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Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2020-09-09, 19:32

We're up to at least seventy 9/11s at this point. Maybe we should throw a party and set off some firecrackers in the woods at 100! 🔥

I've been trying to use that 9/11s metric since at least March. For a while I switched to "your entire home town/city of X wiped out" as a metric, but that was too hard to keep in my head.

I haven't been around the forums much this year, but I guess it's not too late to chime in with my own depressing anecdotes.

The second week of March, shortly after the US case count broke 1000, my employer (Red Hat) announced that effective immediately all employees would work remotely/from home. The following day, all US offices were closed to anyone that who didn't have business-critical on-site work like manning a data center. By that point, a few of my friends/coworkers had already started WFH, one of whom I think had switched to hoarder mode for about a week. We all, at least the people in my close circles, started taking this growing Covid thing very seriously very quickly. I've been working from home ever since. I only go out to pick up groceries, and I always try to do that during unusual low-traffic times to minimize exposure. Early or mid morning Mondays seem to be the best for avoiding filthy humans.

I have several conditions that put me at high risk for severe complications or death of I were to be infected. I have the usual asthma and slew of allergies to airborne particulates, of course, but I also have several other auto-immune conditions including a sometimes dangerously low leukocyte (white blood cell) count (aka "leukopenia"). I went through a scary phase seeing a hematologist-oncologist over the previous year or two ending last autumn. No official diagnosis of the big C, but I'm to keep a close eye on things. Did I talk about that here? I don't think I did. My wife and I kept that mostly to ourselves.

I was fortunate to start this catastrophe with a mostly-full box of real 3M N95 masks; I was lucky to have these leftover from some painting work I did more than a year ago. Whenever I need to go out (ditto for my wife), I put on my well-fitted N95 mask and wear mechanics gloves to make sure I don't accidentally touch something contaminated and then my face and usually I wear a hat and long-sleeved buttoned shirt that I can toss aside when I return. Upon removing the mask back at home, I often look like I've spent all night as a hospital RN in triage; a tight well-fitting mask not only passes the pressure check but also tends to leave a ring around your face where it makes contact.

Whenever we have a package delivered, which like many people is more frequent nowadays, we bring it inside off the porch but leave it on the floor by the door to "decontaminate" for a couple days. I know the chance of transmission from delivery guy to box to us is probably pretty low, but I'd rather not take the chance.

My inner introvert has mostly been fine with staying at home all of the time now. I do miss my coworker friends, but I think they share a similar mindset of gladly suffering in isolation today knowing that it means maybe some time next year we can meet up again.

Suddenly stopping eating out, even if it's just usually the office cafeteria and snacks and coffee dispensers, had an almost immediate effect on my weight. When I realized I was approaching an unhealthy BMI a couple months ago, I took some deliberate steps to plan my meals and eat more. I know that's a problem a lot of Americans probably wish they had, but I'll just say that forcing yourself to gain weight is about as fun as forcing yourself to lose it.



Oh yeah… and a week ago I had a nosebleed that, being the third in three days and refusing to stop fowing after two hours of constant pinching, was continuing to back-wash so much down my throat that I was starting to choke and gurgle and gag. At that point I gave up and let my wife drive me to the ER. At 3am on a Sunday night. The good news there is that despite the general cesspools that hospitals can be, my understanding is that ER patients like me are treated in a completely different opposite end of the hospital from the Covid cases. They didn't test me for Covid. I wasn't showing any signs. I just have awful luck.

Health sucks.

Fuck. I lost my train of thought.

Oh yeah, Covid stuff. Several months ago a friend/colleague of my wife was diagnosed with Covid. They volunteered at our local arboretum for years. She died from Covid. Just another statistic at this point. I don't want to be another statistic. I WANT TO GET OFF MR. BONES' WILD RIDE.

Also, as far as we're concerned, this year's Halloween is cancelled, and that's more than a little heart-breaking for us because we love the season and love going over-the-top with costumes. I should dig up some photos to share somewhere from my last couple of years. Last year, I won the Red Hat company costume contest and shared a conversation and handshake on-stage with our CEO. It was pretty cool.

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