Ah that's good, I was wondering his age so yeah, would be way too scary to bung a 9 year old off to hospital on his own! Still, fingers crossed it goes ok, shows some improvement and he doesn't have to stay in

Still good over here! My old folks as well. Just bought a box of 50 masks as well haha. Figured fuck it, might as well do it now and not wait until the next crisis when people will empty the shelves again. Not like we won't be needing masks in the near future anyway.

@ Pev: I can imagine it's a pain yeah. I once had to run from a metro station to the train platform with a heavy backpack and a lot of stairs up and down and it felt like I was inhaling my mask! If I'm just walking I'm fine but then I don't have the same health issues you do. Hope you can find a more comfortable mask soon! I would suggest looking into getting one of the more expensive 'professional' ones (if you can). They're more rigid, with the additional benefit of offering more protection.

@ J good luck with the surgery! Can I ask how he broke those ear bones in the first place? Sounds like a very particular type of injury.

Kinda hoping Satis and Shiny are ok btw...corona is wreaking havoc on the states again. Yesterday alone they counted 58000 new infections and over 2000 deaths (a daily record). Jesus effing christ. It would be criminal if they are forced to go into work, especially for any work that doesn't really require their physical presence.

In the meantime, countries all over Europe are imposing 10 to 14 day quarantines on Belgian people travelling there because of the recent uptick of the virus there. Effectively stopping travel to almost all of these places since who's gonna go on a holiday or business trip and quarantine for that long? Gonna be interesting to see if I can go anywhere at all this year if I ever take any leave haha.

Well it became clear during the first surgery last year that his "condition" = cholesteatoom probably was something he was born with. Rare, but it happens. Basically you have inner ear tissue (?) above your ear drum (?) growing to the inside, creating all kind of infections and pockets filled with fluid et all. This all caused those bones to be severely damaged.

in Dutch: van zijn 3 gehoorbeentjes (hamer, aambeeld, stijgbeugel) hebben ze eigenlijk maar een half teruggeplaatst na de operatie, omdat de rest te hard was aangetast

Yeah numbers in America are crazy, and then you hear the Donald saying they're doing well ... incredible.

Thanks for explaining! Hope he will be fine and hearing better soon. Fingers crossed. It sounds like a relatively routine surgery but it's still your child, so it's always going to be a bit scary. Do let us know how it went!

As for Trump....is there anything he has gotten right in this pandemic? I think he might have finally found something real enough that he couldn't bullshit his way out of it.

- It's not real, it's a hoax
- It's just a cold/flu
- We only have 100 cases, soon there will be 0
- Masks are stupid, don't wear masks
- We should reduce testing, it makes us look bad
- Hydroxychloroquine is a wonder drug, you should try it

I guess one thing we can credit him for was the early closure of the borders for Chinese travelers. Which likely prevented the early spread of the virus in the US. But then it came in from the rest of the world (mainly Europe) anyway. At least now he is wearing masks so his die hard followers are perhaps getting the message that it's not about being a 'weak libtard'. Who knows?

He also said that if they could keep deaths between 100 and 200k it would have been a great success. This was when they were still at 5000 or so and at the time it felt like a total overshoot just so he wouldn't have to say 'ok we have 10 times more deaths than I said, oops'. But it's already at 161k and rapidly approaching 200. Sheeeet.

Yeah I might have to try and find a more rigid professional one. Still they do keep saying not to do that unless you have to since they're still short. Anyone see the latest scandal? Something stupid like half a mil masks (can't remember the numbers, might be more or less) that we dropped a ton of money on for the NHS staff a few months back from 'some random place' rather than the usual suppliers have turned out to pretty much be pointless as they just don't fit anyone so they're all being chucked away. I most certainly don't think the government have handled things properly but I also give allowances for the fact this is a new virus on a scale we haven't seen in modern times so I'll cut them a little slack but this will just be yet one more thing for people to be down on them about.

I saw Antwerp in the news so am assuming they've got quite a few cases. I see France is on the up again too, third in Europe behind UK and Italy now. My friend has just been to Turkey for a week and got back a couple of days ago so hoping she's ok. I don't know if that's a quarantine country (not planning on travelling so doesn't bother me) but she's been staying at home anyway so it's not an issue for her.

I don't pretend to understand politics at the best of times and especially not American politics but a recent BBC article suggested (via graphs) that Trump is out of favour so far, more so than he was in 2016 with his surprise win. So we can hope but I know it doesn't mean anything.

*throws things at Satis* Oi, check in with us and let us know you're ok!

I think you could make the case you're in need of better protection than others, given your health situation. And that it wouldn't be such a major issue if you bought a few during the currently relative lull of hospitalized cases...it's going to be a lot more important for the medical professionals to have these masks in a few months (but hopefully not!). Not sure where you find any though, and at what sort of gouged prices!

There were a few similar scandals like that as well in Belgium, especially in the beginning of the crisis. Governments would just panic buy any stock they could find and clearly some importers got rich off it. Belgian government had a few bad batches they had to throw out, and they had also destroyed their stockpile of these emergency supplies a few years earlier without replacing it. Goddamn short-sighted governments...it feels like we all got too comfortable and thought 'well no war or major global crisis happened in the last 50 years so we're probably going to be good forever now! So why would we invest in something that isn't benefiting us politically right now?' Except apparently, who have never stopped stockpiling because they know what they're dealing with, with Russia next door.

Belgium still going the wrong direction even though Antwerp has stabilized, and France is marching towards new lockdowns it seems (albeit local ones). I'm still fine though, and so are my family. Fingers crossed!

Russia claims it has a functional and safe vaccine btw, and that they will start rolling it out for those in need (medical professionals, essential workers, etc) in a month or two. And that they can start doing widespread inoculations by the end of the year. I mean, it would be great if it was true, but it's Russia so you know...not going to take their word on it. On the bright side, we might have a whole country full of guinea pigs for their vaccin to test it's safe or not.

Yeah France isn't looking so great. Back on the quarantine list if you holiday there now.

Not sure I trust that Russian vaccine! Niall said he'd seen something (I assume on BBC) that says they only tested it for a few weeks on 30 people. I know we're all desperate for one but I'd like to be sure it's relatively safe. Apparently the UK (and I assume most countries) have essentially been pre-ordering vaccines from all sorts of institutions just in the hopes that one is ok and they can get it before the rush. Wonder if you get a special edition coronavirus statue with every pre-order?

J - has your son had his surgery yet? Hope it's all gone ok.

Yeah he's fine, thanks for asking. It had come back worse than the doctor had presumed it would, he had hoped for a 1 hour operation, it ended up turning into a 4 h one. They also had to replace his ear drum and one of his hearing bones (the hammer). So considering all that, he's fine now. Didn't have to spend the night there, eats well, slept well last night, plays games all day.

Lol as long as he can still play games it's all good! Glad to hear it went ok if longer than expected.

Hey guys, just saying hi. Sorry, we've both been working a lot and otherwise trying to avoid reality. Lots of booze, lots of games. *shrug* We're both still in the clear... I'm still not going into work unless I absolutely have to, which is next to never. Still getting my ass worked off. I've been subbing for someone that's been on vacation so I'm waking up at 6:30am and working until at least 6pm every day. Ugh. I had 3 12 hour days last week in a row before I said screw it and stopped. Shiny unfortunately still has to go in every week at least once, sometimes twice. She's been dealing with her own work drama. So yay... but at least we still have jobs and our health, I guess? Nice to hear all of your updates... glad to hear you kid is doing good after his surgery, J. And good on Pev and Ox for being responsible citizens. God, we must all be getting old.

Thanks for checking in Satis, was getting worried! I do feel for Shiny (and you). Hope she gets the drama sorted out. Sounds like you need a few days off to just sleep.

Tell me about the 'old' thing lol. All these memes you see around about how if Ikea is an exciting day out for you, you're old, yep they're all true! I read through some really old threads on here a while back too and I was just cringing at young me.

I'm not even gonna try and find my old stuff, because I'll sure want to kill myself at the end of it. I'm sure you look fine in comparison Pev!

Good to hear you and Shiny are ok Satis! Was getting a bit worried there. Great to hear you at least managed to avoid having to go into work in that virus hellscape of a small room with 10 people separated by tiny little screens. Too bad Shiny can't really avoid dealing with people for what concerns her job, but I'm sure she'll take all the necessary precautions yeah. Now just hope she doesn't run into some completely irresponsible selfish asshole!

I'm not getting worked like you but still busy days. My boss and most of my colleagues decided to take all their leave around the same time so I'm now basically running the whole department, which has its good and its bad days. Unfortunately most of last week was a bad week. Anyway they're all going to be back in a week or two when all their kids have to go school again so things will normalize soon.

Still not sure if I will manage to take a real holiday as I can't really do shit with the virus still out there, and spending 2 weeks at my parents' without being able to visit friends doesn't sound like my vision of a holiday either. I'm kinda rooting that after the summer the virus will take a dip again, when all the morons have to get back to their day jobs/school and stop partying (and before the winter comes and everyone will be stuck inside). If that happens I might be able to escape to Malta for a bit for a lonely man trip. Fingers crossed.

Heh... yea, I haven't gone through the old posts on this board. Maybe when I get a bit older. :p Omg... I just looked at the oldest post in this forum and it was from Ox... in 2003... and was a poll about masturbation.