I personally find it comforting to know that no matter how bad this virus gets, it’s essentially nothing when placed within the context of human history.
It's not panic buying when you are basically told to stay in your home for weeks on end. You say two weeks- but in Washington here our schools are closed for SIX WEEKS. People want to be prepared. I have kids, they eat like adults. Do you realize how big of food shopping trips people normally do every 1-2 weeks anyway with full families? And we simply don't know if production is going to slow down, how fast stores with be able to resupply various items. Might be no big deal or might be a problem.
So I think you really confuse panic buying with being prepared.. having to go to the store every few days because you don't stock up pretty much defeats the purpose of what we are doing.
>markets down in historic marker
And why should it not be? The markets were already pushing themselves to the limits.. you add a simple normal reversal on top of this mess and you get exactly what we are seeing. Plus, there is no modern equivalent for the economic impact this will have. It's going to spiral and seep into every aspect of the economy. Why shouldn't the market plummet? The uncertainty is almost unfathomable.
>everybody acts like they can't make the next payment
Well.. you have tons of people who simply cannot work right now. Enough people in the country/world live essentially paycheck to paycheck anyway- now suddenly we take away potentially weeks/months of income? What do you expect?
>We are so under-prepared for anything really serious.
Yes and no. This situation just shows how utterly fragile all parts of the economy depend on each other, how much supply chains are linked, and how much we take it for granted that everything is always working as usual.
I think this shift of buying could be called preparedness, but in another way it’s a panic because it’s a serious change in behavior.
A nuclear attack without any warning would be unprecedented. Usually there is some build up before you wipe out entire cities. That build up let’s people get prepared.
A deadlier Ebola by the way would be less serious than actual Ebola. Ebola is already too deadly to make use of its infectiousness. In my view, the most deadly virus would be a variant of coronavirus that will regularly send healthy young adults into the ICU, and have a longer period of being asymptomatic.
> Usually there is some build up before you wipe out entire cities. That build up let’s people get prepared.
Yes. We have runs on toilet paper and lunch meats now. What then, when people are preparing for a nuclear strike.
Initially, I got irritated with it too. But there seems to be no hurry from the govt in creating a vaccine, testing kits aren't widely available. When they do become available, it will most likely not be free of charge. There is no clear, coherent messaging from the govt. No clear instructions other than the basic "stay home, don't shake hands". The president is trying to buy the vaccine only for his countrymen from Germany...
How hard can it be to release accurate numbers, have consistent/clear messaging on the status, on what to do and what not to do, set up testing centers for free etc?
If this is the level of response for this, what can we expect in the case of much severe scenarios like the one you describe?
People are panic buying because they don't know what else to do.
So while the millennial and gen x have a 0.2% chance of death from coronavirus which of course all precautions should be taken, this is nowhere near the hazards our parents and grandparents faced in ww2/Korea/Vietnam.
Lockdowns are great - they keep the assholes away from you and lock you in with the people who will live and die with you (or they can be hell). If you're not with someone, maybe you should find someone? Move in with a friend because loneliness will make you very depressed.
Use it to lock away the rest of the world. Instead of swiping on Facebook or thinking of what clubs to go to, you can cuddle with a significant other, or make pancakes with a friend. Watch TV together. Build little LEGO structures. Find the best way to make tea or fried eggs.
I like to focus on the little things and this is the time when all of them will be magnified. So what if you lose your job, your career, your life's savings? There will be a different world next month. Just enjoy the sunset.
Written non-ironically on a device ;)
Everyone dies. Some of us will die in the next month or lose loved ones, and worse. When things are out of control, that's when it's most important to have control over your emptions.
This has two main benefits IMO:
1. you short circuit the mainstream media's agenda: provoke fear to generate clicks and keep your eyeballs stuck on the screen which means more revenue for them.
2. When you put yourself in situations of severe stress, you release that stress hormone (whose name I'm unable to recall) which can and will have a negative effect on your body putting you at even more risk of becoming ill. (this has happened to me earlier last year)
Last piece of advice: in your downtime, try to call your friends, family members if you're on your own, play video games with them online, have fun, watch comedy movies / shows etc ... Don't let this get to your head, that's how you beat the virus.
I say all this because in my area, the vibe and energy is so off and negative it feels like everytime I go out I'm about to meet to group of zombies ready to eat me alive (a la walking dead).
Just wash your hands, and the rest will fall into place. At this point there's not much one can do, people die everyday from countless numbers of illnesses and diseases, the world will move on eventually.
I don't know if it's a western thing or what, but it feels like people in this part of the world are craving for a catastrophic scenario like that to unfold so they can feel part of something greater than themselves, it's quite unsettling.
Oh, and also, use this time to re-evaluate your goals and aspirations in this life, because you've only got one. Apologize to the people you hurt and forgive those who've hurt you, make peace with yourself and smile to people when you see them, lift the atmosphere up a bit, because the media sure isn't going to do that.
Finally, as one meme I've found on the www yesterday so brilliantly put it: WW3 never happened and the Australia fires eventually stopped.
Sorry I went on a bit of rant, but I had to get this off my chest.
Cheers mate
Protect yourself, your family, and simply do good for others as much as you can.
Cortisol? :D
I agree with all your points. I uh after checking twitter (I never checked twitter before as much especially local news), I am panicking more about the fact that we have so many people who actually believes in some seriously messed up stuff.
Even if twitter is not representative of total population, seeing only that on my screen made me anxious and I realised why we are becoming a surveillance state worse than China for quite some time.
This reminds me of a recent piece in the NYT about despair[1]. I thought that a discussion of meaning was conspicuously absent. I think that religion and civic life has so utterly failed to provide any substantive meaning of life for most people in a manifestly secular world, that is isn't the least bit surprising to me that a growing number of people are experiencing existential despair.
A genuine catastrophic scenario can easily be seen as a source of richness, excitement, and meaning that many deeply crave, even if they don't realize it consciously. We humans are starved for such meaning.
You simply said "[family is] all we have". I think it's fair to interpret that as applicable to any point in one's life, or broadly all of one's life (barring emergencies), not just on one's deathbed.
Life is pretty long. It's great to have family, and I love mine. But I can't admire them all day.
As Camus wrote:
> There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.
To me, art, mathematics, fiction, music, etc. are not what comes to mind when I answer that question.
So I don't think Camus would necessarily accept family as universally what makes life worth living, if that is what you meant.
To me, the rejection of art, mathematics, fiction, music makes life that much less worth living. Family is one of my essential values, but so are many other things. It is not a competition in any sense.
A lot of my friends also have free time. So a lot of doing stuff together remotely. Some of doing stuff together physically in small groups. And mostly, just a lot more contact with people on WhatsApp.
I read some advice that said, only check the news on e.g. 2 set moments in the day. I am trying to follow that. As for anxiety about how this is going to play out, I have accepted that things will be touch for a while. But I have faith that, here in the Netherlands at least, society will survive. And I have enough buffers (financial and supply wise) that I believe I am setup well enough that I can last longer than most. Hence, I think drastic measures will be taken to protect most people before I really start feeling the pinch.
My advice to you: stay in contact with people. Be open about your anxiety to them. Don't be an alarmist to your friends if you can help it.
As for work, I just sent them an e-mail saying "I ain't doing very well" with an implicit 'deal with it' in there.
This is really healthy advice. My approach has been to establish some routine for checking news. At first it was whenever possible, to figure out what to do in a country that was being misguided by its own government (US). Then, when our family made its decisions about how to respond (isolate), we read news off and on throughout the day, and spent much of our time contacting people we have decent relationships with, trying to help them understand to take things seriously. Now that we're mostly in our own house and just waiting it out, we're starting to just check things a couple times a day. I've found it's healthy for me to not check news just before bed. Check in the evening, then have time to digest what's happening and let go of it enough to get a good night's sleep and try to stay healthy.
Reminder for everyone in an area where peak caseload is still in front of you, we want to stay healthy and uninjured not just to avoid coronavirus, but also because an overwhelmed health care system won't respond well to any other injuries or illnesses either. So now, 9yo son, you can't build a tower to the ceiling and climb up on it because there's a small chance you'll fall and break your arm and we don't want you trying to mend a broken arm in an entirely stressed health care situation. I am normally a much bigger fan of natural consequences than I am right now.
Stay safe everyone, and give yourself space to let go when you can.
For me, it's making sure I have followed the recommendations of health organisations in my country, making sure I get my work done and do what I do well every day, making sure I take care of my health, reaching out to my colleagues / friends if I need help or they need help.
But most of all, it's focus. I am training better focus via Headspace app and it's really helping.
I have decided that now is a good time to go through all those pre-pandemic tabs. This limits my exposure to covid news and allows me to stay sane.
- trying to be helpful to others - this single mental attitude can improve overall mood, make one feel more connected, and has a positive effect on the world
- have hobbies and activities that are engaging and that you look forward to. For me this is boardgaming, which has been a bit of a challenge given the social distancing, but fortunately there are online options that are helpful
- reminding myself that this is temporary. Although I haven't quite been through anything exactly the same, I have been through difficult experiences in the past and have grown due to them.
This is a specific instance of the general strategy I call "PARSE" which is an acronym for Positive Actions Reasoned Service Experiments. Positivity comes first because negativity is a terrible and ever present trap, actions are fundamentally different from plans and rumination, reason because it is always worth stepping back to make sure what you are doing actually makes sense, service because being fully human means helping others, and experiments because ultimately anything you can do is just an attempt to try something out that will lead to examination of results and honing of observations, methods, ideas, and so on.
2. We're all gonna die. But for most, not today, and not from this.
I'm a bit uneasy and quite pessimistic about the whole thing. The possibility it's going to get bad beyond what anyone can currently imagine isn't zero. One month ago we wouldn't have imagined where we are today.
That said, the majority of my life up until now has consisted of considerable real life social isolation, so the social distancing as of late is basically business as usual.
Today, after the UK generally and my office specifically required working from home, I made subtle references to this sketch [1] from TV show 'That Mitchell and Webb Look'. I make standups light and breezy; I add a lighter tone to emails.
The important thing for me is not to undermine the seriousness of the situation that we're in - in many ways I'd like to emphasise it and embolden it. On the other hand, I want to reduce the mental strain on people and to keep spirits high. High spirits, high productivity and everyone feels like they're being included and that everything is being taken care of.
Now is the time for managers to shine. We have the responsibilities of looking after our people, especially in a profession such as software engineering which could potentially be isolating and intimidating.
I've most likely got corona myself (waiting for the pcr test results) and am isolating. I setup my man cave as a "camping experience " since I'll be staying here for some time.
- Learned to bake my first loaf of bread from scratch. Wife and I celebrate by eating some of the bread together.
- Germinating my seeds in seed trays for the first time. Food stuffs like corn and bell pepper plants, in addition to flowers. Taking pictures every day as the corn and red cabbage sprouts.
- Playing with our dog extra, since he is depressed I'm home and ignore him for most of the morning and afternoon to WFH.
Block/reduce usage of sites that are abt mindless consumption (hacker news encourages mindless consumption too - I don't really need to see most of the stuff that shows up here surrounding the tech stuff I care about)
Stopped using YouTube/Reddit/FB which I think has helped.
Twitter I still find useful but I Enable it only on the weekends for few hrs to catch up with messages and ppls feeds.
Also blocked most news sites (nytimes/CNN/fox/wapo/bbc...basically any news site where they threw opinion/infotainment at me on the side panels or prominently on main page). It was too addictive for me.
So I just blocked them in my Host file. I use Steve blacks big list on github. I scatter multiple entries for the same site throughout the file so its a pain to unblock even if I feel an urge.
The consequence is I end up getting most of my news on sites (from Canada, Ireland, Japan etc) where the opinions are about things I have no great interest in and find it easier to skip over.
Basically control your daily info flow. Just like food don't over consume. The sites are designed to capture your attention and keep you feeling helpless to sell ads.
Unfortunately, what's happening in the world is out of our control. We need info and we need to share good info, but don't constipate on bad news. Recognize that fear in the past, often was about nothing, or it's worse to think about it. Learn to not give a F.
You have some control, how you react (not how you feel), and getting into some work or play will relieve the stress. We need to move our bodies, sing and dance if you can, however best you can release your energy. Build from there.
Some things we can change, other things we can't. Use this time to reconnect with yourself, investigate stuff that interests you, let the bad news fly by as pure informational data and realize you are in your own cockpit. A good distraction is focusing on someone else and what they need.
Good luck! There will be bad feelings, but the worst of them is just thinking too much. Let the feelings come if they need to, just don't indulge in fear or paranoia, and accept that negative reactions will come up.
Slow, deep breaths into stomach. Relax.
People just want to rally around something - you've now got access to more prompts for conversation with complete strangers under looming conditions that appear to threaten your species.
There is also a reverse psychology element in your biased Media Mogul Controlled "News" telling you to stay away from other people for a few weeks (when authority announces the end of this phase there will be a burst of interaction and crowded events to restore social equilibrium ).
Since we all learned through standardized curriculum grade school about large fractions of past populations dying off to disease spread - all of this is ancient memory tellling us to be careful.
So I view all of this with watchfulness, some concern, but not particularly with fear. I try to take care of those around me. (I'm limiting my exposure to others at the moment, because my daughter may have had it a week ago, but wasn't tested, because we're in the US and nobody was being tested here a week ago.) We stocked up on some things two or three weeks ago. I'm working from home. I'm maybe a little bit bored, but not much more than that.
News out there exists to induce some heightened emotional response. Either a WOW factor or a FEAR factor. Apparently, news to induce the FEAR factor is usually available. You don't believe me - then count the negative news and positive news articles for a 15-20 days. This stands true even without the Covid-19 fear.
When working from home, limit your TV news time. I watch business news mostly and that too for a limited period. Do not let news chatter in the background.
Go for a 15-30 minute walk alone, it will help in reducing anxiety. And get some sun - it does wonders.
There is a saying: yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the "present.” - Master Oogway, Kung Fu Panda.
This is so true. Switching from being in an office (open plan or otherwise) to being in a small room on your own with only your laptop for company can for a lot of people be too jarring.
Not everyone is cut out for WFH, but currently most do not have a choice. Everyone who is not used to it, will go through an initial period of anxiety as your daily routine has been up ended.
From a work point of view, the most common initial WFH anxiety, is 'how will my boss know I'm still working?' quickly followed by 'am I working enough?' - my advice here is: Don't change your work routine. If your office hours were 9am to 6pm, then stick to that, even though you are at home. Don't be tempted to login earlier or work later. Create a division between work and home life.
Do not sit on the couch with your laptop on your lap or the coffee table - this isn't 'WFH Fridays' where barely anyone does any work. You need a proper working environment. If you can designate a desk in your home to be your 'office' then do that. Organise it as you would your real office desk. Try to position things so that you have natural light.
If you find the silence too deafening, there are plenty of 'ambient' sound channels on YouTube that emulate the hustle and bustle of coffee shops and open plan offices, or even waves on a beach and stormy rain-forests if that's your thing.
Use the newly gained free time that used to be lost to commuting on something that helps your wellbeing, i.e. at 6pm, log-off and do some exercise or have a daily bath.
If you are worried about how your work output is perceived, agree with your boss a way to provide timely updates so that he/she is always informed. Do not be afraid to set Slack/Teams/Skype to 'Do not disturb' if you need to - The downside of people not being able to 'see' you is that impromptu IMs increase and can disrupt your flow.
Try to 'get up' everyday. It's easy to just roll out of bed and sit in front of your laptop in your pyjamas, and not shower every day. Don't do this, it will make you depressed and disconnected. Get up, wash, get dressed (as if you are actually going out) - keeping to your normal healthcare routine will help keep you mentally positive.
In the UK at least, we are not currently locked in our houses, so if you can go out for a walk - even during the work-day. You didn't chain yourself to your desk for 8 hours whilst you were in the office, so why do that at home?
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I've been working from home for several years now, and although I don't follow all of my own advice, I have navigated around most of the pitfalls. That said, not everyone is cut-out for WFH, so your mileage may vary.
Other than that, if you're stuck at home don't use every minute of your WFH breaks to check the news, exponential growth doesn't imply that your situation changes every minute. Make sure to take that breaks in the first place. Maybe reach out to other people in the same situation and have a relaxed chat, just like you would in a non-pandemic cafe setting. Try to find normalcy, hyperfocus on bad news is seldom productive for one's mental stability.
Regarding news, I try not to watch too much news on the TV. I also think I'm relatively informed regarding this new virus, and as I'm not in (too much) risk, I try now to worry too much..
Keep busy and use time effectively. Practice a skill, write a novel, make something, finish some projects.
I've been through:
- storms with 100 mph/160 kph winds blowing down 200-year-old oak trees, concrete-anchored redwood fences flying through the air like kites and bowing-in glass windows several inches / 10 cm nearly to the point of failure
- Loma Prieta and a myriad of earthquakes too numerous and forgettable
- Enron rolling blackouts
- the Camp Fire
- week-long and longer power outages
- and now a pandemic
I'm probably forgetting some events. All I'm missing on my disaster bucket list T-shirt are volcano, hypercane, locust, GRB, asteroid and tsunami. :)
The current situation is a necessary but major inconvenience is all. Things and life will be better in 6-18 months. It will be OK. There's no point to worrying about things that are absolutely beyond one's own control, while addressing and preparing for things within one's control to eliminate sources of worry.
What I do worry a little about is the knock on effects; the amplification of existing trends that reduce physical commerce in town centres, driving shops, cafés, etc., out of business.
If we want to have places to shop other than supermarkets and online and a reason to maintain and develop town centres someone is going to have to figure out how to change various tax regimes to make it easier for such places to survive.
In most towns that I visit there has already in the last forty years been a dramatic reduction in the range of goods available and of course this just drives even more people to shop online further reducing the turnover of the local shops.
Of course it could be that we should just let them go out of business and find an alternative way of living.
Other than that, as keiferski says we live in much better times, even with this crisis, than pretty much ever before.
I also play 'worst case scenario' with myself. My wife and I are relatively young, so the odds of us being seriously impacted health-wise are very low. But, worst case would be my wife and/or my parents die. Next level terrible, but it's also a reminder to be talking and present with them every day. It's not making light of it, but accepting this is a worst case from a health stand point.
From an economic standpoint, my company could be forced to close. I could be forced to eventually use all my savings, sell my house, etc... Would that suck? Absolutely. Is it the end of the world? Nah, and it's infinitely better than something happening to the people around me. I started with very little, and would just start again.
Things I can do: wash hands, try not to touch my face, limit contact with the more at risk population and teach my kids to do the same. Things I can't do? Anything else related to covid-19. I can also limit my intake of negative news.
Also using screen time to block Safari on my phone and removed social media apps.
Also using /etc/hosts to block news websites.
Only news I get now is through the radio when I'm chilling out listening to Chris Country. That's more manageable than a wall of bad news and horror stories.
I'm feeling a lot better. Leaving my apartment, looking at the blue sky and the bustling people on their way to work. Life feels much better, I'm also not checking my phone as often.
Outside of work find something to occupy your mind so you're not just fretting. My thing is guitar. I like having something that's not computer-related I can do. Maybe yours is computer-related like learning a new language or framework. Pick something you enjoy doing and takes a little bit of concentration so you can take your mind off of things.
In more useful actions, I stocked up on some food (both canned and frozen) to prepare for self quarantine and/or self isolation. I pulled out my moped and de-rusted the chain yesterday after seeing multiple sick people on public transport, ignoring the advice to stay indoors for anyone who shows symptoms. Now working from home but still quite hard to focus with all of the news. I also have some anxiety, but it sort of comes and goes and just cleaning obsessively for a little while seems to settle it :D
Second thing is that it has nothing to see with the crises of the XX century, and probably much less serious than what is going to happen towards and after 2050 (huge number of people fleeing their unlivable lands).
This is gonna be the first time I'll actually have to say "thanks" to people that I consider to be my friends. At the beginning of very likely the worst crisis that the world has seen.
Ruby, Scala, OPS, Machine learning, AI, Angular, fully-remote and distributed...
FML.
I run a website that helps people figure out life in Berlin in Germany. It covers important topics in plain language.
These days I maintain an overview of the Coronavirus situation in Berlin, and spread correct information in various communities. The government is doing a poor job at propagating information, and most sources are only in German.
Save a few surprisingly hostile people, the response has been very positive. It feels good to be helpful, even if it's only for a few hundred people.
Nitpick: The official information is clear, simple and plenty, albeit indeed primarily in German language: https://www.infektionsschutz.de/coronavirus-sars-cov-2.html
This is advertised in social media anywhere.
Your site (link?) presumably links to the English documents there as they are updated regularly?
- If you can manage it, try to stick to 'business as usual' as much as possible : a lot of Tech-workers càn work remote and with limited face-to-face contact. That doesn't mean you deliberately have to avoid contact, yet I like to limit even online conversations as any discussion these days will divert into a talk about the current Crisis.
- Don't expect to be 'hugely' productive, but it might be a good time to engage in the work you left hanging in recent times. (For me, that's Documentation and such, Ugh!) It will be gratifying to see some of those actions being handled ...
- Keep up with past or new Hobbies / Opportunities : I am not in complete Lockdown here (yet), so I go for a run (alone) in the woods and plains at noon. And I've made a list of stuff that I want to do in the evening : Read some Books, Learn new Programming languages, etc.
- Don't forget about other people : I can get a bit self-centered once I have found a good personal rythm in handling this situation. But I need to remind myself to check in with relatives and friends (through Social Media and other Technology options ofcourse).
- Keep some inspiring Quotes or some calming "mantras" nearby (like on Post-It notes, Screensaver on your Phone, whatever, ...). I tend to find some solace and inspiration in those. My selection of Quotes revolve around ways to keep calm in times of adversity but they might be too pessimistic in these trying times, so I refrain from giving examples and will let you decide the Search Terms for yourself ...
- As I have a family here at home (2 Adults, 2 Kids), it's actually quite easy to get into a "Family-time, long unexpected Vacation" vibe where we : use online platforms to educate the kids (somewhat), do chores in and around the house, spring-cleaning, go on walks for as long as it is allowed, have a nice drink at home once and again, ... We have things like movie-nights with the Kids and they love it.
- Keep a diary on your Experience and write in the Evening as you retrospect your day. Any moments you can recall where you were extremely Anxious? Write it down, and write on how you will cope with it better the next day. Tommorrow is a new day to try to do a better job of it.
Good luck, try to focus on the good, ignore as much of the bad or leave them to be properly examined in your journal.
In last few days, all of the sudden, my girlfriend decided to get in shape, so I'm helping her out.
We had to cancel a vacation, could not see our families, cannot go home, took a big financial hit, had to cut many of our hobbies and will not get to see a good friend get married. It's ok if I feel worried, stressed, angry or sad about it. But hope springs eternal and this too shall pass.
We've most of our machines to work for Folding@Home[0].
I start using Calm about a month ago after having a odd (in that I can't see a directly attributable cause) acute spike in anxiety. Obviously right now its fairly normal to feel anxiety but its good to try to minimize it's affects on you.
(Edit: hopefully the site is skimmable. I tried to write that way, so each sentence is like part of a paragraph, but also often a link to more info...)
(Edit: also, things happening now were predicted long ago, for these last days, so we don't need to be surprised, but we can be OK. In the context of climate change and the world in commotion, I wrote my thoughts on that at the page: http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html .)
Edit/ps: I've been through plenty: a divorce (and wonderful remarriage), some significant mistakes (aka learning experiences), health problems, economic uncertainty, but with help from family, church etc), and what I wrote at the site is from personal experience, in detail, and one can personally jump around to the most interesting stuff I hope, easily. Some of the content I think applies even if one doesn't follow religion, like about direction in life.
I've been buying things that will be helpful during a lockdown (that I've been putting off from well before WWC: new phone etc), while the risk is still low.
- Regarding WFH: maybe you can make a "hangout" video conference to emulate the office a bit?
- do video walls with friends
- try to stay rational (you can't do more than self-isolating, nothing more you can do)
- if you can concentrate on it and have the energy: learn something
I set a timer and go for 3 minutes.
Also, see yourself as an observer of the times, not so much an actor. Don't worry about powerlessness, just be glad you can see how things are going.
It will help you focus and get you thinking in the task you have at hand.
During the current crisis HN felt like a text-only Facebook.
That is largely within the delta of what I chalk up to luck of the draw, when I got my job anyways. So, it is well within expected variance.
I am young, so health is no big deal. I am following protocol, but not worried for myself. Honestly, not that much has changed. People are panicking due to mass hysteria. But, this isn't that bad.
Maybe I used to it. My country has had just as massive dengue, swine flu and bird flu epidemics over the last decade. People died in huge numbers just the same. Just that, the ones at risk were mostly really poor people in a 3rd world country, so no one cared enough to force such a response.
My friend jokes that the only reason this pandemic is so serious, is because it's the only one that seriously affects white boomers. I'm not sure if he is entirely wrong.
Focus on your family and your work. Try to tune out the noise. Take solace in that we’re all in this together.
Which might be true, but going crazy won't fix it.
Yeah, not really good, but this might not be the week to stop sniffing glue...
Now I can focus on prepping and survival.
To me doing nothing makes me much more nervous than catching up with latest news and trying to save myself and my family.
This is the time to work hard for everyone, it's not the time to go watching netflix and wait for "others" to do the hard work.
You can also try to help with the research projects which are trying to find a drug.
1. I don’t trust news by default, when I saw something that might affects me, just then I started digging the facts across multiple sources.
2. I don’t share news, even if that could help others, unless I am 100% sure its a factual news.
3. Focus on what I can control, e.g government trying to hide something? Its not like I have the power to uncover the facts and I am not sure either if they’re trying to hide something.
4. Think positively, judge what is in front of you, stay safe by default. Government saying no one is infected with corona yet? Think positively and believe them, and stay safe by self social distancing. Unless you have the knowledge and resources to do research, its gonna waste a lot of your time while you can use it to prepare for your safety and those around you.
5. As for WFH, changes are always hard. Make sure to keep communicating and clarifying things that aren’t clear. Keep notes of anything important. Get enough sunlight, exercise, stay clean, drink enough water.
6. Whatever happens, happens. Remove all negative thoughts, for every hardship, there’s ease and comfort at the end ~ like how its always been (think about a hard problem from the past, and how it can be solved and there we are, still here and strong and learned something).
Best wishes! TLDR; Ignore news by default, stay positive!
To solve this, I smoked a lot of weed. I’m out of weed now. Guess I should try to get some work done.
Here's my word of unsocilited advice. EVERY PERSON'S BODY IS DIFFERENT. When dealing with mental health medication, it's trial and error. What seems to work for one person doesn't work for another. I am under the care of a physician, and the cannabis I consume is prescribed by that doctor, grown in a fully licensed facility, lab tested, and used as part of an overall treatment regimen that got me off of addicted benzos and productive at levels I never saw before.
Keep your advice to yourself.
Like, I agree with you in principle - but as a human being, I think your opinion in extremely priviledged and something you can only say sitting behind a computer screen shielded from real life.
Tough luck that you can't get fly home but that doesn't affect my main point. International air travel is unsustainable and is KILLING OUR PLANET!
We as a species have two choices; either we let our global economy collapse or we let our global ecosystem collapse. I know what my choice is.
So by your own logic of greater good trumps all the economy trumps helping people.
There are many ways to improve the economy so that it better serves the needs of the majority rather than just a small wealthy elite. That is a fact and does not imply neither pixie dust nor dictatorship.
The one good thing that comes out will be improvements in home office and home education culture. Better tools, more online materials, wider acceptance.
3 months ago, in many rich countries, a lot of young talented people were doing "bullshit" jobs that had 0.000001% impact on the results of their company. I don't even mention the fact that many were working on completely useless stuff. This will be a quick adjustement for every company - keep only people you really need. Sure - short term economic choc and governements absolutely need to step in and help people adjust. But long term - this is a great news. It's a brand new world right there - you have a good, idea (not a bullshit app nobody cares about) - go out, there will be plenty of opportunities once the dust settles and governements will help and fund this.
I actually think, this is the perfect time for European Union (and most countries for that matter) to launch huge scale projects - high speed rail in whole Europe, this kind of things. We will have quite a lot of competent workers available, interest rates are 0% for any foreseable future and the benefits for the future would be huge.
Concerning climate - this is the best, by a huge margin, news we've ever heard. I'm eager to see what big cities will look like with 0 traffic.
We already start to see the best in people - young offering help for elders (that they barely noticed until 2 weeks ago). No doubt we will see some of the worst too, but I believe it will be hugely outweighted by the good.
So yeah, this situation is very hard, but as most hard things in live, it definitely can end up as a huge net postive. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.
I mean, may as well have a small nuclear war and kill 30% of humanity as well if the goal is slowing climate change at all costs.
edit: Btw, your proposal is exactly the sort of thinking that got us in this climate mess in the first place. You're putting your desire (climate change in this case) higher than the overall well being of people. Republicans put their desire (money and business) higher than the overall well being of people (including future people impacted by climate change). Lack of empathy is not something to admire and generally results in everyone being worse off.