NotTV - Life in The SIP Zone

[PGage]

I have been designated “essential personnel”, living and working in counties which are (or will be at 1 min after midnight tonight) ordered to shelter in place. I am also in (or adjacent to, depending on the criteria) the vulnerable population for COVID-19. Its been stressful and surreal, and protocols and work flow change day by day, sometimes hour by hour. For now I go to work (25 or 40 miles each way, depending on the day of the week), go straight to my office, close the door and have no contact with any other human for 8-12 hours (again depending on the day). Staff meetings, in the same building occur online. All my patients are seen either in online video or telephone sessions. Up side: traffic on the commute is much improved, and I can look at Twitter during meetings. Down side: absence of non-verbal cues and human contact with patients, and constant background anxiety over how much exposure we are getting to the virus, and how much we might be endangering our families. 

Oh, and as I write this I see Gov Gav has issued a stay at home order for the entire state.

Yes, I wash my hands many (many) times a day, and yes I am gelling my hands even more often. There is some discussion of letting us work from home, but that will require software and hardware compliant with security and confidentiality requirements. 

We are not freaking or panicking, but trying to find some kind of sustainable floor that we can operate from for next couple of months or more. Like everyone, dealing with the losses in our everyday life (cancelled graduations, concerts, ball games, endangered weddings). I’m. It complaining; I know as odd and stressful as things are for folk in my situation, we are the fortunate ones, as so many others, often those who can least afford it, are losing income or jobs completely.

I am assuming things are similar throughout the country, though I did see the Gov of Oklahoma encouraging his people to hang out at the county fair. Whatever, we are all in this one together, for sure. Find things that give you peace and pleasure, find people you can count on and share with. Let’s try to be a little nicer to each other where it counts.

Be careful out there.

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[Bob Jersey]

PGage: Long before this crazy virus complicated everyone's lives, all the hospital orgs here were rolling out smartphone apps for "virtual visits" with professionals. Do you have enough knowledge of/experience with these to form an opinion?

B

[Kevin M.]

At the print shop where I work, apparently because some (frankly, a tiny percentage) of the labels we make go on products which go to grocery stores, my workplace qualifies as an essential service. It seems like a loophole, but I’m happy to have a paycheck. My fiancée and both her adult kids are out of work. I’ve been going to different grocery stores each day this week to purchase food for them since the stores in their area are even more wiped out than the ones in mine, so tomorrow I will be violating the state’s order to not travel outside the county where I live, so I can bring them what I bought. If anybody has a problem with that, ask yourself what you would do if the people you loved needed food. I support the quarantine, and I don’t intend to flaunt my lawless behavior by driving around to record stores or book stores (even though I am aching to do both), but this is how it is.

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[PGage]

Sure. We have always done virtual visits (either video or telephone). Before this month I did 2 or 3 a week. Now of course doing 5 to 8 a day. Research suggests outcomes are pretty good, though I don’t feel the same therapeutic relationship. 

On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 7:21 PM 'Bob Jersey' via TVorNotTV <tvor...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

PGage: Long before this crazy virus complicated everyone's lives, all the hospital orgs here were rolling out smartphone apps for "virtual visits" with professionals. Do you have enough knowledge of/experience with these to form an opinion?

B

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[Dave Sikula]

The wife and I are ending the second week of our own stints of working remotely. In her case, the office was asked to stay home on Monday the 9th to test the company's remote capabilities. By Wednesday, they were under orders to not come in at all. In my case, the campus closed down on Tuesday the 10th and we've been teaching via Zoom ever since. There were rumors we were going to truncate the semester, but at last report, we'll finish it out, just not in person. (I spent the first week going to campus and sitting in an empty classroom, but they've pretty much locked everything down by this time. I can't even get into my office.)

Fortunately, almost all of my lectures were done, and it's been mostly student presentations ever since.

My birthday was Wednesday the 18th and we had dinner plans which were scrubbed, but on Monday, we were able to find the one restaurant in the Embarcadero that was still serving (until 7:00) in advance of the shelter in place order. We did go out yesterday clandestinely and got pastrami sandwiches and pie from two different restaurants that were (like every place) doing takeout only. I've been to our usual grocery stores this week--just to get out--and supplies have ranged from "picked clean" to "business as usual." (I expect the latter will prevail now that the first wave of panic buying has subsided.) The only good thing has been that traffic has been nonexistent. (Roy Wood Jr. tweeted that everything right now is like Dec. 26-31. I think it's more like a permanent early Sunday morning.)

Assuming we don't get a lockdown order (which is probably inevitably coming), it hasn't been too awful. I'm certainly not going to run out of DVRed stuff to watch or books to read, and I fortunately have a downstairs to escape to. My biggest regret so far is that my show closed down after opening night. To be honest, I wasn't crazy about doing it, but it just feels like unfinished business.

Hope everyone else has as easy a time of it as we have so far (famous last words ...)

--Dave Sikula