harder to wrap your head around. Your behaviour could kill someone else, even if it's a couple steps down the line (you infect someone who infects someone who infects someone who dies). That's a level of abstraction that is hard to absorb. It's not about being 100% pure in our actions, but thinking socially, about denying our individual interests for that abstract social. That runs against what we've been taught for decades. It's tough. Culturally, we've been ill-prepared for this.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

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Flex wrote:
27 May 2020, 1:27pm
The problem is when the level of safety/compliance is dictated by your employment circumstances, not your own sense of well being. I'm lucky enough to be able to work from home anyways, but my wife and I are waiting for the call for her to come back to the office and she absolutely doesn't feel like it's safe, but there's also no real recourse for us to find alternative employment at the moment (and we're trying) given the state of everything.

That's not the individual finding the right safety balance for themselves, that's being forced to sacrifice your health for the economy.

We (from a distance) dropped off a care package to a friend who has the 'rona and chatted with her for a couple minutes. She's very healthy, low risk by any metric, and has what's considered a "mild" coronavirus case. She's had it for 2 months and says every day she's so physically exhausted from the illness she usually can't even get out of bed (we saw her at what she's says is about he best she can feel). Symptoms seem to dissipate for a bit and then surge back and there's no gradual wind down of symptoms that she can detect. Again, this is after 2 months and she's considered a mild case since she never had to be hospitalized. She's physically incapable of working, caring for her child, cooking meals, et cetera.

I personally am not super excited about increasing my risk of coming down with an illness like that, but people aren't islands unto themselves and the chances are at some point the reopening of society is going to force me into higher risk situations than I'm comfortable with whether I like it or not, mostly related to being forced back into enclosed office spaces or having close contact with people who are back at the office themselves.
This is a great point. I currently find myself sort of in the same boat as your wife: waiting on the call to come back to work (I'm currently furloughed). I have no idea if I will be able to work from home, but at this juncture I don't have a lot of great options. As you said - not a lot of options out there right now and with 2 small kids - I need the insurance. They tell me to jump and I feel bound to say how high.
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

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Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 May 2020, 6:34am
BostonBeaneater wrote:
26 May 2020, 11:54pm
But we straight up hate our neighbors.
But what about all the yellow ribbon magnets on the cars?
We love our soldiers and police because they kill people.
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WestwayKid
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

Post by WestwayKid »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 May 2020, 1:32pm
WestwayKid wrote:
27 May 2020, 1:14pm
I feel like society is grasping with what is an acceptable level of risk with this virus. I might be oversimplifying, but I'll compare it to the speed limit. The majority of drivers routinely drive over the limit - 15, 20 miles over. It's against the law and there is a level of risk with going faster than the posted limit - not just for the driver, but for other drivers and pedestrians. We (society) have judged that to be an acceptable risk and part of this is based on the idea that we trust our fellow drivers to be careful. It's like there is an unsaid handshake deal that while we'll drive above the limit, we won't drive reckless and we will call out those who really push the limits.
You're describing spontaneous order. Which is to say that, far from chaos, the absence of external authority will still generate standards of behaviour. There was a story of a dangerous intersection in the Netherlands. Authorities tried rumble strips, more signs, etc etc, but nothing seemed to work. Until they removed all the signs. Essentially telling drivers to govern themselves. And the number of accidents started to fall. Without expecting other people to obey the posted rules, which drivers decided was an opportunity to cheat, they had to modify their behaviour to assume all the other drivers were going to be aggressive, so they drove more conservatively. Fascinating as hell.
It feels like there is something similar happening with this virus. Society is trying to figure out how much risk we're able (and willing) to accept and how much we trust one another to be careful (wear masks, wash hands, stay inside when not feeling well).
Much of the problem, I think, is that we can't just think about being a victim but also being a perpetrator. If you think only as being a victim, you might look at the statistics and figure, well, I'm young and in good health, odds are I'll be fine if I catch it. And by that calculus, sure, the odds say yes. But it's that other part—infecting others—that is harder to wrap your head around. Your behaviour could kill someone else, even if it's a couple steps down the line (you infect someone who infects someone who infects someone who dies). That's a level of abstraction that is hard to absorb. It's not about being 100% pure in our actions, but thinking socially, about denying our individual interests for that abstract social. That runs against what we've been taught for decades. It's tough. Culturally, we've been ill-prepared for this.
I very much agree with this and with the point about denying our individual interests.
"They don't think it be like it is, but it do." - Oscar Gamble

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Re: The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

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Interesting watching the German football which has restarted. Despite all the very strict protocols around everything, empty stadiums, testing, social distancing for all staff including coaches and substitutes, wearing of masks, scrapping of pre match handshake rituals etc etc humans nature is what it is.
A goal is scored and natural instinct takes over, the players celebrate as they naturally do then stand back and touch elbows.

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Re: The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

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I just received an email saying that my dentist's office is opening back up. Which seems like a very bad idea.
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

Post by revbob »

JennyB wrote:
27 May 2020, 5:01pm
I just received an email saying that my dentist's office is opening back up. Which seems like a very bad idea.
Same.

I went like a week before shutdown.

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Re: The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

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revbob wrote:
27 May 2020, 5:14pm
JennyB wrote:
27 May 2020, 5:01pm
I just received an email saying that my dentist's office is opening back up. Which seems like a very bad idea.
Same.

I went like a week before shutdown.
I am actually due for an appointment soon, but fuck no. I'm happy to brush my teeth and floss five times a day in the meantime, but I'm not going anywhere near that germ factory.
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

Post by Dr. Medulla »

JennyB wrote:
27 May 2020, 5:21pm
revbob wrote:
27 May 2020, 5:14pm
JennyB wrote:
27 May 2020, 5:01pm
I just received an email saying that my dentist's office is opening back up. Which seems like a very bad idea.
Same.

I went like a week before shutdown.
I am actually due for an appointment soon, but fuck no. I'm happy to brush my teeth and floss five times a day in the meantime, but I'm not going anywhere near that germ factory.
I was booked for a cleaning in April, which they rescheduled for September, so they must have figured they'd be closed for several months.
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

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"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

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Re: The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

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Re: The Coronavirus Thread Of Good News

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One person in NZ has the Corona Virus.
Wouldn’t it be easier if they told everyone who it was then we could just avoid them and get on with normal life.

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