Both my mother and mother-in-law are over 70. My mother doesn’t go out needlessly, but my mother-in-law, much to Mrs. ToKnow’s consternation, feels obliged to be out in the world far more than we’re happy with in this situation.
Just this morning, it was announced that 2 people have tested positive in Mecklenburg County, so we’re hoping that will convince her to stay in more.
My 72-year-old mother regularly goes to the grocery store, 4-7 times per week. So often, the clerks and managers all know her by name, and vice versa. This week, I told her to stop shopping so much, and she indicated that she just wanted to see her friends at the store. It’s her “social time.” I told her they would get by without her for a few weeks. I mean, for pete’s sake, my 86-year-old step dad is currently in in-patient rehab after falling due to getting the flu a couple weeks ago. She doesn’t need to be bringing any more germs into the house.
She just said, “I’ll cut back.” :mad: Old people these days…
My dad just got out of the hospital after getting Influenza A, pneumonia and bronchitis. I was amazed at the swiftness with which they treated him, being that he has emphysema and COPD (he’s 70). If covid-19 is as deadly as reported, he’s toast if he gets it. So are my aunts, my brother’s in-laws, my grandma, and my T1 Diabetic/heart patient friend.
I don’t think I’ll get hit bad, even tho I’m a T2 diabetic. I somehow missed Influenza A even though everyone in my immediate family got it. But I am starting to worry about my passing it to these vulnerable people in my family and my community.
Secondly to that I worry about my aforementioned diabetic friend…she’s a waitress and her doctor told her she can’t work. No work is no money. That’ll be true for millions of people. Not cool.
My wife and I are both in our 80s and I am equally worried about both of us. I did not vote in the poll.
My mom. She’s had a rare lung disease for a while, but one that you just manage until it gets bad, and then you have a surgery that manages it more, usually working for a while. She’d even already had that surgery, but it failed due to the anesthesiologist not being able to intubate her. And they’d been dragging their feet since August on it anyways. Now she got an appointment in late April at a new place to do the same tests AGAIN and consult before she can get the surgery done.
My mom is the person in the world I am closest to. I’ve already been so worried about when she will die. If it happens here, because of these incompetent doctors dragging their feet because they won’t take seriously a slowly progressing disease whose symptoms can be temporarily reversed, I genuinely don’t know what I’ll do. Hell, the reason it took from the failed surgery in January to now is that they fucked up actually sending the papers to the new place.
Oh, and I may become homeless, as her income (now through disability) is part of how we are still here. And while somethings are better, I still have agoraphobia. The only thing keeping me going is intentionally not thinking about it, because I know worrying won’t stop anything from happening.
General public health. There’s one person close to me I’m a bit worried about, my 92 year old grandmother, but mortality rates among the elderly who get infected is still “only” one in 30, so I prefer to be optimistic. It’s not like me worrying about it will make it more likely she is one of the unlucky ones. All my family is in Norway and the government there just closed most of society down and banned large entertainment events and feeding people in places where you can’t keep people three feet apart.
I’m more worried about the general public health issue here in the US and a situation as we see in Italy and in China where a limited initial response lead to a massive wave and overwhelmed health care systems. The US response so far does not inspire confidence.
Not worried about myself, but about others close to me. Also a bit worried about food/electricity/supplies. Hopefully the stores will remain stocked but not sure what the best way to shop is since being around people carries risk.
Yup. Voted ‘other’.
Agreeing with both of those as well. If everyone, both as individuals and as national/state governments, behaved sensibly: I think this would for some people be a whole lot of extra work, for a small percentage be a disaster, and for most people be a significant nuisance but no worse than that.
The sum of a lot of individual panic, combined with significant government mishandling, could make it a lot worse; both in direct effects (increased illnesses, worse illnesses, more deaths) and in indirect effects (individual and societal economic disasters, and ruined chances of things not directly economic.)
Personally, while I’m somewhat worried about my own health and about the health of some family members and friends, I’m also significantly worried about the farm season – both in that if I’m too sick at the wrong time there’s nobody else to do my work, and in farming work not done at the right time can take ten times as long to do later or be entirely useless if done too late in the year; and in that I’m going to need open and functional farmers’ markets by mid-June at the latest, a factor which might be affected by panic and/or governmental mishandling as much as by actual illness. I have some hope that the worst of this, at least locally, will have gone over by/before June; but it’s really hard right now to tell what’s going on.
(And I was a little tempted to answer this thread by saying that what I’m worried about is that the Dope will be entirely taken over by coronavirus threads. The number of threads seems to be replicating faster than the virus. However that concern’s actually pretty minor.)
my chief concern is that the Texas Dental Assoc. meeting first weekend in May will be cancelled and I’ll have to find continuing education classes elsewhere which is a pain. Pretty selfish I know. I do feel for those who get it and also those who loose money/jobs due to all the closures. Sure NBA players can afford the time off but the hourly folks running the concession stands sure can’t etc, etc.
I marked health of someone close to me. My parents are in their late 80s and are in the PNW. But it’s not just them. It’s their friends, people I’ve known for decades, the parents of my childhood friends, etc.
Very likely that my parents will lose a friend or two.
Secondary is the economic impact. Tourism is a big business in many areas. They are already talking about hotels going under due to the lack of tourists from China, and there will be probably more.
I’m not really concerned about myself. Things will smooth out in 30-60 days so I’m not concerned about the economy long term. This isn’t the beginning of Fear the Walking Dead.
I am greatly concerned about my mother. She is elderly and going through chemo. We want to have her around for a while. I can’t limit my exposure to the public and I’m one of those who she relies on.
I picked “Your personal health” but I also would have selected “The health of someone close to you” because my mom is 85 years old and a polio survivor. (read: kind of in frail health already).
The reason I picked "Your personal health is because as of yesterday I started feeling very achy in my joints and muscles; and I have asthma. I had a flu shot a month ago; so now I’m concerned I have the virus. Oh well, I’m staying home, trying to get rest, and drink lots of liquids. We’ll see.
So far, the general trends of the poll bears out an impression that I was wanting to confirm: that not a lot of people are worried about them personally dying. But some of the panic trends seem to indicate that the public in general may be? It’s hard to tell either way, obviously, but I do find it interesting.
At least according to the stats out there, elderly with pre-existing conditions, while the most at risk group, still at least are a good deal more likely to survive it than not. It’s still a scary fatality rate
What metrics do you believe will smooth out in 30-60 days, and what is your basis for this belief?
I have lots of concerns.
My mother is a patient in a nursing home. We are no longer allowed to visit. This will be horrible for her psychologically, although it is necessary to protect her physically.
The situation is giving me lots of economic anxiety. Sometimes I think I have an extraordinarily ill-timed life. I just retired 3 months ago. I’m just not looking at my accounts for a while.
Unlike a lot of people, I hate the social isolation. I like being around people. I’ve already had some scheduled events canceled.
I did some extra shopping. Nothing crazy, stuff geared around “what if we are sick and stuck inside for a couple of weeks.” Soups, mac and cheese, family sized heat and serve meals - low prep stuff that will be easy to fix if we are sick. Normally we don’t keep a lot of groceries around, there is a good grocery store in our subdivision so we usually buy stuff as we need it.
And I keep thinking that I’m feeling sick…does my throat feel a little sore? Why did I cough just now? Why is my energy so low? … and I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
I’m thinking it would have the same kind of sudden onset as the flu, when you go from being basically fine to sick as a dog in a couple of hours, but I’m not sure. So more anxiety.
I’m most worried about the secondary effects of the fear. I guess that includes economic impacts, since a lot of closures and loss of business isn’t the direct result of sick people staying home but healthy people trying to avoid sick people. But it doesn’t stop there. I’d like to think the current administration would face some backlash for how they’re handling things, but I worry that somehow people in their panic will cling to the devil they know, and we’ll get four more years of cuts to essential services and children in cages. I’m worried about violence against Asian-Americans. I’m worried about the courthouse where I work closing down and parents being denied due process when their children are taken away. I’m worried about the abortion clinic where I volunteer closing down, maybe never to reopen, and women being unable to access essential healthcare as a result. I’m worried about all of us missing out on the things that make life meaningful because we’re huddled in fear.
I’m not worried about my own health.
My main coronavirus concern is that, once again, people will take an opportunity to overreact, blindly listen to misinformation they hear from whatever unreliable sources, and generally exacerbate the problem well beyond its intrinsic ramifications.
Almost any time there’s a large-scale problem (think SARS, terrorism, the Eyjafjallajökull eruption, police brutality, Trump’s election), it’s the overreaction of the general populace that makes the situation so much more extreme than it needs to be.
In the Swine Flu epidemic, 60 million Americans got sick, a quarter million were hospitalized, and 12,000 died. Ten years ago. Anybody remember? How scared were you?
My fear is an overloaded healthcare system that, as in Italy today, has to follow wartime triage. Leaving anyone - victim of a virus, stroke, coronary, accident etc. without care and left to die because some other ICU patient has a better chance of surviving.
Proper medical ethics but an incredible societal failure…