My brother, who is only 36, is in the ICU with a fresh diagnosis of cirrhosis. The thing is no one can visit him. Thank God they’re not out of ventilators yet, I guess?
My sister is an NP and had a long meeting with a patient who later tested positive. Please cross fingers for my family.
On a happy note, Sister and I convinced Mom to pay for grocery delivery.
@BiblioFeroz sending your brother ALL the good thoughts I can.
The other thing with the homemade masks is they help remind you to not touch your face when you’re out! So that helps, too!
SNAP benefits are dispersed through the month. Varies by state, but Illinois has around 10 days where benefits are paid out.
Ha, I noticed that too and was like “well, maybe it’s different in IL”. Usually snap is a different day based on your social security #
The number of coronavirus cases worldwide has surpassed 1 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins. The global death toll of the pandemic passed 50,000 earlier today.
Hm, good to know! The person who told me not to shop now is on SNAP but I guess she doesn’t realize that and maybe her benefits kick in on the 1st?
Yea, probably her social ends with 1. Sometimes they do it by last name, too. Unless you live/work with a bunch of SNAP recipients, you wouldn’t necessarily know that your day isn’t everyone’s day.
WIC also staggers the checks (which is good because WIC is an admin disaster on the grocery side).
Thinking of you and your family 
well, those are… Numbers. Eep.
@Biblioferoz I hope your brother recovers quickly.
@Biblioferoz I hope your brother gets out of ICU soon and you NP family member stays healthy!
Welp…now they are recommending homemade masks for Americans. So, I guess I’m making masks this weekend. DH has to wear higher protection at work. Kiddos are currently not out in public. But I’ll work up some for everyone. The “not adequate protection” is not what I’m hearing from my contacts inside the health world. More like 50% as good if made based on some available patterns from hospitals collecting masks. Plus, I could see potential benefit of having more humid air to breathe given the relative infectiousness at varying levels of humidity.
I’m not surprised testing is an issue to be perfectly honest. Spent a couple of decades doing work with similar molecules and science assays and, it’s just complicated. Plus, even the simplest things we did in the lab had a high potential for user error. No matter how dedicated some folks were, they just could not get things to work. Some of these things just seem to require a “touch,” at least until they get to the high-throughput level (like the 5 min rapid test…I am way less familiar with those assays). Testing isn’t just a simple matter and there are many, many steps where things can go wrong.
Made my first mask yesterday so I could go get a routine prescription. Let me say that if you don’t have any metal to help shape the nosepiece, heavy duty aluminum foil folded over about 15 or so layers will do it. So far unknown if it will survive the wash (it’s still outside in the contaminated clothing basket), but I can report back tomorrow.
Washington state just extended “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order until May 4.
This isn’t unexpected.
Step-FIL is throwing a shit fit tonight over the whole damn thing. I understand that he’s frustrated, we all are. But he continues to lash out at MIL, slam dishes while he does chores, huffs under his breath, etc. Can’t wait to be staying home in my new apartment.
People need to take this seriously. And stay the fuck home as much as possible. These restrictions will not be lifted on May 4th, they’ll be extended.
This is tangential to the quarantine, but I really liked this piece:
https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0
Such a “duh” moment.
It also makes sense to me with the general grocery hoarding - a lot of people have no clue how much food they actually need for a couple weeks, because so many of us buy so many takeaway and restaurant meals. Of course you’d overestimate what you need if you’re not quite sure and don’t want to run out.
Yep. We have been feeling weird about how much food we have been buying because it’s waaaay more than we usually buy, but between both of us suddenly eating all our meals at home and me snacking more and more as the pregnancy hunger sets in, we keep falling short. The limits on what you can buy in one shop don’t help at all.
In my area commercial suppliers who have lost their hospitality customers have started offering deliveries to residential customers which hopefully helps to ease the strain on supermarkets. A few of the take away places are also reselling commercial quantities of dry goods, which I assume is the difference between their regular orders and what they are using at the moment, at prices better than the supermarkets.
We have a Woolies order in for delivery tomorrow. I’m not hopeful that they’ll fill our flour order. Not that we can’t buy bread, I’ve just got the time on my hands to really get into baking. I regret not buying a giant bag of proper bakers flour before all this. But then I didn’t have time to bake.
We are out of bread and I don’t plan on going to the shops to buy any, so Ponder is getting a workout tomorrow to knead some for me.
@Pancakes I would very much like a 25kg bag of flour…
I used the dough hook on the mix master for the first time the other day to make bread. Not sure I’ll go back to kneading by hand.
Hmmm 25kg is a lot…
