Coronavirus prep

AnnPT77 wrote: »

kimny72 wrote: »

My parents are in their mid 70s and I typically go over twice a week to have dinner with them. Should I stop going? I can't tell if I'm being cavalier to go over or being overly anxious to not visit them the whole time this is going on. I know they'll say to come over, that's just how they are!

How is your social distancing? If you have contact with no one, that's one end of the scale. If you're out and about to a job, maybe errands, with live-in immediate family doing likewise, worse yet some younger family member dodging isolation and then coming home, that's the other end of the scale. Contact locations may matter, too (health care facilities, say, vs. some others), as do factors others have mentioned.

Personally, I'd stay away from my elderly parents (if I still had any), unless I was pretty much 100% isolated myself, and had been so for a bit, but ramp up other kinds of contact (phone, video chat, email, whatever media they were comfortable with) so they knew I was still caring about them. But that's just me.

I'm not an anxious person, I'm not in a major hotspot, but I'm isolating myself as much as practical anyway, for my own and others' benefit.

In my case, social interaction is not real common this time of year anyway. I am retired and tend to hibernate due to SAD. My one regular thing, Pub trivia on Monday nights, has been cancelled so there goes any gatherings. I am not doing anything special except keeping in contact with at-risk neighbors. Since I am already semi isolated I feel I am at a lower risk when I do go out to pick up groceries and stuff so I am happy to help out by running errands for others who need to isolate fully.

Who knew that my typical late winter/early spring hibernation would work to my advantage?

I last posted on here somewhere around page 62 that I had developed a sore throat. I and my face mask went to Urgent Care and Doc said it was Strep throat. Have been doing a 10 day course of Amoxicillin and throat has almost cleared up. People have been congratulating me for just having strep.

Hubs and I went to the market this morning. Shelves were mostly stripped from all the panic shopping over the weekend. I had thought it would just be TP and hand sanitizer but it was almost everything!!! I asked the checker when they would be getting more stock in. She said they had restocked twice and now they were out of back stock. Guess that market will closed by this afternoon. We are always generally stocked up so this will not be hard. We can get by without milk. I had thought I would buy some flour for making my own bread - wrong! It was all gone. I do have enough flour on hand that I can make 6 or so loaves for now. And I have tortillas on hand. It was spooky seeing all those empty shelves.

Chef_Barbell wrote: »

bearly63 wrote: »

@Chef_Barbell Wow....so weird. My son lives there and last I heard he was till having to go to work. I am fully convinced that he will be getting it. This mama bear is not pleased

Hubby is a union electrician and still has to work at job sites with over 50 people and limited sanitary. This wife is not happy. I feel like I'm sending him to battle every day.

kperk91 wrote: »

Where I work in Florida, if you have the ability to work from home - then that is what they are requiring. In my building, that is basically just upper management and project managers. The rest of us are considered essential employees and have to show up to get the work done.

I've been thinking a lot about the way the burden of this situation falls differentially on people, depending on things like occupation. Restaurant/bar and some other service jobs (among others) are hit harder financially. Essential jobs that must be done in groups, at some specific location, are at higher risk of exposure, like those construction/skilled trades ones; as are health workers and other required high-human-contact jobs. Solo seniors may be more at risk logistically, if no one to depend on for errands, but in high-risk categories so they isolate. And so forth.

Trying to consider what I may be able to do, as a self-isolating solo senior myself, to help out (besides food bank donations and the like).

And I'm really inspired, still, by the number of companies and individuals that are stepping up and doing things: Online education/activity programs for kids, helping neighbors, setting up phone connections to check up on people, paying employees for not working even though the company doesn't normally have paid leave, offering free internet to school-age kids with no access, and more.

This morning, I was really touched to get a Facebook Messenger message from a very casual friend, a 20-something guy I met mostly through my brewpub (!) but have gotten to know a little because we're both plant nerds and I've given him seeds for plant oddities. Knowing I live alone, he was checking to see if I was OK, ask whether I needed anything, and tell me to let him know if he could help. So thoughtful and sweet!

T1DCarnivoreRunner wrote: »

I and the rest of my dept. are going to be working from home starting tomorrow. Obviously most employees in my manufacturing plant are not going to be doing that. My view is slowly changing to acknowledge that a combination of shutting some things down, coupled with the virus killing its hosts, will slow down the spread to a reasonable level eventually. But I'm still of the overall opinion that an all or nothing approach is best. Either everybody (except a small group of essential staff) stays home or nobody should). The economic loss without a reasonable reduction in R0 values just does not seem fruitful because of more total deaths (from Covid-19 + from economic loss).

For once I think I agree with you - if you’re going to take precautions, it only makes sense to take precautions that work. Taking fruitless precautions for the sake of appearing to do something doesn’t benefit anyone.

My poor mom doesn’t have much sense sometimes. It’s ridiculous, she is a very intelligent, educated person, but she never has had any grasp of how diseases spread. She lives out in the country on a small farm and we have convinced her to isolate except for phone calls and me and a friend leaving groceries on the stoop for her. So now she’s wandering around inside her own house washing her hands compulsively and disinfecting her kitchen counters repeatedly with bleach. I’ve tried to explain that she isn’t going to catch it from herself, she only needs to disinfect if she has contact with an outsider. Then she said she might catch it from the air outside while going out to the barn to feed. I explained that it doesn’t work like that - the house and barn are a quarter mile from the road, which has zero pedestrian traffic because it’s a highway, and the nearest house is a mile away. As far as Coronavirus is concerned she might as well be on a desert island.

So, having convinced her that she doesn’t need to scrub her hands raw when she hasn’t even touched anything outside her house, I find out... she went to church and took communion yesterday. Good. Grief.

Beka3695 wrote: »

My 71 year old mother with multiple health issues refuses to stay home. Even after I told her how serious this was to the point she was crying... still she will not stay at home.

Any advice?

None, I'm afraid. My 88 year old mother still went to bingo on Friday, in Florida .

Dnarules wrote: »

Beka3695 wrote: »

My 71 year old mother with multiple health issues refuses to stay home. Even after I told her how serious this was to the point she was crying... still she will not stay at home.

Any advice?

None, I'm afraid. My 88 year old mother still went to bingo on Friday, in Florida .

I'm thankful they've closed the casinos in CA because we can't get my 91 year old father to stop his weekly visits. And the gym where he goes 3 times a week. Now they need to shut down mass and lock him out of the nursing homes where he ministers to the sick. For a man with an anxiety disorder he is incredibly oblivious. 🙄

I’m in the U.K. and currently self isolating, my husband and 7 year old both have fever and cough. Our guidelines are to self isolate the entire household for 14 days, so my 9 year old and 14 year old aren’t going to school either. I’m immunosuppressed so I should be contact by health England next week at some point because I fall into the severe risk category. We have plenty of food and toilet roll (had to put in an order online when I couldn’t get any in our local supermarket three visits in a row). I’m more bothered by the lack of fresh fruit, vegetables and milk. Thankfully I have a couple of siblings who will drop stuff at the house for me

Howdy folks, friendly community moderator here.

In order to best help the community, please keep this discussion about actual coronavirus prep/coping solutions and not full of jokes/memes.

We have a chit-chat section for jokes and memes.

Thanks for your cooperation. :flowerforyou:

Best regards,
Sugar
MFP Moderator