palsytalks

This is not about us. You’re gonna get other people killed.

Staying home is a preventative action.

Kids, I live in the middle of China.  And guess what?  It’s on the decline here, because travel was shut the fuck down, and people have been self-quarantining and staying home.  Stay home.  And I’m not saying that because I’m a doomsday fear-monger.

Do you know why self-quarantining works?  Because the incubation period is anywhere from one to two weeks.  You could be a carrier long before you know you have it.  You can leave your home, catch it from another carrier, and go about your life spreading it to others for a solid fourteen days.  And everyone knows that aeroplanes are just flying Petri dishes.  You’re at risk of transmission on a plane, and you’re at risk of transmitting for much longer than most of you may realize.

The virus is travelling at an exponential rate because of this incubation period.  When it reaches where you live, no one will know for two weeks.  People will be passing it around for two weeks.  And then the cases will crop up, and when they do, your healthcare systems will be overwhelmed.  Your neighbours will be treated in hallways and waiting rooms.  There will be limited resources, limited oxygen machines, limited kits.  Doctors and nurses will be pushed to breaking point, and they will exhaust themselves.  And as I’ve seen here, some of them will die as a consequence.  And the elderly and the immunocompromised will be at risk of dying.

But you can help this.  By staying the fuck home like the goddamn CDC says.  Go out only if it’s necessary.  For work, for groceries, for doctor visits.  If your job allows you to work from home, do it.  Travel only in emergencies.  Stay home.  Don’t put yourself or others at risk.

Here’s a graph!

See those flat lines?  Those are Chinese provinces, where the virus could have been exponential, but people were quick to distance themselves and stay home, so it hasn’t been exponential. There haven’t been that many new cases.  And, yeah, it was government-enforced.  It also worked.

So when your CDC advises social distancing because your government can’t constitutionally enforce it? Do it.  Just fucking do it.  Look at the graph.  And do it.

I know it sucks.  But someone else’s right to LIVE is greater than your right to a cheap plane ticket and a weekend away.

We’re going to survive this.  And you increase how many of us will by staying home.

Staying home is not a fear reaction.

I don’t usually post personal shit but my friend and I were talking and there were some things she didn’t know were PTSD related, and sometimes it’s just so weird and out there so. Some stuff I learned too late were caused by trauma:

- Nightmares that have *nothing* to do with your trauma

- Getting angry at anything that startles you/is loud/is irriatating

- Becoming alarmingly calm in situations of crisis/chaos

- Shaking, just, all the time

- Needing very little sleep to function effectively

- Massive mood swings that often get mistaken for personality or mood disorders

- Feeling like there is a layer of dirt on you/that your skin is dirty and needing to get it off

- Believing you will die young and alone !! Big one!!

- Looking for reasons to cut people out of your life

- Needing things to be exactly as you like them to be – not necessarily clean/organized but just to be a specific way and be within your control, and getting angry when it is not *this one gets mistaken for OCD v often

- Preferring high stress/very busy lifestyles to keep occupied

- Needing compression/pressure (ie tight shoelaces, heavy coats and blankets, snug fitting hats, etc) to feel comfortable/safe

- Discomfort with silence

- Very sensitive to heat, smell, and lighting

- Ringing in ears!! I had no idea about this one tinnitus is not that uncommon for ptsd, even if there was no direct head trauma involved

- Physical numbness, often in arms & hands when a flashback or panic attack is about to start

- Derailing conversations when they are causing stress

- Sudden and unexplained onsets of just the most deep sense of melancholy (often accompanied by a lot of tears)

This will be false.