Coronavirus. How is it affecting you?

The state Governor here has ordered a lockdown of the whole state. We're allowed to go out for groceries a couple times a week or for medical reasons. Some of the doctors are doing their appointments over the phone instead of in the office. Schools are shut down til mid April but I don't see them opening up until next school year. My friend will be keeping her son home for the rest of the school year even if they open back up. City hall in my city has shut down completely. They have a notice on their web site that everything will be done on line using designated web sites for deifferent departments. Web sites that are shut down and non fuctional. All businesses are ordered closed except grocery stores, mail, medical. The major grocery chains that were 24 hour are open from 7 am til 10. A lot of shelves are empty but not as much now as you would expect. Most meat and eggs are sold out except for the big slabs of ribs, some pork and ham and steaks are plentiful. I think the stores are doubling their prices or at least raising them. I was actually surprised the things that were still available. Lot of fresh fruit and veggies, bread, milk, cheese, lunch meat, fish, some butter but not a lot and the only frozen stuff that was picked over was junk food. Their are limits on certain items.

It's ironic that the pick up and delivery options show available even if they show no available times but the shipping option is unavailable across the board when that would be the best option to offer customers. I had to switch cat food because only one chain (Kroger) carries the Abound that they are used to. I would have gladly paid shipping cost to have a standing order shipped to my house even after the crisis is over. I heard a report that all mail that requires a signature will be dropped of without any signature or verification until further notice.

I think if people had used some common sense things would be going smoother. People are acting like food and supplies will never be made again. Farmers will still run their farms, still need to sell their products for one. We have a local dairy farm that does deliveries and they are good with milk products as far as not running out and the other products that they carry they can get more often than not. It cost a little more for milk and stuff but half the year I order from them anyway because the quality is so much better than in the big chains. If people can just keep their head on straight they'll find there are ways to make things work in this bad situation.

On a humorous note, before the lockdown in Detroit the police stopped a guy from trying to sell toilet paper on the street for $50 a roll when it was still on the shelves.
 
I guess I can update you here. Despite the US almost having 100,000 deaths and over 1.5 million cases, the states are opening up again. I live in TN and right now pretty much all restaurants are opened back up at full capacity. For my family, we are still committed to staying at home. I have a pretty good job with decent benefits from a work from home job. My wife's job is the hair industry, so we are sort of trying to figure all that out right now. I have mentioned that it might be a good idea to temporarily quit during her pregnancy (Oct 26).

Other than that we've had a lot of out door time. We've done a lot of hikes around the TN area. I'm mostly running outside every 2-3 days depending on the weather. I play WoW Classic on Tuesdays and Thursdays for raid night specifically.

We stick to local parks, but not indoor stuff.
 
I haven't yet had anything happen to me personally yet thankfully outside of working from home for two months now.

The states are reopening but I haven't heard anything from my employer about actually returning to work. I'm not really scared for myself but I'm taking care of my parents and they are high risk so I suppose we will see.
 
I'm still unsure when work will be opening up again. Things aren't looking great but it'll be a very different world for sure.

I've been hit with a sense of cabin fever in recent days and I went a little insane. I've started going out more regularly for walks in my local area, but I do refuse to go too far afield like some 'covidiots' who aren't adhering to social distancing while they crowd in parks and on beaches. I'm fine with those who are going out so long as they are careful and avoid people. But some aren't. If we leave it up to common sense then humanity falls flat sometimes.
We're now allowed 'unlimited travel' despite still being in a lighter lockdown, but with so many mixed messages people appear to have taken advantage of that.

A few of my more distant family members (my mom's uncle and aunt) have both caught the virus in care homes. The situation in care homes is particularly bad here.
My sister is in an uncomfortable situation where she has to now decide whether she should let her five year old go back to school in June. She's thinking no. The father of another child at the school is only 37 and is fighting for his life in intensive care from the virus, and she knows through being a teacher herself that it is difficult to keep children who are that young apart from each other.

But I'm okay myself. Aside from madness. :updown:
 
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Cut to (almost) one year later...

I run a bar so we've really felt the effects of what's been going on. Those last couple of weeks before the UK went into lockdown (almost exactly a year ago) were so quiet, it was strange. At first I remember the whole feeling that it was just something that was happening elsewhere, not here. Then suddenly it was here, and it was a sudden change for us all.

I spent the months of lockdown not really doing anything. We began decorating the spare bedroom, which took a longggg time. Luckily we had good weather so were able to spend a lot of time in the garden (also luckily we have a garden). My fiance moved into a hotel for a month as she's a nurse and I'm diabetic, and she was very conscious of bringing it home to me. It was a funny month - the hotel only did room service, most of which she didn't like, and didn't offer a laundry service so she was coming home every few days to wash her clothes and to get something decent to eat. Work reopened in July, but was never anywhere near as busy as before Covid. Then the government threw one thing after another at us and kept making things more and more difficult with things like the 10pm curfew. It honestly felt like the hospitality industry was being scapegoated for a lot of what happened in the second half of last year. We shut again when Manchester went into tier 3 in October and I haven't been in work since. We'll be opening again next month and I CANNOT WAIT.
 
COVID isn't really effecting me much. I'm extremely introverted and misanthropic, I prefer books, Wikipedia rabbit holes, and documentaries on YouTube to socializing with the local community of people. And retro games. That's always been that way though, even before COVID. That was just my natural evolution. Likewise, I prefer to spend most of my time alone.

Most of my socializing has either been either online, or at/through underground metal concerts. --Of which, okay yes, I miss the live underground metal scene, for as small as it is/was, there is a part of me that is deeply rooted in that from my teens, even though I've mostly outgrown it and done my time in it already. I'm more for stoner rock and shoegaze these days, anything trippy or floaty in atmosphere, it's relaxing to me. I just don't have the innate aggression in me that I did when I was a kid. ---I mean, of course that can be roused by a couple of shitheads, but that's besides the point. :ROFLMAO:

At my age, most of my friends puttered off into love, having kids and pursuing the "American Dream" that I don't personally believe is either real nor accessible to someone like me. So naturally, I pursued a career in Management because that seemed like the next most logical thing to do after being a burned out black metaller in my early 30s. Me listening to Emperor while I work, and my co-worker who likes K-Pop is like: "Dude are you okay??" And I'm just like "I'm fine, I can play this song." Music =/= to my mood. For that matter, fuck it, Charles Mingus it is. :ROFLMAO:


As for COVID??
The biggest issue was being out of work without a paycheck for 3 months. While in the meantime of that, I realized that because my schedule revolves around my job, when I don't have a job to get up to go to in the morning (because I'm single and have no children) I was more inclined to just be like: Fuck it, I'm gonna sleep in. Weeks went by, I lost track of time and was disoriented as Hell.
 
Just when I think I'll get used to it I don't for a variety of reasons.

The first quarantine in 2020 was pretty bad. The media didn't help at all and as I don't live alone there was quite a lot of fear around it. I don't think I've quite recovered still. My outlook is considerably darker as there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.
Then the second quarantine hit in late 2020. I was working from home as a tutor and I saw how it affected the productivity of my students. Some managed to adjust though others had concentration issues. I would work from my room ss I had quite a few classes and it was my first year, as a result I was quite stressed. i remember going to bed and just thinking about my job. It was like I was still at work.

As of this year, not that good. The self-testing has become a requirement for vaccinated people as well and I have to shell out money out of my own pocket for the tests and I'm not even making as much. It might be around 40 euros per month. Just before Christmas the covid cases sky-rocketed and they're still up. Two years now I have managed not too catch covid as far as I know but I'm required to teach in person now and one of my classes has already had a case and a student whose family member had covid. I hate this if I'm being honest.
 
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