You'll love this one...!! A book club & more discussion
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Watcha' Doing - 2020
I saw pictures of that Sandra! Made us shake our heads too. You want to avoid many people being close together and then make them stand with hundreds in a room for hours..
Kristie wrote: "I was thinking about the people that run out (or come close to) of toilet paper right now and how difficult it would be to find that basic necessity, Sandra."We had 5 or 6 rolls left, and now I brought a pack of 12. Sounds like a lot but keep in mind we are 10.
I could have brought 2 packs, but they had only 4 boxes, I I know lot of people was in the same situation of us. No hoarding.
Peggy wrote: "I saw pictures of that Sandra! Made us shake our heads too. You want to avoid many people being close together and then make them stand with hundreds in a room for hours.."It is stupid, right? Americans in Europe were kind of forced to come back, since you don't know what is going to happen with all of this travel bans. Is a lot of people coming from Europe, so I'm sure many are sick or have been exposed. And then you left them all together, very close to each other for hours????
Well I think my state has gone mad. They have closed everything. Illinose now has closed all bars and restaurants. It is insane.
Alberta has closed the schools & daycares. I don't think bars/restaurants are closed yet. Up until now, all cases in Alberta were travel related. But over the weekend, 7 cases were linked to a single event in Calgary. Two other cases have unknown origin. These two factors were what precipitated the school closures.
I ordered groceries online and will pick up tonight. I wonder how much of it will not be filled.
Ireland is also playing it carefully. All bars closed last light. SHOCK, HORROR - ST. PATRICKS DAY IS TOMORROW!!!!!We are experiencing the same things as you are all reporting. Apart from you Sarah. I don't blame you for worrying but I doubt that in in any of our countries these measures will do much to change the course of the virus.
We are hoping here that the disease will stop at the border LOL
We had a live 'address to the nation' from our prime minister today. Last time that happened was in the 70s. He explained again the need for the current measures, but also implied that this can take months and not weeks. I can't wrap my head around the fact that there are still people who think this is all just overreacting and think the rules don't apply to them. Or who stretch it to the limits.
I agree Peggy! I've bumped into a few people who think it's all a massive overreaction and it does my head in. My mum was just carrying on her business hoping it would all be over by the weekend so she could come to visit me for mother's day. We had to have a difficult conversation at the weekend so she understood the situation more fully, especially as she has COPD! I couldn't handle being the one to give her the virus if anything happened to her. I made the decision today to stop seeing face to face clients at my clinic and see clients via Skype instead. It's going to be a difficult few months financially as well as everything else. But I can't risk it with my asthma. It was a hard decision to make and I went back and forth a lot over the weekend with it.
Boris has just brought in some voluntary self distancing measures but nothing all that concrete as yet. Hopefully that will change this week.
I spoke to a friend in Northern Ireland earlier as she mentioned that she knows someone who just came back from Lanzarote and 3 of the people she flew back with are in intensive care at the moment. I know a few people self isolating as they have symptoms, including a couple clients. A man died in Bristol over the weekend. It's all getting a little too close for comfort.
I had to laugh when I saw the pubs in Ireland were closing. My friend also said they were discouraging people from going to mass too!!! That made me laugh.
I think it's wise Sarah, to stick to skype contact with your clients. Hopefully it will be alright financially.We practiced using MS Teams today for teaching.
We are also going to postpone our April holiday. We'll wait for a few more days but we're figuring out what the best alternatives are. My holiday in October is an option, but Rob's not sure he can get that week off. I hope it's all over by then! Otherwise perhaps around Christmas, but we'd have to go to another destination. I feel a bit bad worrying about things like holidays given the state the world is in right now..
I think you did the right thing, Sarah. It's not worth the risk specially in you condition. You had a couple of bad winters, if I remember right. Imagine if you catch this virus. And considering some people are not being careful enough, you can't trust you won't be exposed. This is going so fast...I am still seeing lot of people doubting the seriousness of this. I had my doubts at the beginning (we discussed it here), but I think we all had more than enough proof at this point. What is happening in Italy is heart breaking. And Spain is in its way there.
We are quarantined here at home. It's not only that everything in the real world was closed or cancelled, but that, as I said before, my daughter arrived from Europe yesterday and it is not only mandatory but the right thing to do. I have provisions for the 10 of us for 2 weeks, and I have cancelled everything we had scheduled.
Peggy, I am not surprised if this last months, really. I read this morning that some primary studies on Chinese people who was sick and recovered showed that the virus was still in the body after the recovery up to 5 weeks. The average was 20 days, but in one case in particular the virus was present and potentially contagious after 37 days. So I guess the 2 weeks suggested are soon going to be short, and longer self-isolation periods are going to be recommended.
I still can't believe how we put ourselves in this situation...
Sarah wrote: "I agree Peggy! I've bumped into a few people who think it's all a massive overreaction and it does my head in. My mum was just carrying on her business hoping it would all be over by the weekend so..."Sarah, mass has actually been cancelled in the republic until tye end of march. I saw on the news on sunday that a number of priests were filming themselves on webcams and saying mass to an empty church! The pope has given this the green light 😁
I picked up my order tonight and half of it wasn't filled. I was missing Tylenol, cat food, liquid hand soap, Kleenex, potato chips, and a chocolate Easter bunny (thought I would treat myself). I went to Costco earlier today and was dismayed by the number of kids that were there with their parents. School was cancelled in an effort to stop the spread of the virus. So the parents take them to Costco and most likely other stores and restaurants. People aren't taking it seriously.
Nope, they're not. I worry everyone here will flock to ikeas and garden centres on Saturday, because they're still open and will make a sort of day out. Many countries lock down partly because people can't take responsibility and still gather in places that are not closed.
Our prime minister explained yesterday that we don't want lockdown as apparently that increases chances for a country that the virus will come back. We're social distancing but not closing everything to flatten the curve and build herd immunity. I hope people understand and behave so that the goverment doesn't feel like they should close everything after all.
Yes, our PM has said the same thing about closing schools, but there's a big push from the general public to shut everything down. It's hard to know what is the right thing to do. I am staying away from people as much as possible. It's a bit hard, standing in supermarket lines. Many schools here are closing the libraries, and not permitting any borrowing.
Our governments's line was herd immunity too. And a recent report published yesterday was very damming of it and showed that if we carried out the measures they had proposed to obtain that, 250000 would die with 8x demand on intensive care beds. So yesterday, our government did a u turn. Still no schools shut but i think they will be by the end of the week. They stated that over 70s and those under 70 with certain health conditions are to practise social distancing for 12 weeks. So i feel justified in my decision to stop seeing face to face clients. I was worried i was overreacting.
Please include Health care workers in your prayers. The demands on them at this time are horrific. Here they are being made to work more hours. One of my good friends is a doctor. He has made the choice to stay with 3 other doctors for the duration. This will allow him to stay closer to the hospital while limiting the chance he could expose his wife and children.. We are keeping safe with social isolation. He cant.
The herd immunity idea is ridiculous and criminally dangerous. I yelled at the tv when I saw Johnson had said that.Our Foreign Affairs department has just issued advice tonight for all Aussies travelling to come home. They have a map of the world on their website marking their travel advice, and for the first time ever the entire map is marked "reconsider your travel" and "do not travel".
We're still open at the moment but I have spent the first few days of the new job trying to work out how we move everything online to teach if we have to. And to see how I set up my new team work from home if needed. We're expecting shutdown in the next week or so.
I think we will have a shutdown here to try and stop the peak of the pandemic (but probably too late as the Aus Gov is incompetent). And then we will have people drip back on to campus, first staff who can't work from home, then the rest, then eventually students.
But everything I've been hearing and reading is suggesting this isn't a short thing, and may take over 12 months to sort out properly. The Spanish flu took around that amount of time so people are seeing that as a precedent.
That's the numbers I've heard Sarah for the UK. They're predicting about 50 000 deaths here out of our 25mil.
It's good you have time to figure out the online stuff Rus. Here it was quite sudden, as it was announced on Thursday evening that we should stay closed starting the next day. I think systems had been tested earlier to see if they could handle many people working from home, but the actual program to use for online teaching was only decided on yesterday. It's been quite stressful actually! Just to figure it all out with MS Teams (which is what we'll be using), be there for the students.. and as I'm one of the coordinators of the whole thesis thing, lots of questions from teachers and students about what to do as many students cannot conduct their research right now. I think for the 4th year students we have it all sorted out now with the online communities.
Good in some ways, I agree. We have an online Moodle they have to use for classes already, so they can watch lectures through that. We're looking at Zoom for tutorials. We're trying Microsoft Teams for admin work to see how we go.It's lab work for skeletal analysis or archaeology digging skills (still learning the lingo lol) that will be hard to translate.
Yes, I can imagine some things simply can't be done only online.
I've also seen where people are saying that it is a political hoax and are throwing out all sorts of conspiracy theories. Can we just pull their voter registration cards? Henry - who is essential personnel on the military base and has to report to work and nonessential personnel are working from home - has a "washing" protocol that he is now following before he can step foot in our house so he doesn't possibly get me contaminated. He doesn't even work in the health field. The military is not messing around with this.
You'll always have those people... I haven't read anything about hoaxes here.I did just read that 50.000 masks were stolen from a medical storage facility in Cologne. Who even gets that idea?! Hospitals are also saying that stuff gets stolen, like masks and desinfectants and stuff. Not in huge numbers, but enough to get noticed.
On a cheery, non-corona note:I went to the hairdresser last Friday and on my way there I noticed a woman lying on the sidewalk, with one older woman standing next to her, and a younger person watching. I asked what happened and if they needed help, and apparently the woman (in her 60s) fell off her bike and she couldn't move her leg anymore. She wasn't really in pain, and they were trying to call her husband. I asked if shouldn't call emergency services if she couldn't move, and then it was decided that the other lady would call the GP emergency number. They told her they couldn't send anyone and that she should get in a car and come to the GP. However, the fallen lady was very afraid to move and was sure something was seriously wrong with her knee. Another girl came, who was a nurse, she asked some questions, said it wasn't that serious, and continued on. We then called the ambulance, and it took about 20 minutes before they got there. All in all, I was with the lady for about 40 minutes (and she had been on the ground for much longer, as she had fallen behind a car and for a while nobody noticed her). We chatted for a bit about where we lived, worked etc., about corona of course, and she asked my name. When the ambulance came I left and went to my hairdresser.
Today she left a voicemail on my work number. She had remembered my name and where I worked, called my university, and got my number. I just called her back and we chatted for 30 minutes. Everything's fine with her. In the end she asked my address because she wanted to bring me something to thank me. I told her several times that that was not necessary, but she really wanted to.
She also said: 'Those two girls who were nurses were of no help, they pretended they were doctors and left. But I was really glad you were there, staying calm and chatting with me, and being there until the ambulance arrived'.
Lol, when I was there I felt so useless because I had no clue what to do except talk and distract her a bit, and I wished I was like those nurses and could actually feel her knee and say something useful and calming.
Yikes, long story.
That's a wonderful story, Peggy. You helped her to stay calm and focus on something else which brought down her stress level. That is everything.
That was kind of you to stay with that woman, Peggy. Even though you felt helpless in the situation, you went a long way to making her feel cared for.
That's lovely to hear Peggy!Thanks guys. @Sandra - yes that's right, I had bad bouts of flu the last couple of winters, so yes, it makes sense to do this.
I had some lovely news too. One of the clients that cancelled actually offered to continue paying me in the frequency they would normally because the coronavirus will affect my business and income whereas it won't theirs. How lovely is that?!
That's great Sarah!Restaurants are also offering to bring food at home, so if there are restaurants in my area doing that, I want to make use of that too. Just to make sure they have some income.
I also think it would be great if people who have things like classes or theatre shows cancelled don't go ask for refunds (as long as you can afford it yourself, of course), but just 'donate' the money, especially to small businesses.
That’s so nice, Peggy. 🥰 You were a big help to her! Glad your client if offering to continue paying, Sarah. That’s so thoughtful of her.
I love all of the positive stories of people helping others right now.
Peggy wrote: "That's great Sarah!Restaurants are also offering to bring food at home, so if there are restaurants in my area doing that, I want to make use of that too. Just to make sure they have some income...."
That's what we ended up doing with our tickets for the Shakespeare Festival. They had to close their entire spring season productions because half of their revenue is from field trips with schools. They are hoping to reopen for summer, bu that's iffy too. We don't know when we would be able to go with other obligations, so we donated our tickets because we don't want them to close their doors forever. Every little bit helps.
Peggy, I can't believe those nusres didn't stay with the patient! The only mitigating circumstances would be it they were on their way to work. She was very lucky that a kind person like you walked by. Well done :-)Over here it's a very very bleak Paddys Day. It's a national holiday but no one is stirring. Not even any kids playing outside. I'm very glad our pubs are closed. As someone was saying earlier, people just don't observe social distancing - specially after a few drinks. Loads of social media videos going around early this week about behaviour in pubs and nobody was keeping their distance.
The government is going to pay private sector workers, and the self employed, 230 euro per week to keep their jobs open (actually they bay it to the employer to keep the job open). Anyone who gets the virus will get 305. Pete is working from home for 2 weeks but I don't think that can go on indefinitely. It doesn't seem fair that all public sector workers are getting their full salary. Something needs to be done to even things more even.
On a happy note, the e download service in our library has a ton of new books including loads from my wishlist. The government must have thrown money at them as a clear may of allowing people to read (listen). Such a shame I can only take out 5 books ;-o
I was in the supermarket and there were signs to keep 1.5m distance, but nobody seems to take care of that. Except me. But if I keep 1.5m distance from the person in front of me, and the person behind me moves in, I can't keep that distance from him too!Our goverment is also announcing measures tonight for all those companies that have closed, are in danger of going bankrupt, and people who lose their jobs. I read an open letter from someone in health care that that is great, but what about them? Health care people are underpaid and have been for a long time, yet now they are expected to continue to work under these circumstances for the same pay, while I don't know how many millions of euros are made available for companies etc. within a day. I know you can't really compare it and that it's complicated, but still, I can imagine how they must feel. It's a criticism of our current goverment that they side too much with big companies and economics, and not so much with the poorer people and healthcare and education etc.
I do hope that all those people with low-paid jobs who are now called 'vital' (health care, public transport, cleaners, truck drivers, garbage men..) will be rewarded when this is all over.
Oh, and with regard to your library comment: maybe this is what will get all the kids reading again!
UNESCO also made lots of new stuff available to the public through it World Digital Library:https://www.wdl.org/en/
Peggy wrote: "Oh, and with regard to your library comment: maybe this is what will get all the kids reading again!"My kids are all good readers, but right now they are reading insanely. I brought from the library (before it closed) 10 book in the My Weird School series for my 9 years old, and he read all of them already!
I'm not allowing more screen time, so they have lot of free time. Next Monday school start with the online classes, so I guess they will get more to do. I am just scared how I will manage all that "homeschooling".
In times of crisis the true nature of persons comes out. I've got the worst day today.
You'll manage Sandra! Oh no Saar.. what happened?
It's just something stupid or silly, but for me, I'm just sad about what happened. My pony is stabled 5 minutes from my home and I've been there for 15 years. Now, with corona there are measures that are taken there, which I totally understand, no doubt about that. The owner of the stables asked me when I planned on coming to see Lambic (my pony). I give her the hours and days, but some days/hours were not possible, so I gave other and asking if she wanted to take into account that I work shifts in health care, so my working hours/days are different every week. The next day I got a message from her saying that I was only allowed to go 4 days a week. Before that I said that I was only planning on not going on Wednesday. So, I said that I'm not going on Saterday also, but that wasn't good. I was getting annoyed (but still polite and understanding) and said to her that I normally came every day without seeing another person, so that wasn't a problem and I feed him myself. She got mad and saying that she was making the rules and that I couldn't come on Wednesday and in the weekends. That I should come when it's not that full of other people. I apologised (I don't know why, because I wasn't mad or so) and then she told me that she find my reaction bad, that I've got no respect for them and so on...I mean, come on...Normally the ostheopate had to come for Lambic, because he's stiff and limping and I've read on our group on Facebook that there can't be any external persons at the stable, so I had to cancel that appointment, even if he's in pain. Today I've come to a post on the Facebook group where she called me (without naming me) someone who does what she wants, who has a sour face that hangs on the bottom of the ground, that has no respect for the rules,...and someone refered to me that 'from donkeys you can't make racehorses' (that's a Dutch saying). I was shocked, but replied very politely, but as expected, no one from the group reacted to it. Since August last year everything has changed at the stable. The owner forms a little group with some other horse owners and they are very tight together and I'm left behind.I mean, I'm 37 and I know it shouldn't bother me, but as an introvert it's hard to make friends and I know this may sound stupid, but I only have one best friend. Besides that my pony means everything to me and I know that I hate changes and I get irritated about it, this whole reaction of the stable owner was out of place.
Sorry for me going on...I know there are more important things now. I just wanted to vent.
That reaction from the stable owner sounds completely unnecessary, Saar. I guess this whole situation is starting to stress people out.
I don't know. This has been going on for months now. Maybe her husband overheard the conversation that I had with another horse owner who finds the vibe that hangs there also changed for months now. But I dind't said anything bad, just the things I've said in my recent post above. He said that he's moving away with his horse, because of all the things happening. He's in his late 60's and I'm going to miss him and his horse.
Big hug Saar! That sucks and is not good behavior, corona or no.
Thanks, Peggy, I think that I won't see my horse for a couple of weeks now, as for now, Belgium is officially in lockdown. until 5th April..The governement is promoting activities in open air, but not in group, except for families. But I don't think that they will aplly that at the stable.From now on everything is closed, except banks, pharmacies, supermarkets, stores for animal food and bookstores (yay!)...But we still need to go to work and I don't know if the emergency care for children is canceled. We've got now cancelation for the children camps in the Easter holidays...
I'm sorry you were treated like that. That just isn't kind.
Thanks, Jayme. I still get messages from them where I can conclude from that they are lining as one front behind the stable owner that they are so glad that they take care of the horses. It's like I'm the bad woman here...
Renee wrote: "Well I think my state has gone mad. They have closed everything. Illinose now has closed all bars and restaurants. It is insane."Michigan did the same thing as of 3 pm yesterday. Our President of our university reiterated who can work from home should so today was my first day working from home. I swear if I have to listen to my new neighbor’s dog barking all the time (I should say yapping it appears to be a toy poodle), I will go crazy.
I like to have a little socializing during the day and just having the husband working from home isn’t going to help.
Lol, I can so relate to you Jannene! Both on the dog and the socializing. I'm glad to have some conference calls with colleagues and students.
As I have been working from home for the last 2 years, my work day is pretty much business as usual. BTW, Peggy, I use MS Teams a lot and it works fine, for messaging and conversation for up to 3 people. I never use it for more than that as we use a conferencing software for meetings. Evenings tough are weird. I have not been out for the last days. Some retail shops are closing. They have a online store and i do not think they have enough walk-in clients to make it worth staying open. Some restaurants and coffee places are close but for delivery or take out.
I will have to go out tomorrow as my parents need some stuff. I will get some grocery for myself at the same time as I still have stuff only for a few more days.
Someone told me that the price of gas has gone way down. Figures...
We have our first case(s) in my small city. Yesterday, they said there was 1 case in the North Zone. The North Zone covers my city and Jenn's but we're hundreds of miles apart, so it's a huge zone. We are now reporting 3 cases. Today, WestJet released the latest impacted flights. One flight was to Grande Prairie. So at least 1 of the cases is here. Likely all 3.
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You'll love this one...!! A book club & more
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I was thinking about the people that run out (or come close to) of toilet paper right now and how difficult it would be to find that basic necessity, Sandra. I was fortunate enough to have picked some up right before the craze so I'm good for a little while. Hopefully this won't last too long and people will have more access to toilet paper soon.
My grocery store has had to move the box that contains the sanitizing wipes for the carts further into the store near the registers. They had to put them where they can keep an eye on them.