Coronavirus, Day 56 – COVID Discounts

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I know that this virus has been tough on people financially in a variety of ways, so I wanted to share a handful of discounts that we’ve stumbled upon recently to help put a little cash back in our pockets…

Verizon – Monthly Discount for Nurses
Their verification app was a little clunky, but after looking up and providing Sara’s state license #, the next day Verizon confirmed we’d be getting $25/month off of our cell phone bill … plus next month it’ll be $50 because they didn’t have time to do it for this bill cycle!

Progressive Auto Insurance – Free Meal +20% Off
A couple of weeks ago I was surprised to find an email in my inbox with a $50 Uber Eats coupon, also because my wife is a nurse. This one was triggered automatically, I assume because I listed our professions when I signed us up. They’re also supposed to be giving everyone 20% off their auto premiums for April and May, though I haven’t seen anything on this one for April yet…

(I believe Geico and USAA and some others are offering premium discounts, too…)

Electric Co-Op – Capital Credit Refund
Now this one may be unique to us but because our electric company is a co-op, they issue a refund each year for the excess profits that they collected. This normally comes around Christmastime, however they decided to do it early this year due to COVID and as a result, our next bill has a $60 credit on it!

Student Loans – Refinancing for Deferred Payments & Interest
This last one is a doozy, and it’s still up in the air because I won’t fully believe it until I see it, but long story short – Sara’s student loans didn’t qualify for the interest and payment waivers from the CARES Act because apparently her loans aren’t technically owned by the US Department of Education.

…even though they started out that way…

Regardless, a few weeks ago we started the process of consolidating them, which in theory should move them back under the Dept. of Education and basically put everything on hold until Sept. 30, That’s five months of no student loan payments or interest, so if it works, that’s definitely the biggest savings opportunity currently on our plate!

TALK TO YOUR BANKS
One other thing I’ll note that isn’t really a discount, but if you’re really struggling because maybe you’re out of work or have reduced hours or additional expenses, I’d strongly recommend getting a hold of your bank(s) … mortgage, credit cards, car loan … anyone who loans you money, and ask what options they have for forbearance.

We did this during a hurricane where we evacuated a few years ago. I made a list of everyone we made payments to and many of them had info right on their websites about what to expect. Because most of our banking is with one bank, with one somewhat long phone call, I think I temporarily eliminated over a grand out of our monthly budget by getting credit card payments and other loan payments waived.

You definitely need to read all of the terms to understand whether you’ll owe a lump sum at the end or if payments are just tacked onto the end of your loans (I think this was more common), but most businesses are willing to work with you if they’re aware that you’re struggling and otherwise just might not pay them!

Coronavirus, Day 51 – Just a Sandwich

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I think today was the first day that I actually set foot inside of a restaurant for more than like 30 seconds, and it was very uncomfortable and weird.

I decided to grab lunch from Firehouse Subs, but their app wasn’t working so I had to go inside to place my order. The place looked as if they were getting ready to tear up the floors – all of the tables and chairs had been piled in the corners except for a single row of tiny two-seaters against the wall opposite the counter. A table with cups and lids was setup in front of the drink station so that no one would have to hand you your cup. And a stack of high chairs served as a barricade to provide extra distance between customers and the cashier.

There were a couple of X’s in tape on the floor to indicate where people were supposed to wait, but there was only one other guy sitting at a table by himself eating his lunch, so it didn’t really matter.

Surprisingly, there were like four or five employees on the other side of the counter, which seemed excessive, but I suppose it was later in the afternoon so maybe it was busier earlier.

For the last month and a half, I’ve pretty much exclusively gotten my food through drive-thrus and curbside service, and even Panera the other day brought my food out to me instead of me going in just to grab it off of their takeout shelf.

The other day I drove through the mall and admittedly it was very strange to drive past restaurants and see tables full of people, even spaced far apart.

I’d imagine it’s even more uncomfortable for the employees working at these places.

Coronavirus, Day 47 – Are We Making a Huge Mistake???

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I’ll be honest – all of this talk about Reopening America™ makes me very uncomfortable.

It’s like everyone agreed that this phased approach with gradual openings based on a downward trajectory of cases made sense, and then a few days later they decided to just skip the data part and go right to putting things back the way that they were!

I mean, yesterday we just had our second-worst day of new cases ever at 36,007, so how are we even talking about this right now?!

I just look at places like Jacksonville where they reopened the beaches and people claimed that they were acting responsibly and social distancing, even though a lot of them weren’t. I’ll admit that even just walking around Walmart, it can be hard to do when there’s just a ton of people and you need to grab a box of Frosted Flakes that this lady has been standing in front of for the last five minutes.

I worry that things are going to go back to normal, and people will basically ignore that Coronavirus ever existed … and then cases and deaths will spike like we never could’ve imagined in the last month and a half that we tried to keep this under control.

Yes, I get that we can’t just live inside forever and that a lot of businesses are hurting from not being able to be opened right now, but this disease isn’t something that’s just going to go away because Americans got bored with it and Trump needed our economy to rebound for his reelection campaign.

One of the arguments I’ve heard is, “You can stay inside if you want, but let the rest of us do what we want…” and there’s a part of me that would be ok with that if there was any sense that the people saying it would still follow the guidelines and keep safe distances from each other and generally take COVID-19 seriously. Yet instead when they do go out, they gather in huge crowds and wave semi-automatic weapons on the capital lawn and rant about how awful vaccines are … and I just can’t.

Right now as I write this, we’re finally at the high-water mark of the 65,000 deaths caused by the last flu season … two months into COVID-19 … and with no actual sign of it slowing down anytime soon.

There’s a good chance that by the end of June, we’ll be over 100,000 deaths and 1.5M cases, and I fear that the more lax we get about reopening the country, the more we’re just going to blow right past those figures like the first couple of months were nothing.

It’s like we’re living the movie Jaws and I guess I just really don’t want anyone else to get eaten by this shark…

Coronavirus, Day 39 – That Idiocracy Movie Was Fiction … Right???

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Last night the President of the United States hypothesized on live television to an audience of 10+ million people that the scientific community should explore injecting ultraviolet light into the body to combat Coronavirus. And also injecting disinfectant into the lungs.

Which … look … I don’t have a problem with the president spitballing random ideas that pop into his head for members of his cabinet to then research.

I mean, I’d rather he let the experts come to him with ideas that they’re researching using actual scientific methods and principals, but in the bigger scope of things, what bothers me when Trump goes off on his little brainstorming sessions like this is that believe it or not, lots of people in this country look up to him as a role model and actually follow through on the random things that come out of his mouth.

Like the elderly couple who poured themselves glasses of aquarium cleaner after hearing the President talk about how maybe hydroxychloroquine might be a wonder drug for COVID-19. One died and the other ended up in intensive care.

Note that a month later, one study of the drug was cut short after patients began exhibiting irregular heartbeats and nearly two dozen died.

Of course, in classic Trump form today he’s claiming that his off the cuff comments were made as a joke to dig at the liberal media in the room – because who doesn’t like a good joke when 50,000 Americans and counting have died from the disease that two months ago the leader of their country was denouncing as little more than a hoax and a political jab at his re-election.

So last night I rewatched Idiocracy – a movie that I honestly didn’t even really like when I first saw it – but I’ll be damned if it didn’t hit way too close to home! How did we get to this place where not only are people proud to deny science in favor of their own whims, but now they’re very much willing to risk their own lives by parading through the streets without masks in protest of their rights to act like the responsible adults that they’re not in the middle of a global pandemic?!

I read a few comments earlier in response to Michigan’s governor removing many restrictions as her citizens had demanded, but also in turn requiring people to wear masks when they’re out in public…

“They can’t make us wear them!” 

“As far as I know, this is still a free country!”

And my favorite – “My husband didn’t risk his life so that I could be told what to wear to the grocery store…”

I … don’t know how to talk to people with this kind of mentality anymore because if they’re this hellbent on doing things their way, they’re perpetually going to be a part of that percentage that’s part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Despite a public health risk not only to themselves, but more importantly to others in their community, these are the same people who refuse to get vaccinated, who go to work and send their kids to school even when they’re sick, and are basically just selfish assholes. And all we can do as their neighbors and friends is do our best to stay away from them in hopes that in the end they only hurt themselves and not the people around them.

It’s a sad perspective to have to take, but when the President tells somebody to jump off a bridge and they actually do it, what else is there for the rest of us to do except for to view that person at best as a cautionary tale?

Well, that and we also need to get ourselves a President who stops telling people to jump off of bridges.

Coronavirus, Day 35 – Has It Really Been a Month of This Already?!

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I know that it all seems like kind of a blur…

  • 3/12 – 3/16 : Businesses across the country, including Florida’s entire tourism industry, ground to a halt. Public schools followed. My job announced remote work for employees in the USA. Toilet paper was surprisingly hard to find!
  • 3/27 : A $2.2 trillion dollar stimulus package – the largest in US history – was passed by Congress; US surpassed Italy with 100,000 cases of COVID-19; healthcare workers struggle for PPE to protect themselves against the virus.
  • 3/31 : Public schools began their crash course in virtual learning.
  • 4/3 : The CDC advised everyone to start wearing masks in public to help further slow the spread.
  • 4/6 : US total cases exceeded 350,000; death toll passed 10,000 people.
  • 4/14 : US total cases exceeded 600,000; US death toll passed 25,000 people.
  • 4/16 – 4/17 : Protests erupted in several states over social distancing measures. President Trump unveiled plans for reopening American economy, despite no discernible decline in in new cases or deaths.

In many ways, time feels like it’s standing still because it takes so much effort just to get from one day to the next, only to have it look pretty much like it did the day before.

Somebody should make a movie like that! Do you think that Bill Murray would be available???

It definitely concerns me to see so much restlessness in our country right now because looking at the numbers and the continuing struggles for medical supplies, I don’t really think we’re ready to be talking about starting up the country again already. I hope I’m wrong, but I feel like what’s going to happen is the most restless among us are going to force the issue until the segments impacting them re-open – like beaches, for example – which will result in a surge of new cases and deaths, but will be even more difficult to confront because people will be even less likely to accept social distancing measures again when they already balked at them once leading up to this.

And I know that we can’t just stay inside forever, but … there’s got to be a better answer because right now the talk makes it sound like “Back to business as usual!” is what the loudest protesters want, even if that’s admittedly not what’s even outlined in the plan of the guy who’s banner they were waiving on the capital steps!

It’s really amazing the impact that only a month can have on people’s heads.

I know that I’ve been really stressed, and admittedly in the grand scheme of things my own personal impact isn’t that bad.

Last week I saw a teenager complaining on Facebook about how this had been going on for months now, and regardless of your typical teenage melodrama, I can sort of appreciate the sentiment because I’m sure the folks who took to protesting last week felt the same way.

The idea that we’ll be extremely lucky if we have a vaccine in production this fall and can put it all behind us by Christmastime … which is still EIGHT MONTHS away … seems like too much for anyone to comprehend.

We all just want to go back to the way things used to be – kids in school where they belong while their parents begrudgingly go to work, nights out at restaurants and vacations at big, crowded theme parks and cruise ships, and not having the headlines every day dominated by this single issue from seeming every angle – political, scientific, and more unsubstantiated opinions than anyone should have to judge in their day.

But the thing is, we can’t just go back to the way things used to be.

We don’t have that luxury in the middle of a global pandemic.

To date 165,000 people around the world have died from this one communicable disease – a quarter of them Americans – and despite our best interests, we’ve yet to see any real evidence that we’re past the peak of it.

So if we want to start trying to grab back elements of normality in our otherwise chaotic lives, we have to be really smart about it. And that’s tough to do when we still have people walking among us, and some on television and in positions of power, who think the entire COVID-19 thing is some bizarre hoax.

I think that’s the most weary part of this for me because it’s really hard for me to try to balance everything all around me while I’m still encountering people who think that it’s all bullshit.

I mean, I don’t really care what they think, and I’m trying to get past the point where I care about trying to change their minds, but like most conspiracy theorists … sometimes it’s still scary just knowing they’re out there. People who think … like that.

All of that said, I do think that some pretty impressive things have also happened in the last month, which I think I’ll try to write about tomorrow because this blog post became longer than I was expecting as it is!

Stay safe, stay sane, and have hope for a brighter tomorrow. That’s really the best that we can do today.

Coronavirus, Day 32 – How are the Kids Doing?

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Given how much stress the rest of us are under trying to juggle life under this bizarre pandemic, I think it’s easy to overlook the impact it has on the little ones in our lives.

This is a topic that came up with my therapist last week when we were talking about struggling with e-learning and new behavior issues, and I kind of surprised myself to realize that I wasn’t really thinking about how the kids were being affected by everything taking place…

  • They haven’t been able to go to their school in a month. And play with their friends. And see their teachers.
  • They can’t go to the playground, or Legoland, or Busch Gardens, or any of the other places for fun that we visit outside of the house.
  • Home has become more than just a safe place where they can unwind – now they’re expected to learn here, and follow schedules that they used to relate with the classroom.

Not to mention, typically taking away things like the playground or time with friends is a punishment, but in this case they didn’t do anything wrong! 

I’m sure it’s very confusing for them, and then on top of it they’re seeing Mom and Dad struggling with these new responsibilities and the stress cascades down to them. It really shouldn’t surprise us that they’re acting out more and picking fights with each other and getting into trouble because we’ve essentially taken the world that they know and turned it upside down.

And occasionally I’ll try to explain that, “We can’t go to Legoland right now because lots of people are sick…” but it’s obviously a lot deeper than that, and probably deeper than anyone could really expect a three to six year-old to understand.

It stresses me out to know that almost three quarters of a million Americans have tested positive for COVID-19 and that 36,000 of them have died of it … but kids aren’t going to understand all of that.

They don’t get all of the masks, and the restrictions.

And they don’t get why the rest of us are stressed, either.

So more and more I’m trying to give the kids a break when they’re acting out because once again, none of this is normal, and just because they don’t understand it doesn’t mean that it’s not affecting them.

If anything, I’d argue that it’s affecting them all the more because they don’t understand it.

Coronavirus, Day 28 – Uncertainty

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It’s hard not knowing what’s going to happen next.

Over the last few years, I’ve learned that this plays a big part with my anxiety because I do much better when I have a plan to follow and specific things that I know I want/need to be focused on.

With this pandemic, though, everything is up in the air and I’m often working on the fly … which is why I’m still up writing this blog post at 3:18am instead of asleep in my bed like I should be… 😛

I’ve really been trying to tell myself that these are not normal times and you can’t expect a lot of anyone – including yourself – while we’re all in the middle of chaos, yet there are some things I’d love to see change in my current day to day:

  • I’d like to feel as if I’m not just cleaning in any spare moment that I have because no matter how much I get done, it feels like the three cyclones that are my kids manage to tear it all back apart by the time I get up the next morning.
  • I’d like to make better use of my work time. Right now it feels like most of my time is spent jumping from fire to fire, and admittedly that’s what probably too much of my job felt like a month ago before all of this started, too! But in general, I’d love to find a way to stabilize that so I can start working towards my actual goals again and not just spend all of my time treading water.
  • I’d also like to find more time for calm in all of this because, well, HA! I mean, I’ve been blogging and writing humor a little more, which I think is nice, and I had a therapy session over telemedicine on Friday that gave me a chance to just talk through a lot of random frustrations. From the tone that I find myself taking with the kids, though, I know that I desperately need more.

It’s tough because there’s so much to worry about right now. Will any of my family directly catch and struggle with the virus? Will our jobs make more changes … they’ve already made a few … that suddenly change our finances at home? Will politics or businesses continue to heed the advise of the medical community or will we find ourselves backing off from social distancing too early and end up making this thing even worse?

Are my kids getting anything out of their e-learning in the absence of their traditional school environments?

What about the damage from missing out on things like their in-home autism therapies?

And what about all of those people who aren’t even as lucky as me to be able to work from home and try to support this demanding e-learning effort???

It’s a lot to handle, and as much as it feels like we’ve already been doing it forever (in reality, it’s been about a month), at this point I still have a hard time picturing an exit strategy to get everyone back to work and school…

Maybe some businesses can make adjustments to their workplaces, but many (like mine) have switched to open office floor plans that don’t even give us the privacy of cubicle walls anymore.

Schools on a good day are basically filled with walking petri dishes, so I really don’t see the kids doing anything other than virtual learning until the fall.

And all of those large gathering places like theme parks and beaches … I worry those places might end up being where we have to learn the hard way because if my local Walmart can’t even limit the number of people coming in the door, there’s no way that Disney World is going to when they’ve got people paying $150 a piece and they’ve grown accustomed to packing them in like sardines. 🙁

Still, I get the opposing argument – we can’t just stay locked away forever, and if a vaccine could still be 6-12 months away … what then???

I don’t know the answer to that one. I just know that all of the answers that come to mind sound scary, and I hope that there’s a team buried in data and brainpower somewhere that has some better ideas.

And that when they’re ready, we have the wherewithal to hear them.

Until then, all that we can do is take this one day at a time and not make any rash decisions.

Coronavirus, Day 25 – But The Flu…

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One of the most common arguments against all of the measures being taken against COVID-19 is citing how many deaths we see from the flu every single year.

And I’ll admit that a number like 35,000 Americans dying from the flu gives me pause because that sounds awful. Of course, 2.8 million people dying each year in general sounds awful, but let’s talk about the flu because I’ve given it a lot of thought trying to rationalize the real difference between fighting this Coronavirus today and the seasonal flu…

Duration of Impact
For starters, let’s consider that flu season is typically 4-6 months long, whereas right now we’ve been facing COVID-19 in the States for a little over three weeks.

Just at a glance, this sounds like a huge factor in why our medical system can handle the seasonal flu without having a run on ventilators like we’re seeing today simply because the regular flu is spread out over a much longer timeframe. If we compare stats, we’ve already seen 18,000 deaths in three weeks compared to those 35,000 in four to six months.

Conservatively speaking, that’s an average of 857 deaths per day for COVID-19 and 291 deaths per day for a four-month flu season. Wow!

Vaccines and the Lack Thereof
Next, let’s consider the impact of vaccines specifically on the front lines to protect doctors and nurses from also contracting and spreading diseases … which has been a problem particularly in NYC where we’re seeing caregivers catching the virus from the same people that they’re trying to help.

We don’t really see this with the regular flu because at my wife’s hospital, for example, come flu season every employee in the hospital is either required to get a flu shot or wear a mask for the entirety of flu season!

That’s a level of protection lacking for the doctors and nurses facing Coronavirus today because we simply don’t have a vaccine ready yet.

Stacking Numbers
And another point, along the lines of protection, is the devastating PPE shortage that hospitals have been fighting because sure, they might normally stock enough masks and gowns and whatnot to manage the seasonal flu, but the regular flu didn’t just go away when Coronavirus came to town.

So the result is a system that’s already supporting a regular flu season then also thrust into a brand new and very different flu pandemic, and the lack of adequate supplies to protect workers and even family members and other patients becomes painfully and quite dangerously clear.

Other Considerations
Couple these with other factors that Coronavirus has shown us including a longer incubation period, carriers with mild to no symptoms, and just being something new that the medical field isn’t used to dealing with I think puts it on a much different level than the regular, old flu.

One terrifying story described a patient’s lung tissue literally being torn away by the virus … something that the flu doesn’t do! So there’s a lot to be said for simply dealing with the unknown in the middle of all of these other factors.

So no, we don’t shut down the economy and close schools and workplaces and see this dramatic response to the seasonal flu … because it seems to reason that what we’re facing with Coronavirus is an entirely different beast altogether.

Is the fact that we vaccinate for the flu enough to counter the need for the drastic social distancing being exercised today? Probably not entirely, but all of these pieces of the puzzle together make for a compelling argument as to why it’s not wise to be so quick to quantify COVID-19 with the flu that we face every year like clockwork.

Coronavirus, Day 22 – Inspiration in Kindness and Compassion

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There’s plenty around to drag a person down these days, so I thought I’d take the opposite spin and share a few of the things that have made me smile and given me a little bit of hope in the face of so much tragedy and turmoil lately…

Innovation in Food Service
Restaurants are getting hit pretty hard right now with most not able to actually serve in their dining rooms, yet it impresses me how many have done everything that they can to embrace the takeout and delivery models to keep their employees working and paid. I think it’s great to see the extra thought that many have put into “contactless delivery” to help dispel the fear of even that minimal contact with your delivery driver.

We’ve even got a local pizza place that has turned their dining room into a donation center where customers can pick up a couple of rolls of toilet paper or other essentials if they’re in need!

Creativity in Education
It’s hard enough to get adults to pay attention during conference calls, so the idea of teaching kids all the way down to kindergarten age online is a daunting one to say the least, but so far I’ve been really impressed with how my sons’ teachers are doing their very best to work with what they have and try to connect with their kids at whatever level they can.

And even after only a few days and lots of struggles, they’re starting to get more engaged – my oldest son would barely talk on his first Zoom call with his teacher and class, but now he’s laughing and enjoying sharing time with his friends, listening to his teacher read to them and answer questions about the work they’re doing online, and generally just trying to bridge the digital divide that has been thrust upon everyone.

I thought it was really cute on Friday when she announced to everyone that it was funny hat day and how all of the kids needed to run and find a silly hat so that she could take a group picture of everyone together on the screen! 😉

Heartfelt Gratitude for Medicine
If there’s one angle of this pandemic that most of us can relate to the least, it’s for those doctors and nurses on the front lines actually facing COVID-19 head-on and doing their best to care for the people who get it.

My wife told me recently about being brought to tears along with her coworkers upon learning that people had left chalk drawings and signs of support in their parking lot around the hospital where she works. Some even waited in the parking lot until change of shift so that they could thank them as they were coming and going from work, while others drove a parade of cars around the hospital honking and cheering for everything that they were doing to help fight this horrible virus.

It’s easy to get caught up in the dire negative and feel like there’s no end in sight, but there are good things happening out there, too.