Month: February 2021

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

good-ho-mens:

f83718766502835705dc733d4de30b6c383b7688

 

good-ho-mens:

7f5b923bee4334784a833f0b576d0c202320e281

 

good-ho-mens:

01fbe597ae96411f630898dd099676c8496e2e4a

 

good-ho-mens:

5e3d89d7215986d06d606f63c391a2ad99bb368a

 

unashamedly-ineffable:

1a9d6b26cf9a791243353dbaacf8c091c650a1f7

Tags:

#I like the mental image here #my brain is depicting this Discord chat as two people standing in a shadowy room talking to each other #and the COVID-positive person is wearing a full hazmat suit #like the kind that’s one step short of a spacesuit #towards the end you can see them chewing a jalapeno contemplatively through the transparent panel on their head #covid19 #illness tw #the power of science #food #(me @ brain: ”so how does the hot sauce work then”) #(brain: ”they leave the room and when they come back they’re wearing one of those hats with the soda cans on it inside their suit”) #(”but instead of soda it’s hot sauce”)

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{previous post in sequence}}

aa49d59ecd971a3ba9bdd142e45b94af69c121f2

twitblr:

Definitely masking up post-COVID (x) {{the original link didn’t actually lead anywhere; I have replaced it with a genuine source link}}

 

juliainfinland:

Also, let’s keep having soap and disinfectant dispensers everywhere.

 

derinthescarletpescatarian:

By contrast, I’ve been getting the same number of sniffles that I do every year even though there’s no one to catch them from, which is how I learned this year that I’m not prone to minor colds; I’m prone to hayfever.

 

brin-bellway:

Huh, you’re still getting hayfever with a mask? I started wearing a mask in 2017 *specifically* to avoid pollen, and it’s been working wonderfully for me.

Have you been keeping the mask on outside, and when near front doors that people are opening a lot? Does it have a well-fitted nosepiece?

—

I also had no colds in the calendar year 2020. It used to be fairly normal for me to go entire years without getting sick (after I adjusted to my current microbial milieu, that is; I got sick a *lot* the first couple years I lived in Canada), but then I started working a customer-facing job where nobody else ever took sick leave and staff members were forbidden from wearing masks, and I went from a cold every 1 – 2 years to a cold every few months. Getting rid of that damned fast-food cold rate wasn’t worth what it’s cost, but it’s a very nice silver lining.

(for anyone who finds my rate of colds bogglingly low: I’m guessing the two big components are “trained myself out of touching my face in public when I was a pre-teen, and always wash my hands upon returning home” and “rarely travel”, in that order)

I didn’t even used to do any anti-airborne measures†, just anti-fomite. I plan to start wearing a mask in indoor public spaces from October – March or so each year and on public transit year-round, and it’ll be very interesting to see what that does to my baseline cold rate.

(also, on a broader scale, it will be interesting to see if COVID-19 vaccines grant any cross-protection against cold-type coronaviruses)

—

†Except in extreme situations like “on an airplane two seats away from a coughing dude”. Guess who didn’t get sick until an incubation period *after* the rest of her family? (unfortunately there’s only so much you can isolate from people you’re sharing a hotel room with)

 

derinthescarletpescatarian:

I very rarely wear a mask. I hardly leave the house and when I do, almost nobody wears masks here because there’s no covid in my state outside of the quarantined medi-hotels for infected international arrivals; we just sanitise, social distance, keep records of where we go and get tested any time symptoms show up so that when it does show up, we can respond before it’s got more than a couple of people. The distancing and group size limits are enough that basically nobody’s getting colds.

My probably-hayfever is very mild and isn’t debilitating at all (which is probably why it took me so long to notice); I just get a sniffly, runny nose so I haven’t bothered with any pollen precautions. They’d be more annoying than just living with it.

 

brin-bellway:

Fair enough, I suppose.

When I started wearing pollen masks, my only symptom was mild sore throats. The main problem I was having was that pollen attacks felt exactly like…well, the onset of a cold. *Physically* the sore throats per se weren’t a big deal, but I hated never being sure whether or not I was coming down with something.

I’ve started getting runny noses too now, which I found even worse in that they’re impairing in their own right. Maybe I’m just more bothered by having a runny nose than you are.

 

alarajrogers:

My allergies are for animals and dust. I have pets and am far too disorganized to dust. So yeah, I’m actually just as miserable this year as I am every year, but I definitely have noticed, no colds. Runny nose and sneezing and occasional sore throat and cough… but at my age, the biggest symptom of a cold is a draining and horrible fatigue. All my fatigue this year comes from diabetes and depression.

I do think I’m going to keep using masks during the winter every year.

 

brin-bellway:

At your age? Are you implying you *didn’t* get horrible draining fatigue from colds when you were younger?

When I saw that one of the DSM rules is that in order to qualify as having clinical depression it has to be at least two weeks, I thought “ah, of course, they’re thinking of self-limiting diseases”. The last week of December, 2017, I had a cold that *didn’t* come with a transient depressive episode, and it was amazing how much less it sucked. Turns out that while sore throats and stuffy noses and coughing fits *are* pretty annoying, *most* of the badness of colds is from direct inducement of misery.

…if there are people who *normally* don’t get depression from colds, that would explain a lot about how blase they are about disease prevention.

(…“people with enough depression at baseline that colds are just background noise” would also explain a lot but in a much more horrifying way. you indicate that in at least some cases they can be distinguished, though.)

 

brin-bellway:

@rustingbridges replied: “no, I don’t feel that way. identifying a cold mostly consists of ruling out allergies and guessing”

holy fuck

 

poipoipoi-2016:

Same really. 

At some point, I will give in and move to the desert but right now, the year is: 

* Mold/Dust season all winter
* Fading into OH GOD OH NOOOOOOO season as pollen season arrives and I more or less fall over flat on my ass for a month
* Summer is great except for the bit where it’s 97 degrees and going outside is hellish
* Into August/September where ragweed arrives and knocks me out for 3 days every year
* Into leaf season where it’s time to get bronchitis and pneumonia again just in time to redevelop a continuous hacking cough for
* Oh look at that, it’s dust season.  

I literally have a rule that I maintain 3 alarms and if I sleep straight through them, it’s a sick day because if it’s a choice between ragweed and getting hit by a truck, let’s go play in some traffic.  

Horrible draining fatigue is pretty normal, but trivially, if you can throw a depressingly expensive cocktail of OTC, prescription, and illegal meds at “Getting your nose the f*ck back open”, that basically goes away.  

Then of course, I’m increasingly certain I ended up with Long COVID, because I’ve had constant chest pains and shortness of breath since April, so I’m working on going remote so I can carefully maintain CO2 levels below 600PPM…. by opening a window to ragweed spores year-round.  

Ouch. Many sympathies for what you have to put up with.

Every year my pollen sensitivity NOS (the allergist couldn’t figure out what to make of me) gets worse: stronger symptoms, for more of the year, after less exposure. I hope I never end up in as terrible a position as yours, but I’m worried I might.

I also don’t get depression from pollen, but again worried this might change as my condition deteriorates. (The psychological problem of a pollen-induced sore throat is the fear from “I associate this feeling with *becoming* depressed a few hours later”: pollen currently doesn’t *directly* cause any brain symptoms.) For a cold, the depression hits before the nose symptoms do, so getting my nose open clearly isn’t enough.

What happens if you just…wear a mask all the time, taking it off only when you need to eat or drink or something? Maybe with one of those tabletop air purifiers too?

—

@jadagul has reported in as not experiencing cold-induced depression [link], although honestly I’m not even surprised. Like, if you’d asked me before all this “does jadagul get cold-induced depression”, I’d have said “god, probably not, *nothing* depresses that man: failing to get depressed when sick is *exactly* the kind of weird shit his brain would do”.

—

I have now written up a post describing what colds are like for me [link].

Tags:

#reply via reblog #allergies #covid19 #illness tw #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #oh look an original post

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

{{previous post in sequence}}

aa49d59ecd971a3ba9bdd142e45b94af69c121f2

twitblr:

Definitely masking up post-COVID (x) {{the original link didn’t actually lead anywhere; I have replaced it with a genuine source link}}

 

juliainfinland:

Also, let’s keep having soap and disinfectant dispensers everywhere.

 

derinthescarletpescatarian:

By contrast, I’ve been getting the same number of sniffles that I do every year even though there’s no one to catch them from, which is how I learned this year that I’m not prone to minor colds; I’m prone to hayfever.

 

brin-bellway:

Huh, you’re still getting hayfever with a mask? I started wearing a mask in 2017 *specifically* to avoid pollen, and it’s been working wonderfully for me.

Have you been keeping the mask on outside, and when near front doors that people are opening a lot? Does it have a well-fitted nosepiece?

—

I also had no colds in the calendar year 2020. It used to be fairly normal for me to go entire years without getting sick (after I adjusted to my current microbial milieu, that is; I got sick a *lot* the first couple years I lived in Canada), but then I started working a customer-facing job where nobody else ever took sick leave and staff members were forbidden from wearing masks, and I went from a cold every 1 – 2 years to a cold every few months. Getting rid of that damned fast-food cold rate wasn’t worth what it’s cost, but it’s a very nice silver lining.

(for anyone who finds my rate of colds bogglingly low: I’m guessing the two big components are “trained myself out of touching my face in public when I was a pre-teen, and always wash my hands upon returning home” and “rarely travel”, in that order)

I didn’t even used to do any anti-airborne measures†, just anti-fomite. I plan to start wearing a mask in indoor public spaces from October – March or so each year and on public transit year-round, and it’ll be very interesting to see what that does to my baseline cold rate.

(also, on a broader scale, it will be interesting to see if COVID-19 vaccines grant any cross-protection against cold-type coronaviruses)

—

†Except in extreme situations like “on an airplane two seats away from a coughing dude”. Guess who didn’t get sick until an incubation period *after* the rest of her family? (unfortunately there’s only so much you can isolate from people you’re sharing a hotel room with)

 

derinthescarletpescatarian:

I very rarely wear a mask. I hardly leave the house and when I do, almost nobody wears masks here because there’s no covid in my state outside of the quarantined medi-hotels for infected international arrivals; we just sanitise, social distance, keep records of where we go and get tested any time symptoms show up so that when it does show up, we can respond before it’s got more than a couple of people. The distancing and group size limits are enough that basically nobody’s getting colds.

My probably-hayfever is very mild and isn’t debilitating at all (which is probably why it took me so long to notice); I just get a sniffly, runny nose so I haven’t bothered with any pollen precautions. They’d be more annoying than just living with it.

 

brin-bellway:

Fair enough, I suppose.

When I started wearing pollen masks, my only symptom was mild sore throats. The main problem I was having was that pollen attacks felt exactly like…well, the onset of a cold. *Physically* the sore throats per se weren’t a big deal, but I hated never being sure whether or not I was coming down with something.

I’ve started getting runny noses too now, which I found even worse in that they’re impairing in their own right. Maybe I’m just more bothered by having a runny nose than you are.

 

alarajrogers:

My allergies are for animals and dust. I have pets and am far too disorganized to dust. So yeah, I’m actually just as miserable this year as I am every year, but I definitely have noticed, no colds. Runny nose and sneezing and occasional sore throat and cough… but at my age, the biggest symptom of a cold is a draining and horrible fatigue. All my fatigue this year comes from diabetes and depression.

I do think I’m going to keep using masks during the winter every year.

 

brin-bellway:

At your age? Are you implying you *didn’t* get horrible draining fatigue from colds when you were younger?

When I saw that one of the DSM rules is that in order to qualify as having clinical depression it has to be at least two weeks, I thought “ah, of course, they’re thinking of self-limiting diseases”. The last week of December, 2017, I had a cold that *didn’t* come with a transient depressive episode, and it was amazing how much less it sucked. Turns out that while sore throats and stuffy noses and coughing fits *are* pretty annoying, *most* of the badness of colds is from direct inducement of misery.

…if there are people who *normally* don’t get depression from colds, that would explain a lot about how blase they are about disease prevention.

(…“people with enough depression at baseline that colds are just background noise” would also explain a lot but in a much more horrifying way. you indicate that in at least some cases they can be distinguished, though.)

 

brin-bellway:

@rustingbridges replied: “no, I don’t feel that way. identifying a cold mostly consists of ruling out allergies and guessing”

holy fuck

 

alarajrogers:

I’ve suffered from depression since my 20′s, though, and yet the whole “a cold comes with terrible exhaustion” dates to… I wanna say maybe somewhere between 35-40? After I had my kids? A good bit after I was diagnosed with some unspecified fatigue disorder which turned out to be depression under a new guise?

Also, the kind of draining fatigue I’m talking about isn’t what I suffer from my depression.

A depressive episode comes with: i know I ought to do that thing but I really don’t feel like it, I have no willpower to do anything, everything seems kind of pointless, I could get up and do the thing I’m supposed to do but it’s so hard, can’t focus, nothing gives me any sense of satisfaction, no real emotions aside from a general feeling of blah unhappiness or else deep sadness

A cold comes with: going up the stairs has me out of breath, I want to do things but the physical energy is just not there, not sleepy but so tired, watching TV is exhausting, emotional state is anger because I want to do things and my body is betraying me and won’t let me, but I don’t have the energy to rage about it

They both manifest as fatigue, but different kinds of fatigue.

(see also)

That first one sounds much more like a cold to me than the second one does. I guess we’re experiencing different things after all, even now.

I…I’d kind of suspected something like this might be true ever since I had that non-depressive cold in 2017, but it’s still kind of a revelation to have people confirming they actually don’t experience this.

I wonder where the difference lies.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #illness tw #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #depression

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

{{previous post in sequence}}

aa49d59ecd971a3ba9bdd142e45b94af69c121f2

twitblr:

Definitely masking up post-COVID (x) {{the original link didn’t actually lead anywhere; I have replaced it with a genuine source link}}

 

juliainfinland:

Also, let’s keep having soap and disinfectant dispensers everywhere.

 

derinthescarletpescatarian:

By contrast, I’ve been getting the same number of sniffles that I do every year even though there’s no one to catch them from, which is how I learned this year that I’m not prone to minor colds; I’m prone to hayfever.

 

brin-bellway:

Huh, you’re still getting hayfever with a mask? I started wearing a mask in 2017 *specifically* to avoid pollen, and it’s been working wonderfully for me.

Have you been keeping the mask on outside, and when near front doors that people are opening a lot? Does it have a well-fitted nosepiece?

—

I also had no colds in the calendar year 2020. It used to be fairly normal for me to go entire years without getting sick (after I adjusted to my current microbial milieu, that is; I got sick a *lot* the first couple years I lived in Canada), but then I started working a customer-facing job where nobody else ever took sick leave and staff members were forbidden from wearing masks, and I went from a cold every 1 – 2 years to a cold every few months. Getting rid of that damned fast-food cold rate wasn’t worth what it’s cost, but it’s a very nice silver lining.

(for anyone who finds my rate of colds bogglingly low: I’m guessing the two big components are “trained myself out of touching my face in public when I was a pre-teen, and always wash my hands upon returning home” and “rarely travel”, in that order)

I didn’t even used to do any anti-airborne measures†, just anti-fomite. I plan to start wearing a mask in indoor public spaces from October – March or so each year and on public transit year-round, and it’ll be very interesting to see what that does to my baseline cold rate.

(also, on a broader scale, it will be interesting to see if COVID-19 vaccines grant any cross-protection against cold-type coronaviruses)

—

†Except in extreme situations like “on an airplane two seats away from a coughing dude”. Guess who didn’t get sick until an incubation period *after* the rest of her family? (unfortunately there’s only so much you can isolate from people you’re sharing a hotel room with)

 

derinthescarletpescatarian:

I very rarely wear a mask. I hardly leave the house and when I do, almost nobody wears masks here because there’s no covid in my state outside of the quarantined medi-hotels for infected international arrivals; we just sanitise, social distance, keep records of where we go and get tested any time symptoms show up so that when it does show up, we can respond before it’s got more than a couple of people. The distancing and group size limits are enough that basically nobody’s getting colds.

My probably-hayfever is very mild and isn’t debilitating at all (which is probably why it took me so long to notice); I just get a sniffly, runny nose so I haven’t bothered with any pollen precautions. They’d be more annoying than just living with it.

 

brin-bellway:

Fair enough, I suppose.

When I started wearing pollen masks, my only symptom was mild sore throats. The main problem I was having was that pollen attacks felt exactly like…well, the onset of a cold. *Physically* the sore throats per se weren’t a big deal, but I hated never being sure whether or not I was coming down with something.

I’ve started getting runny noses too now, which I found even worse in that they’re impairing in their own right. Maybe I’m just more bothered by having a runny nose than you are.

 

alarajrogers:

My allergies are for animals and dust. I have pets and am far too disorganized to dust. So yeah, I’m actually just as miserable this year as I am every year, but I definitely have noticed, no colds. Runny nose and sneezing and occasional sore throat and cough… but at my age, the biggest symptom of a cold is a draining and horrible fatigue. All my fatigue this year comes from diabetes and depression.

I do think I’m going to keep using masks during the winter every year.

 

brin-bellway:

At your age? Are you implying you *didn’t* get horrible draining fatigue from colds when you were younger?

When I saw that one of the DSM rules is that in order to qualify as having clinical depression it has to be at least two weeks, I thought “ah, of course, they’re thinking of self-limiting diseases”. The last week of December, 2017, I had a cold that *didn’t* come with a transient depressive episode, and it was amazing how much less it sucked. Turns out that while sore throats and stuffy noses and coughing fits *are* pretty annoying, *most* of the badness of colds is from direct inducement of misery.

…if there are people who *normally* don’t get depression from colds, that would explain a lot about how blase they are about disease prevention.

(…“people with enough depression at baseline that colds are just background noise” would also explain a lot but in a much more horrifying way. you indicate that in at least some cases they can be distinguished, though.)

 

brin-bellway:

@rustingbridges replied: “no, I don’t feel that way. identifying a cold mostly consists of ruling out allergies and guessing”

holy fuck

 

gasmaskaesthetic:

fwiw I don’t tend to get depressed when I’m sick with a cold either. A bit grumpy and tired at worst.

even having the flu isn’t depressing as such, it’s sucky and miserable but doesn’t cause a depressive episode.

(I wrote most of the following before seeing this branch, but putting it as a response to your post seemed reasonably fitting)

I would like to be clear here that I am not talking about feeling mildly down. If I were going to be stuck feeling the-way-I-feel-when-I-have-a-cold forever, I would seriously consider suicide, and if you know me you know that I do not say that lightly.

no fucking wonder that one Girl Guide casually mentioned to me after breathing on me for like an hour that she had a cold like it wasn’t a big deal, she probably didn’t *know* she was risking condemning me to 3 – 5 days of *life not being worth living*

Come to think of it, this also explains a lot about people failing to grok depression. Like, yeah, quantity has a quality all its own, but maybe when I saw that one chronically-depressed person explain what “having so little executive function that it takes hours to summon the will to get off the couch and go to the bathroom” is like as if it *wasn’t* a universally relatable experience, she wasn’t just doing whatever-the-opposite-of-projecting is.

(I would also like to be clear that I am not otherwise prone to depression. There have been some instances of experiences that *maybe* qualified, but that kind of deep shit where you can barely even exist let alone do anything else, I haven’t been anywhere near that *except* when I’m sick.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #illness tw #suicide cw #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #depression

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

{{previous post in sequence}}

aa49d59ecd971a3ba9bdd142e45b94af69c121f2

twitblr:

Definitely masking up post-COVID (x) {{the original link didn’t actually lead anywhere; I have replaced it with a genuine source link}}

 

juliainfinland:

Also, let’s keep having soap and disinfectant dispensers everywhere.

 

derinthescarletpescatarian:

By contrast, I’ve been getting the same number of sniffles that I do every year even though there’s no one to catch them from, which is how I learned this year that I’m not prone to minor colds; I’m prone to hayfever.

 

brin-bellway:

Huh, you’re still getting hayfever with a mask? I started wearing a mask in 2017 *specifically* to avoid pollen, and it’s been working wonderfully for me.

Have you been keeping the mask on outside, and when near front doors that people are opening a lot? Does it have a well-fitted nosepiece?

—

I also had no colds in the calendar year 2020. It used to be fairly normal for me to go entire years without getting sick (after I adjusted to my current microbial milieu, that is; I got sick a *lot* the first couple years I lived in Canada), but then I started working a customer-facing job where nobody else ever took sick leave and staff members were forbidden from wearing masks, and I went from a cold every 1 – 2 years to a cold every few months. Getting rid of that damned fast-food cold rate wasn’t worth what it’s cost, but it’s a very nice silver lining.

(for anyone who finds my rate of colds bogglingly low: I’m guessing the two big components are “trained myself out of touching my face in public when I was a pre-teen, and always wash my hands upon returning home” and “rarely travel”, in that order)

I didn’t even used to do any anti-airborne measures†, just anti-fomite. I plan to start wearing a mask in indoor public spaces from October – March or so each year and on public transit year-round, and it’ll be very interesting to see what that does to my baseline cold rate.

(also, on a broader scale, it will be interesting to see if COVID-19 vaccines grant any cross-protection against cold-type coronaviruses)

—

†Except in extreme situations like “on an airplane two seats away from a coughing dude”. Guess who didn’t get sick until an incubation period *after* the rest of her family? (unfortunately there’s only so much you can isolate from people you’re sharing a hotel room with)

 

derinthescarletpescatarian:

I very rarely wear a mask. I hardly leave the house and when I do, almost nobody wears masks here because there’s no covid in my state outside of the quarantined medi-hotels for infected international arrivals; we just sanitise, social distance, keep records of where we go and get tested any time symptoms show up so that when it does show up, we can respond before it’s got more than a couple of people. The distancing and group size limits are enough that basically nobody’s getting colds.

My probably-hayfever is very mild and isn’t debilitating at all (which is probably why it took me so long to notice); I just get a sniffly, runny nose so I haven’t bothered with any pollen precautions. They’d be more annoying than just living with it.

 

brin-bellway:

Fair enough, I suppose.

When I started wearing pollen masks, my only symptom was mild sore throats. The main problem I was having was that pollen attacks felt exactly like…well, the onset of a cold. *Physically* the sore throats per se weren’t a big deal, but I hated never being sure whether or not I was coming down with something.

I’ve started getting runny noses too now, which I found even worse in that they’re impairing in their own right. Maybe I’m just more bothered by having a runny nose than you are.

 

alarajrogers:

My allergies are for animals and dust. I have pets and am far too disorganized to dust. So yeah, I’m actually just as miserable this year as I am every year, but I definitely have noticed, no colds. Runny nose and sneezing and occasional sore throat and cough… but at my age, the biggest symptom of a cold is a draining and horrible fatigue. All my fatigue this year comes from diabetes and depression.

I do think I’m going to keep using masks during the winter every year.

 

brin-bellway:

At your age? Are you implying you *didn’t* get horrible draining fatigue from colds when you were younger?

When I saw that one of the DSM rules is that in order to qualify as having clinical depression it has to be at least two weeks, I thought “ah, of course, they’re thinking of self-limiting diseases”. The last week of December, 2017, I had a cold that *didn’t* come with a transient depressive episode, and it was amazing how much less it sucked. Turns out that while sore throats and stuffy noses and coughing fits *are* pretty annoying, *most* of the badness of colds is from direct inducement of misery.

…if there are people who *normally* don’t get depression from colds, that would explain a lot about how blase they are about disease prevention.

(…“people with enough depression at baseline that colds are just background noise” would also explain a lot but in a much more horrifying way. you indicate that in at least some cases they can be distinguished, though.)

@rustingbridges replied: “no, I don’t feel that way. identifying a cold mostly consists of ruling out allergies and guessing”

holy fuck

Tags:

#this explains so much #oh my god #replies #illness tw #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #depression

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

{{previous post in sequence}}

aa49d59ecd971a3ba9bdd142e45b94af69c121f2

twitblr:

Definitely masking up post-COVID (x) {{the original link didn’t actually lead anywhere; I have replaced it with a genuine source link}}

 

juliainfinland:

Also, let’s keep having soap and disinfectant dispensers everywhere.

 

derinthescarletpescatarian:

By contrast, I’ve been getting the same number of sniffles that I do every year even though there’s no one to catch them from, which is how I learned this year that I’m not prone to minor colds; I’m prone to hayfever.

 

brin-bellway:

Huh, you’re still getting hayfever with a mask? I started wearing a mask in 2017 *specifically* to avoid pollen, and it’s been working wonderfully for me.

Have you been keeping the mask on outside, and when near front doors that people are opening a lot? Does it have a well-fitted nosepiece?

—

I also had no colds in the calendar year 2020. It used to be fairly normal for me to go entire years without getting sick (after I adjusted to my current microbial milieu, that is; I got sick a *lot* the first couple years I lived in Canada), but then I started working a customer-facing job where nobody else ever took sick leave and staff members were forbidden from wearing masks, and I went from a cold every 1 – 2 years to a cold every few months. Getting rid of that damned fast-food cold rate wasn’t worth what it’s cost, but it’s a very nice silver lining.

(for anyone who finds my rate of colds bogglingly low: I’m guessing the two big components are “trained myself out of touching my face in public when I was a pre-teen, and always wash my hands upon returning home” and “rarely travel”, in that order)

I didn’t even used to do any anti-airborne measures†, just anti-fomite. I plan to start wearing a mask in indoor public spaces from October – March or so each year and on public transit year-round, and it’ll be very interesting to see what that does to my baseline cold rate.

(also, on a broader scale, it will be interesting to see if COVID-19 vaccines grant any cross-protection against cold-type coronaviruses)

—

†Except in extreme situations like “on an airplane two seats away from a coughing dude”. Guess who didn’t get sick until an incubation period *after* the rest of her family? (unfortunately there’s only so much you can isolate from people you’re sharing a hotel room with)

 

derinthescarletpescatarian:

I very rarely wear a mask. I hardly leave the house and when I do, almost nobody wears masks here because there’s no covid in my state outside of the quarantined medi-hotels for infected international arrivals; we just sanitise, social distance, keep records of where we go and get tested any time symptoms show up so that when it does show up, we can respond before it’s got more than a couple of people. The distancing and group size limits are enough that basically nobody’s getting colds.

My probably-hayfever is very mild and isn’t debilitating at all (which is probably why it took me so long to notice); I just get a sniffly, runny nose so I haven’t bothered with any pollen precautions. They’d be more annoying than just living with it.

 

brin-bellway:

Fair enough, I suppose.

When I started wearing pollen masks, my only symptom was mild sore throats. The main problem I was having was that pollen attacks felt exactly like…well, the onset of a cold. *Physically* the sore throats per se weren’t a big deal, but I hated never being sure whether or not I was coming down with something.

I’ve started getting runny noses too now, which I found even worse in that they’re impairing in their own right. Maybe I’m just more bothered by having a runny nose than you are.

 

alarajrogers:

My allergies are for animals and dust. I have pets and am far too disorganized to dust. So yeah, I’m actually just as miserable this year as I am every year, but I definitely have noticed, no colds. Runny nose and sneezing and occasional sore throat and cough… but at my age, the biggest symptom of a cold is a draining and horrible fatigue. All my fatigue this year comes from diabetes and depression.

I do think I’m going to keep using masks during the winter every year.

At your age? Are you implying you *didn’t* get horrible draining fatigue from colds when you were younger?

When I saw that one of the DSM rules is that in order to qualify as having clinical depression it has to be at least two weeks, I thought “ah, of course, they’re thinking of self-limiting diseases”. The last week of December, 2017, I had a cold that *didn’t* come with a transient depressive episode, and it was amazing how much less it sucked. Turns out that while sore throats and stuffy noses and coughing fits *are* pretty annoying, *most* of the badness of colds is from direct inducement of misery.

…if there are people who *normally* don’t get depression from colds, that would explain a lot about how blase they are about disease prevention.

(…“people with enough depression at baseline that colds are just background noise” would also explain a lot but in a much more horrifying way. you indicate that in at least some cases they can be distinguished, though.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #illness tw #covid19 #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #allergies #depression

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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maryellencarter:

brin-bellway:

maryellencarter:

4b51025d79f39f30f9e021e5513e5b55b1f06902

@rustingbridges The bacon pretty much dissolved, just added some flavor. Onion might be a good idea but I absolutely loathe trying to chop the damn things. Do they sell pre-chopped onion?

Sausage might be a good mix-in. Maybe just thaw and chop some breakfast links and toss them in. That might be a good plan.

Onion powder?

—

For my dad’s kidney beans we use hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, chopped green bell pepper, salt, black pepper, onion, and garlic. When I make hummus I pretty much just embrace the bland, apart from some garlic and salt.

Worcestershire sauce! I definitely need some. I think I had looked for onion powder at Target but they were all out, and in my experience onion powder and paprika don’t really have any flavor anyway. Maybe the bottles my family had were just very stale though

moral-autism replied: “I’ve seen stores sell both fresh prechopped onion and frozen chopped onion potato mixes…”

Tags:

#conversational aglets #food #the more you know #bluespace #replies

Anonymous asked: “Oh boy there is sure some fucking Argentine nationalist bullfuckery going on in the notes!! 🙃” Are you from Argentina? Because you sound like one lmao

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

ericvilas:

sigmaleph:

loving-not-heyting:

Wtf is this supposed to mean is “sounding Argentinian” some kind of new insult like wut???

frankly i would be terribly offended

wait if I’m understanding right, does that mean that an Argentinian stereotype is “hating Argentine nationalism”?

Because if so uhhhh… Shit. Fuck. I have to go now for completely unrelated reasons.

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(context I knew about when I first read this: both sigmaleph and ericvilas are Argentinian) #(later: I saw some stuff complaining about Falklands War apologists and I think that might have been the bullfuckery referred to in the OP) #anon hate cw?

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