With all the news about the virus, i just want to know if you guys are ok and safe.
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Never been a better time to get some IF work done, right?
My spring break is doubled in length. Trying to make the best of the situation.
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Iām just going about business as usual, with the exception of washing my hands more often. My job deals with a lot of people and their personal property, so I try to wear gloves a lot. Not much else I can do.
Iām a homebody anyway, so even if the entire city was on quarantine, I probably wouldnāt even notice. 
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My husband has now switched to working at home to protect immunosuppressed me. Luckily he is a software engineer / academic, and has supportive bosses.
Having said that a GP cousin (family doctor) messaged me today, extremely concerned about the virusās risks to me. Heās advised that I should avoid health centres and hospitals as much as possible. Not least because in the UK community testing is now ending, so there will be many unknown cases. Iām rearranging a face to face doctor appointment this week to phone call. Then I donāt need to go near them before July ā¦
Iām still planning on entering Spring Thing, but my 25 year neurological disease is proving more of an impediment to me right now than Coronavirus. Still expecting to submit my game in time though.
And probably best not get me started on concerns re my parents, 85 and 83, with serious lung and heart conditions. Fingers crossed basically ā¦
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All good. Heck, I am retired anyway. My wife is still teaching school. Regular spring break was this week. The school system extended it a week and may start online learning depending on the situation after next week.
We will see. I am going to hibernate at home and work on a story for Info Comp.
fos1
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My wife and daughter have persistent head colds, so weāre quarantining ourselves. These last months have been rough, but weāll pull through.
Still, if Hell was real, it would involve bring locked in the home with a bored, volatile 18-month toddler.
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Being a young and otherwise healthy individual, Iām mostly concerned with going insane over the enforced inactivity. Patience is not one of my strong suitsā¦
Iām not in any risk group, so Iām not too worried about my own health, or that of my immediate family. Iām also lucky to be working from home.
But Iām concerned about the long-term effects on society, when borders are closed and everything grinds to a halt. Many people will find themselves without a job. Itās happening already in the travel, hotel, restaurant, and entertainment sectors.
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This episode will provide much useful information for writers to get a better idea of how an apocalyptic disease scenario would run.
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Iām safe so far, though yesterday I tweaked my back in a completely unrelated episode and now itās sometimes hard for me to get up out of my chair.
Our schools just declared that they were closing as of Wednesdayāwe were keeping our children home already. My university is moving to remote instructionāspring break already startedāand Iām trying to figure out how to do that. Based on the Cragne Manor experience I think Iām going to set up Slack groups for my classes, because Slack is the only service like this I can ever remember not hating. I do ordinary course-related functions through Blackboard but I donāt think it would be adequate for these purposes.
Anyway I just want to say that, whether or not you are in a high risk group (and prayers/good vibes/whatever your favored form of good wishes to those of you who are), social distancing is about trying to keep COVID from spreading to those who are, and keep the medical system from getting overwhelmed when everyone gets sick all at once. So Do It For Humanity.
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They also just announced the closure of every school in my state. This doesnāt affect me directly, but it makes me wonder if/when my job is going to get shut down.
The fact of the matter is that Iām a mechanic working for a franchise, and when I hop from car to car, it just conjures up images of bees pollinating flowers. I canāt imagine theyād let us stay open much longer at this rate. Working from home is obviously a no-go, so Iāll just have to hope that I donāt fall into a loop hole that prevents me from claiming unemployment during this, since Iām the only person with income in our household.
Iām also worried for my girlfriend who has been sickly for years and has a horrible immune system from never leaving the apartment. If I get sick and Iām quarantined with her, I really donāt know what her chances are.
I know I played it off as nothing earlier, but Iām honestly seriously concerned what my life will look like in the next few months. 
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Iām using the extra time at home to play a game I call āwriting unit tests for my next IFComp entry and keeping them greenā. Iāve got my high score up to 110 now.
I have used FreeConferenceCall for online screen-sharing before, Iām sure there are tons of similar apps, but I had good luck with this one for a single teleconference I had. Slack would also be good, but I donāt remember if it had whiteboard capability.
Iām doing fine here, I also work from home and Iāve got an abundance of remote grocery locations that arenāt getting picked clean. Iāve taken a ton of time off though so my paycheck will suffer, but I bet everyoneās in the same boat.
I guess Iām lucky to be an introvert because I have so many projects to keep myself occupied and donāt suffer from lack of social interaction, though I do have my local friend/family group I am hanging with. If we go down, we all go down together!
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Iām fine, but a little worried about my 80+ mother living in a retirement community.
It was a bit unnerving to see the empty shelves in the grocery stores. Iāve never seen that before. I incidentally stocked up on a normal amount of TP a couple of weeks ago. So, thankfully I missed the rush on that.
Gatherings of 50 or more people are now banned and schools are closed. Very few cars on the road and people walking about. Eerie.
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Man IFCOMP is gonna be LIT this year. A zillion games made by people that had a zillion extra hours to make 'em.
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Predictions for IFComp 2020:
At least four games independently pioneer the My Crappy Quarantine subgenre.
One parser game is a faithful replication of The Masque of the Red Death.
Two games are resource management sims where your species is under threat of extinction from an invasive virus which, in a spectacular twist, turns out to have been Humanity all along.
One game is an implementation of the well-known NP-hard optimization problem āTravelling Salesman with Contamination and Moral Deficiencyā, where you must visit the major cities of the world, collecting frequent-flyer bonus points from under-priced flights, with borders closing by the hour due to the pandemic that you are propagating. As air carriers go bankrupt, their frequent-flyer programs vanish, and the goal is to maximize the remaining number of bonus miles available to you at the end of the game. The only winning move is not to play.
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Six Silver Bullets contains numerous references to this work, which is one of my favorite Poeās
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Very fine. Hope that the fellow whose PM me is now at easeā¦
Iām actually toying around the idea of a 10 room competition (that is, Dekameronā¦ who know 14th Century Italian poetry (cit.) will get the reference 
)
Of course, this national lockdown gives me plenty of time for general codingā¦
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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Looks like we may fit the symptoms. Thatās disheartening, but itās nice that weāre already sequestered. Weāre not debilitated and weāre mostly bored and cautious during excursions.
Still, itās a downer.
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I wish you a speedy recovery, get well soon!
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