Hot water solves a lot of things 🌊

[dorchadas]

If I used more references or whimsical tags, I would have titled the tag for the current unpleasantness The Great Contagion, but I've stuck to purely factual tags and I'm not going to change that now. And they're easier to translate.

We got word today that we're work from home until at least April 30th, and who knows how long it will actually go at this point. Originally it was until April 3rd, and then it was April 20th, and and now it's April 30th. It may be even longer if people keep congregating in groups and forcing extra necessary time spread out the effects of coronavirus. At least I can work from home and keep my job--I have a lot of friends that's not true of. And they're planning to update the database to the new version on Friday, which, well, I'm glad I'm not in charge and having to make these decisions, because that's not a decision I would make. The functionality that I need to do my job won't be entirely implemented yet, which is why I haven't really had the opportunity to test it, and every time we have a meeting to discuss it, we never really go over it, and half the time I've tried to use it, it's been too slow to do anything with at all. I'm going to need to spend a bunch of time in the test database trying to figure out what my workflow is going to be like. I already know that since it's web-based, I won't be able to use all the text commands that I'm used to to speed things up. No wonder everyone has RSI if we keep having to click through the same menus hundreds of times every day.

On the other hand, in an email today responding to the idea that we needed to send people back to work and accept death in order to keep the economy moving, the CEO said:

"Thomas Friedman recently interviewed Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel on the nature of the 'common good.' Sandel put it this way: 'The common good is about how we live together in community. It’s about the ethical ideals we strive for together, the benefits and burdens we share, the sacrifices we make for one another. It's about the lessons we learn from one another about how to live a good and decent life.'

"We at the AMA, and the physicians we serve, save lives; but not simply to keep score. We save lives to uphold that common good."

So that made me feel good about the place I work.

I was talking to thosesocks a couple days ago and she said I seemed to be far more fatalistic about the coronavirus than anyone else she knows and asked me if I knew why that was. I think a bunch of it is that I knew this was coming--I follow a lot of East Asia news on Twitter, so I knew this was going to be a serious problem, though admittedly not how serious. But as she pointed out, I was pretty anxious the last time we saw each other in person, and I think a lot of that is that I was worried I was an asymptomatic carrier and I was going to infect my sister or, worse, my parents. It's been nine days since then and none of them have said anything about symptoms, so I think we're safe on that score, and that's done a lot to ease my anxiety. Everything is just stoic resignation. I'm staying at home, I'm wearing a mask when I go outside, and I'm otherwise being cautious. Everything else is outside of my control. If I get sick, I get sick, and if I die, I die.

I mean, I'll probably be fine, but even so.

There's a variety of reasons for this. It's how my parents are, and I grew up with their fatalism and preparation for the worst as a model. I didn't really have the space to be visibly worried in my marriage, because schoolpsychnerd would catastrophize, so I had to always be calm even in the face of what seemed like disaster. But really, it just feels like the rational response to me. There's no point in constantly disinfecting Amazon packages and washing my hands twenty times a day, because my exposure to to coronavirus is minimal. The last time I came within talking range of anyone was yesterday at the grocery store, and before then, it was Tuesday when britshlez came by to drop off cookies. My risk is low, so why worry?

I suppose I'm lucky that that actually takes.

Last weekend wasn't super great on the mental health department. I used to be the kind of person who could stay inside for days on end no problem, but the thing is, I always had someone else there. There's a vast difference between staying inside alone and staying inside with even a single other person, as long as that other person wants to spend time with you. On days with work, there's plenty to do and I have a bunch of tasks I've set for myself, like studying Japanese, doing translation for a podcast I listen to, playing through some of the game son my backlog, reading, what exercise I can do in my home, that kind of thing. On weekends, when there's so much more time to fill, things get more difficult. I do have more tasks I can take on--work on RPG homebrews I have sitting, text friends and see if they'd like to chat, sit and read, studying more programming, etc--but they're still all ways to fill time. Admittedly, right now, that's about all I can do.

I also had my first coronavirus anxiety nightmare last weekend, I think from the worry about infecting others. I was an infected human that was infected by some kind of alien hive mind that mutated its hosts, The Thing-style, and I had broken free of the hive mind. I was running through a space station, pursued by mutated monsters, when in front of my a horrifically mutated woman with a face full of eyes and too-long twisted limbs burst out and grabbed me. I sat up gasping in bed, passing consciously from dream straight into waking, and listened to the raging storm that was hitting Chicago in the early morning.

The dream I had later was like a birds-eye view of a tabletop wargame, with my friends in the role of the pieces, and no actual battle, so it was like a tech demo flying over a snowy valley. It was far more peaceful, and when I woke up the storm was gone.


I'm not historically a bath-taker, not because I hate baths, but because I'm 6'5" / 195 cm and and after living in Japan where the bathtubs are deep enough that I can comfortably submerge my entire body, American bathtubs are mostly far too small. But today I was looking at the tub in the guest bathroom and thinking you know, I think I could fit in that. So rather than play video games I tried to get in and, when I fit with enough room to space, I finished my exercising, took a shower--there's no way I'd get into a bath dirty and just sit in dirty water, the very idea is disgusting--and then ran a bath. I lit a candle, turned the lights off, and listened to a meditation podcast while I sat there. It was exactly what I needed and I felt roughly 150% better after I got out. And I even discovered that the bathtub has jets!

Maybe I should buy some bath bombs.


Alright, that's enough watching an Actraiser longplay and writing this. I had a nice FaceTime call with lisekatevans earlier, and she told me that Black Button Eyes is doing an online-only show called Masque of the Red Coronavirus tomorrow. I've been making constant Masque of the Red Death references this whole time, so of course I'm going to tune into that. It's exactly what we need in these trying times.

And also, sleep. And hopefully no more nightmares.

Comments

[grayswandir]

I think a bunch of it is that I knew this was coming--I follow a lot of East Asia news on Twitter, so I knew this was going to be a serious problem, though admittedly not how serious.

Yeah, same. I don't normally follow a lot of news of any kind, but since it was relevant to my plans at the time, I started following news about the coronavirus quite early, so I've also been expecting it to be serious (though, as you say, not necessarily this serious). But I've also always been pretty fatalistic about most things in general, so it's probably also just a matter of personality.

Disinfecting packages sounds fairly reasonable to me, though, assuming that for some reason they can't be left sitting unopened for a while, which would be the simpler solution. I haven't been back to the store in about a week and a half now, but when I do go again, I'll probably leave most of the groceries sitting untouched for at least a day before I put them away or start opening and using them, and wash off anything I want to use immediately. Granted, exposure this way is pretty unlikely, but it's not impossible, and the extra precautions don't do any harm. All around, as long as what they're doing doesn't harm anyone, I'd be happier if more people were taking excessive, unnecessary precautions rather than insufficient precautions, which seems to be mostly what's going on. :/

Masque of the Red Coronavirus

Hah. I had been thinking that someone needed to do something like this. I should have known that they probably already were.

[dorchadas]

When I saw they were still planning to hold the Met gala, my immediate thought was "Will there be a mysterious attendee dressed in red that no one remembers inviting? I hope so."

I'm in the state where if I am going to get infected, I'd prefer it to be now when I'm not going to expose anyone else to danger (and I do expect to get it eventually, even if odds are I won't ever know I had it), but you're right that most people aren't taking it seriously enough. Look on twitter and there's a bunch of scolds who seem to think that talking down to and insulting people is a good way to motivate them, and look out in the world and people are still gathering anywhere that it's allowed to continue. But not that I really blame them--we built society around the idea that this can't happen, and it hasn't happened here in living memory, so I'm not surprised people don't think it's serious.

Plus the partisan angle, which is perfectly calculated to get some people to ignore the problem. It's a perfect storm of being unable to effectively respond.

[omnipotent]

If I get sick, I get sick, and if I die, I die.

This is about where I'm at as well. I saw this coming too, simply because too many people refused to take it seriously and kept downplaying it as something only elderly people should worry about. I knew Trump was going to not doing anything because a.) he is completely incapable of caring about anyone or anything but himself and b.) Trump and some of the people around him will view this as some "population control", and for a person who is often right about things [/arrogance], I'm saddened that I am right in this case.

That bath you took sounds amazing. My hot water tank isn't large enough for me to take a bath (it only gives about 10 minutes of hot shower water), so I envy you.

[dorchadas]

I did remember after I wrote this that I had pneumonia as a high school student and had weak lungs for a decade after--I'd get a hacking cough every winter with no other symptoms that gradually went away--so I might actually be at risk. But even so, there's not much I can do other than what I'm doing.

It was disgusting when Trump seemed to actually take the current situation somewhat seriously and the press was like "Trump is finally a president!" You'd think they would have learned.

The bath was amazing! I lit a wood wick candle, turned out the lights, and put on a meditation podcast. It was exactly what I needed.

Ten minutes of shower sounds really stressful I'm a long, indulgent shower kind of person, so I'd have a hard time dealing with that.