I somewhat feel the same way… I’m as safe in an empty office as I am at home, right? But I guess I should reserve that line for the folks who have large families or even multiple roommates.
I miss having some amount of separation of work from home. My line of work compels me to do a lot of remote work, regardless, but with an office, you come home and can say, “I don’t need to do that now, it can wait”. At home, that mentality changes and I find I work longer hours, but not as productively, as I do at the office.
Given the length of time the virus has been found to stay viable on various surfaces, this depends a bit on your likelihood of touching things other people may have touched before leaving.
I agree with this. I went into my lab to put out cleaning supplies. Weather in Louisiana is volatile this time of year, so if anyone needs to come work in the lab because they’re without power or water, they need to be able to clean off work surfaces before settling in.
My whole family has a stomach bug this week. This just shows the importance of staying calm, not hoarding, and flattening the curve. We had all the cleaning stuff at home. But if someone needed to go to our local Target to get some cleaning supplies, they’d be hosed. And an improperly cleaned household with children and a disease that causes rapid liquid loss is a recipe for disaster at a time when medical care is about to be in real short supply.
If your dentist feels OK to see you, you should still go. Dentists are medical providers, but not the kind in short supply due to the crisis. Their PPE should be sufficient, and if they’ve had to stop taking patients in order to donate supplies to area hospitals, they will cancel on you. Of course, don’t go in if you’re feeling ill.
Last night I went to Office Depot for some black duct tape to patch up the futon cover where our dog has been making holes. They had a big package of toilet paper on hold for someone, which the woman in front of me buying massive quantities of paper towels and facial tissue asked about.
Today at the grocery store there were signs limiting TP to 2 packages per customer… and no toilet paper anyway. Everything else was mostly normal, aside from a couple of heavily bundled-up people (it’s not that cold today, just a little rainy) and some with gloves.
Whether anyone will care 4 centuries from now, I don’t know.
It’s fascinating to watch something so ancient as a plague creeping into the modern world. Like living in an H. G. Wells novel.
Meanwhile in Chattanooga, we had our first confirmed case AND apparently he’s a super popular preacher who was glad handing half the town before he became symptomatic.
My silver lining: my business just blew up. Every yoga teacher on the planet - Finland, Czech Republic, Germany, Canada,South Africa - has reached our for help getting online.
So I made a thing and several people have become coaching clients.
A beautiful, sunny day. The streets of Manhattan seemed perfectly normal. The subway was empty, but the streets were crowded. I didn’t think I would have anything to write about today.
I passed a restaurant with folded menus on a stand by the front door. A woman passing said to her friend in a peeved way “I could read one of those if I touched it, but I don’t want to.”
I bought coffee, a loaf of bread and cookies at Garden of Eden on 14th Street. The cookies came in a transparent plastic container. As I was checking out, the cashier noticed the lid was coming off and quickly handled it all over trying to get the lid back on. She failed. All I could think about was all the other people she had contact with that day. When I got home I washed the container with soap and water, with the cookies still inside.
On the ride home I saw a man enthusiastically blowing his nose. I sat as far away from him as possible. After a while a mother and son entered and sat down right bedside me. Why? I don’t know. I could have moved to another seat, but I didn’t want to be rude. Eventually, one of them coughed openly into the air. That’s when I moved.
When I got home Moscot called about my appointment scheduled for next week. They wanted to reschedule me for tomorrow. It seems they want to space-out their appointment so they can have time to fumigate the examination rooms. But I can’t go tomorrow, I have to pick up that laptop computer.
It turns out I will not be able to pick up the laptop tomorrow as I planned. IT emailed me at 10:30 asking if I had the computer. All Apple Stores are closed until the end of the month. I guess this is what happens when you have so many touch screens. This has certainly made things much more complicated. I had planned on using the laptop as little as possible, but it would be good to have if the entire world decided to shut down. And that is looking increasingly likely.
So, I will have visit the head of IT’s apartment tomorrow and pick up a back-up to the back-up laptop. Assuming the subways are still running.
I’ve occasionally been worried about this kind of thing (from the other side). Almost every winter I get a persistent cough, and over a month ago I got mildly sick (runny nose, sinuses, and general blah), which hasn’t entirely gone away. Combine that with being tired from having worked several 24-hour shifts recently, and I end up really worried about how many false symptoms people are seeing…
[edit] bit of an overlap with the game thread, but…