This is why I've been saving all those USB cables over the years.

This mask always makes a fashion statement in my area. People are willing to pay real big bucks to keep up with the Joneses - haute couture.

Puffery around a not so deadly disease just isn't justification for loss of freedom.

 

3+ million cases and over 225,000 (and counting) deaths is not deadly enough for you? Ask Boris Johnson how benign this disease is. Maybe you need a little science education and less FOX news.

Let's try to get this back on a slightly more photography-slanted angle - I have the same issue as others with glasses misting up when I wear a mask and peer through a viewfinder, or binoculars.

 

The reason I wear a mask (and latex gloves) when shopping or on public transport is that it does a little to reduce other people's anxiety, and to me that outweighs any temporary discomfort I may feel. To quote Chester Anderson in The Butterfly Kid - 'Forestalling other people's paranoia is a basic survival technique'.

 

And to those who feel lockdown and movement restrictions are intolerable - may I suggest you read The Diary of Anne Frank.

 

Trusting this is not seen as overly or overtly political in either content or intent.

glasses misting up

At first I was distressed by this but now I’m kind of enjoying looking at the world through a Pictorialist haze. The other day, I strolled through Golden Gate Park’s rhododendron dell and felt as if I was moving through an Impressionist painting. Only problem is, the photos I took came out too darn sharp!

 

Come to think of it, bad times can be awful, but they also present opportunities for change going forward. Aside from potential cultural, economic, and practical shifts, walking around in soft focus for weeks might just impact my seeing the world going forward. Enjoying street photography as I do, the experience of exaggeratedly quiet midday streets and highways, people walking out of their way to avoid someone coming toward them instead of hogging the sidewalk, more and more dads out playing catch with their young sons on front lawns, folks setting up beach chairs on the sidewalk to chit chat with a neighbor who’s at a safe distance on their front porch, a few drive-by parties where folks sing ‘happy birthday’ from their cars. These and more will undoubtedly affect my view of city life going forward. Even the sound of cheers for first responders echoing through the darkening sky leaves a visual and emotional imprint.

 

There’s a great feeling when you take off those foggy glasses and wipe them and your eyes back into focus. A good refocusing rarely harms a good photographer.

 

:)

The only impacts I get when mine steam up are from recalcitrant inanimate objects, that don't see me coming and walk into me. Trees, lampposts, buses - items of such ilk.

The mask not only fogs up glasses but cuts off some lower vision of where you feet are going. Not many good sidewalks in this town but you can walk in the streets now. Almost got run down by a tourist in the crosswalk last weekend, made me feel nostalgic for the good old days.

I know this will be removed. I don't care.

 

 

Julianne Nicole

 

AoutsaprfmriSl 2n4 saponctc ssnsot9:49ral PMersed · Public

 

I am a Covid ICU nurse in New York City, and yesterday, like many other days lately, I couldn’t fix my patient. Sure, that happens all the time in the ICU. It definitely wasn’t the first time. It certainly won’t be the last. What makes this patient noteworthy? A few things, actually. He was infected with Covid 19, and he will lose his battle with Covid 19. He is only 23 years old.

I was destroyed by his clinical course in a way that has only happened a few times in my nursing career. It wasn’t his presentation. I’ve seen that before. It wasn’t his complications. I’ve seen that too.

It was the grief. It was his parents. The grief I witnessed yesterday, was grief that I haven’t allowed myself to recognize since this runaway train got rolling here in early March. I could sense it. It was lingering in the periphery of my mind, but yesterday something in me gave way, and that grief rushed in.

I think I was struck by a lot of emotions and realities yesterday. Emotions that have been brewing for weeks, and realities that I have been stifling because I had to in order to do my job effectively. My therapist tells me weekly via facetime that it’s impossible to process trauma when the trauma is still occurring. It just keeps building.

I get home from work, take my trusty companion Apollo immediately out to pee, he’s been home for 14 hours at a time. I have to keep my dog walker safe. No one can come into my apartment.

I’ve already been very sick from my work exposure, and I’m heavily exposed every day that I work since I returned after being 72 hours afebrile, the new standard for healthcare workers. That was after a week of running a fever of 104 even with Tylenol around the clock, but thankfully without respiratory symptoms. I was lucky.

Like every other healthcare worker on the planet right now, I strip inside the door, throw all the scrubs in the wash, bleach wipe all of my every day carry supplies, shoes and work bag stay at the bottom of the stairs.

You see, there’s a descending level of Covid contamination as you ascend the stairs just inside my apartment door. Work bag and shoes stay at the bottom. Dog walking shoes next step up, then dog leash, then running shoes.

I dodge my excited and doofy German shepherd, who is bringing me every toy he has to play with, and I go and scald myself for 20 minutes in a hot shower. Washing off the germs, metaphorically washing off the weight of the day.

We play fetch after the shower. Once he’s tired, I lay on the floor with him, holding him tight, until I’m ready to get up and eat, but sometimes I just go straight to bed.

Quite honestly, I’m so tired of the death. With three days off from what has been two months of literal hell on earth as a Covid ICU nurse in NYC, I’m having an evening glass of wine, and munching on the twizzlers my dear aunt sent me from Upstate NY, while my dog is bouncing off the walls because I still don’t have the energy to run every day with him.

 

There's lots more.

Moderator Note

The off topic latitudes sometimes allowed in the Casual Photo Conversations Forum are wearing thin. (absolutely terrible mixed metaphors)

Back onto Photography related comments, please.

Thanks.

 

William

Edited May 18, 2020 by William Michael

I can walk, shop, take photos. I have some risk factors but consider myself one of the lucky ones so far.

Demanding the inalienable rights guaranteed to U.S. citizens under the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Puffery around a not so deadly disease just isn't justification for loss of freedom.

 

Inalienable rights, indeed, Sandy. But that phrase isn't used in the Constitution; it's from the Declaration of Independence. I suspect you may have been thinking about the Constitution's preamble. "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." (Emphasis added.) Social distancing and wearing gloves and masks outside the home is a preemptive measure to lessen the number of cases and deaths due to Covid-19. If this isn't a clear example of promoting the general welfare, I'll never know what is.

 

You already may know that I am Jewish. There's a passage from the Talmud ( the rabbinic source of interpretation of the Jewish bible) that reads, "Anyone who destroys a life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed an entire world; and anyone who saves a life is as if he saved an entire world." The object of the measures governments in the US - federal, local, and state - is to save lives. How can anyone take issue with this?

 

Believe me, I truly feel very badly for all of the people out of work. Earlier in my life, I went through 2 periods of unemployment - 1 for 4 months and the other for close to 7. During the latter period, my unemployment benefits ran out too soon for my liking. However, the currently unemployed people need to understand that this will not last forever. Certainly their plight didn't justify some of them occupying the gallery floor of the Michigan House of Representatives armed with semiautomatic weapons.

Moderator Note

 

The off topic latitudes sometimes allowed in the Casual Photo Conversations Forum are wearing thin. (absolutely terrible mixed metaphors)

Back onto Photography related comments, please.

Thanks.

 

William

Edited May 18, 2020 by William Michael

 

Sorry about the poor quality of the image. It shows that wearing masks depresses the rate of infection, indeed the S Korean line flattens after they instituted masks.

 

Statistics paint a dramatic possibility. An expert in probability, Naseem Taleb a risk professor, says mass mask wearing is inevitable -because not doing so involves an asymmetric risk: even the worst mask reduces infection rates by 30%, and if both people involved in an interaction wear one, risk of infection can drop by 90%.

Moderator Note

 

The off topic latitudes sometimes allowed in the Casual Photo Conversations Forum are wearing thin. (absolutely terrible mixed metaphors)

Back onto Photography related comments, please.

Thanks.

 

William

Edited May 18, 2020 by William Michael

Let's try to get this back on a slightly more photography-slanted angle - I have the same issue as others with glasses misting up when I wear a mask and peer through a viewfinder, or binoculars.

 

The reason I wear a mask (and latex gloves) when shopping or on public transport is that it does a little to reduce other people's anxiety, and to me that outweighs any temporary discomfort I may feel. To quote Chester Anderson in The Butterfly Kid - 'Forestalling other people's paranoia is a basic survival technique'.

 

And to those who feel lockdown and movement restrictions are intolerable - may I suggest you read The Diary of Anne Frank.

 

Trusting this is not seen as overly or overtly political in either content or intent.

I wear a mask when I'm photographing so I don't inadvertently hand out a death sentence to some other person should I be infected and come into close proximity.

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Sorry about the poor quality of the image. It shows that wearing masks depresses the rate of infection, indeed the S Korean line flattens after they instituted masks.

 

Statistics paint a dramatic possibility. An expert in probability, Naseem Taleb a risk professor, says mass mask wearing is inevitable -because not doing so involves an asymmetric risk: even the worst mask reduces infection rates by 30%, and if both people involved in an interaction wear one, risk of infection can drop by 90%.

 

Some people can't be bothered with facts!

Unfortunately many people put their own self interests over the welfare of the society as a whole.

Unfortunately many people put their own self interests over the welfare of the society as a whole.

 

Well said!

Old tech - no wire required.

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Hand over that strong box podna!