My man. You know, as much as I sometimes miss the politics thread for having a place to discuss such things, it really did cause a lot of unnecessary stress between posters. I know at times we disagreed pretty heartily in there, and I apologize for any past tensions. I am finding you and I agree on A LOT of stuff in most other facets I've seen discussed here, and even then more often than not on politics. I'd raise my coffee mug to you, but I don't have any at the moment. Might go down and brew some more..I can't seem to shake off the brain fog today.

Also, yeah, I've been very respectful in most of my grocery and stocking stuff, but I bought like 4 pounds of coffee. Not going to risk running out with all this going on.

Well well well, and I thought you were okay. You're the reason I can't find any!! JK we are good for now, but I worry if I can't find more within a week or two I might have to find a new use for my back issues... JK

I would feel dirty wiping Land's porn tracing on my body. Time to bring a dark colored towel into the shower.

Isolation journal Day 16...

And my wife has started to do Cthulhu impersonations while she eats Gummi Worms...at least I hope that is all it was after listening to Levar Burton's Reading Rainbow reprisal, I swear he was reading the Necronimicon aloud...

-M

My wife is a banker, so an essential employee, and still working, so we aren't in a financial crush, just living within our means for now. I also got my first unemployment payment this week, so we're getting by, and I understand that we are among the lucky in that regard. We both experienced growing up rather poor and leaned the hard lessons of distinguishing between necessities and luxuries as kids, and how to make do without luxuries, and right now we have the necessities and that is all we can ask. And, I should still have my job waiting for me on the other side of it all, unless things get much worse and my employer closes down permanently, but I think chances of that are remote right now. So in that regard we are good, thankfully.

I've been spending my time trying to get to some of the home improvement (and hobby) projects that have been on hiatus since my hernia surgery a couple years back. I am trying to do all those things I kept saying I'd get to if/when I ever had the time or some time off from work to work on them, since I do have the time now, and I am trying to take what positives I can instead of dwelling on the negatives. I've got almost the entire upstairs painted, got some of the furniture pieces repainted or upscaled, and should have that phase done by the end of this week, which leaves constructing the built-in shelving units for the space next week. I spend a few hours each day working on the projects, a few on organizational stuff (getting comics and media cataloged, and ready to be shelved when I get the shelving units done), catching up on chores and spring cleaning, etc. and getting to spend some more time with my wife than usual (we usually work opposite shifts most days) and working my way through the pile of books, comics, movies, tv shows, music etc. I wanted to get to.

I hate the circumstances of how I got the time, I feel for those who are not as well-positioned economically to endure this as we are currently, I worry for those who are at risk as they do their jobs to get us through this, and I count my blessings as I try to make positive use of the time I suddenly have. When I start to get down, I think back to the stories my dad and grandfather told me of living through the Great Depression and World War II (my dad was born in '37) and what they had to endure and try to give myself some perspective. We are healthy. We have shelter and food. One of us is working and we both should be when this is over. There's a lot to deal with and it's hard. There's frustration, feelings of helplessness uncertainty and fear. There's sadness as I watch the news each day and see the verified cases and death toll. There's hope when I see acts of kindness, sacrifice, charity, selflessness, dedication and bravery. There's anger at seeing some of the stupidity, greed, selfishness and base attempts to exploit this for personal gain too. There are moments it all feels too much, but for now, we endure.

-M

I'm very interested to see how things will evolve in Sweden and the Netherlands. Social distancing is a logical measure, as it should reasonably slow the virus's spread and so reduce the strain on our collective health care systems. But does it actually work? I mean, models show that it could, and intuitively it's reasonable to assume that with fewer contacts we should have reduced transmission, but nothing beats an actual experiment. And an experiment requires a negative control, which Sweden can be if it sticks to its current strategy of moderate distancing.

One thing that puzzles me regarding the efficiency of social distancing, once a virus starts spreading in the community (and not just from travellers), is that in the admittedly limited sample of my province, many people suffer from flu-like symptoms. Among those who get tested because of those symptoms, most are negative for the coronavirus; their symptoms must be due to some other flu-like virus. And that worries me a little. How in tarnation did they get the flu? It's been three weeks, now, and everybody is keeping their distances and washing their hands... no virus, either SARS-cov2 or influenza, should be able to get to these folks. And yet they still get ill. Does that mean that isolation measures are still not strict enough? Or does that mean that if we assume a higher infectivity for the coronavirus than for the flu (which is what has been reported), most positive people for covid-19 are asymptomatic?

It's hard to analyze a dynamic situation when we're in the middle of it, and it's probably long after the epidemic has abated that we'll be able to draw a clear picture of it... and that's why I'm interested in places like Sweden, with more relaxed restrictions, and China, with downright draconian ones. We'll be able to compare strategies and global results.