How has COVID-19 affected you personally?

I started my teaching career in a fine PA boarding school you have probably competed against. There are students who graduated from 1984-1986 who remain dear friends to this day. I drink in the monthly alumni magazine cover to cover. I know all of the special traditions that your life there must be filled with, and how four years of those moments all culminate in the final weeks leading up to graduation rituals that are even more special than everything else. Moving out without even being able to say goodbye must have been terrible for you. But traditions are at the very heart of what a private school is all about. You may miss having your final months of classes there, but the bonds you've made will not weaken, and there is no doubt in my mind that even if it's in August, your school will celebrate your graduation with all the bells and whistles. For now, focus on staying well and helping your elderly relatives stay well--that's even more of a challenge than it is for the rest of us since you live in such a hotspot. Finish your coursework, as crazy as it may feel to do alone with a computer instead of with your friends. When all of this is over, you'll have your graduation, and it will only strengthen the bonds you have with your school and your friends throughout the rest of your life.

 

Being laid off from the zoo I work(ed?) at and having to relocate may have had a silver lining. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a couple job openings that I qualify for, and given that it's an organization I hope to work with once I have my Masters it could be a good way to get my foot in the door. There may also be relaxed reqs for pathology/morgue technition jobs which is another way for me to get into a job more relevant to my career interests.

 

Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. People in Corpus aren't taking this seriously. Guess I'll have to stick with Baywatch and Animal Crossing.

 

Thank you very much for those strong words, as it is definitely appreciated. I have no doubt that I will see many of my friends again and that this will all be a point to remember several months down the road.
And I certainly understand the civic and familial responsibilities that have been thrusted upon myself and all of us, and I hope to take it the most serious degree possible.
Thank you

 

I started making fabric masks. So I got that going on. Made one for me and my landlady, then a bunch of family members wanted some, and a few of my landlady's friends want one. My parents are offering to pay for supplies if I make some to donate to hospitals so I might do that.

 

I'm now out of school until at least May 1st. Since my school year would only be for about a month more, I'm calling it now, I'm gonna be out of school for the rest year.

 

I'm out of school until at least the end of April. Things are winding down here quite a bit, I suspect I actually WILL be back by then.

 

I thank you for this sincerely. It's much harder and time-consuming than we could have imagined and much, much, much harder than anyone else imagines. At least 50% of my time is dealing with online issues--students trying to use phones for their composition class, inadequate wifi speed, the complete and utter breakdown of BlackBoard with suddenly 100 times the users, lots of students ill with the same flu variant that has found me working from bed all day for the last eight days.... Another 25% of my time is reading email updates from every level of the huge bureaucracy, every day, with information we need to know. I shower, sleep, and work the rest of the day just to try to do what I used to do in a 2-hour class.

But after a while, when I've been at my desk for 8 hours and haven't even done anything with students yet, it's demoralizing, because we will not be even close to what is normally accomplished in a semester. The lesson each day seems to be to scale back even further. I thought this worrying might be alleviated somewhat by setting up a huge old desktop monitor and keeping it tuned to streaming elephant cams. I go hours forgetting it's even there.

I thank you for acknowledging us, because we are all trying SO hard to salvage this situation and make the best possible outcome for our students.

 

You're in high school, right? Yeah, I figure at some point schools are gonna cut their losses. Say you do go back May 1. Having missed so much school, it's gonna be damn near impossible to get the kids back on track. Even the good kids are going to struggle after such a long period of disruption, not to mention that with less than a month left of school, they'll be a lot less motivated. Especially if the standardized tests have been cancelled in your state/district. Nothing that happens in that month period will matter and the kids know it.

 

With the number of cases exploding exponentially in America so that the United States now have skyrocketed to have more cases than China in the span of a week, I fear that continuing education might soon not be a primary concern in America anymore. Especially in heavily affected regions, like New York where the outbreak is hellish and California. And that orange monstrosity in the White House who keeps on insisting the economic consequences are much worse than overwhelmed health care systems and people dying in droves and that the containment measures should be lifted quickly is definitely only making things worse. So yes, I fear for the havoc this virus is going to wreak in the United States.

Not that Europe is in great shape. Some countries (Spain, Italy, France) are still in very bad shape and things are not improving there. Others, like my own, are doing their best to prevent situations like those in Spain and Italy happening, but cases and deaths are nonetheless still rising quickly here. I hope we can avoid a total disaster in my country, but I still fear that it might come.

On a personal level I haven't slept well the last two nights. And my back hurts, probably due to a combination of my work at home spot not being ergonomically ideal, lack of sleep and probably some less than ideal positioning during the night.

 

I haven't followed this thread but something just happened that will have an effect on all American taxpayers (myself included). The House of Representatives just passed a bill that the Senate passed a couple days ago and the president is likely signing as I type this. Everyone who paid taxes last year and made less than $75,000 will get a $1,200 relief check and many businesses will get loans. Since I still have my job this will be a nice bonus. Of course for those who have lost their jobs, it may not be enough (especially if the restrictions stretch on for months).

 

With luck the expanded unemployment benefits will support both full- and part-time workers as well as gig workers It's all in there. Along with billions for corporations

 

I'm really struck by how rapidly the numbers are skyrocketing here. We now have more cases than anywhere in the world, including China. With celebrities dying and a friend's friend dying and Boris Johnson even contracting it, it's becoming more palpable that we are all going to touched by loss from this virus. I find myself thinking for the first time that I can no longer think of all my colleagues safely weathering this from home or even ZooChatters being safe behind their computers. The odds now are that someone on here that we've come to know and respect will succomb to this virus.

 

Things were doing ok until the millennials started bucking orders so I understand. CA and FL had to physically kick people off beaches in areas with a stay at home order. Indeed many people have been ignoring shelter in place orders which then gives the virus opportunity to spread. If people would just stay put this whole thing could be over much faster. Instead by being out and about unnecessarily they are prolonging shutdown which hurts everybody. It's really frustrating. Common sense and courtesy is not what it used to be.

 

It should be noted that the fact that more cases are being detected in the US will, in part, be due to the rapid increase in availability for testing. If much of the population is asymptomatic or at least have non-severe symptoms, then they won't know they have it unless they get tested. What's probably happened is most people who have/had it before never got tested so the figures were always lower than they really were, but now with a larger portion of people getting tested the known numbers have skyrocketed. That's not to say it hasn't spread, but that will definitely be a major factor.

~Thylo

 

With as many members as ZooChat has, it is almost a given that some of us will contract Covid-19 at some point (or perhaps already have). However a lot of people who contract Covid-19 only have mild symptoms, and quite a few more do get seriously ill but are able to survive and (mostly) recover. Given that some of us do belong to higher-risk categories, and that even previously healthy young people can get critically ill and die from Covid-19 (as the media have reported repeatedly as a warning), admittedly there is a possibility we might lose members of our community to it. But I would say there is plenty to be concerned about even before we get to extreme sad scenarios like losing members to this disease.

In any case I hope that and call on all ZooChat members to keep themselves and their loved ones as safe possible, to take the necessary sanitary precautions and to follow government rules including staying at home if required and possible. Please do not be among the people who are defying government orders or who don't have the common sense and decency to not put themselves or others at undue risk.

Many of us however probably have family members of friends who are elderly or belong to higher-risk categories, and there is a definite possibility members of ZooChat will lose family members or friends to Covid-19. Unfortunately under the current realities of this pandemic it is highly likely that many if not most of us at some point will know someone who became seriously ill or sadly succombed to Covid-19.

Even with the people who still have contact with her (home care nurse, household help, some family members) being careful and following the orders, and most of us only having contact with her via telephone, I still worry about my grandmother as she is 85 and already has quite a few health problems (though no related to lungs or heart).

Another family members I personally worry about somewhat is my cousin. She is a nurse and she works with Covid-19 patients - and her hospital like all hospitals in my country has seen a big surge in Covid-19 admissions in the last few days. The worst problems with regards to shortages of protective equipment for healthcare staff may have been partially resolved due to government action, and they certainly know what they are doing in the hospitals, but healthcare workers in the front line are always going to be at a substantially elevated risk during outbreaks, and we are already seeing that a substantial number of them are among the infected by or sadly even the deceased from Covid-19.

Here in Belgium on the last night cafés, bars, clubs and dine-in restaurants were allowed to be open before the beginning of soft lock-down, numerous places decided to last-minute organize what has become known as "lock-down parties" and a lot of people did attend those or went for a last night out for the time being, leading to the gathering of substantial crowds in these places (many of them young, though not only millenials took park in this unethical behavior). Unfortunately there has been quite a bit of spread in those circumstances, and just this week the media reported on some young people involved in those events having since ended up in the hospital, and some sadly are in an Intensive Care Unit or even on a ventilator now. Let that be a sober warning...

While a lot of people have the common sense to understand the necessity of and to follow the stay home and social distancing orders, there is sadly always going to be a substantial minority choosing to defy the rules. Tough enforcement on a substantial scale and harsh penalties are needed to crack down on those who refuse to act ethically and responsibly in these difficult times. Containing this epidemic and, as they say, flattening the curve, is going to be lengthy and difficult process as it is, but the actions of some idiots will not make it any easier - and these idiots cannot in my opinion be condemned and dealt with strongly enough.

 

If I've already been exposed to Covid-19 it likely would have been back in February, sometime between my trip to Dallas and the Chicago Comics & Entertainment Expo. I felt under the weather for about a week or so and a friend I saw at the convention remarked that I sounded very out of breath while talking...or it could have just been my seasonal allergies being terrible due to the weather we were having then. There's really no way to know for sure.

I do worry slightly if I haven't already been exposed because as someone with multiple chronic illnesses (including asthma) I'm considered "higher risk". I was actually planning on getting a surgery later this year to manage one of those chronic illnesses and improve my quality of life because my flare-ups are getting worse but haha it looks like that won't happen for a while now. Physically I'm pretty miserable because if I'm not having a migraine I'm struggling with the effects of my medication to manage the previously mentioned chronic illness failing. And I can't see my doctors since they're in another state :')

I wish there was a way to see if I've already been exposed and therefore am presumed immune. If there was a way to know for sure I'd be figuring out a way to get to the hospitals or funeral homes or medical examiner's office to help in any way I can. Morbid but it's needed, and I have experience with working with human remains so. My time for my skills to shine I suppose. I'm not necessarily worried about catching the disease from human remains because as far as we know corpses aren't a vector, it's more the risk of coming into contact with infected living individuals.

 

Your willingness to help is so admirable, but I'd be very cautious about assuming anything about this virus and immunity. There's a lot that is unknown about this virus, including how to make a vaccine, and there are viruses out there like varicella zoster that can recur; someone who had chicken pox is not immune from getting shingles later in life. Until it is proven without doubt--and with much further study--that humans do produce permanent antibodies, I'd strongly recommend you assume otherwise, especially given the conditions that render you high-risk.

 

One of the prime virologists here in Belgium, who is also a lead advisor to our government for dealing with this coronavirus and one of the prime scientific voices in the media, has stated that he thinks the antibodies to Sars-CoV-2 are not going to be permanent.

We have already learned this novel coronavirus is a really nasty one and I wouldn't assume anything about this virus with regards to immunity or risk until science has establish what is and isn't true, especially if you have known risk factors.