CheeselandSkies

Thanks. My biggest fear was always that it would hit her pretty hard since she has diabetes and is immunocompromised. Thankfully (so far) she has not had any respiratory distress and her oxygen levels are near normal despite the pneumonia, so the hospitalization was more of a precaution than a necessity.

Well, despite our best efforts (wearing masks, avoiding eat-in restaurants/bars - in fact pretty much not going anywhere except work, washing and sanitizing hands, cleaning surfaces, doing pretty much all shopping via delivery or curbside pick-up), my fiancée and I have tested positive (we are both 34, BTW). I had one day the week before last where I felt kind of "bleh" and developed a nagging cough, then lost my sense of taste and smell. She went to the doctor for an unrelated reason a week ago today, and they found her blood pressure was very high so they sent her to the ER. They wanted to admit her and administered a COVID-19 test as a pre-admission precaution. She tested positive and was admitted to a room in the COVID unit (no visitors, full PPE for providers, etc). Her blood pressure came down and they sent her home on Saturday, but it was only after that that she really developed recognizable COVID-19 symptoms including a persistent headache (at times really bad, according to her) and a hacking cough that appeared whenever she tried to lie down, but mostly went away when she sat up. Meanwhile, I got tested last week Friday and got a call on Sunday that I had tested positive. Then yesterday I took her to urgent care because her headaches were continuing and she felt extremely lethargic (could barely muster the energy to dress after taking a shower, and could barely talk). They did a chest X-ray and found she does have pneumonia in both lungs, although she has not had the shortness of breath/chest tightness reported in many cases. I took her back to the ER and she was admitted to the hospital once again. Thankfully she reports feeling better today and if that holds they should send her home tomorrow. I feel pretty much fine now and my taste and smell have started to come back, more noticeably today than before. I still have an occasional fit of coughing, but nothing that couldn't easily be mistaken for an ordinary cold or allergies. FWIW neither of us have ever had a fever, so temperature screenings are pretty much useless...

Might I remind everyone that @ldub23 gave us possibly the worst-aging post in the history of weather forums on August 19, 2017:

Go tell that to the nurses at any of the swamped ICUs in NY, FL, TX or AZ.

Maybe it doesn't help that I only have my two all-black work-provided ones (and a limited supply of surgical masks at home). I've got my first custom one on order.

I don't know if I'd go that far. I'll stick with "Annoying, but necessary for the time being."

So if I (34) were to be in a car accident, or were to catch COVID-19 and be one of the unfortunate few in my age group who needs hospital treatment, they should turn me away? Gee. thanks.

Coastal bomb in summer...why not, 2020?

Oh man, how did I blank on Dorian?

Among other things, it makes it darn near impossible to retire any name earlier than "F." Even in 1992, Andrew probably wouldn't have been Andrew if names were burned through like they are now.

The discussion sounded almost like they expect an event similar to that one in August, 1994 that Gary England wrote about in his book (especially the line about "wind-driven hail"). Same general area, too of western KS/OK border region.

Wisconsin's % positive rate has been holding between 2-4% for some time now. I don't know how we've gotten lucky so far, what with the April primary fiasco and then the doors being thrown open by the Supreme Court in mid-May. Our mask-wearing compliance seems to be no better or worse (in other words, not great) than other parts of the region. Thankfully my workplace has now mandated masks, although not everyone fully complies at all times (I see some people where theirs spends half the day down around their chin) at least they are when we have to be in close proximity for extended periods of time.

Man, I thought no May could be duller than 2018 in the Midwest/Plains. At least that had Tescott for those who were able to get out for it. 2006 and 2009 were pretty bad but they seemed like anomalies in that decade.

Yet this virus has shown it's capable of killing seemingly healthy, younger people (including children). Yes the percentages are low, but still far higher than for the flu and is that really a roulette game you wanna play?

Our illustrious legislature and a complicit court have successfully undermined our governor's efforts to keep us safe. After doing relatively well at keeping case counts from exploding the last six weeks, Wisconsin is now the only state with NO official state-level restrictions or guidelines in effect. And I've been going to work all this time, in a workplace where several people have to touch a lot of the same devices. I've been trying to encourage my coworkers to wear masks, but so far only a few have signed on.

There are just too many stories of people under 40 getting severely ill/dying from this. Some with no identifiable preexisting conditions.

So sorry for your loss, @Jackstraw. Those stories are heartbreaking and terrifying.

Yes. The pandemic has significantly tempered my enthusiasm for violent weather for the time being.

U.S. Supreme Court also overturned the extension to return WI absentee ballots to April 13th. Now they still have to be postmarked by tomorrow. Those who still haven't received theirs due to the massive backlog are SOL and have to vote in person if they want to vote. I see some people (not necessarily on this thread, although I have seen it once or twice) still like to throw around "socialism" and "communism" as scarewords. So, picture Chernobyl. Dr. Fauci is Valery Legasov and Boris Scherbina rolled into one. The rest of the Trump administration and the courts are Zharkov, Bryukhanov and Fomin.

It's unconscionable.

It's impacting the weather too (or at least our ability to predict it). Read several articles that reduced aircraft observations may negatively impact model performance.

That and, it's not feasible to enforce/follow a 100% lockdown in the U.S. Some people will continue to ignore it; but everyone still has to go out at least to get food/supplies/work if you still have it. Cases in Dane County, WI (my friend among them) have been increasing at about 10-20 per day for the last few days. We were still just under 200 at last update. I don't know if that's because we just haven't hit the exponential growth yet, or if we've actually been relatively successful in keeping the spread in check (or if we haven't been testing enough). We did seem to get a bit of an earlier start on social-distancing measures than many other places in the state.

Just found out yesterday a friend of mine is hospitalized with COVID-19. He's 39. We hung out a lot from 2014-early 2017. We haven't seen as much of each other since then for reasons that in retrospect seem kind of petty, although I did still go to some of his gigs (he's a musician here in the Madison area). I'm not really a praying man, but really hoping with every fiber of my being that he pulls through. He also has a wife and daughter.

In other news, there was just a huge ****storm on another weather forum regarding the ethics of storm chasing against state stay-at-home-unless-essential orders (at least WI and IL both have one in place, don't know about IA) and following (or not) social distancing guidelines and other precautions while chasing. It seemed to be a relatively reasonable discussion until I logged on this morning and . I would like to once again thank the atmosphere for making Saturday an easy no-go for me the morning of, despite the proximity of a 15% hatch and the dearth of quality tornado setups in the region since 2/28/17, which I didn't chase because, well...it was February.

Indeed, that is why some people are still questioning whether all this social upheaval is necessary/worth it. You have only to look at what has been happening in Italy/some other places in Europe and is starting to happen in New York to see why it's necessary. ...and if the US and the rest of the developed world was caught so much at the mercy of this virus, imagine a pandemic of a similarly communicable disease with a much higher case fatality rate (basically the plot of Contagion).