#it's not like we're in quarantine because of a dangerous pandemic... right?

[anemoarchonhoe]

Thinking about sagau again and just had to stop and consider something.

Which has lead me to give an ask (i was planning to ask something else but this has to come first) because my mind won't shut up. I wanna share this brainrot because it's been in my head for quite some time 🤓 it's nerd time

So like... Y'all are saying that.. the creator, who is a person living on earth in the 21st century, gets transported to Teyvat that has it's medical knowledge lagging a few centuries from ours?

Won't that be dangerous for them in a way tho? Cuz like--

Bacteria evolves with respect to our bodies defenses. And not just that, we're literally carrying at least over 380 trillion viruses in our bodies (10 times the bacteria that resides in us), with at least four that triggered pandemics with high mortality rate. Of course, because our immune system are prepared to defend our body (also by the help of vaccines) these viruses won't harm us, but that doesn't mean they're erased from our bodies.. they're still there.

Seeing as Teyvat citizens are not vaccinated in a few of our diseases and may not be immune to them, (and assuming reader just got vaccinated) they could get corona.

Or measles...

Heck, let's count off viruses and diseases (that comes to mind) that could kill almost everyone once they get in contact with reader:

Chicken pox

Influenza A

Mumps (from the paramyxovirus)

Diphtheria (from Corynebacterium diphtheriae bacteria)

Corona

Measles

I think some of the diseases listed above won't have heavy/fatal effects on healthy adults, but could infect a child. But who knows right ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And Hepatitis wouldn't spread to cause a pandemic because it's passed through saliva- oh who am I kidding. A few acolytes might have licked the reader's spoon at least once.

AND ALSO IMAGINE IN THE IMPOSTER AU

What if reader was a survivor of the Ebola Virus? The reader doesn't have any long term infection (like blindness) caused by the virus because they were treated immediately before it got serious.

Reader is in Teyvat branded as a criminal and is being chased. During the chase, reader is forced to get in contact with some peeps, which also will get in contact with their families or other peeps...

...give them at least two weeks then boom- 38%ish of the nation's population is bleeding and dying and no one knows why.

The reason why I'm leaning towards the imposter au is because imagine the despair (and maybe angst) the people will feel when they discover that the imposter was legit and that they're being punished for hurting the creator. Hahahahah Teyvat wouldn't even do anything to avenge us, just letting everything go down without trying lol.

OMFG I'M SO HAPPY I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE THINKING ABOUT THIS.

Like in Bubu Pharmacy, they only have medicinal herbs to cure their diseases??? Like it doesn't matter if those herbs have divine properties (source: Shenhe, bartender dialogue) or whatever, it's still just HERBS.

IT CAN'T CURE SERIOUS INFECTIOUS DISEASES LIKE CORONA.

BET COMMUNITY QUARANTINE (for medical reasons) AND VACCINES ARE STILL FOREIGN CONCEPTS. Like maybe individual quarantine, but an entire city closing itself off from other nations? Inazuma would riot because it's the Sakoku Decree all over again. Liyue would riot because what about their businesses? Mondstadt would riot because it's the city of freedom and they're being restricted!!!

So, Your Honor, they're all going to die. And we be eating pizza as Teyvat goes down.

Now that we're talking about this, Teyvat technology confuses me in the way that they're behind BUT ALSO kinda advanced(???) because of alchemy. How do these lamps in the middle of nowhere even works? Afaik, they don't use electricity and there are no wires connected to them or whatever. Do they use some sort of pyro stone inside the lamp? How do Mondstadt, Liyue, and Inazuma sewer systems work? How do they take baths? Like do they have faucets or do they only rely on wells? I'm so curious!!!

They're all so reliant on the power of the elements. There are bombs (Klee), so where are the guns? Why do only the Fatui have those cool ass shit? They have scholars in Sumeru, why not study deactivated Ruin Guards and learn how to make actual missiles?? Also I want to kiss Cloud Retainer's Guizhong Ballista. When will they ever invent bicycles? But I do understand that horses are cooler than bicycles or motorcycles as a mode of transport.

STILL, I NEED ANSWERS.

#ventus.answers #genshin impact sagau #genshin sagau #cult au #genshin!cult #genshin cult au #sagau

[xokona]

on my mind:

this pandemic continues to be the worst. we're approaching two years since we moved to the states and have no idea when we will ever be able to visit Australia. between Australia's mandatory hotel quarantine combined with B's small amount of time off - it just doesn't make sense right now. i know he's hanging in there, but i really feel for him and his parents. and also i fucking miss Melbourne and want to visit, like, yesterday.

our lease is up at the end of October. keeping my fingers & toes crossed that we can find a new place with a lease that begins early to mid-October... that accepts "dangerous breeds." six month leases are the fucking worst... although i'm not super upset about having to move out of this townhouse - there are a lot of annoying quirks that i won't miss.

B's immigration status. it's been *ONE YEAR* since B's visa application moved to the "ready to schedule interview" stage. our immigration lawyer is confident that his interview will be scheduled soon... which i fucking hope is true because B's work authorization card expires at the end of December. we've been waiting since February to receive his updated work auth card. this shit is literally the worst and covid has made it unbearable. not me panicking about if we sign a year long lease in October/November and then B has to quit his job because of this fucking immigration bullshit...

i'm proud of myself because i've been consistently running three times a week for over a month now. we bought a treadmill which i love. i'm contemplating signing up for my hometown's Turkey Trot 5K ... who knows if that will actually happen but i used to love running that annually.

it's been over a month since i started my new job. so far, so good? it's been an adjustment and i still hardly feel like i know what i'm doing (remote work + hard to reach boss). but overall, choosing a job that i can work from home (and only work Monday to Thursday) was a great decision.

i got to get out of the house a couple of times this month - my best friend is getting married next year and i got to see her try on wedding dresses. we also got ice cream from Salt & Straw - i tried the blackberry birthday cake flavor and it was DIVINE.

i got sick after the above outing. tested negative for covid, and luckily only felt shitty for a few days. i haven't been sick since Jan 2020 (when my entire family was sick and we now suspect that we possibly had covid) so it was not a fun experience.

my sister moved up to Bothell and we got to spend the night at her new place. it's ginormous with the tallest ceilings. PLUS they have a hot tub. and an amazing sushi place less than 10 minutes away.

B and i are starting to seriously think about buying a house??? maybe??? i know nothing about the house buying process except that it's a sellers market and house prices up here are astronomically high but it's something that we have been on-and-off talking about for a bit (because we *hate* renting) so once we figure out our next rental, we'll probably start doing some serious research.

[the-blind-geisha]

For the love letter requests, Noctis from XV, SFW. Flower choices: MISTLETOE - Kiss me, Affection, Difficulties, Sacred plant of India; HONEYSUCKLE (CORAL) - I Love You; JONQUIL - Love Me, Affection Returned, Desire, Sympathy

A/N: I'd be delighted to~! Thanks for the request, lovely~! Oh boy, did I just make a pandemic reference in this? I think I did. Peft.

Y/N,

It's so hard for me to write these letters. I know, I know... I can hear you now, joking I've never truly grown out of my shell. But I guess when it comes to anybody's opinion of me, yours is what matters the most to me. I can look out my window at the rows of lights and just wonder how you're doing. Easily, I can pinpoint exactly where you live and in my heart, I wish I could just go there.

Did I tell you I thought about doing that before? I had seriously considered going to your bedroom window and being that creepy guy you always joke about in fiction and fantasy throwing rocks at the window to get the girl's attention. I guess, deep down, I thought that it would be funny to act out that scene that annoys you so much just to see you laugh for a moment.

Times have been hard after that elemental container exploded and has made your area of the city nearly unbearable for you, but I promise, things will get better. We're working on it so the harsh icy chill in the air doesn't spread throughout Insomnia, making the air unbreathable without aid. I just kind of wish you weren't stuck in isolation. I kind of wish... I could be selfish and risk it just to pull you out of the danger zone.

I know you continue to tell me you're fine, but I don't know. I want there to be more I could do.

I miss you, y/n. I miss talking to you face-to-face and just being a nerd about things I can't really talk to Ignis and the others about. I know there's Prompto, but he's not you. I shouldn't be selfish. I do get to hear your voice every now and again when we talk over the phone or voice chat online, but I want to hug you again. I want to feel your body in my arms and hear you laugh without the phone or anything else distorting it.

So this is kind of forward of me, but I want to kiss you, y/n. I know I get all weird whenever I am asked to do such things, but I don't know. I worry I'm not that good and you're secretly only putting up with me because you do care about me deep down. You're being honest, right? You do love me and everything I do for you, yeah?

I guess this unexpected isolation for the both of us has made things hard for me. I'm always second guessing myself and impostor syndrome just comes down hard. I don't want you to suddenly find somebody else because I'm not there for you during this rough time. I want to be there and be stuck in that room with you. I want to sit on the bed with you, finding reprieve in your arms as I listen to your words you speak just hum in your chest.

Can't I have that? Why does it feel like I'm not allowed something others take for granted?

I'm whining again, aren't I? Sorry about that. Again, this quarantine you have to endure sucks. But, if I do risk going out there to grab you, y/n, will you stay with me in the Citadel? I love you so damn much, and it just hurts not having you here. All those times I got to spend with you... yeah... now that I think about it, I did take you for granted too, didn't I?

Well, not anymore. The moment I am able, I am going to spoil the hell out of you. I'll give you anything you want or ask for. Just let me be the one to be spoiled in having you in my arms again, y/n. There's so many things I want to tell you in person that I feel writing it in this letter would be unfair. I want to show you how I feel—in person.

So if you hear a random knock or something outside your window, be sure to let me in. I'm sure it's going to be me.

Take care, and know that I love you with all of my heart.

Noctis Lucis Caelum

#special nerd boi #noctis lucis caelum #noctis lucis caelum x reader #noctis love letter #ffxv #ff15 #final fantasy xv #final fantasy 15 #final fantasy xv insert #ffxv fanfic #love letter #request #mywriting #oreana writes #strongheartmaid

[breelandwalker]

So, my boyfriend and i are from different countries and we haven't seen each other for almost 2 years. We agreed to meet each other in my country but then he said he couldn't because of his circumstances that turned out to be not supportive at all of him travelling to meet me. Is there any spell or anything i can do to make him come meet me? Or maybe help him with his problems (Financial problems, his family won't let him travel) so he can be able to travel?? we really miss each other and we're in deep sorrow because of our condition.

Oh honeybunny, that’s awful! My husband and I did the long-distance thing for a while, and I remember how hard that could be. I can only imagine how much worse it is nowadays.

This doesn’t sound like a lack of desire or willingness, but more of a Life Is Intervening problem. And there are plenty of spells for that! You can certainly cast spells to bring him more money, if that’s what he needs, and spells for safety, since traveling is very dangerous right now.

And on a practical note, please make sure both of you are being realistic about the risks associated with meeting in person, especially if you need to travel internationally to do so. If his family is objecting to the trip, the pandemic probably has something to do with it.

I would recommend both of you getting tested before traveling and having all your PPE in place. Also, you may need to plan for quarantine or isolation when you arrive, depending on your relative locations, so account for that as well. And all this assumes that your two countries don’t have any travel bans in place.

(I wouldn’t recommend the trip under the current circumstances, but I also can’t stop you from doing it.)

Good luck to both of you, and please be safe!

#milkystarluv #In point of fact I haven't seen my parents since 2019 so it's not just you. #Bree answers your questions

[augmented-beauty]

Finals are essentially over for me, I have the time to rant now.

I'm sick of this country, and of the majorities of the others who inhabit it. We were doing fine after lockdown, cases we're gradually lowering (expect in my region, that still kind of has quite a lot of cases for a country that was supposed to be back to "normal"), life gradually went back to some sort of normality. In the last few days though, daily cases got pretty high again. Sure, nothing compared to the worst moments of the COVID emergency here in Italy, but again, pretty high for a country back to "normal". And you know why? Because it's full of ignorant fuckers in this fucked up Country. People who can't think straight and leave politics aside to respect rules (and many times, they're right-winged and vote/would vote for Salvini. Friendly reminder: he seems to like Trump a lot...and his voters are mostly ignorant, racists and homophobic fuckers...coincidences? I think not), people who complain about wearing face masks like it was some sort of incredible torture even if it's just for the time of groceries, people who even talk of " medical dictatorship" and fucking bullocks like that...

I'm fed up of sitting here with the fear of starting all over again with lockdown and all, throwing previous months of sacrifices and attention away completely. I'm sick of the irresponsible idiots who live in this country. An entire family tested positive violated their home quarantine, putting many people at risk (even infecting some, I believe); the son, 24 years old, even went to a party. A businessman back from Serbia who had a contact with a man tested positive and who later died, refused any sort of test or medical attention and went on with his life; in a matter of days, he started to feel sick and was tested positive; he too put many people at risk, and the region of Veneto is registering new cases, after hitting zero (0) for days and days and days. Discos were reopened some time ago, but no fucking body actually follows the rules; in many pics, you can see crowds of people who don't even wear a bloody mask, while unis are still shut down; in Riccione, a girl was tested positive, she was to a discotheque recently, 40 people were put in quarantine.

Long story short, out there, it's full of idiots who are living like there's no pandemic going on, like we didn't spend months in lockdown to prevent the hell that it's happening in Brasil or in the USA. Did they all forget about this?

That's no warzone pic. That's from Bergamo, a city in my region, and it was taken in March. It's a long story, with lots of mistakes and incompetence, and you have to blame our governor for that, but there's not much you need to know. So many cases were registered here, so many people died. They needed to take some bodies away to get cremated somewhere else, as Bergamo's cemetery was too full and they couldn't make it alone. And Bergamo is not exactly small. Yes, those army trucks are full of bodies, bodies mainly belonging to elder people, of people who contracted Coronavirus.

But you don't need to take a look at Bergamo. Hospitals all around the region and pretty much all around the country were at the verge of collapse, doctors and nurses were going through hellish, endless shifts, and at times they even lacked face masks and so on, making things dangerous for them. Many of them were tested positive at some point, and some others even died.

So, yeah, I can't understand how can those irresponsible, selfish idiots behave like this. How dare they? We're facing an economic crisis due to the lockdown. We were barely recovered from the 2008 crisis, and the small progress made is already a memory, pretty much. Lockdown was necessary to keep everyone safe, but economically speaking, we wouldn't survive a second one. And if we do go back to start, there won't be any government or Europe to blame for our ruination. Their stupidity would be the cause.

I didn't stress the fuck out for months during lockdown because of uni and online lessons and exams to get the fuck back in lockdown because of some fucking idiots who don't understand or don't care that the virus is still there.

I could go on for hours and hours to rant about social, educational, political problems that this country has. I already was sick of this all before the pandemic, but now, my patience is essentially dead. As days go by, my desire to escape leave the country grows more and more. I feel like there's no future here for me. Young people that ask about their paycheck are called pretentious here in Italy by some people. And when a young worker turns down a job because the paycheck is too low compared to the working hours, they're called lazy. Too bad that it's no tea time conversation, it's a job interview. And ignorance, intolerance, don't even get me started on misogyny...I'm sick of this. I feel like I don't belong here. I feel out of place. Worst part is I don't even know where I could go.

No matter where you're from, wear that fucking face mask, respect anti-covid rules...don't be an asshole.

#long post #like #really long #rant #a big ass rant #covid 19 #italy #coronavirus italy

[erin-hart]

“We can now read the report on COVID-19 that terrified every head of state from Boris Johnson to Donald Trump to the dictator of El Salvador so much that they ordered people to stay in their houses after lax attitudes in the beginning.

Here's a brief rundown...

The COVID-19 response team at Imperial College in London obtained what appears to be the first accurate dataset of infection and death rates from China, Korea, and Italy. They plugged those numbers into widely available epidemic modeling software and ran a simulation: what would happen if the United States did absolutely nothing -- if we treated COVID-19 like the flu, went about business as usual, and let the virus take its course?

Here's what would happen: 80% of Americans would get the disease. 0.9% of them would die. Between 4 and 8 percent of all Americans over the age of 70 would die. 2.2 million Americans would die from the virus itself.

It gets worse. Most people who are in danger of dying from COVID-19 need to be put on ventilators. 50% of those put on ventilators still die, but the other 50% live. But in an unmitigated epidemic, the need for ventilators would be 30 times the number of ventilators in the United States. Virtually no one who needed a ventilator would get one. 100% of patients who need ventilators would die if they didn't get one. So the actual death toll from the virus would be closer to 4 million Americans -- in a span of 3 months. 8-15% of all Americans over 70 would die.

How many people is 4 million Americans? It's more Americans than have died all at once from anything, ever. It's the population of Los Angeles. It's four times the number of Americans who died in the Civil War...on both sides combined. It's two-thirds as many people as died in the Holocaust.

Americans make up 4.4% of the world's population. So if we simply extrapolate these numbers to the rest of the world -- now we're getting into really fuzzy estimates, so the margin of error is pretty great here -- this gives us 90 million deaths globally from COVID-19. That's 15 Holocausts. That's 1.5 times as many people as died in World War II, over 12 years. This would take 3-6 months.

Now, it's unrealistic to assume that countries wouldn't do ANYTHING to fight the virus once people started dying. So the Imperial College team ran the numbers again, this time assuming a "mitigation" strategy. A mitigation strategy is pretty much what common sense would tell us to do: America places all symptomatic cases of the disease in isolation. It quarantines their families for 14 days. It orders all Americans over 70 to practice social distancing. This is what you've seen a lot of people talking about when they say we should "flatten the curve": try to slow the spread of the disease to the people most likely to die from it, to avoid overwhelming hospitals.

And it does flatten the curve -- but not nearly enough. The death rate from the disease is cut in half, but it still kills 1.1 million Americans all by itself. The peak need for ventilators falls by two-thirds, but it still exceeds the number of ventilators in the US by eight times, meaning most people who need ventilators still don't get them. That leaves the actual death toll in the US at right around 2 million deaths. The population of Houston. Two civil wars. One-third of the Holocaust. Globally, 45 million people die: 7.5 Holocausts, 3/4 of World War II. That's what happens if we use common sense: the worst death toll from a single cause since the Middle Ages.

Finally, the Imperial College team ran the numbers a third time, this time assuming a "suppression" strategy. In addition to isolating symptomatic cases and quarantining their family members, they also simulated social distancing for the entire population. All public gatherings and most workplaces shut down. Schools and universities close. (Note that these simulations assumed a realistic rate of adherence to these requirements, around 70-75% adherence, not that everyone follows them perfectly.) This is basically what we are seeing happen in the United States today.

This time it works! The death rate in the US peaks three weeks from now at a few thousand deaths, then goes down. We hit, but don't exceed (at least not by very much), the number of available ventilators. The nightmarish death tolls from the rest of the study disappear; COVID-19 goes down in the books as a bad flu instead of the Black Death.

But here's the catch: if we EVER relax these requirements before a vaccine is administered to the entire population, COVID-19 comes right back and kills millions of Americans in a few months, the same as before. The simulation does indicate that, after the first suppression period (lasting from now until July), we could probably lift restrictions for a month, followed by two more months of suppression, in a repeating pattern without triggering an outbreak or overwhelming the ventilator supply. If we staggered these suppression breaks based on local conditions, we might be able to do a bit better. But we simply cannot ever allow the virus to spread throughout the entire population in the way other viruses do, because it is just too deadly. If lots of people we know end up getting COVID-19, it means millions of Americans are dying. It simply can't be allowed to happen.

How quickly will a vaccine be here? Already, medical ethics have been pushed to the limit to deliver one. COVID-19 was first discovered a few months ago. Last week, three separate research teams announced they had developed vaccines. Yesterday, one of them (with FDA approval) injected its vaccine into a live person, without waiting for animal testing. Now, though, they have to monitor the test subject for fourteen months to make sure the vaccine is safe. This is the part of the testing that can't be rushed: the plan is to inoculate the entire human population, so if the vaccine itself turned out to be lethal for some reason, it could potentially kill all humans, which is a lot worse than 90 million deaths. Assuming the vaccine is safe and effective, it will still take several months to produce enough to inoculate the global population. For this reason, the Imperial College team estimated it will be about 18 months until the vaccine is available.

During those 18 months, things are going to be very difficult and very scary. Our economy and our society will be disrupted in profound ways. Worst of all, if the suppression policies actually work, it will feel like we are doing all this for nothing, because the infection and death rates will be very low. It's easy to get people to come together in common sacrifice in the middle of a war. It's very hard to get them to do so in a pandemic that looks invisible precisely because suppression methods are working. But that's exactly what we're going to have to do.”

The entire report is below...

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

[itmightneverbetherighttime]

...

#this whole new trend on ig of sharing a story & tagging people just reminds me how irrelevant i am #like yeah maybe i am exaggerating #but #it just makes me feel pretty fucking much like the outcast #once again and as always #like i know a lot of people but i'm really not a part of any group of friends #like everyone has their inside jokes & secrets & funny stories #but i'm just standing there watching everyone else have fun #yes this is pretty much stupid af #it's not like we're in quarantine because of a dangerous pandemic... right? #this is stupid and i know it but guess what? #that won't stop me from feeling fucking lonely #as always #talking to the wall

[johnmichaelgeguera]

A WAY OUT OF CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS

Christmas. A time where we can enjoy various things. Spending time with family, peers, and loved ones. This time of the year, wherein we can enjoy many things ahead of us were truly fun. Buying gifts, eating outside, and spending your hard-earned money for yourself. Or how it's suppose to be. Due to the pandemic, many restrictions were placed in celebrating this kind of event. Many people can't get out that much and we can't publicly celebrate this event because of tue fear of getting the COVID-19. The government really put us in a tough spot because of this. But we can't argue that this is for our own good, right? So now, this Christmas, the hope of getting back to the original Christmas was present in the eyes of our fellow citizens. The cases of COVID-19 were declining and the restrictions placed upon us were not that severe anymore unlike the previous year. The hope of going outside with the family, eating together, buying gifts, and enjoying romance for the youth. That is what some of us were hoping for. I, for one, were hoping for the same thing to be back. I am hoping that this year, we can enjoy our time together with those who are precious to us.

NARRATIVE ABOUT PANDEMIC

Pandemic. Just this one word makes us all become stressed out. Because of the COVID-19, our country became a place where it is dangerous to go outside because of the fear of getting the said virus. For the previous year, we were in a tight quarantine because of the cases increasing and we can't do much work because of it. We can't go outside, work in a proper way, study in a proper way. We're all stuck in our homes doing nothing, thinking if we can survive this predicament. Months, perhaps a year had passed and the cases were getting a decline and we can now go outside with the proper protective measures to COVID-19. The alert level was now at 2 so we can now worry less. As for me, after the new alert level was turned into 2, I still stayed at home. If I were to be asked what is the most happiest moment that I got to experience after the alert level 2 was declared, I'll said the I am happe that I got to stay at my home all day doing things that I liked. You see, I love staying home. I don't like going outside that much and social interaction was a task that I avoided the most. So for me, staying at home was the most happiest thing that I got to experience throughout the whole pandemic period.

[bentonpena]

We Don't Have the Words for What We're Living Through

We Don't Have the Words for What We're Living Through https://bit.ly/3cQaMCE

Coronavirus Roundtable

Coronavirus RoundtableWe're here to discuss news, rumors, questions, and facts about this pandemic as we live through it.

“Quarantine” was never quite right. “Reopening” isn’t an accurate term either. What we’re going through as a society is unprecedented, and we do not have the words to describe it. I think that’s because we can’t name that which we can barely wrap our minds around.

I first recall hearing the term social distancing in the context of Chinese officials canceling New Year celebrations in February. It felt like a bird’s-eye view kind of term, something you would apply as you’re looking down on an ant colony. By March, the preferred term was physical distancing, a recognition that we aren’t trying to disrupt social connections, just physical proximity. Certainly most of us are staying at home and away from other people as much as possible, but physical distancing still feels less than a fit for total societal upheaval.

What’s the word for staying at home?

Colloquially, a lot of us talk about quarantine: #QuarantineLife, quarantinis. The technical meaning of quarantine, as the word is currently used in public health, is sued for someone suspected of carrying an infectious agent who is not obviously sick yet. Meanwhile, somebody who is showing symptoms gets isolated.

And yet isolation is also an everyday word implying loneliness. So we talk about self-isolating even outside the context of illness. If you’re all by yourself in your apartment, you sure feel isolated.

Part of why we stay home is out of prudence, as well as managing our own personal tolerance for risk. But another aspect includes the government regulations that mandate, for example, the closure of businesses. These aren’t quite shelter-in-place orders, because that term comes from dangers like active shooters and potential radioactive fallout. A stay-at-home order is closer to the truth, but in many places it’s fine to go for a walk. It’s not quite right to call it a lockdown or a shutdown either. You get what I’m saying: We don’t have a word or phrase that communicates what we are and aren’t doing.

Six Things Our Readers Are Buying With Their Stimulus Checks

What’s the word for the thing that comes next?

Quarantine, in the health sense, is an on-or-off state. You are quarantined until either you get sick or a certain amount of time passes; then you are free. A lockdown ends when you unlock the door. A stay-at-home order can be lifted, at which point, one assumes, we no longer have to stay at home.

If we had managed to cut off the virus’s spread with a harsh two-week shutdown, it might have been possible to end it with a simple reopening. But that’s not what’s going to happen now.

Cities, states and countries will ease restrictions—if not now, then someday soon. We already make tradeoffs: hospitals and grocery stores are still open. Family members get to quarantine (or whatever we’re calling it) together. Even before we fully control the virus, some restrictions may have to be eased.

We’ll be living in a gray area, probably for years, during which society will not be fully locked down, yet won’t be fully open. This, too, will be unprecedented: Should restaurants reopen first, or last? Where should schools fall on the spectrum? When can hospitals resume elective procedures? If nobody is stopping you from visiting friends, when should you consider it safe to do so?

The word reopening is not enough to describe all of this, and I think giving it a single, open-and-shut name encourages us to think of it like a light switch. We were living our normal lives, and then suddenly everything went dark. But that doesn’t mean we can flip the switch back the other way just as suddenly.

We need a new word for this. The WHO talks about easing restrictions. Some governors speak of phases or levels.

What should we be calling all of this? Is there a better word for “staying at home when we can because we’re afraid of catching a deathly disease and/or doing what we can to comply with orders that some of us agree with and some of us don’t”? How about for “starting to be near people again while a deadly disease is still circulating”? What have you been calling either of these phenomena? If you could invent a new word, what would it be?

Internet via Lifehacker https://bit.ly/2VwWgKq April 27, 2020 at 02:59PM

#IFTTT #Feedly

[arabellaflynn]

I quit Facebook a few weeks ago. Shortly after the lockdown protests began in Michigan, I posted an explanation of what their mindset was, why the protests were inevitable, and how bad an idea it was to pretend we could keep them from happening. I was dog piled by a load of people trying to explain to me in tiny words why the best way to keep the novel coronavirus from spreading was to keep people inside and away from each other. The only reply I could give them was yes, I know what science says, I'm telling you what people are actually going to do. This exact thing has happened during every pandemic in recorded human history, up to and including the fictional Corrupted Blood debuff in World of Warcraft. 

It is a horrible idea to predicate your public health plans on the assumptions that 1) people will behave rationally all of the time if you just shout at them loudly enough, or 2) people looking at the same data set will always draw the same conclusions.

All things in life include an element of risk. I don't know about other places, but I don't personally remember a time when Americans were not bombarded with dire warnings about everything in their quotidian existence. Eat eggs, don't eat eggs, living in a city raises your risk of cancer, living in the country raises your risk of tick-borne diseases, coffee will make you live longer, coffee will kill you, salt is dangerous, fat is dangerous, carbs are dangerous, the sun is dangerous, breathing is dangerous.... and all of it is fed to us as if we have a moral imperative to do everything in our power to bring our risk of dying as close to zero as possible. It is acknowledged that the results of a lot of these studies are in conflict, and that it's difficult to sift through all the information to decide which one is more 'correct' about how to keep yourself safe. But never is there room for anyone to conclude that maybe they would rather have that thing in their life, than gamble on statistically raising the odds of living a few more years without it.

In the early days of the AIDS pandemic -- before PrEP, before HAART, after we had acknowledged that HIV was a thing and was killing people -- the only messaging was dire. Sex could kill you! Think twice before you get laid! The underlying assumption was that if you could get people to pause and remember the risk, of course they would decide not to go through with it. We do the same thing today with teenagers, in the secular version of abstinence-only sex education. It does not seem to have crossed anybody's mind at any point that anyone might go over the numbers and decide, yeah, that level of danger is acceptable to me. I want the possible positive outcomes of that action enough to risk the negative ones.

When people start doing just that -- and they always start doing that -- the reaction of the moral authorities is to start bolstering their side of the "rational" argument with fear. They may genuinely believe that their side holds more weight, but surely that will be more obvious if they help it along with a thumb on the scale. It is a known phenomenon that the scarier and more profound the consequences seem, the more probable they look, even if the odds have not changed. It is also a known phenomenon that people will weigh personal experience more heavily than abstract arguments featuring strangers. As anyone who has gone through the DARE program will attest, the more you (and your friends) do something "bad" and come out of it unscathed, the more you view anyone who claims to be an authority as being completely full of shit. Whether they are or not.

All of this is to say, riots were inevitable under the "abstinence-only" model of self-isolation and social distancing. They were as inevitable as the Summer of '69, and the failure of the War on Drugs. They made it a moral imperative to fight a basic human motivation (stay away from your loved ones, abstain from sex, don't seek out pleasurable drugs), "for the good of society". People can only deny basic drives and force themselves to suffer for so long. People still die from complications of AIDS, and they fuck anyway. People still ruin their lives over addictions, and they still take drugs. It was only a question of when it would happen, and what would tip it off.

In this case, the propaganda urging people to accept suffering "for the greater good" has blown up in their faces. All of the people in the streets have done the calculus and decided that overturning the system "for the greater good" is more important than avoiding the personal risk of catching COVID. Which, to be honest, a lot of them were becoming inured to anyway. 

We are tired of being told to be afraid, and that the correct way of dealing with this fear is to wall yourself off from the scary thing. I was horrified when I first saw advertisements for "Safr", a ride-sharing service whose selling point was that it was women-only. I mentioned this to a friend, and his reaction was oh of course, it's horrifying that rape culture is so entrenched that the only way to escape it is to establish your own alternate economy. And I said no, that's not it. The part I find upsetting is that we as a culture are normalizing the idea that the correct way of dealing with your personal anxieties is to just refuse to engage with anything in the outside world that makes you uncomfortable. I have seen this accusation lobbed (rightfully) at hyper-conservatives who complain about the push for diversity, but it is just as often true, in other contexts, of hard-line liberals. Men make you nervous? Don't interact with men. Afraid immigrants will take your job? Bar them from entry. Racist words in old books offend your moral sensibility? Demand to be excused from the class. Resent bisexuals for being able to "pass" as heteronormative? Form a group exclusive to gold-star gays and lesbians. 

You cannot pad, pillow, and gatekeep your world until nothing in your bubble makes you nervous. That's not how this works. I have not been more than half a mile from my house since March 13th. I have only once been farther than the garbage bins, and it freaked me out so badly I came back in after fifteen minutes. To be clear: I have a diagnosed anxiety disorder. This is very bad. The point where I normally yeet myself to the nearest emergency room came and went at least a month ago, and the only reason I didn't go was rampant plague. I am coherent enough to operate a keyboard right now because I had the foresight to order a metric fuckton of gray-market diazepines at the beginning of this whole shitshow. People with fewer resources and less internet savvy are drinking themselves blind, or just melting the fuck down.

And yet, this is the mindset the power structure has been sowing since at at least 2001. Stay in, stay insular. Cocoon yourself. Outside is a threat. The miasma will seep in and destroy your way of life. The authorities are special, they are allowed to roam freely -- but be afraid of other people, be afraid of their proximity, their difference, of the very air that they breathe. Be afraid of Black people, they break laws. Be afraid of strange people, they break quarantine. It is a matter of life and death, so it's okay to emotionally-blackmail your loved ones into doing the same. Be afraid of the police, if they scare you that means they're scaring your enemies away too!

We can't do this anymore. We're tired. If everything is deadly, then nothing is particularly deadly, and it doesn't matter. If all roads lead to ruin, then we're free to just pick which mess we want to be in. A life in unremitting isolation is not a life. It doesn't matter whether we're told it's because of a virus or because "other people" are dangerous animals. No one can do that. No one is going to do that. Have you not, like, met other humans? I don't know why anyone thought that was going to work.

I really don't know where all this is going, other than I fucking told you so, and maybe a warning that if you try to talk to me and I seem a little incoherent, it's only because I refuse to be sober right now for what I feel are completely valid mental health reasons. For the record, I am 8-10 miles outside of the parts of Boston that are intermittently on fire, on the north side of the river, in a very calm suburb where absolutely nothing is happening. The local police force consists of like three bored cops, who spend most of their time attending traffic accidents and telling drunk teenagers to go home. The most violence I have seen in the past few weeks are the squirrels outside my window squabbling over ownership of the pine tree.

The rat is handling this much better. He was chittering his fool head off, loudly, for almost an hour after I turned the lights out last night. I finally went over there to make sure his unbridled joy wasn't because somehow gotten hold of an entire chocolate bar. No; Durnik was just settled down in a HAMMOCK, and it was COMFY, and this made him so HAPPY he had to announce it. I fed him half of a pitted medjool date, making him even happier, and went back to bed.

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