so natural for people to over react in crisis situations. that is good because often they are right. i would not let an older loved one go into a health establishment with the limited protections they have there unless it was already dire. health workers are more giving care comfort than actually saving lives at their own expense. a worthy thing to do but really is it. good luck with it all.

So sorry to hear about biggerwife. Caring so much is part of what makes her great at providing her services, but not being able to turn it off isn't good for her personally.

I don't mean this to sound flippant, but I can't think of the right wording: How about you and her sit on the deck this evening with some music in the background, a nice bottle of wine, try to enjoy the sunset and relax?

We do this as lot. Yesterday we walked the seawall when she was struggling. We talk a lot about how lucky we are to have what we have. It helps to shift your mind to that when possible.

keeping a strong mind is key in a tough spot. so both of you are doing it right . keep on tract and let no one get within ten feet of you.

if you feel you have to get within ten feet of people than you are risking your life as well as your loved ones and all the random people you may kill that you wont know about.

Just have her watch zero news, zero facebook, etc.

Can she call her family a bit more regularly so she feels more in touch with them?

She really wants to keep up with what is going on. She just needs to get news in small doses.

Yeah, she stays in touch pretty well. She walks with her dad (6 ft. apart) regularly and talks to the rest of her family a lot.

Random stuff:

Test results finally came back on the patient that was sent to the hospital. Negative. Whew. That's a big load off.

My wife was wearing a home-made mask yesterday and some other workers in the facility spotted it and started giving her a hard time about how she got one and they didn't. It got a little ugly. She tried to explain that a person she knew sewed it, but it didn't seem to register.

I think the city is about to announce a bigger initiative that would probably shut work down. Not really sure yet.

Random coronavirus stuff

My wife occasionally meets her son for dinner, or a walk. He's sort of been avoiding her lately but she met him last night. Turns out he has been sick with the typical coronavirus symptoms. He hasn't been tested, but biggerwife is convinced he has (or had) it. Somewhat interesting is the fact that his liive-in girlfriend is an ER nurse. She doesn't have it. I'm somewhat skeptical that he had the virus.

The maintenance guy at work has had a nasty dry cough for a couple of days. They sent him home. That's all I know.

They are keeping the bait shop open. We haven't officially been designated essential but you don't have to for the latest city/county guideline. You just have to keep customers 6' apart, which we will do...somehow.

sounds like your family isnt doing the right things and are lax like most of the others.

and its ten feet. the virus can shoot out 6 feet and remain in the air for some period of time.

Yeah, this is a good example of people who probably think they are doing a "very good job" but doing a very mediocre or poor job.

You really shouldn't be going into work imo. Your wife shouldn't either unless she is essential. You guys shouldn't be seeing anyone in-person either.

This isn't just about yourselves. By staying open, the owner of your business is actually making a decision that will kill X amount of people who wouldn't have otherwise died. It is very hard to wrap one's mind around that. But that's actually what's happening. He (or you) won't know how many lives it ends up costing, but in the very near future (if not already) the chances of it costing more than 1 life is probably very likely.

This is an ethical (not legal) issue. You really will potentially save a life or lives by not going into work there. Many more if you can convince them to shut it down for a while.

I'm going to start this by defending my wife.

She IS designated as essential and she has the paperwork to back it up. The only people she is seeing outside of work are her father and her son. She is not going in their house. She texts them and they come out. They stay 6 feet away from each other while they walk. As far as the 10' thing, the CDC guidance is 6 feet. So, ragging on her will cease and desist in my blog.

Now, as far as me, fire away.

I'm not going to argue the ethics of everything I do. I will say that I don't agree with your post, Yugo. I actually don't agree with a lot of what is going on with the state of everything happening right now, but that's not what I care to blog about. I completely respect your opinion and understand why many people would think this, I just don't agree.

i think most of us are worried about you and your family and have concerns and feel the need to say them. hopefully they help and to also get it off our chests. i will let it be as i made my points. good luck.

Oh, I didn't really mean to rag on your wife at all. I apologize if it came across that way. I assumed she was probably designated essential but thought that perhaps she might not be. I should have tried to make that clearer.

As far as your conduct. Hmmm, in general I think you are doing ok. Going into work is supporting an enterprise that I think is conducting itself unethically - but it is not the same as having control over the store and keeping it open.

I also don't really want to argue about "a lot of what is going on with the state of everything happening right now." However, I felt at this point I should speak up to some degree on the store you work at. I certainly support enterprises that are doing unethical things, so my main thing is floating out that information on the chance that you could somehow help them close earlier rather than later (or find a way to do orders online and leave things out for people to pick up - something like that).

I completely agree with Ray Zee - I posted that because I do care about you and your family even though I have never met you and, to be honest, have only had limited interactions with you on this forum.

Whenever we read Loonee Balloonees my daughter says "Mr. Boat?" "What kind of name is Mr. Boat?!"

Oh, I didn't really mean to rag on your wife at all. I apologize if it came across that way. I assumed she was probably designated essential but thought that perhaps she might not be. I should have tried to make that clearer.

As far as your conduct. Hmmm, in general I think you are doing ok. Going into work is supporting an enterprise that I think is conducting itself unethically - but it is not the same as having control over the store and keeping it open.

I also don't really want to argue about "a lot of what is going on with the state of everything happening right now." However, I felt at this point I should speak up to some degree on the store you work at. I certainly support enterprises that are doing unethical things, so my main thing is floating out that information on the chance that you could somehow help them close earlier rather than later (or find a way to do orders online and leave things out for people to pick up - something like that).

I completely agree with Ray Zee - I posted that because I do care about you and your family even though I have never met you and, to be honest, have only had limited interactions with you on this forum.

Whenever we read Loonee Balloonees my daughter says "Mr. Boat?" "What kind of name is Mr. Boat?!"

Thanks guys. I sort of overreact when it comes to my wife.

I find some of these issues we are all grappling with very interesting on an intellectual level.

For instance, people toss out "well, people die in car accidents and we don't stop driving". It sounds really crass on one level but it is an important concept that society constantly deals with. At what point do we alter behavior based on the lives that might be lost either directly or indirectly due to that behavior. We have decided right now as a society that we will take drastic measures to prevent people from dying of this virus. But, for this discussion it seems valid to bring up that we don't do the same things for the flu. I'm not saying either approach is right or wrong. That's not my point. And, I realize the flu and coronavirus aren't the same animals. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole (or the car rabbit hole) at all. The are just different illustrations of how society deals with these sorts of dilemmas.

I also can see Yugo's point completely. I'm sure that there is a non-zero chance that my behavior might indirectly cause the loss of life. The chance is also probably less than 100%. So, how do we grapple with everything in between? It's a difficult question.

I'm still processing your comments on where I work. But I believe it ties in with the dilemmas I've outlined above. How do we figure out when to shutter and when not to? Or, how long?

Which brings up another question with all of this. I doubt seriously that this is eradicated any time soon. But, society-especially American society-will no doubt start pushing back on stay-at-home orders. It is inevitable. And there will be many on the other side saying it is too soon. How do we balance when we attempt to get back to normal?

I don't have any of the answers about how our society should deal with these things. It is unprecedented for our time and I don't think anyone knows the right answer. Undoubtedly, most have very strong opinions, but not the perfect answer. In fact, I'll go as far as to say there is no right answer. There will always be some behavior somewhere that will contribute to some non-zero number of deaths. I believe every individual sees things differently and, like a lot of things, I am trying to listen to everything coming in and try to parse my opinion without judging the opinions of others.

It's because this has the potential to kill a couple million people in the US AND put us into some kind of great depression. It's not one or the other, both are potentially on the table here. It simply is a much bigger potential deal than the flu or car accidents.

Your situation is somewhat unclear (although I assume you do not *need* the money, which, again to me, makes it a clear call to just stay at home instead). But the owner of the shop you work for really is being unethical. Keeping any sort of retail shop open "normally" will cost live(s). And yes, every decision maker is grappling with when to shutter, when not to, etc. But right now businesses should shutter for some amount of time or conduct business without letting humans get within 6-10 feet of each other. The trade-off will never save more lives for the lost economic dollars than around now (of course, we can't pinpoint which exact dates are best until much later).

The reason I am coming down so black and white here is not because there is no grey area. There is definitely a grey area on many things. For instance, take daycare. Ours is opening back up. And it probably should...but I really wish it was *only* for parents who have essential positions. I think they are just taking any kids. So now, I am making the decision on what to do - but I definitely should not put my kids back in daycare (which, yes, I legally have to pay for) in terms of my duty to the community.

I'm not going to lie. We have grandparents helping some days and the last 2 weeks of having a 4 year old and 10 month old at home has been...taxing. So not only is it tempting, but I know many people *will* send their kids back to daycare when they really could have found a way to keep them home.

It is unfortunate that individuals need to actually be stepping up to make most of these decision - this is very clearly one of the main reasons to have government at all. They can work with actual experts on this to figure out optimal timing (which in hindsight will of course not be optimal but MUCH better than what a non-expert *feels* is right) and then lead.

I'll respond later, but I'd be interested to hear wellnameds take on all of this.

I just happened to see my name pop up in the subscribed threads on tapatalk. I haven't been following this thread very well lately, but I'm flattered you'd want my opinion. I'll read through it more closely a little later.

Although I feel like if the question is how to model the costs/benefits of more or less drastic social distancing policies then I'm not sure I know the answers. I read this recently, which provides one perspective: https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2...carefully.html

It probably suffers from the same issue I always have: arguing both sides a little bit (i.e. we need to shutdown now but also need to try to avoid shutdowns in the future by being better prepared to act more effectively).

But I think it makes some sense to say that shelter in place orders are the panic button, and if we had been better prepared we might have been able to do more with less economic disruption. I also think it's likely true that we can't have a complete economic shutdown for a long enough time (months?) to completely eliminate the threat without even more disastrous consequences, so we will be forced to develop something like the "stringent protocols" the author mentions.

I also think it seems clear that the threat is severe enough (in comparison to the flu, or car accidents, or ...) that hitting the panic button was the only reasonable response once we'd gotten past the point where the South Korean model was possible. My state shutdown earlier than a lot of other states (especially relative to number of cases) and I think that was the right call, even if it's unsustainable in the long term. It's the only way now to slow down the rate of growth and get enough time to prepare for the fact that we're going to be dealing with this for some months. So I think it's really important that people who can avoid social contact right now do so. Non-essential businesses really should stay closed for a period of time. Especially in areas with higher risk of significant outbreaks.

Of course it's easy for me to say; I already work from home. It's not putting much strain on my household. That's why it's also really important for government to take action that facilitates the social distancing, e.g. via the types of relief in the stimulus bill (should really be called a relief bill?). I get that it's hard to have much confidence we're going to do a great job of that, and I understand why it's difficult for individual small business owners to make the decision to go into lockdown mode proactively, or employees to give up a guaranteed paycheck for some slightly vaguer assurances. But it seems likely to me that a relatively shorter (4 weeks? 6 weeks?) but more drastic lockdown is probably still better than a really drawn-out version where there isn't enough compliance to slow the spread down but there's still an enormous economic impact (e.g. some half-measures for 6 months?), so people should try to comply now as much as they can.

To be clear though, my confidence level on how to think about the tradeoffs is very low.

I tried to have this discussion with my wife and her first response was along the lines of "wtf are you talking about? this is serious". I kept trying to explain where I was going with this and she just wasn't having it. She told me that this was way too emotional for her to even think about discussing it in some sort of cold logical terms. This actually gave me the answer I was looking for. We base these decisions not from a cost/benefit, risk/reward, or any sort of analytical approach. We base them on emotions.

I haven't thought much about why I ask such questions before now but I think it is partially due to my underlying anti-social personality disorder. I just don't process things like pandemics like most here do. I've sort of just been an observer. I mean, it is horrible for sure but it hasn't touched me emotionally like it has my wife. Not even close.

But, I am able to alter how I view such things by probing. It's sort of a derail, but I've failed miserably at relationships all my life. But I've worked on it and listened to my therapists and listened to the women that have pointed out what they feel I haven't contributed to the relationship and I believe strongly that I've absorbed all of this through the years and applied them to my marriage. I do a lot of things that don't come completely naturally now due to asking questions that seem sort of lacking in emotion. Seems unrelated but it isn't.

I appreciate the input here. It will help me process this better.

Related - I've already talked about the fact that my wife isn't handling this well emotionally. However, her emotional need to see her daughter will override any fear and/or anxiety related to this virus. I have no doubt that she will hop on a plane after a certain period of time apart from her daughter, regardless of the situation out there.

First, I'm very impressed that you are willing to try and digest some of this information. I realize that where you are located may be something like weeks behind other parts of the country in terms of policies and how people are conducting themselves (which, in turn, are still way behind places like S Korea in terms of personal conduct). And if very few people seem to be doing something in your community, it's quite hard to even consider it. Which, of course, has to do with emotions being the primary driver of human behavior - not logic or reason.

I'd love to try and provide some kind of advice but I'm not sure what you discussed with your wife. That she should stop seeing people? Or change her behavior in some other way(s)?

Since full isolation for her is a non-starter, this is a very useful video on steps you can both take to drastically decrease chances you get the virus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxyH1rkuLaw.

The video is long but there is a summary at the top of this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comm...g_advice_from/.

One caveat I will give is this doctor seems relatively convinced people aren't getting COVID via aerosols but the scientific community hasn't come to anything resembling confident consensus on that. Still, this kind of hygiene is what is meant by "wash your hands" but it has to be much, much stricter than what people normally do.

Note that the purpose of masks is largely to stop you from touching your face, not for protection. So any kind of mask that makes it hard to touch your face will be helpful.

So, if she can really get neurotic about this protocol then seeing her son/daughter/whoever should be "fine" - but perhaps they can shake their feet or with their elbows or something and just not touch each other with their hands at all.

She's over the top careful. It's part of her routine even before this virus. Constant hand sanitizing, doesn't touch face, etc.

When she sees her dad and son, she does not go inside. Does not touch them. Does not get within 6 feet of them.

I grunched most of the most recent stuff. Are you still working at the bait shop? Your wife's job is essential correct? She works with old folks who are going to die if they catch the virus correct? What if you catch it from some guy at the bait shop and give it to your wife before you are symptomatic. Then she takes it to the old folks home and passes it around before she or you are symptomatic. How many of the old folks die so that some guy can buy some shad to go fishing? Do you really need the bait shop money? I was under the impression you were basically just doing it to have something to do. Take a break man.

That sounds great.

I think I'm going to quarantine this blog.

Meh, I thought I could lock the thread, but apparently I can't.

I'll return after things settle down.